Death Leaves Us Homesick, Who Behind Poem by Emily Dickinson

Death Leaves Us Homesick, Who Behind

Rating: 3.2


Death leaves Us homesick, who behind,
Except that it is gone
Are ignorant of its Concern
As if it were not born.

Through all their former Places, we
Like Individuals go
Who something lost, the seeking for
Is all that's left them, now—

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Mesam Sky 03 January 2012

I love how emily paints death as a uncaring being. He strips from us our cherished companions. We then are left with the only thing he could not take, our memories.

8 3 Reply
Paul Brookes 04 November 2012

Again another stange yet evocative poem from the pen of Emily Dickenson painting with words deaths unconcern for the living. And yet again Mr Straw gives us a lecture just to show how clever he is without telling us how this poem makes him feel or not.

5 5 Reply
Mesam Sky 03 January 2012

I love how emily makes death an actual uncaring being. He strips from us our cherished companions. We are left with the only thing death could not destroy; our memories.

7 1 Reply
Kevin Patrick 04 November 2012

She's expressing death on a multitude of levels I think, the first line is about loss while the next once deal with people who do not deal with death as if the consequences of someone loss is not their concern, in the end death makes us all companions of life, and if we are not born to deaths hold eventually we will.

5 1 Reply
Kevin Straw 05 November 2009

When someone dies we are reminded paradoxically of our real home in heaven. And death itself means nothing to us, nor the things and memories the dead leave behind. We journey through life like individuals who have lost contact with the company they were with (and lost the paradise death once took from mankind) , and who have nothing now but to seek that salvation which will reunite them with those they have lost.

3 2 Reply
MAHTAB BANGALEE 04 September 2022

Fearness teaches us protecting policy not protesting policy!

0 0 Reply
John Richter 04 November 2014

I must agree with others in saying Emily sometimes writes in what appears to be riddles. In the first stanza here she mention's the word it several times and I'm left pondering the meaning.... Death? A friend who died? A home? Or place? Substituting these words brings little more sense than the word it. So admittedly this particular poem falls outside my understanding, I grew up reading Dickinson and understand most of her poems - mostly by understanding Emily herself. Emily lost several close friends to death and she wrote about death often, usually complaining that death has no regard for the living. So I'll assume this poem concurs with that pattern.

7 1 Reply
Macanthony Chijioke Nwatu 04 November 2013

That is the effect of death.

5 1 Reply
Savita Tyagi 04 November 2013

Reading Emily's poetry is so time like playing fill in the blanks. You know what sentence would mean, just need to find right words to connect. Not fond of cross word puzzles yet love her style and poems.

8 1 Reply
Pranab K Chakraborty 04 November 2012

who behind, Except that it is gone... Just for such enlightened refraction of wisdom, we simply move fanatically encircling the poetry. Beautiful utterance, so lucid but so much penetrative. Fantastic, can't forget as we can never forget Elliot's...Who is the third beside you... just this just this........................................Pranab k c

3 0 Reply
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Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson

Amherst / Massachusetts
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