I like to see it lap the Miles by Emily Dickinson: Summary and Analysis

The poem I like to see it lap the Miles was written in 1862 and was published for the first time in 1891. It was an
age of rapid growth of technology. The Amherst and Belcher town Railway had already been established. The
poem is a record of the poet's reaction of the coming of the train. Emily Dickinson invests the mechanical product
of technology with aesthetic effects.

In this riddle like poem, Dickinson never mention the name of the subject, but referred to as 'it'. And it is about the
train. She does not describe the thing, the Railway train itself. But she describes with a sense of wonder, the
beauty of the locomotive, without ever mentioning it. In the poem Emily Dickinson presents the Railway train in
the metaphor of a mythical horse. The metaphor is appropriate, because it suggests the superhuman power of
the train. The poem also illustrates Emily Dickinson's habit of charging words with the new meanings. In its
purpose, design and tone, the poem is remarkably similar to Whitman's "To a Locomotive in winter."

The speaker likes to gaze at the movement of the train, the way it laps the miles and licks the valleys up and how
it stops to take water. Once it is filled with water, it then takes a prodigious step forward. The speaker appreciates
the train's speed and power as it goes through valleys, stops for fuel, then "steps" around some mountains.

The train continues its journey and travels around a mountain range and then takes peeps with an air of contempt
and superiority into the huts around the mountains. It then cuts and trims a distant quarry in the mountains.
Between the sides of a quarry or a tunnel, the train claw's groaning and complaining in horrid hooting noise. Then
finally it goes down the hill. The words 'crawl' and 'chase' add picturesqueness to the movement of the train. Till
the end of the third stanza the train's movement and the distances it covered and the places it crossed are vividly
presented. The train itself is portrayed not as a mere machine, but as a living being. This is only to prepare us to
receive the final metaphor in the last stanza of the poem. The train now neighs like a mythical horse and then
promptly comes to a stop at its stable door.

As the poem is framed as a riddle, the speaker does not mention the exact word for the description she uses in
her poem. She is amazed by the development of transportation and the introduction of the train in her town for
the first time. She likes to watch this strange creature which "lick the Valleys up", feeds itself, crawls and even
shows its emotions by complaining and is very arrogant. She gives the qualities of the natural world of the animal
to the train and juxtaposes between them. Though on the surface the poem seems to be praising the train,
implicitly the speaker does not like it; her description of it as a “supercilious” is somehow negative. Further the
sound of the train is presented in an undesirable way like “horrid” “hooting” and “complaining”. Its unwanted
features are combined with its "omnipotent," power. It is not a good thing in the natural world as it goes on licking
all the hills and destroying the peace of the town with its horrid sound. For the speaker, the new creature does
not fit the natural world that is why, it might be one reason, she does not mention the word train in her poem.

This is one of Dickinson’s most famous poems, typically (and soundly, I believe) interpreted as dissecting a
mental breakdown.

The poet’s physical body is treated metaphorically as funeral attendees and her aware self as the
consciousness trapped helplessly within the funeral event. The consciousness feels under assault by “Boots of
Lead” and a service that “like a Drum— / Kept beating—beating” until she felt her mind numbing. Interestingly,
here as in “If your Nerve, deny you” Dickinson locates herself as somewhere other than her mind or her soul, for
she not only feels her mind “going numb,” but hears a heavy coffin creaking “across my Soul.”

I have never had a migraine, but those who have or who work with migraine sufferers claim the poem is a
very good description of the pulsing, skull-filling pain that makes every noise painful if not excruciating. Indeed,
some of the major imagery in the poem involves sound: there is the funeral service that beats and beats like a
drum, the creaking of the heavy coffin carried across her soul, and the tolling of space “As [if] all the Heavens
were a Bell.” In fact, the poet’s existence is reduced to being nothing but an “Ear.”
 Whether describing a migraine or a breakdown (or perhaps both), though, the poet’s aware self (that which
encompasses and observes both mind and soul) is experiencing something very much like torture. The poem is
one long single sentence connected with thirteen “and”s and additional implied ones as in “treading—treading”
and “beating—beating.” The slow pace heightens the pain. It is very hard to read the poem in anything other than
the dragging pace of a funeral.

When Dickinson writes that the mourners kept treading through her brain in the leaden boots until “Sense was
breaking through” she says two things: the actual physical sensations described have broken through into the
brain itself as if it were a floor beneath the feet, and that her conscious senses were being broken—falling
through the floor of the brain. This latter image sets up the last stanza when a “Plank in Reason” breaks and her
aware self drops “down, and down” until ultimately it loses all knowledge and awareness.

The fourth stanza is quite strange. The painful and pulsing noises become so overpowering that the poet
finds herself in an altered state: “All the Heavens” become a “Bell” ringing with sound, while “Being” is reduced to
being nothing but an ear. Her aware self, the “I,” is “Wrecked” there. It’s a frightening and utterly lonely image.
There is no bedroom or bed, no loved ones, no window—nothing to grasp in any way that might help the sufferer
hold on to reality.

She does have a companion, however: “Silence.” This companion, wrecked and “solitary” with the poet’s
aware self, is completely unexpected after all the merciless and excruciating pain. It makes sense as a “yoked
opposite” —a term one Dickinson scholar has used to describe many of Dickinson’s images and phrases. When
Being has been reduced to nothing but an ear and the heavens to a bell, the “strange Race” of Silence is
necessarily a (silent) companion. It is as necessary as shadow to sun, as present as the existence of pain to the
experience of joy. **

But the aware self cannot maintain this terrible quietus for long. In one of her strongest images, Dickinson
has a “Plank in Reason” breaking. This image not only recalls the mourners treading back and forth across the
floor, but suggests that there is a floor to our sanity, something that holds our sense of self and sanity together.
But this has broken and so the poet’s self drops “down, and down” to unknowable places—a “World, at every
plunge.” From the funereal pace of the previous four stanzas, Dickinson catapults us here to almost the speed of
light. The word “plunge” not only denotes a forceful speed, but an almost willful act as that of a diver leaping from
a cliff to plummet into a pool below. But in this case the self is out of control, careening downward from world to
world as if there are different levels of subconscious realities that bear little resemblance to the everyday world
we are familiar with.

The final line, when “knowing” is finished, comes as an almost welcome and relief. Rest is finally achieved,
both physical and mental. Dickinson is a poet who famously charts her conscious awareness far beyond the
grave, and s this finishing of knowing is strikingly final.