In this poem Emily Dickinson seems at her furthest remove from Walt Whitman. His “I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul . . . The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new tongue” (Song 21) in its inclusive, expansive energy poses the most extreme counterpoint to Dickinson's exclusions, retractions, and renunciations. I wish to argue, however, that Dickinson’s work addresses cultural forces and challenges in ways continuous with Whitman’s, although ultimately with a difference in cultural position from his, that remains fundamental.