(no subject)

I died for Beauty — but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining room —

He questioned softly "Why I failed"?
"For Beauty", I replied —
"And I — for Truth — Themself are One —
We Brethren, are", He said —

And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night — We talked between the Rooms —
Until the Moss had reached our lips —
And covered up — our names —

I can't possibly be the first to have noticed that this is clearly a tribute to Keats and Shelley. Keats ("load your rifts with ore") dies for beauty in the sense of dying while still living for it, Shelley likewise truth. Keats is, what, a year in the ground at Rome's Protestant Cemetery when Shelley is buried nearby. They don't recognize each other at first, being dead and in the dark--and personality is somewhat less important there. Shelley politely quotes Keats' own poem to him when he realizes who he's with--Dickinson knows what an influence Hymn to Intellectual Beauty had on Keats' Odes, clearly. They talk till their names are covered up, lips stifled, meaning: their poetry is in dialogue, our memories of them intertwined, until that time when they shall be forgotten. See Westminster Abbey, the plaques joined by a flourish, above Shakespeare's bust. As for the "why they failed," see perhaps Browning's Childe Roland.

Kinsmen met a night.

Dickinson's heart is more with Keats, hence her speaking his part.

Bloom links Strange Meeting to a passage in Revolt of Islam. I can't remember the details, perhaps Dickinson's working off that too.

The teacher had some other explanation. I had to shut my mouth because it's an invasion to go into all that.

(See Mamet's The Edge, last line, for a differently ironic twist on dying "for" something.)