XX
I have no life but this,
To lead it here;
Nor any death, but lest
Dispelled from there;~Emily Dickinson
Nor tie to earths to come,
Nor action new,
Except through this extent,
The realm of you.
This reads like a classic description of an obsessive love. Without the beloved, the speaker is nothing, has nothing, not life, not death, not anything after that. The beloved is an entire realm through which the speaker experiences everything. This definitely seems like a new love and not a relationship that’s well-established.
One of the interesting things about this poem, to me, is that unlike other Dickinson love poems, this one doesn’t convey a clear emotion–rather, a state. We don’t get a sense of whether or not the speaker views any of this as good or bad–it simply is, without judgment.
This is also not Dickinson’s typical “Yellow Rose of Texas” meter. The lines are shorter than her usual ones, and every even-numbered line is shorter than the one before it.
What I like most about this poem, though, is the cleverness of its construction. It begins with “I” and ends with “you,” demonstrating through its very language and structure how the lover has become subsumed into the beloved.
The Emily Project 