poetry texts, poem archive at plagiarist.com

great oxymoron at the end

i agree with Poe - the last two lines are very intriguing. to me, it is a very proper slogan for the agnostic camp. there is no way we will every know (at least in the foreseeable future) whether there is a god or an afterlife (it all rests on faith). thus, we might as well just appreciate this life as much as we can before death intervenes.

i liked this poem ever since i first read it, though i only just recently derived any real meaning FROM it (besides the last two lines). it is a poem about love and loss of love. "my life closed twice" refers to two love affairs the speaker has had in the past. both affairs ended by breaking her heart, a tramatic experience which she relates to dying. after her first two failed love affairs, she is now questioning whether she will have the enjoyment of experiencing another love before she dies. by questioning whether "immortality" will "unvail a third event" for her, she is equating the experience of love to immortality. the only way we can combat mortality, with which we are all plagued, is to make the most of this life and truly appreciate the beauty, including love relationships. when a person is in love, he/she feels immortal.

This Poem is about miscarriages, and how Emily had already suffered two, and is questioning if she will have a third chance. It is a negative depressing poem, ending with the feeling that she has not yet seen her children, and her life is like hell.

I really enjoy this poem because I really feel that everyone does, at one point think and analise life. That is wheat Dickenson is doing.