Poem of the Week: I Died for Beauty by Emily Dickinson

but was scarce

Francesco Hayez, Il Consiglio alla Vendetta (detail)

I Died for Beauty
Emily Dickinson

I died for beauty—but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining Room—

He questioned softly “Why I failed”?
“For Beauty,” I replied—
“And I-for Truth-Themself are One—
“We Brethren, are,” He said—

And so, as Kinsmen met a Night—
We talked between the Rooms—
Until the Moss had reached our lips—
And covered up-our names—

This poem was originally published in the Christian Union (September 1890).

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So ghostly.

I love it. I imagine these specters conversing in a mausoleum or in some willow tree-lined cemetery at night. The solemnity of their voices, how they resign themselves to dying for beauty and truth. And, the suggestion that finding this connection in death, even as their lives are forgotten (“Until the Moss had reached our lips—”) is ultimately, chilling.