December Poet – Emily Dickinson

Dickinson’s ‘’Twas just this time, last year, I died’

Dec 1, 2007

Emily Dickinson was born December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her poem "'Twas just this time, last year, I died" looks beyond the death of the speaker.

The poem consists of six quatrains, each with the rime scheme ABCB and features Dickinson’s famed slant rimes: corn/on, between/in, came/sum, way/me. Dickinson explored the astral territory beyond death quite frequently, for example in “Because I could not stop for Death,” “I heard a Fly buzz when I died,” and many others.

First Quatrain: “’Twas just this time, last year, I died”

The speaker asserts that she died last year about this same time. As her body was transported through the countryside “by the Farms,” she heard the wind rustling the tassels on the corn. This reference puts the speaker’s death approximately in July.

Second Quatrain: “I thought how yellow it would look”

The speaker then speculated about the corn, musing about “how yellow it would look— / When Richard went to mill.” Then the speaker says she “wanted to get out,” but “something held [her] will.” She felt motivated to rise out of her coffin, but she was unable to do so; of course, death had immobilized her physical body, but her mind was still capable of comprehending her environment.

Third Quatrain: “I thought just how Red — Apples wedged”

In the third quatrain, the speaker thinks about the color of red apples, and the stubble in the fields as they are harvested. She then remembers the wagons that are pulled through the fields as the harvesters plucked the pumpkins.

Fourth Quatrain: “I wondered which would miss me, least”

Then the speaker makes a startling remark: “I wondered which would miss me, least.” A reader might expect the speaker to wonder who would miss her most, but she contemplates the opposite. And thinking further into fall, she wonders if her father would still place a dinner table setting for her at the Thanksgiving meal.

Fifth Quatrain: “And would it blur the Christmas glee”

Thinking even farther ahead, the speaker wonders if her Christmas stocking hung now in heaven would be too high for others to see. She also fancies she will be at too high an altitude for Santa Claus “to reach.”

Sixth Quatrain: “But this sort, grieved myself”

But then the speaker reverses her thoughts; thinking about how those still on the physical plane would react to her being on the astral plane becomes too sad, causing her to have “grieved [herself].” So instead of thinking the ordinary way, she decides to muse on that time—“some perfect year”—when they would join her.