Emily Dickinson

I died for beauty, but was scarce

"scarce adjusted"

Barely settled in—death just happened. The poem starts mid-scene, like walking into a conversation already happening.

I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.
He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth,—the two are one;

"the two are one"

Plato's *Symposium* argues beauty and truth are identical—the same ultimate reality. Dickinson's speakers claim kinship through philosophy.

We brethren are," he said.

"as kinsmen met a night"

"Kinsmen" = blood relatives. "A night" (not "at night") is archaic, biblical phrasing—sounds like Genesis or Psalms.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.

"covered up our names"

Gravestones become unreadable. The ideals they died for—beauty, truth—don't stop physical erasure. Time wins.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

What the Moss Actually Does

The poem's turn happens at "Until the moss"—everything before is dialogue, everything after is silence. The two speakers bond over shared ideals, claim brotherhood, start a conversation. Then nature shuts them up.

Dickinson wrote this around 1862, during her most prolific period (she wrote nearly 400 poems in two years). She was reading Keats, who wrote "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" in *Ode on a Grecian Urn*. Her poem answers him: fine, they're the same, but what does that matter when you're dead?

The moss is literal—it grows on New England gravestones, slowly obscuring the carved names. But watch what it covers: first "our lips" (stopping speech), then "our names" (erasing identity). The ideals these people died for—beauty and truth—can't protect them from physical obliteration. The poem asks: if even the highest human values end in silence and anonymity, what's the point of dying for them?

Dickinson's Tomb Architecture

Notice the "adjoining room"—death is domestic space, like a boarding house. The dead are neighbors who chat through walls. This is pure Dickinson: she rarely left her house in Amherst, so even the afterlife has room divisions and polite conversations.

The question-and-answer structure mimics a social call. "Why I failed" is interesting phrasing—not "why I died" but "why I failed." Death is failure, and both speakers failed at life while pursuing abstractions. They're bonding over mutual defeat.

"We brethren are" uses archaic grammar (modern English: "we are brethren"). It echoes King James Bible syntax, giving the line false authority—these dead people sound wise and eternal, but the moss proves they're not. The elevated language can't save them from rot.