I think one sees the evolution of her very idiomatic use of “it” in action in the enigmatic “My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun” (P754, dated conjecturally 1863).1 As I have said elsewhere (see “Representations of the Male in the Female Imagination:

The Brontës and Dickinson”, note 21 above), this poem is, I think, fundamentally about Dickinson's preoccupation with the capacity of her art to create, but also to destroy, and the distinction between different qualities of destructiveness with which the artist must come to terms.

My Life had stood—a Loaded