Emily Dickinson

I think just how my shape will rise

THINK just how my shape will rise
When I shall be forgiven,

Resurrection physics

She imagines her body literally rising upward, head disappearing last—like watching someone ascend through a ceiling. Dickinson makes the afterlife physical.

Till hair and eyes and timid head
Are out of sight, in heaven.
I think just how my lips will weigh
With shapeless, quivering prayer
That you, so late, consider me,
The sparrow of your care.

Sparrow reference

Matthew 10:29-31—God notices even sparrows falling. She's claiming the least valuable position in God's care, the minimum attention.

I mind me that of anguish sent,

Past survival

"Drifts" are snowdrifts of suffering. She's arguing from precedent: God removed some anguish before, so why not this one?

Some drifts were moved away
Before my simple bosom broke,—
And why not this, if they?
And so, until delirious borne
I con that thing,—"forgiven,"—
Till with long fright and longer trust
I drop my heart, unshriven!

Unshriven reversal

Unshriven means dying without confession or absolution. After obsessing over being forgiven, she dies unforgiven—the poem's devastating pivot.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Forgiveness She Never Gets

The poem moves from hopeful fantasy to brutal reality. Stanzas 1-3 are conditional—"I think," "I mind me"—imagining scenarios where God forgives her. The final stanza switches to what actually happens: she dies unshriven, without absolution. That exclamation point isn't triumph; it's shock.

Notice "delirious borne"—she's carried away by fever or death itself while still rehearsing ("con" means to study or memorize) the word "forgiven." She spends her dying moments drilling a vocabulary word she'll never earn. The "long fright and longer trust" tells you the proportions: trust outlasts fear, but both are exhausting.

Dickinson wrote hundreds of poems about her fraught relationship with Calvinist theology. She couldn't accept the doctrine but couldn't escape wanting its promises. This poem captures that trap—you can't think yourself into grace, but you can't stop trying.

Dickinson's Signature Moves

Watch the physical specificity in stanza 1. Most poets would write vaguely about "ascending to heaven." Dickinson gives you the body parts in order of disappearance: hair, eyes, head. She makes the metaphysical concrete—resurrection as a stage effect you could watch happen.

The "shapeless, quivering prayer" in stanza 2 does double work. Shapeless lips can't form words properly (she's dying or too weak to speak clearly). But shapeless also means the prayer itself has no form—it's just desperate noise. The quivering is both physical trembling and the wavering of faith.

"Simple bosom" is deliberately humble diction, matching the sparrow image. Dickinson often positioned herself as small, insignificant, easily overlooked—then used that position to make demands. Here she's saying: my heart is simple/breakable, God moved other suffering, why not mine? It's theology as legal argument.