I died for Beauty

I died for Beauty - but was scarce
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;
We brethren are," he said.

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

Emily Dickinson                                                                         

The poem has a rhyme scheme of ABCB and has the dark dreary outlook of life, just like many of her poems. This poem begins with the speaker whose death was brought on by beauty. The line of "I died for beauty" implies a sacrificial role the speaker played in order to let beauty live. Though in death, the speaker does not hint any note of regret or despair of being in a tomb. Perhaps due to the lack of time, because it is before the speaker is"scarce/ Adjusted in the tomb", the speaker does not contribute fault to beauty. Another deceased body enters to the adjoining room next to the speaker, and for this corpse, it has died "for truth". However, it is not because of death that the other corpse makes a connection between him and the narrator. It is because of who they died for and sacrificed their lives for. Therefore, they hold beauty and truth as one entity that is beyond worth sacrificing their own life for. The brotherhood and kinship they share brings the beauty and truth to mean similar things, whether it is in value of figurative or literal esteem they hold these two concepts. Though they were able to be at each other's presence, the "kinsmen met a night" where "the moss had reached" their lips and "covered up" their names. The irony in these two last lines is that the two corpses conversed with each other despite of dying but it is the only living plant, a moss, that takes away their ability to speak and their identity. It is as if they were trying to defy the natural order of life by speaking to each other and nature balancing the oddity out through taking away their source of familiarity, connection, and comfort. The end, therefore, displays silence, loneliness, and desolation. Going back to the truth and beauty, could the poem be making a point about how life is not worth living for if one does not have beauty and truth? The truth is either beautiful or something that possesses beauty is the truth. Even if the truth and beauty went hand in hand, they cannot belong together because the human kind unavoidably fall into death. The characteristics of truth and beauty are in some ways physical because they reveal an inner light of a person, idea, or an element in life. Truth & beauty and death are linked through the death of humans. People are always searching for that enlightenment of fulfillment of beauty and truth, but even if one journeys through that road, death is going to be the result. Also, in the poem, the speaker who died for beauty was barely adjusted in the tomb before the person who died for truth came. Although I do not know the whole meaning of the time, but the close proximity allows the two to be seen as something that follows one another. This poem has been hard to analyze and the one memorable Emily Dickinson poem that I remember is the poem "Nobody", which I read in 8th grade.