Emily Dickinson

Griefs

GRIEFS.
I MEASURE every grief I meet

Analytic eyes

She's studying grief like a scientist—measuring, comparing, collecting data. The clinical language ('measure,' 'analytic') contrasts sharply with the emotional subject.

With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size.
I wonder if they bore it long,
Or did it just begin?
I could not tell the date of mine,

Date of mine

Grief so old she can't remember when it started. This transforms grief from an event into a permanent condition of existence.

It feels so old a pain.
I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.
I wonder if when years have piled—

Thousands—on the cause

Notice the wild time scale—she's imagining grief lasting thousands of years beyond death, continuing 'through centuries above' in the afterlife.

Some thousands—on the cause
Of early hurt, if such a lapse
Could give them any pause;
Or would they go on aching still
Through centuries above,
Enlightened to a larger pain
By contrast with the love.
The grieved are many, I am told;
The reason deeper lies,—
Death is but one and comes but once,
And only nails the eyes.

Only nails the eyes

Death merely closes the eyes—it doesn't end grief. The verb 'nails' is brutally physical, suggesting a coffin lid.

There's grief of want, and grief of cold,—
A sort they call 'despair;'
There's banishment from native eyes,
In sight of native air.
And though I may not guess the kind
Correctly, yet to me
A piercing comfort it affords

Passing Calvary

Calvary is where Christ was crucified. She's walking past other people's suffering like stations of the cross, finding comfort in shared pain.

In passing Calvary,
To note the fashions of the cross,

Fashions of the cross

'Fashions' makes crucifixion almost casual—different styles of suffering, like clothing. Darkly ironic word choice for describing how people bear pain.

Of those that stand alone,
Still fascinated to presume
That some are like my own.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Grief Taxonomy

Dickinson approaches grief like a naturalist collecting specimens. She measures, wonders, and notes—the vocabulary of scientific observation applied to emotional devastation. This isn't metaphorical; she's literally describing how she studies other people's suffering to understand her own.

The catalog in stanza six breaks grief into categories: grief of want (poverty), grief of cold (physical suffering), despair (which she marks as something 'they call'—she's skeptical of the label), and banishment from native eyes (exile, being a stranger even at home). Notice she doesn't include death in this list. Death is separate, a one-time event that 'only nails the eyes'—it closes them, nothing more.

The most disturbing claim comes mid-poem: grief might continue 'through centuries above', growing into a 'larger pain' in the afterlife. She's imagining heaven as a place where you're more aware of what you've lost, not less. The 'contrast with the love' means you finally understand the full scale of what's gone. This inverts the entire Christian promise of eternal comfort.

The Comfort of Calvary

The final stanza's logic is strange and precise: she finds 'piercing comfort' in observing others suffer. Not because their pain lessens hers, but because similarity proves she's not alone. The word 'piercing' makes even comfort hurt—nothing in this poem offers relief.

'Passing Calvary' transforms everyday life into a walk past crucifixions. She's 'fascinated to presume / That some are like my own'—that word 'fascinated' is clinical, almost voyeuristic. She's drawn to others' suffering because it validates her experience. The 'fashions of the cross' suggests there are different styles of crucifixion, different ways of being destroyed, and she's cataloging them.

CONTEXT Dickinson spent much of her adult life in seclusion, rarely leaving her family home in Amherst. Her letters describe prolonged periods of psychological suffering she called 'a terror' that began in her early thirties. This poem's ancient, undatable grief—'It feels so old a pain'—matches her descriptions of depression as a permanent state rather than a passing mood.