I’m going to go out on a limb and mention something slightly, okay, very risqué and a little out of line, but hey, this is college.

There’s a chance I could be completely off, but I see a huge parallel to sex, specifically an orgasm in this poem. It appears that Dickinson might have wanted to talk about the subject, but had to hide her opinions by using seemingly contradictory words to avoid conflict in a conservative society.

I believe the speaker is describing her lover’s face as he reaches orgasm. She stares into his eyes that exhibit “a look of Agony” because the feeling is so overwhelming. Although agony usually means severe distress, it can also represent intense pleasure. She follows with “Men do not sham Convulsion, Nor simulate, a Throe.” These spasms that come with orgasm (right?) are real and true. His “Eyes glaze once” like “Death” because the sensation is too awesome to control, so extraordinary that it is “impossible to feign.” At the end, the lover is covered with sweat “beads upon the Forehead” that this anguish has “strung.” All his work amounted into the great climax, the anguish. He has just made love to the speaker.

So, at first, one might see the words in the poem as symbols of death and the despair because that is what they mean. However, many of them can have double meanings. Agony, convulsion, throe, and even death can be associated with orgasm.