22 pages 44 minutes read

Emily Dickinson

If I should die

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1891

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Further Reading & Resources

Related Poems

Song of Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1859)

Here is Emerson’s fullest articulation of the Transcendentalist vision of humanity’s oneness with a glorious and powerful natural world that Dickinson celebrates in the opening 10 lines. Nature, whose “oldest force is good as new” (Line 82), Emerson says, reassures him, who like Dickinson struggles with the awareness of death, that nature does not know exhaustion. To borrow from the poem, a thousand sunrises are as one, apples never cease ripening, and rivers never empty. Within that grand energy field, death is irrelevant. “In slumber,” the speaker ultimately concludes, “I am strong” (Line 8).

It’s Easy to Invent a Life by Emily Dickinson (year of composition uncertain)

The poem offers one of Dickinson’s most compelling statements about the ephemeral nature of life, how easy lives come and go, how simply we invent purpose and then find that entire enterprise rendered ironic by the inevitability of death. Within God’s grand scheme, individual people can be easily inserted and just as easily slipped out. As with Poem 54, the irony gives the honesty a certain kind of playfulness, a sly sense of humor. Much as the speaker uses the stock market in Poem 54, here God’s creation itself happily suggests the fragility of human endeavor and the irrelevancy of any single life.

Related Titles

By Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

A Bird, came down the Walk

Emily Dickinson

A Bird, came down the Walk

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

A Clock stopped—

Emily Dickinson

A Clock stopped—

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

After great pain, a formal feeling comes

Emily Dickinson

After great pain, a formal feeling comes

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

A narrow Fellow in the Grass (1096)

Emily Dickinson

A narrow Fellow in the Grass (1096)

Emily Dickinson

STUDY + TEACHING GUIDE
logo

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

Emily Dickinson

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

"Faith" is a fine invention

Emily Dickinson

"Faith" is a fine invention

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)

Emily Dickinson

Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

Hope is a strange invention

Emily Dickinson

Hope is a strange invention

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers

Emily Dickinson

"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

I Can Wade Grief

Emily Dickinson

I Can Wade Grief

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

I Felt a Cleaving in my Mind

Emily Dickinson

I Felt a Cleaving in my Mind

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain

Emily Dickinson

I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking

Emily Dickinson

If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking

Emily Dickinson

STUDY + TEACHING GUIDE
logo

If you were coming in the fall

Emily Dickinson

If you were coming in the fall

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

I heard a Fly buzz — when I died

Emily Dickinson

I heard a Fly buzz — when I died

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

I'm Nobody! Who Are You?

Emily Dickinson

I'm Nobody! Who Are You?

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

Much Madness is divinest Sense—

Emily Dickinson

Much Madness is divinest Sense—

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

Success Is Counted Sweetest

Emily Dickinson

Success Is Counted Sweetest

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

Tell all the truth but tell it slant

Emily Dickinson

Tell all the truth but tell it slant

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

The Only News I Know

Emily Dickinson

The Only News I Know

Emily Dickinson