Death in Vain

Emily Dickinson is an interesting woman. She did not become famous until after her death when they found her poems. She seems completely depressed in contrast to Walt Whitman. From what I have studied about her, Dickinson seemed to live a really lonely life. But her words are beautiful in a strange way. The one poem that I like the most is numbered 448/449. She writes that she died for something swallow and vain like beauty. She seems to say that it is not good to live and die for fleeting hollow things like beauty. Those things do not last long and always run away from us in the end. Lines five through eight prove this fact by saying, “He questioned softly ‘Why I failed’?/‘For Beauty’. I replied-/‘And I- for Truth- Themselves are One-/We Bretheren, are’ He said-” Beauty and other swallow things are not really worth dying for in the end. Dickinson finishes that poem up with the moss reaching for their lips and covering up our names. It seems to say that in the end, if one only goes for fleeting empty things in life, they will mostly be forgotten in the end. It is a shame, really. Humans should reach out for more meaningful and deeper things in life.