Dickinson's After great pain

The final stanza again uses the hard, cold images. The line, "This is the Hour of Lead," depicts time as a metal that is associated with gray hardness. Then the speaker claims that if a person can outlive such a tragic experience, that person will remember the stages his body and mind went through "As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow -- / First -- Chill --then Stupor -- then the letting go." These last two lines show the stages the speaker experienced as she struggled to overcome the suffering. First came a period of nonbelief and then near unconsciousness. If the sufferer survives the suffering, the final relief comes, and the relief is in "letting go," the time when the mind finds that it can finally relax and no longer concentrate on the terrible pain.

Go To Page: 1 2