"As by the dead we love to sit," By Emily Dickinson [Analysis]

As by the dead we love to sit,[1] Become so wondrous dear --[2] As for the lost we grapple[3] Tho' all the rest are here --[4] In broken mathematics[5] We estimate our prize[6] Vast -- in its fading ration[7] To our penurious eyes![8]
Poem 88 [F78] "As by the dead we love to sit" Analysis by David Preest [Poem]

This poem comes in a letter of 2 March 1859 (L204) sent to her dear friend, Mrs Holland. Emily tells her friend that she gathers from the Springfield Republican newspaper that Dr Holland is about to return home from a lecturing tour, and exclaims, rather girlishly, 'Am told that fasting give to food marvellous Aroma, but [I] by birth a Bachelor, disavow Cuisine. Meeting is well worth parting.' But she then gives this point its most serious possible application by saying that unless people dear to us died, we would never experience after a period of impatience the rapture of meeting them in heaven. Then follow the two stanzas of the poem. As we mourn for our dead, in mathematics broken by our tears we work out that the greater the penury of our loss, the vaster will be the prize of reunion in heaven. 'Fading' is a mysterious word. In poem 687 'faded child' means 'dead child,' so perhaps 'fading ratio' means 'the sort of ratio imposed by death.'
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