Emily Dickinson

How dare the robins sing

HOW dare the robins sing,
When men and women hear
Who since they went to their account

settled with the year

Accounting metaphor—death as paying off a debt. The dead have "settled their account" with life, like closing out a ledger at year's end.

Have settled with the year!—
Paid all that life had earned
In one consummate bill,

consummate bill

"Consummate" means complete or final. Death is the total sum of everything life charged them—paid all at once, account closed.

And now, what life or death can do
Is immaterial.
Insulting is the sun
To him whose mortal light,

Beguiled of immortality

"Beguiled of" means tricked out of or cheated of. The dead person was deceived—promised eternal life but got darkness instead.

Beguiled of immortality,
Bequeaths him to the night.
In deference to him
Extinct be every hum,
Whose garden wrestles with the dew,

garden wrestles with the dew

Dawn imagery—flowers struggling to lift their heads under the weight of morning dew. Life keeps fighting even when death should stop everything.

At daybreak overcome!
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Grief as Outrage at Normalcy

Dickinson wrote this after someone died—we don't know who, but the fury is specific. The poem's central scandal is that nature keeps going. Robins sing, the sun rises, gardens grow. The speaker demands silence, extinction, cosmic mourning.

The accounting metaphor runs through the first stanza: "settled with the year," "paid all that life had earned," "consummate bill." Death is a ledger closing, a final transaction. Once you've paid everything, nothing else matters—"what life or death can do / Is immaterial." The word "immaterial" does double work: both "irrelevant" and "not made of matter." The dead are beyond physical concerns.

The second stanza shifts to "Beguiled of immortality"—cheated of eternal life. This is likely a crisis of faith. If Christianity promised resurrection but delivered only "night," then the sun rising the next morning is an "insult." How dare the world continue when the promise was broken? The poem ends with a demand: everything should go "Extinct" in "deference" to the dead. Even the hum of insects, even dew-soaked flowers at daybreak. Dickinson wants nature itself to stop as an act of respect.

Dickinson's Death Accounting

Dickinson used financial metaphors for death throughout her work—"Because I could not stop for Death" also treats mortality as a transaction. But here the accounting is bitter. "Paid all that life had earned" suggests life was expensive, a series of debts that death settles in one brutal payment.

The poem's structure mirrors its argument. It starts with a question ("How dare") that's really an accusation, then builds through two stanzas of explanation, ending with a command: "Extinct be every hum." The exclamation points aren't excitement—they're anger. Notice how she uses dashes to create pauses, forcing you to stop at "year!—" and "bill," like an accountant checking figures.

"Deference" is the key word in the final stanza. It means respectful submission. Dickinson demands that all of nature—sun, robins, gardens, insects—bow to death. The fact that they don't, that the garden still "wrestles with the dew" at dawn, is the poem's real grief. Life's indifference to death is unbearable.