Lapping Miles Around Emily Dickinson

"I Like to See it Lap the Miles"
Emily Dickinson : Published 1891

Galloping through my introductory literary study class, a poem that came to my particular attention was Emily Dickinson’s “I Like to See it Lap the Miles.” Like most poets / poems of the class I was unfamiliar with this work as well and the spark to my interest ignited when we did not go over its “meaning” as in depth as we had some of the other works. So, I took it upon myself to look more into the clever four stanza poem and found its “riddle” speaks to me in more ways than one.

To begin, simply, the poem characterizes what seems to be a horse doing horse type things; running around, feeding, drinking, doing some more running, neighing, and finally returning to its stable door. Part of the literary genius of the poem that Dickinson lays out is the glaring ambiguity of what exactly is lapping the miles. At glance it would appear the title using “it” to do the “lapping” would possibly hint that the poem will reveal what is doing all that work, but on the contrary, the poem follows with nothing but that one pronoun. In lines 1, 3, 9, 13, and 17 forms of “it” are explicitly used, adding to the mystery.

Without getting into an entire history of Dickinson, it is commonly recognized that the poem is about trains. Others suggest that the horse is equivalent to the newly installed railway that traveled through Dickinson’s hometown. The poem, not only using the ever evading “it”, utilizes verbage congruent to actions of both a horse and a train. As seen in lines 1, with “lap”, line 3, with “feeds”, and 13, with “neighs like Boanerges” the verbs can be used to describe the actions of both the new train and the familiar horse.

Though seemingly congruent, relating horses to trains, i.e. bringing a common connection to this new thing resulting from the Industrial Revolution, one word in the poem stands out to me. In line 12 Dickinson cleverly throws a cog into the mechanics of the poem by using “stanza.” At first I thought this odd but upon more consideration I found the true beauty of the poem and why it interests me. Given the hint in class that the poem not only says one thing, but says another and that it’s possibly about the poet’s ideal of poems / poetry it dawned on me that anything could replace the word “it” (insert epiphany of the main theme in a project I did on this poem). It was this key moment that helped me realize the true significance of such a work of art. Dickinson constructed an internally functioning poem that can loop for generations where each time her “riddle” is read a new answer can be found.