Emily Dickinson

A Coffin — is a small Domain,

Summary


"A Coffin — is a small Domain" is a short poem that sets the smallest of spaces against the largest of ideas. In three compact stanzas, Emily Dickinson's speaker measures a coffin and a grave, then finds both wider than the sun, the seas and the lands. The mood is hushed and contemplative, yet strangely expansive. The tension lies in the contrast between a "diminished Plane" and the boundless reach of grief, loss and the Citizen of Paradise it holds.

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A Coffin — is a small Domain,
Yet able to contain
A Citizen of Paradise
In it diminished Plane.

A Grave — is a restricted Breadth —
Yet ampler than the Sun —
And all the Seas He populates
And Lands He looks upon.

Woman beside a small coffin and open grave, with a vast sunlit horizon beyond, for Emily Dickinson's "A Coffin — is a small Domain".

To Him who on its small Repose
Bestows a single Friend —
Circumference without Relief —
Or Estimate — or End —

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Credits

Emily Dickinson was a 19th-century American poet from Amherst, Massachusetts, famed for her slant rhyme, dashes and unflinching meditations on death and eternity. Most of her poems, this one included, were published only after her death in 1886.