Time, in Dickinson's poem, turns out to be a gentleman who knows far too much and says nothing. She begins by imagining what it would be like to *be* a Century, a hundred years of human traffic, and her first word, "Funny," sets the tone: amused, a little baffled, not at all solemn. The speaker pictures herself watching "the People -- going by" and admits she "should die of the Oddity." The joke has a dark edge. "Going by" is exactly how a century experiences people: they arrive, pass and vanish. Saying she would die of the sight, when a Century has watched whole generations die, quietly sets a single short life against a vast span of time.
Then she steps back: "But then -- I'm not so staid -- as He." The Century becomes a "He," a composed, unflappable figure, and the second stanza explains his calm. "He keeps His Secrets safely -- very --." The poem never says what the secrets are, and that is part of the fun. We are left to imagine everything people have done while believing nobody was watching. If he ever spoke, "This Bashful Globe of Ours" would be "extremely sorry," being "So dainty of Publicity." The Earth becomes a shy, easily blushing young lady, and the Century a discreet confidant who spares her the embarrassment of exposure. The central idea is that history knows humanity's follies and keeps quiet about them. The poem also teases us, since the "Bashful Globe" seems to have a good deal to be bashful about.
The construction supports this comic tone. Dickinson capitalises nearly every important noun: Century, People, Oddity, Secrets, Globe, Publicity. In her hands these abstractions become characters in a drawing-room comedy, and the capitals make them look like names on a guest list. The lines are short, mostly hovering around eight syllables, and the rhythm skips rather than marches, as if the speaker were chatting rather than declaiming. The dashes work like a raised eyebrow or a lowered voice. In "He keeps His Secrets safely -- very --," the dash before "very" works like a conspiratorial whisper and then stresses the word, which sounds like a promise of secrecy.
Sound does a lot of work too. Almost every line ends on the same "ee" vowel: Century, Oddity, safely, very, sorry, be, Publicity. This gives the poem a tittering, giggling quality, as if the speaker could barely keep a straight face. Century and Oddity make a playful, many-syllabled rhyme, and the closing Publicity echoes them for a final flourish. "By" and "He" do not quite match, though, and that slight miss adds to the off-kilter charm. Even the poem's polite diction ("dainty," "staid," "extremely sorry") sounds mock-genteel, so that something enormous, the whole sweep of recorded time, is handled like a matter of etiquette.
The poem is significant because it shows how much Dickinson can do in eight lines. She is often remembered for her brooding poems about death and eternity, and those themes are here as well, but they arrive through wit rather than gravity. Time and mortality are seen as a social situation: someone who has attended every party, overheard every conversation and is far too well-mannered to repeat any of it. That change of scale is the poem's real surprise. It treats human history as gossip while respecting its weight, and it hints that silence, whether the Century's or the grave's, may be the kindest thing the future has to offer. A poem that begins with "Funny" ends up making us look at our own brief appearances, and what we would not want published.