No, the lives of the poets simply cease when the last drops of life energy are used. Nor, if there is no external force at work, is there any obvious way of preventing their demise. There is no dramatic, violent end to the poetsвЂ™ lives, in the way that the statue of Ozymandias makes for a striking ruin. They are not вЂњput outвЂќ or вЂњsnuffed outвЂќ by some external force. To say that they вЂњgo outвЂќ is, I think, a surprisingly stark way of putting it.

WhatвЂ™s not it doubt is the mortality of the poets, for вЂњThemselvesВ вЂ“ go outвЂќ (line 2). It would seem, that from the starting premise, the immortality of art is in doubt. But candles are only so long, and fuel, when it burns, is spent. True, they provide a more sustained source of light than an uncontained flash, or a stray spark from a flint. On the other hand, lamps are a fleeting source of illumination. They even have some divine connotations, as seen in the Beatitudes: вЂњNeither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick and it giveth light unto all that are in the houseвЂќ (Matthew 5:15, King James Version). On the one hand, lamps are a source of illumination, of literal enlightenment, which is just what readers come to poetry to find. We are told that вЂњhe Poets light but LampsвЂќ (line 1)-and as it turns out, a lamp is a complicated metaphor for poetry.

Like the speaker in ShelleyвЂ™s poem, DickinsonвЂ™s speaker is not content with the easy comfort of that traditional poetic narrative, but I think her argument is more optimistic than the one we find in вЂњOzymandias.вЂќ One would not suspect as much, though, from reading the opening lines. The reader is thus denied the consolation that comes from a poem such as Edmund SpenserвЂ™s вЂњ,вЂќ which promises that one may live forever through verse. And, if youвЂ™ve been following my poem analyses for the past few months, this problem should be a familiar one.Д«ack in July, I covered Percy Bysshe ShelleyвЂ™s sonnet вЂњOzymandias,вЂќ and I made much of how his poem complicates the traditional narrative of achieving immortality through art: the statue of the great king Ozymandias is a near-ruin, and the speakerвЂ™s account of the monument is filtered through multiple layers of hearsay.

We see both of those obsessions on display in this poem, as the speaker grapples with the question of how, or whether, art can endure when the ones who create that art are mortal beings. If you know anything about Emily Dickinson, youвЂ™ll know that there were two big ideas that possessed her, that she returned to time and again in her poetry: death and immortality. Either way, this is a slightly lesser known entry in DickinsonвЂ™s bibliography: вЂњ.вЂќ LetвЂ™s give it a quick read-through before we start pulling it apart. In FranklinвЂ™s numbering, this is poem 930 if you prefer the older Johnson numbering system, itвЂ™s 883. And the fact that so much of her poetry has survived for our enjoyment has some bearing on the poem IвЂ™d like to look at now. Once one gets tired of вЂњвЂќ and вЂњвЂќ and all the other classroom staples, thereвЂ™s still so much more of DickinsonвЂ™s work to discover. Even if most of her poems are on the short side-the piece weвЂ™re going to look at today is only eight lines long-that is a vast amount of material for the reader to appreciate. Franklin identified 1,789 different poems to include in the collection. In his 1998 edition of DickinsonвЂ™s complete poems, R. Something that makes Emily Dickinson a poet worth revisiting is the sheer quantity of her output.

Ozymandias sparknotes