"Safe in their alabaster chambers" by Emily Dickinson

1: a compact fine-textured usually white and translucent gypsum often carved into vases and ornaments
2: a hard calcite or aragonite that is translucent and sometimes banded

9 stolid: having or expressing little or no sensibility: unemotional (Merriam-Webster)

1 obsolete: keen in sense perception
2 a: of keen and farsighted penetration and judgment: discerning <sagacious judge of character> b: caused by or indicating acute discernment <sagacious purchase of stock>

What was the United States like that Whitman and Dickinson were born into?
Source: Ed Folsom, Selected American Authors: Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman

WALT WHITMAN is born in 1819, during America 's worst financial panic to date: a depression follows. The petition from Missouri for statehood begins a violent debate over slave and free territories in the West. The University of Virginia is founded by Thomas Jefferson, who designs its campus and buildings. A law forbidding the importation of slaves is being enforced, and slave smuggling becomes big business. The " Savannah ", a sailing ship with steam power, travels from Georgia to Liverpool in a record 26 days. Major Stephen Long, leading a mapping expedition out West, spends the winter at Council Bluffs and names the prairies "the Great American Desert ." Alabama becomes the 22nd state. James Russell Lowell and Herman Melville are born this same year. The U.S. population is just under 10 million, with population growth favoring the North, where 54% of people live. In 1820, the Missouri statehood bill is approved (part of Missouri Compromise), and at the state constitutional convention one of the most controversial proposals is a provision to outlaw all free blacks and mulattoes from the state. Daniel Boone dies in Missouri at age 85. James Monroe is elected President in an electoral college landslide over John Quincy Adams. First sighting (by a young Connecticut sea captain), south of Cape Horn, of land that would come to be known as Antarctica . New England missionaries land and infiltrate Hawaiian Islands . One-third of novels published in America are written by women. In 1821, Missouri becomes the 24th state, its population 65,000 (about the population of Iowa City today). New York constitutional convention, in a radical move, abolishes property qualifications for right to vote, but excludes free blacks from the right (and, of course, all women). Waterford (NY) Academy for Young Ladies is founded, first U.S. women's collegiate-level school. Santa Fe Trail is opened and traveled. In 1822, Spanish Florida, under Andrew Jackson's military care, is approved for U.S. territorial status; Jackson, after making a name for himself as an Indian fighter against the Seminoles, is nominated for President by Tennessee legislature, undermining the national party Congressional caucus system—"Jacksonian democracy" begins to be talked about. A planned slave revolt in South Carolina , led by Denmark Vesey (a free black), is discovered; 134 blacks are arrested, and 35 are hanged.

EMILY DICKINSON is born in 1830, the year President Andrew Jackson signs the Great Removal act, forcibly resettling all Indians west of the Mississippi; Jackson addresses the nation, "What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute?" The Sac and Fox tribes, over objections of chief Black Hawk, give up all their lands east of Mississippi River ; Choctaws do the same; other tribes like Chickasaws follow suit within a year or two. Only the Cherokees, literate farmers who wanted citizenship, hold out. In 1832, Black Hawk leads some Sac and Fox back across Mississippi into Illinois --they are eventually ambushed and massacred in the Michigan Territory , and Black Hawk is turned over to U.S. authorities by the Winnebago Indians. Major Congressional debate is over whether or not the sale of Western lands should be restricted; Western senators sense a plot by Eastern business interests to close the West so that cheap labor stays in the Northeast where factories demand low-paid workers. Joseph Smith publishes "The Book of Mormon", based on his deciphering of golden plates he claimed to have found on an upstate New York mountain, detailing the true church as descended through American Indians who were apparently part of the lost tribes of Israel (an idea quite common in early 19th-century America). The next year, 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville arrives in the U.S. and begins his journey around the country that would result in his massive book of observations, "Democracy in America ," including his analysis of “the three races in America ” (black, red, and white). Nat Turner, a Virginia slave who had visions from God of white spirits and black spirits engaged in bloody combat, leads a revolt with seven other slaves, killing his master and his family; with 75 insurgent slaves, he killed more than 50 whites on a two-day journey to Jerusalem, Virginia, where he was hanged along with sixteen of his companions (many other blacks are killed during the manhunt for Turner). The Turner Insurrection was the stuff of nightmares for white Southerners, who passed increasingly severe slave codes. The song "America" is sung for the first time in Boston on July 4.

Source: Mitchell, Domhnall. Emily Dickinson: Monarch of Perception. University of Massachusetts Press, 2000. 261–63. Print.

Safe in their alabaster chambers,

Untouched by morning,

And untouched by noon,

Sleep the meek members of the Resurrection,

Rafter of satin, and roof of stone.

Light laughs the breeze

In her castle above them,

Babbles the bee in a stolid ear,

Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadence:

Ah! what sagacity perished here!

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers –

Untouched by morning

And untouched by noon –

Sleep the meek members of the Resurrection –

Rafter of satin,

And Roof of stone.

Light laughs the breeze

In her Castle above them –

Babbles the Bee in a stolid Ear,

Pipe the sweet Birds in ignorant cadence –

Ah, what sagacity perished here!

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers,

Untouched by morning –

And untouched by noon –

Lie the meek members of the Resurrection –

Rafter of satin – and Roof of stone –

Grand go the Years – in the Crescent – above them –
Worlds scoop their Arcs –
And Firmaments – row –
Diadems – drop – and Doges – surrender –
Soundless as dots – on a Disc of snow –

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers –

Untouched by Morning –

And untouched by Noon –

Lie the meek members of the Resurrection –

Rafter of Satin – and Roof of Stone!

Grand go the Years – in the Crescent – above them –
Worlds scoop their Arcs –
And Firmaments – row –
Diadems – drop – and Doges – surrender –
Soundless as dots – on a Disc of snow –

6–10]
Springs – shake the sills –
But – the Echoes – stiffen –
Hoar – is the window –
And – numb – the door –
Tribes – of Eclipse – in Tents – of Marble –
Staples – of Ages – have buckled – there –
·
Springs – shake the seals –
But the silence – stiffens –
Frosts unhook – in the Northern Zones –
Icicles – crawl from polar Caverns –
Midnight in Marble –
Refutes – the Suns –

Study Questions

Emily Dickinson often writes poems that are riddles or definitions of something. What is the answer to this riddle? What is she describing? Who are "members of the Resurrection"?
Why do you think this "riddle" form where she gives a definition for an abstract state is appropriate?
What does the word "safe" evoke? What are they safe from? Do they want to be safe? If so, why might they want to be safe?

Sample Student Responses to Emily Dickinson's "Safe in their Alabaster Chambers –"

Dickinson, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. Boston: Little, Brown, 1960. Print.

Martin, Wendy. The Cambridge Companion to Emily Dickinson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. Print. (CL 811.4 C178)