The Whole of it came
not at once –
‘Twas Murder by degrees –
A Thrust – and then for
Life a chance –
The Bliss to cauterize –
The Cat reprieves the mouse
She eases from her teeth
Just long enough for Hope
to +teaze – +stir –
Then +mashes it to death – +crunches
‘Tis Life’s award – to die –
Contenteder if once –
Than dying +half – then +part
rallying
For +consciouser – Eclipse – +totaller
Link to EDA manuscript. Originally in Packet XXXI, Fascicle 23, ca. 1862. First published in Bingham, Ancestors’ Brocades (1945), 333, the first stanza, with the alternative not adopted; Bolts of Melody (1945), 257, entire, with the alternatives not adopted. Courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
This poem illustrates what Cristanne Miller identifies as “Dickinson’s most common alteration of stanzas within a poem” from her most frequently used form, or 8686, to her second, 6686. We see this pattern also in “That first Day, when you praised Me, Sweet” (F470), “The Birds begun at Four o’clock –” (F504B), “I think to Live – may be a Bliss” (F757), and variations on the pattern in many other poems. Miller speculates:
Perhaps the fact that so many of her poems involve thinking through an implied question or a process of reflection encourages movement from one rhythmic structure to another.
This bleak poem, about dying a little every day, also features neologisms, Dickinson’s creation of words, to reinforce her theme. In three instances, she intensifies key adjectives to express the excess, but not the totality (that would require using the –est suffix), of “dying half:” “Contenteder,” “totaller,” “consciouser.” These neologisms are inevitably linked as signifiers of something out of the ordinary, some disruption of grammar, order, maybe even common sense. Shira Wolosky comments:
This poem seems remote from the hymnal; yet, the hymnal frame gives to it as to so many Dickinson poems, an extra resonance and force. Even original figures are often rooted in traditional ones.