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A Pit - but Heaven over it -
And Heaven beside, and Heaven abroad; And yet a Pit - With Heaven over it. To stir would be to slip -
The depth is all my thought -
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This Emily Dickinson poem, #508 Franklin, has a highly unusual layout of three unequal stanzas: the first with four lines, the second five, the last with 12. This poem is also unusual in that it uses a refrain: "A Pit -- but Heaven over it," and "a Pit -- With Heaven over it" in the first stanza, "Ah! Pit! With Heaven over it!" in the second stanza, and "a Pit -- with fathoms under it" in the third stanza.
Why repeat the "Pit" line? In the first stanza particularly, the image of "Pit" is overwhelmed by the threefold reference to "Heaven." Even with the addition of "and yet" (line three), the reader must be terribly conscious that "Heaven" is the controlling factor. The "Ah!" in line nine confuses things further. Is it an expression of surprise? What is the purpose of three exclamation points? The final shift of the refrain changes "Heaven" to "fathoms," "over" to "under." Why?
What then is the "Pit?" Is it hell? Is this another of those Dickinson twists on conventional Christianity? Surrounded by Heaven on three sides, then fathoms on the fourth, it remains the center of attention.
The idea of a refrain, or at least a reprise, can also be found in the scansion. The first stanza is 4,4,2,3 iambic and the second is 3,3,3,3,5 iambic. The third begins with the same pattern as the second: 3,3,3,3, then at line 14 shifts to 5. The purpose of this regularity as with the refrain appears to have reference to "Circuit" (line 15).
More repetition, this time in structure, takes place in the second stanza where three pairs of infinitives create a singsong effect: stir/slip, look/drop, dream/sap. Taken as a whole, the regular rhythm, the refrain, and the bouncy pairs seem antithetical to any concept of terror assoicated with the "Pit." Yet the words themselves convey this.
In this incredibly auricular poem, at lines eleven and twelve a strong "s" sound surfaces: "start us," "sit," "so straight," scarce suspect" followed by only two in the altered refrain. In line fifteen, however, it hisses back with "it's Circuit just the same." Line sixteen shifts to a long "oo" in four consecutive words: "whose Doom to whom?" Two of these end with "m" which is conspicuous in the last six lines: "them," "tremble," "Bomb," "Bosom," and the final word "calm."
Why is this? What is the poet doing? After sixteen lines the consistent meter staggers. The hiss changes to incantation, a bell-sound booms ominously.
The "what" is the word "Bomb." Ironically, just in time for the "gotcha," the rhythm again becomes regular (line 19). This return to the familiar reinforces the sense of relief which is brought by "Bomb." How is it that "Bomb" brings relief? It does so by shifting the perceived power from the "Pit" to the speaker. Does this make logical sense? Hardly. Yet, consider that "Bomb" may be a pun on balm which would exact rhyme with the poem's final word calm.
August 1862. MANUSCRIPT: BPL (Higg 55). Ink. PUBLICATION: AM LXVIII (October 1891) 448-449; L (1894) 307-309; LL 243-244; L (1931) 277-278. With this letter ED enclosed two poems: "Before I got my Eye put out," and "I cannot dance upon my Toes."
Franklin, R.W., ed. The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Variorum Ed. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1998.
_____. The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Reading Ed. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1998.
Johnson, Thomas H. ed. Emily Dickinson: Selected Letters. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1986.