Reflection In Emily Dickinson's 'Safe In Their Alabaster Chambers'

Emily Dickinson wrote two poems titled “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers --,” one published in 1859 and the second published in 1861. These poems share close to identical first stanzas and dramatically differing second stanzas, causing the poems to stand on their own as individual, different poems. However, themes of life, death, and resurrection, remain the same. The speaker of each poem performs the theme of the poem through the tone, which is revealed in the specific language choices as well as the individual structures throughout. The speaker of the 1859 “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers --” could be the same as the 1861 poem, however the tone of the speaker appears changed, perhaps with time and a growing awareness of death and how time passes on. The addressee, maybe an apostrophé being the deceased in the tombs (or graves, or coffins), also changes as the speaker changes

The ninth line of the poem reads, “Diadems – drop – and Doges – surrender,” repeating the letter “D,” while also bringing the plural “Diadems” and “Doges” into “surrender” (which contains a heavy “D” sound, as well.) The heaviness in the repetition of “D” weighs down the second stanza, as quite the contrast to the second stanza of the 1859 poem. The final line of the poem, “Soundless as dots – on a Disc of snow” visually appears to be chiasmus, but only in the reversal of the first letters “S” and “D,” the same letters repeated in the previous line. The parallel structure created by the repeated sounds and visual letters create a circular effect as resolution to the poem. The snow is soundless and the dots fall on the disc. The imagery and phonemics soften the weight of the previous lines of history changing as time passes by comparing such changes to falling snow, as previously noted. However, through parallel structures and alliteration the execution of this effect is