I’m ceded — I’ve stopped being Theirs —
The name They dropped upon my face
With water, in the country church
Is finished using, now,
And They can put it with my Dolls,
My childhood, and the string of spools,
I’ve finished threading — too —
Baptized, before, without the choice,
But this time, consciously, of Grace —
Unto supremest name —
Called to my Full — The Crescent dropped —
Existence’s whole Arc, filled up,
With one small Diadem.
My second Rank — too small the first —
Crowned — Crowing — on my Father’s breast —
A half unconscious Queen —
But this time — Adequate — Erect,
With Will to choose, or to reject,
And I choose, just a Crown —
Most branches of Christianity baptize children soon after birth, with the parents agreeing for their child that s/he will be brought up as a Christian and accepts certain tenants of Christianity. It seems as if in this poem Dickinson is rebelling against what people have told her her life should be like in childhood, when she didn’t know any better, and is re-baptizing herself with full self-awareness, “with Will to choose, or to reject.”
This peom seems to be more about her not liking her childhood because of the way she way treated by her father with his strict rules and the things he did to controlhis children.