You left me, sweet, two legacies, –
a legacy of love
A Heavenly Father would be happy,
If I had the offer of;
you left me borders of pain
wide as the sea,
between eternity and time,
Your conscience and me.
“You Left Me” is an incredibly concise poem. It communicates two immense ideas in the brief space of two stanzas of four lines.
Clearly Emily Dickinson wrote the poem about someone dear to her. It is not clear if the poem is about someone who is far away or about someone who has died. Both were common in her life. The enduring nature of the poem is such that its meaning is consistent with any case and also with additional cases where there is a physical or emotional separation between two people.
Chronologically, the poem was probably written in 1862, during Dickinson’s period of greatest writing intensity. In 1862 he wrote some 366 poems.
His dear friend, the Reverend Charles Wadsworth, left for San Francisco in 1862 and is most likely the subject of the poem. Dickinson met him in Philadelphia in 1855 and only met him in person on two other occasions, including her visit to see her just before he left for San Francisco. However, his emotional attachment to Wadsworth remained strong for the rest of his life and he wrote many letters to her. She called him the “dearest earthly friend of hers” of hers. Unfortunately, most of her letters to Wadsworth have not survived, and her letters to her were burned, at her request, after her death.
The first stanza of the poem, “You Left Me,” speaks of being left with a deep love, one that even Heavenly Father would be happy with. That is an impressive statement and makes any further description unnecessary.
The second stanza speaks of a void that has remained. It is obviously a huge pain, as big as the sea and compared to eternity. This legacy contrasts significantly with the legacy described in the first stanza.
A third verse was not written to tie everything together in a conclusion. The last line of the second stanza, “Your conscience and I”, seems to bring the reader back from the two great ideas just presented to the basis of the conscience of two real people.
The stanzas are written very formally in ballad meter, iambic tetrameter followed by iambic trimeter. The rhyme is also very precise in the second and fourth lines of each stanza. There are no close rhymes in this poem. Also, the use of anaphora, the repetition of “You left me” to start each stanza, helps to create a very formally designed poem.
As a result of these poetic features, Dickinson was able to create an easily understandable but highly significant short poem. The skill and perceptions are impressive.