Before I got my eye put out Summary & Analysis
by Emily Dickinson

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The speaker of Emily Dickinson's "Before I got my eye put out" has lost their vision—that is, they've had their "eye put out"—and wonders what it would be like to have it back. Ironically, this limitation makes the speaker see the world more clearly: the speaker now has a heightened awareness of the marvels of the world, particularly nature, and feels that "finite eyes" can't contain all that beauty. Like many of Dickinson's poems, "Before I got my eye put out" wasn't published until after her death: it first appeared in her posthumous 1891 collection, Poems.

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