Emily Dickinson

Love's Baptism

LOVE'S BAPTISM.

Baptism as property

"Ceded" is a legal term—territory surrendered in a treaty. She's framing infant baptism as her parents claiming ownership of her through religious ceremony.

I'm ceded, I've stopped being theirs;
The name they dropped upon my face
With water, in the country church,
Is finished using now,
And they can put it with my dolls,

Childhood inventory

Dolls, spools of thread—these are specifically gendered objects. She's listing the props of 19th-century girlhood she's discarding along with her baptismal name.

My childhood, and the string of spools
I've finished threading too.
Baptized before without the choice,
But this time consciously, of grace
Unto supremest name,

Crescent to full moon

The crescent moon is incomplete, waxing. "Dropped" means she's shedding the partial identity for the "whole arc"—full moon, complete self.

Called to my full, the crescent dropped,
Existence's whole arc filled up
With one small diadem.
My second rank, too small the first,
Crowned, crowing on my father's breast,
A half unconscious queen;
But this time, adequate, erect,
With will to choose or to reject,
And I choose—just a throne.

Crown vs. throne

She was "crowned" as an infant (passive verb), but now she "choose[s]" the throne (active). The crown was given; the throne is claimed.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Two Baptisms: Infant vs. Adult Choice

Dickinson structures the poem as a contrast between two baptisms—one performed on her as an infant ("without the choice") and one she's performing on herself "consciously." The first eight lines inventory what she's discarding: her baptismal name, her dolls, her spools of thread. These aren't random objects—they're the apparatus of 19th-century female childhood and domesticity.

The turn happens at line 8: "Baptized before without the choice, / But this time consciously." The second baptism isn't Christian—there's no church, no water, no congregation. It's a self-coronation. The "supremest name" she's baptized into is never specified, which is the point. She's claiming the right to name herself.

The moon imagery tracks her growth from incomplete to whole. "Crescent" is the waxing moon, partial and still forming. When she drops the crescent, "Existence's whole arc" fills up—she becomes the full moon. The "diadem" (crown) is small because it's complete, not because it's inadequate. A full moon is smaller in the sky than a crescent arc, but it's whole.

The final stanza makes the power shift explicit. As an infant, she was "crowned, crowing on my father's breast"—note the pun on "crowing" (both crying and being crowned). She was "half unconscious," a "queen" only in potential. Now she's "adequate, erect, / With will to choose or to reject." The poem ends with that choice: "just a throne." Not the crown someone places on you, but the throne you claim for yourself.

Dickinson's Baptism and Marriage

CONTEXT Dickinson was baptized as an infant in the First Church of Amherst but never joined the church as an adult—a significant act of refusal in her community. During the 1850s revival at Mount Holyoke, she was one of the only students who wouldn't declare faith. This poem likely dates from the early 1860s, when she was in her early thirties and had definitively rejected both marriage and church membership.

The language of "ceding" and being "called to my full" suggests marriage as much as baptism. In 19th-century marriage, a woman was "given away" by her father, took her husband's name, and legally became his property. The poem's imagery—moving from father's breast to self-claimed throne—tracks a refusal of this transfer of ownership.

"Just a throne" is doing complex work. "Just" can mean "merely" (minimizing) or "exactly" (claiming). She's not settling for less than queenship—she's claiming the seat of power without needing anyone to crown her. The throne is what matters, not the ceremony of coronation or the external validation of the crown.