"I often passed the village" By Emily Dickinson [Analysis]

I often passed the village[1] When going home from school --[2] And wondered what they did there --[3] And why it was so still --[4] I did not know the year then --[5] In which my call would come --[6] Earlier, by the Dial,[7] Than the rest have gone.[8] It's stiller than the sundown.[9] It's cooler than the dawn --[10] The Daisies dare to come here --[11] And birds can flutter down --[12] So when you are tired --[13] Or perplexed -- or cold --[14] Trust the loving promise[15] Underneath the mould,[16] Cry "it's I," "take Dollie,"[17] And I will enfold![18]
Poem 51 F 41 "I often passed the Village" Analysis by David Preest [Poem]

From when she was ten until she was twenty-five Emily lived in a house on North Pleasant St, which at the back overlooked the town cemetery, where she was eventually to be buried herself. From the windows of her room she saw many funerals. When she was fifteen she wrote to her friend Abbiah Root, 'I have just seen a funeral procession go by of a negro baby, so if my ideas are rather dark you need not marvel (L9).' This cemetery is 'the Village' which she passed as she came home down the hill from a school day at Amherst Academy. In the poem she imagines that she has died an early death, and promises Dollie (one of her names for Sue) that she will embrace her in the grave when her turn comes to die. We may wonder how comforting Sue will have found this macabre promise, but at least she had heard it before. In April 1852, when she was in Baltimore, she had received a letter from Emily which included the words, 'You wont cry any more, will you, Susie, for my father will be your father, and my home will be your home, and where you go, I will go, and we will lie side by side in the kirkyard (L88).'
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