”Emily Dickinson's ‘The Last Night that She Lived’: Explorations of a Witnessing Spirit,” Concerning Poetry, Vol. 19, 1986, pp. 87-93.

In the following excerpt, Stambovsky offers a very detailed reading of “The Last Night that She Lived,” asserting that Dickinson accepts the reality of death through her “intimate confrontation” with it in the poem.

Emily Dickinson's “The Last Night that She Lived” is a psychologically acute rendering of an unhinging spiritual experience. Far from being an immersion in morbid pathos, however, the poem is a brilliantly searching study of the consciousness of witnessing a death.

The last Night that She lived It was a Common Night Except the Dying—this to Us Made Nature different We noticed smallest things— Things overlooked before By this great light upon our Minds Italicized—as ’twere. As We went out and in Between Her final Room And Rooms where Those to be alive Tomorrow...