Emily Dickinson

I reason, earth is short

I reason, earth is short,

anguish absolute

Dickinson uses mathematical language—'absolute' means complete, without qualification. She's treating suffering like a constant in an equation.

And anguish absolute,
And many hurt;
But what of that?

But what of that?

This refrain appears three times, each after a different 'reason.' The repetition makes it sound more dismissive each time—logic isn't helping.

I reason, we could die:
The best vitality

excel decay

Even 'vitality' (life force) can't 'excel' (surpass, beat) decay. She's using competitive language—life vs. death as a contest life always loses.

Cannot excel decay;
But what of that?

But what of that?

This refrain appears three times, each after a different 'reason.' The repetition makes it sound more dismissive each time—logic isn't helping.

I reason that in heaven
Somehow, it will be even,

Some new equation

The mathematical metaphor culminates here. Heaven will provide different math where suffering balances out—but she doesn't sound convinced.

Some new equation given;
But what of that?

But what of that?

This refrain appears three times, each after a different 'reason.' The repetition makes it sound more dismissive each time—logic isn't helping.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Reasoning Toward Doubt

Dickinson structures this poem as a failed syllogism. Each stanza begins with "I reason"—she's trying to think her way through the problem of mortality and suffering. The three arguments build: earth is brief and painful (stanza 1), death is inevitable (stanza 2), heaven will compensate (stanza 3). But each conclusion gets dismissed with the same refrain: "But what of that?"

The poem's logic is deliberately circular. She reasons that heaven will provide "Some new equation" where suffering balances out, using mathematical language ("absolute," "excel," "even," "equation") to make the afterlife sound like a cosmic accounting system. But the refrain undercuts every argument. By the third repetition, "But what of that?" sounds less like a question and more like resignation—none of this reasoning actually helps.

The meter reinforces the instability. Dickinson uses short lines with irregular beats, making the poem feel choppy and unresolved. The rhymes are slant rhymes (short/that, die/decay, even/equation/given) rather than perfect matches—nothing quite lines up, just like her logic doesn't quite convince her. This is a poem about the failure of rationality to comfort us about death.

Dickinson's Private Theology

Dickinson wrote this around 1862, during her most productive period and amid personal crisis—several close friends had died, and she was wrestling with Calvinist doctrine. The poem reflects her complicated relationship with orthodox Christianity. She invokes heaven but sounds skeptical about whether it matters.

The phrase "it will be even" is doing double work: heaven will make things equal/fair, but also even things out mathematically. This reflects 19th-century attempts to make religion "reasonable"—natural theology tried to prove God through logic and evidence. Dickinson tests that approach and finds it wanting. The "Somehow" in line 9 is telling—she has no mechanism, just vague hope.

Notice what she doesn't say: no mention of God, Christ, salvation, or grace. Just an impersonal "new equation." For a poet raised in Puritan New England, these absences are loud. She's reduced the afterlife to a mathematical correction, and even that doesn't console her. The poem ends with the same dismissive question, unresolved—which is exactly Dickinson's point about the limits of reasoning our way to faith.