Size circumscribes—it has no room

Size circumscribes—it has no room
For petty furniture—
The Giant tolerates no Gnat
For Ease of Gianture—

Repudiates it, all the more—
Because intrinsic size
Ignores the possibility
Of Calumnies—or Flies.

   -F707, J641, Fascicle 33, 1863



"Size circumscribes." To circumscribe means to limit, or to define. So the size of something, say a room, defines what you can fit in that room. But Dickinson is getting at something more than just size here. "Size...has no room for petty furniture." Since there is only so much room in your room, you will want to maximize the space. You will want everything in that room to be worthy of being in that room. If you are an interior decorator, say, then you want every piece of furniture to be just right. Get rid of the petty furniture.

"Size circumscribes" is a very pithy and memorable way of saying that the form should fit content. If you have something to say, for instance, then say it in the best and most efficient way you can. Just as every piece of furniture should count in a room, so should every word count in a poem. And if possible, try to make each word count twice, or even thrice. Likewise, every note in a song or brush stroke in a painting should be perfectly placed.

But lest you think this about making the most of a small space, the next lines tell you that even within a giant space you still must be careful about keeping the gnats out. I take this as encouragement from Dickinson to go big if that's what your content requires.

And speaking of going big, it's ironic that Dickinson wrote this poem directly after F706, her longest poem ever. If you read the poems in order, as they are presented in the fascicle, this poem reads as an arch apologia for the previous poem. The poem I just wrote, she seems to be saying, is a behemoth, but I assure you every word is necessary. There is no wasted space.

"The Giant tolerates no Gnat/ For Ease of Gianture—" There are a couple alternatives for the latter line: "For simple Gianture" and "Because of Gianture". How about that word “Gianture." Did Dickinson make that up? Looks like it. And it’s a perfect word to describe her too. 

In the second stanza the idea of calumnies enter the poem. Calumnies are lies and slander. What should you do if your words evince slander? This poem is suggesting that you ignore it. And more than just ignore it, you should repudiate it!

That’s what I think this poem is saying. It's not warning you to beware of scandal so much as telling you to reject it out of hand. The first few times I read this poem I misread it. I took it as a warning not to get too big for your britches. I read it as saying keep to your own size. Don’t try to be such a giant, because if you get too big you won't be able to ignore the flies and lies. The bigger you get, the more you are susceptible. If you get too large, you lose track of your ability to keep track.

But eventually it clicked, as Dickinson poems eventually will, and I read it differently. I see it now as saying that INTRINSIC size, which is to say, the right size, a size which fits the content, is what you should be going for. You want a good fit, like Frank O’hara says in his great essay on Personism, "If you're going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you."

This is a poem which tells us to go big if we are feeling big, but just make sure all the details count. Then ignore all the little annoyances and repudiate the inevitable malice and lies that come with the territory.

   -  /)dam Wade l)eGraff

                          
                          This is Emily's handwritten "possibility" from the
                          MS of this poem. That "ty" is a thing of beauty.
                          Where is the missing dot on that second "i"?

***

I’m really enjoying the diversity of this fascicle so far. We've had a poem about the joy of receiving a letter and reading it in private. Another taking on the persona of a bride anticipating her wedding night. We’ve had the tragic horrors of war writ large. We’ve had a long excuse to a lover for why they may not live together. And now we have this little brain teaser. After fascicle 32, with its intense focus on heaven and judgment, it feels like Dickinson is getting loose and experimenting with subject matter more in this one. Let's see where she goes from here! It's always an adventure with Emily. 

I cannot live with You –

I cannot live with You –
It would be Life –
And Life is over there –
Behind the Shelf

The Sexton keeps the Key to –
Putting up
Our Life – His Porcelain –
Like a Cup –

Discarded of the Housewife –
Quaint – or Broke –
A newer Sevres pleases –
Old Ones crack –

I could not die – with You –
For One must wait
To shut the Other’s Gaze down –
You – could not –

And I – could I stand by
And see You – freeze –
Without my Right of Frost –
Death's privilege?

They’d judge Us – How –
For You – served Heaven – You know,
Or sought to –
I could not –

Because You saturated Sight –
And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise

And were You lost, I would be –
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fame –

And were You – saved –
And I – condemned to be
Where You were not –
That self – were Hell to Me –

So We must meet apart –
You there – I – here –
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are – and Prayer –
And that White Sustenance –       (White) Exercise, Privilege
Despair –

      -F706, J640, Fascicle 33, 1863



This poem is unusually long for Dickinson and it got me curious as to what her longest poem might be. I looked it up and it turns out this IS her longest poem. Since Dickinson is a master of brevity, the length of this poem is, itself, worth considering.

The dozens of poems before this one, all seemingly addressed to one person, make it seem as if the absence of her beloved was something that was thrust upon her. But the first three stanzas of this poem leads one to reconsider and see that this despair was more likely, rather, chosen by Dickinson.

Why would someone choose despair? The poem goes to some -length- to explain why. The revelation for me though, the main takeaway, is that it is something chosen. Dickinson appears to choose despair, and, moreover, she takes sustenance from it.

What does Dickinson mean by her cryptic statement “I cannot live with You –/ It would be Life – " Why doesn’t the poet choose “Life”? One way to think about this question is to ask what she is choosing INSTEAD of life? She says that she rejects “life” because it is what the sexton keeps locked in the shelf like a cracked porcelain cup discarded by a housewife. There is a lot to unpack in that idea. A sexton is someone that looks after a church, and, often, a graveyard. Life is, paradoxically, like something dead, something precious like porcelain perhaps, but also something that gets old and cracks. Dickinson is looking for something that doesn’t get old, that won’t crack, something that can’t be replaced by a newer and more beautiful model. She conceives that this can be found in a kind of eternal love that is beyond life. (“Fleshless lovers” is the way she puts it in F691). It can also be found, you might say, in poetry itself. One may take the “You” in this poem for one’s self, and read it as an invitation to join the poet in this mystic place beyond decay.

 

It is worth noting the housewife in the analogy here. It is the housewife that is discarding the cup/life, but the implication is, conversely, that Dickinson is discarding the life of being a housewife. Also worth noting is the metaphor of the Sexton, because if “Life” is put away by the Sexton, it reminds us that living life is inextricable from death. You can’t have life without death. Dickinson is aiming for something more.

But the poet also says “I could not die – with You –”, for one must wait to shut the other’s eyes, and, for one thing, the “You” this poem is addressed to apparently couldn’t wait around to do this. “I could not die – with You – / For One must wait/ To shut the Other’s Gaze down – / You – could not – “. This speaks to the fact that no one can really die with someone else. Death, as Dickinson has pointed out in other poems, is a solitary thing. In F698 Dickinson calls this “Death’s single privacy”. 

In the lines that follow you see the depth of the poet’s love, “And I – could I stand by/ And see You – freeze – /Without my Right of Frost – /Death's privilege?” She is saying here, I believe, that she couldn’t watch her beloved freeze into rigamortis without doing so herself. It would be a “privilege” to freeze into death for the poet if she had to watch her beloved die. The stuttering beginning of this stanza (“And I – could I stand by”) is rare for Dickinson and brings the poem closer to spoken language than usual. In that moment’s pause you feel the anguish at the mere thought of the beloved’s death.

So both Life and Death with the beloved is off limits, but, then, so is resurrection. "Nor could I rise – with You – /Because Your Face/ Would put out Jesus’ – /That New Grace/ Glow plain – and foreign/ On my homesick Eye – /Except that You than He/ Shone closer by – “  These lines speak for themselves. Dickinson’s love for her beloved outshines Jesus. This is yet another example of Dickinson choosing a felt earthly love over an unknown heavenly one. This new Grace would be foreign to her and only make her feel homesick. (But what home we might ask? She has already told us she can’t Live with the beloved either.)

These lines may be seen as blasphemous, and most especially would have been so to the intended, who, we find out in the following lines, “served heaven”. “For You – served Heaven – You know,/ Or sought to – “ These lines indicate to me that Charles Wadsworth is very likely the “You” to whom this poem is addressed. See the gloss by Larry B (AKA Lawrence Barden) on the post for F686 for more on this: “At age 24, in 1855, ED attended a sermon delivered by Reverend Charles Wadsworth, a superstar, charismatic minister at Arch Street Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. He was 16 years her senior and married with two children, but ED had found her soul mate. In the words of her niece, Martha Dickinson Bianci (1866-1943): 'Emily was overtaken – doomed once and forever by her own heart. It was instantaneous, overwhelming, impossible.'" 

Some conjecture this poem, indeed this series of poems, is addressed to Susan Gilbert, but I think Dickinson tips her hand when she says the addressee sought to serve heaven rather than be with her. And then she tips it again when she adds “Or sought to”. I take this pointed addition to indicate that either Wadsworth wasn’t convincing her in his service, or Dickinson wasn’t convinced there was such a thing as heaven to serve in the first place.

At any rate, the beloved chooses to serve heaven rather than be with Dickinson, and, as for Dickinson’s part, she says she would choose her beloved over a “sordid Paradise.” Sordid paradise is a very Dickinsonian oxymoron. As to why Dickinson might think paradise is “sordid,” see my comments on F695.

She opens this section with, “They’d judge Us – How – ." How could they judge Wadsworth? Afterall, he served heaven. And how could they judge Dickinson, for she values Wadsworth over heaven. It’s hard to judge someone who doesn't believe in the machinations of this sort of judgment. This fixation on judgment and heaven, though, is explored thoroughly in fascicle 32 and 33, as I point out in my comments on F699.

The next two stanzas go on to say that the poet would rather not be in heaven if her beloved was not there, even if she was the most famous citizen there. On the other hand, if he was in heaven and she was not, it would be as good as being in hell.

The poem ends with another oxymoron, the idea of the two lovers meeting apart. The door is open, but there might as well be an ocean between them. On the flip side, you might read this as saying that the breadth of the oceans between them is merely a door to walk through. This is how you "meet apart."

So We must meet apart –
You there – I – here –
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are – and Prayer –
And that White Sustenance –
Despair –

I’m not sure what Dickinson means by the sustenance being the color white here. I think it likely means white hot, the way she uses it in “Dare you see a Soul at the "White Heat"? It’s worth noting that the two alternative words Dickinson provides for “Sustenance” are “Exercise” and “Privilege.” Both words add something important to the meaning. To think of despair as an exercise is instructive, and to think of it as a privilege even more so.

  

   -/)dam Wade l)eGraff  

I appreciate the poet Steven Cramer’s take on the last stanza of this poem. This is from an article on the poem in The Atlantic: “The final stanza seems to me one of the most overwhelmingly pained and resigned protests in verse. For Dickinson—the recluse who, paradoxically, valued personal attachments more highly than almost any other life experience—separation from a loved one amounts to Hell. The last six lines forsake the symmetry of the previous eleven quatrains, and desolation inheres in each syllable and juncture: in the choked finality of the heavy stresses and strong caesuras (“You there—I—here”); in the emotional abyss that opens with an enjambment (“With just the Door ajar/ That Oceans are”); in the oxymoronic precision of “meet apart” and “White Sustenance—/ Despair.” In this stanza and in hundreds of others, Dickinson resembles Shakespeare, one of the few other poets in English to achieve such a level of volcanic energy. To my mind and ear, no other American poet comes close.”

I am ashamed—I hide—

I am ashamed—I hide—
What right have I—to be a Bride—
So late a Dowerless Girl—
Nowhere to hide my dazzled Face—
No one to teach me that new Grace—
Nor introduce—my Soul—

Me to adorn—How—tell—
Trinket—to make Me beautiful—
Fabrics of Cashmere—
Never a Gown of Dun—more—
Raiment instead—of Pompadour—
For Me—My soul—to wear—

Fingers—to frame my Round Hair
Oval—as Feudal Ladies wore—
Far Fashions—Fair—
Skill to hold my Brow like an Earl—
Plead—like a Whippoorwill—
Prove—like a Pearl—

Then, for Character—

Fashion My Spirit quaint—white—
Quick—like a Liquor—
Gay—like Light—
Bring Me my best Pride—
No more ashamed—
No more to hide—
Meek—let it be—too proud—for Pride—
Baptized—this Day—a Bride—

    -F705, J473, fascicle 33, 1863 


One helpful way to read a poem is by shutting out sense, as much as possible, and just paying attention to rhythm and sound as you read it out loud. If you emphasize the iambic beat as you read, and keep it going in your head like a metronome, and listen to the way Dickinson plays off of the beat, the way she weaves words around it, you get a good foundation for the poem. Try giving voice to this one, making every dash a rest in the beat. Dickinson on percussion is like Buddy Rich. This one is a stellar example of Dickinson's musicality. In my opinion it is as good a composition of sound and sense as I have yet encountered.

In this poem, for starters, notice the emphatic beat on the hard D sound throughout. The poem begins and ends with it. How she works that D into the iambic meter is part of what makes the poem so satisfying to say. 

Rhyme is also turned up in this poem, even further than normal. Look at this wild run of triplet rhymes: “of Cashmere/ of Dun more/ Pompadour/ soul—to wear/ my Round Hair/ Ladies wore/ Fashions—Fair/ like an Earl/ Whippoorwill/ like a Pearl/ Character/ a Liquor." That’s just fun.

Amidst all of this sound, meaning sneaks in. The sense of the words, and the subsequent extrasensory sense of the words, begins to speak through this string of sounds. Through form comes content. That “D” sound comprises a feeling.  Before it has an assigned meaning the central word here, “bride”, has a sound. Dickinson makes the feeling of the word heard.

Whole words can give you a feeling. You can’t say the word pompadour, for instance, without feeling a little pompadour yourself, just as you can't say "whippoorwill" without intoning the song of the bird.

There was also, behind this poem, I suspect, a melody. I imagine this one was written to a tune going through Dickinson’s head, or maybe even while she was playing the piano. She reportedly played beautifully.

I tried playing a lilting Em/ G pattern on the guitar as I sang this poem, with a turn around at the end of each stanza, where I flipped the chords to G/ Em. It’s remarkable how much fun it is to sing. It sounds like a wedding jig.

***

It is a bit difficult to speak of ascribed meaning as it plays out in this poem because there are multiple ways of reading it. The first and foremost reading of this poem, for me, is as an innocent expression of the intense complex of feelings of a bride on her first night of being married; the crazy mix of fear, sadness, joy, excitement, embarrassment, self-admiration, happiness, inebriation and then finally, resolve.

One thing notable about a poem such as this one is how absolutely personal it is, and yet, at the same time, how universal. This poem could be spoken by ANY bride in love. Likewise the reader is transformed into a bride as he or she reads the poem out loud, and perhaps into a husband as well. It could hardly be a more intimate poem, nor a more public one.

Read this way, this is among Dickinson’s happiest poems. There is only the barest hint of sadness, and only a modicum of fear. Mostly there is deep character. That’s what this poem seems to be about, in the end. The poet chooses, by the close of the poem, to have too much pride to have pride, and covers up in bridal white. But, astonishingly, before she does, she let’s us see, in the intimate revelations of this poem, behind the bridal veil. We are, in this way, like the groom.

I swoon when I read this poem. It is so romantic. And yet, sometimes when I read it, it is the antithesis of romance. It is about autonomy. This is simultaneously a marriage poem and a poem about independence. This is yet another way this poem is both public and private. It reminds me of a line from the great Bill Callahan song "Pigeons": "When you get married, you marry the whole world."

***

There is much more to say about this poem. Each line could engender discussion. Just the idea of being too proud to be proud is thought-provoking enough to make this poem a keeper. Another line I find worth noting is "Prove—like a Pearl—", which could stand by itself as an epigram. It sums up Dickinson's entire oeuvre. Enclosed in her oyster shell of a life, Dickinson certainly did prove like a Pearl. 

-/)dam Wade l)eGraff

-

"As you wish."

My Portion is Defeat – today –

My Portion is Defeat – today –
A paler luck than Victory –
Less Paeans – fewer Bells –
The Drums dont follow Me –
with tunes –
Defeat – a +somewhat slower –
means –
More +Arduous than Balls –

Tis populous with Bone
and stain –
And Men too straight to
+ stoop again –
And Piles of solid Moan –
And Chips of Blank – in
Boyish Eyes –
And + scraps of Prayer –
And Death’s surprise,
Stamped visible – in stone –

There’s +somewhat prouder,
Over there –
The Trumpets tell it to
the Air –
How different Victory
To Him who has it – and
the One
Who to have had it,
would have been
Contenteder – to die –

+something dumber + difficult –

+bend +shreds + something

    -F704, J639, Fascicle 33, 1863

This poem takes a surprising turn. Nearly every poem in the last few fascicles seems to be dealing with the aftermath of a lover’s absence, full of an anguished passion which is wrung out in metaphor after metaphor. So when this one starts out by claiming “My Portion is Defeat – today –”, you think it is one more poem bemoaning the absence of He who brings the fire, He who is full of grace, He with eyes like heaven. And perhaps it is.

In the next line the pivotal word “Victory” leads us to see war as the metaphor for whatever defeat is in question for the poet. This defeat feels, to the poet, as brutal and terrible as war: pure hell. Is this an exaggeration? Perhaps, but it makes its point. 

This is problematic. On one hand it elevates the emotional impact of whatever defeat the poet is feeling. On the other hand doesn't it belittle the fate of the soldiers by comparing it to a personal defeat?

But something strange happens. The problem works itself out. In the course of this poem, as Dickinson goes on to describe the horrors of war, like the “solid pile of moan” and “chips of blank in boyish eyes”, it swerves to become more about the poor soldiers than the poet. It’s as if the poet, who is admitting that she is so miserable she’d rather be dead, is now, because of her plight, able to truly sympathize with the soldiers. The poem starts out in self-pity, but as the metaphor gets extended there is a transition until finally the metaphor itself begins to become the subject. The poet moves from pitying herself to pitying the civil war soldiers who are dying en masse as this poem is being written, including some of Emily's own friends.

It reminds me in this way of Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy”, in which Plath is ostensibly expressing anger about her German father, but does this by comparing her father with a Nazi soldier. Plath's poem was controversial, as some saw it as sensational and opportunistic  (The gall of comparing your own privileged life to the horrors of the holocaust!) I can understand this, but I would argue that you can justify Plath’s move as a way of shedding light on domestic abuse, and, conversely, the parental abuse hinted at in poem sheds light on Nazi mentality too.

This poem has a bit of that same problem. In Dickinson’s poem though I feel as if she channels her suffering into empathy. Note that the poem never returns to its initial focus on “me.” In the end the pronoun “me” has been turned into “one.” It has been depersonalized. The soldier and the poet, through the alchemy of the poem, have become “one”.

Let's go through the poem.

First stanza: My portion is defeat today. I didn’t get as lucky as the victor did. For me there are less songs of triumph (paeans), less ringing of bells, and no marching drums at all. To be defeated is more difficult than death by bullets (balls).

Second stanza: Defeat is populated with the bones of soldiers and the stain of blood, with dead bodies so stiff they can no longer stoop, with piles of men moaning in pure agony, with dead boys who now have blank chips for eyes. (“chips” -what a word choice.) The dead boys are holding scraps of prayer, perhaps bible pages. (This is as biting a line about faith as Dickinson has yet written.) And then there is that final haunting image; the way the faces of the dead still show the surprise of death, as if the soldiers were statues carved in stone.

Third stanza: Those over there on the victorious side are “somewhat” prouder than the defeated are. Dickinson provides “something” as an alternative word for “somewhat” here, but I think “somewhat” is much stronger, because it implies that there is still SOME pride in defeat. There is still a minor victory. This is a subtle turning point in the poem and sets up the next lines. "Over there –/ The Trumpets tell it to the Air – " The trumpets of the winners tell their victory to the air. The trumpets are not being heard by anything but “air” though, implying that the victory is as empty as air. Still, empty as it may be, victory is still better, because it doesn’t make you wish you were dead. The defeated soldier would rather have died in battle than lost a cause he was willing to give his life for. And here we are reminded of the stakes for the poet too. She would rather be dead than to have lived without gaining the thing she would have given her entire being for.

This poem, which is, at the onset, about the poet, turns out to be one of the great anti-war poems through sheer force of Dickinson’s imagery.

There is also a unique and effective rhyme scheme and rhythmic structure. Read the poem and listen to it as if there were marching drums underlining it, with a pause in the beat of the snare at every dash. 

-/)dam Wade l)eGraff

To my small Hearth His fire came—

To my small Hearth His fire came—
And all my House aglow
Did fan and rock, with sudden light—
'Twas Sunrise—'twas the Sky—

Impanelled from no Summer brief—
With limit of Decay—
'Twas Noon—without the News of Night—
Nay, Nature, it was Day—

   -F703, J638, Fascicle 33, 1863


We start small here with a “small hearth.” A hearth is a fireplace, which stands here, I think, for the heart, or the life force, of the poet. Once again, as in several of Dickinson’s poems from this time period, the pronoun “His” is ambiguous. It could refer to God or to a lover. To Dickinson I believe it referred to a lover, though to the reader it might stand for any kind of inflamed love.

From “Him” the fire comes, and then the whole house (the whole being) is aglow, suddenly. This sudden fire isn’t the violent kind. Rather it is glowing, and it gently rocks. The verb pair “fan and rock” is an intriguing one. When you think of fire and fan together you might first think of fanning a fire, but here it is the fire that is fanning, so it must mean the fire fans out as it spreads. Rock is something that you gently do to a baby in a cradle to help put it to sleep. So how does a fire “rock”? When a fire is in your hearth the light of the flames seems to sway on the walls, and that’s what I imagine Dickinson is talking about here. “His” fire spreads and gently sways as it enlarges to quickly become the sunrise filling the entire sky.  The effect of this is that the fire that Dickinson felt so intensely has now spread through time and space to light a fire in the reader’s hearth too. Don’t you feel a warm glow from these lines? Don’t the words fan your spirit like a sunrise?

Candlewood Lake CT - 2/19/24

Oddly Dickinson switches to legalese in the next stanza. “Impanelled from no Summer brief—” In a legal context "impanelled" refers to the process of selecting a jury for a trial. It involves choosing jurors who will serve as impartial judges of the facts presented in the case. If we interpret "brief" in a legal sense, it could refer to a written legal argument, typically outlining the legal argument involved in a case. Putting these together, "Impanelled from no Summer brief" might imply that whatever experience is being described hasn't been brought about through the typical legal proceedings or arguments of “summer”. It suggests that the experience of this “fire” is not bound by the usual legal frameworks or seasonal circumstances. The phenomenon being described transcends conventional boundaries. Dickinson’s father and brother were both lawyers, so this type of language would come natural to her.

But “brief” has a double meaning here of having a short duration, as is made clear in the next line, “with no limit of decay.” Summer is brief, the poet is saying, but not the love from Him, which transcends the temporary and is not limited by decay. There is something eternal about this fire/sunrise/summer/noon/day.

The last couplet “'Twas Noon—without the News of Night—/ Nay, Nature, it was Day—” simply means it stays noon, that the “nature” of this love is like an eternal day. The sound play in these last two lines is fabulous, created largely from the run of six “N” sounds, and by the assonance too, the “ooo” sound of Noon and news, and the way nay elongates into Nature. But there are other little things too, like the way “Twas” echoes the earlier use of that word, twice, in the first stanza, and the way it is echoed in the half-rhyme of the word “News” later in the same line. Then there is the strong rhyme of Day with Nay and Decay, which makes the final point feel emphatic. The poetry, if it is to echo and reinforce its subject, must be made so lyrically beautiful that it stays alive forever, capturing in its sound a fiery sunrise brightening to become an endless summer noon. 

- /)dam Wade l)eGraff


My first time through a poem I will sometimes grab a guitar and find a chord pattern and rhythm that seems to fit the poem's tone and then drape Dickinson’s words over the chord structure. It’s such a pleasure to hear Emily Dickinson’s words sung. Along these lines I found a beautiful version of this poem online in which a composer named Juan Ramos has written a sweet melody. The video is great because it just gives you the notes of music scrolling along with the words, and the singing is left up to you. It’s like poetry karaoke.

Except the Heaven had come so near —

Except the Heaven had come so near —
So seemed to choose My Door —
The Distance would not haunt me so —
I had not hoped — before —

But just to hear the Grace depart —
I never thought to see —
Afflicts me with a Double loss —
'Tis lost — and lost to me —


     -Fr702, J472, Fascicle 33, 1863


Sometimes a cry of the heart is best put into simple terms. This is just such a poem. It mourns a double loss. It seems to also hint at regret, the suggestion that it might have been better, perhaps, to never have gotten that glimpse of “heaven” in the first place.

We can be pretty sure that by “heaven” Dickinson is referring to her love life here. Just a few poems earlier, the first poem in fascicle 33, Dickinson makes this clear when she writes that she “sigh(s) for lack of Heaven – but not The Heaven God bestow –”. This is a good example of what is gained by reading these poems in context. It’s fine if you read the “heaven” in this as a Christian heaven, or any other kind; a religious feeling and a romantic feeling can seem one in the same. Both kinds of heaven, the romantic and the spiritual, point us toward a relationship in which the singular self is transcended. But this poem, I believe, is written for, or about, an absent lover, one which the poet holds to be “grace” itself.

Even though this is a fairly straight forward cri de coeur, there is still, perhaps, a wrinkle in it. The clue is in that word “Double”. Note that the word is capitalized. Double is not the kind of word that normally gets capitalized. Our attention is drawn to it. Sometimes the smallest detail, such as a capital letter, can unlock a deeper meaning in a Dickinson poem. The word double is often a rhyme for some kind of trouble. Think of Macbeth: “Double Double toil and trouble.” Or “doublethink” in George Orwell’s “1984”. Doubleness is a sign of a divided mind. In this poem there has been a splitting of the self in two.

What does Emily mean by this “Double loss”? It’s a kind of riddle. “Tis lost — and lost to me.” The reader has to suss out the difference between what is meant by lost and what is meant by lost to me. I’d love to hear your take on this riddle. To me the first loss is an absence, but the second one signals a division of self. It’s as if the self has been taken away with the loss of the lover. “Lost to me” might be a way of saying that the poet feels lost to herself.

It’s the loss of the personal relationship, that unique chemistry in which a me and a thee becomes a we, a whole greater than the parts, that this poem is grieving. That’s what makes the loss doubly painful. It’s not just a loss of a person, it’s a loss of an us. Thus, the significance of the self is lost too.

-/)dam Wade I)eGraff

The Child's faith is new—

The Child's faith is new—
Whole—like His Principle—
Wide—like the Sunrise
On fresh Eyes—
Never had a Doubt—
Laughs—at a Scruple—
Believes all sham
But Paradise—

Credits the World—
Deems His Dominion
Broadest of Sovereignties—
And Caesar—mean—
In the Comparison—
Baseless Emperor—
Ruler of Nought—
Yet swaying all—

Grown bye and bye
To hold mistaken
His pretty estimates
Of Prickly Things
He gains the skill
Sorrowful—as certain—
Men—to anticipate
Instead of Kings—

   -Fr 701, J637, Fascicle 33, 1863

This poem calls into question the idea of a childlike faith. 

The first stanza might be paraphrased like this: The child’s faith is new. The child has absolute belief, and, just as absolutely, bases his principles off of this faith. This faith is widely held and is blinding like sunlight on freshly opened eyes. (You might have to squint when facing it!) This child has no doubt at all. He laughs at any uncertainty or hesitation. He believes only in the promised paradise. Everything else is a sham.

Second stanza: The child credits the world for all that is false. He considers God's dominion the largest of all kingdoms. Caesar is small in comparison to this greater kingdom. Thus far into the poem a general reader might see this poem as a celebration of a child's faith, but after the first five lines the second stanza switches gears in a tricky way. The last lines of the stanza “Baseless Emperor—/ Ruler of Nought—/ Yet swaying all—” complicates the poem because it functions as a sliding modifier. (This sliding modifier thing that Dickinson does is very confusing to the unpracticed reader, but I believe it is essential to understanding certain poems.) If you read the above lines as modifying the lines before them, then the baseless emperor is what the child thinks of Caesar;  powerful (“swaying all”), but ruling nothing real (baseless). But these lines may also syntactically modify the last stanza. Read this way, the baseless emperor is the child of faith. He rules nothing that is real, even if his faith might sway others. By conflating the two Emperors this way (Caesar and the child of faith) we see them as essentially the same. They are both baseless. Caesar might ultimately be an empty emperor, but so is the one who thinks his “faith” represents an even bigger kingdom.*

In the last stanza of this poem the child of faith “grows up”. He has grown, gradually over time, ("bye and bye"), to see that his absolute conviction about paradise was really just an estimate, and not an accurate one. It was pretty to believe so, but it doesn't resemble the hard truth, which is much more prickly than pretty. (I'm reminded of Hemingway's line here, "Isn't it pretty to think so?”)

Eventually the child "gains the skill/ Sorrowful—as certain— " to see more clearly. Learning to be skeptical and to doubt is presented to us as a skill. By going through sorrow the child “gains the skill” and a new kind of certainty; that man is flawed, and is not divinely right like a king is meant to be. We learn to accept reality for what it is.

There is a doubleness to the phrase "bye and bye" in this poem. The child learns by and by, but also learns "goodbye after goodbye". Loss is part of the deal.   

Experience leads us to a more humble kind of faith. I think this is what is meant here by "sorrowful—as certain—". Love doesn't point us toward future glory, and isn't based on comparison, but is a belief in the embrace of another in the here and now. One can have a kind of faith which is accepting of the whole person, as they are, flaws and all, rather than a faith which has more to do with self-regard and trying to be "good" for some future judge. 

- /)dam Wade l)eGraff

* To reiterate, the sliding modifier means it can be seen as two poems. The first one, seeming to praise the child of faith, ends after the second stanza. The second poem, criticizing the child of faith, begins in the second stanza with the line "Baseless emperor." It's worth taking a moment and reading it both ways, to get a feel for how Dickinson pulls this off. Compare the two below.

1. 

The Child's faith is new—
Whole—like His Principle—
Wide—like the Sunrise
On fresh Eyes—
Never had a Doubt—
Laughs—at a Scruple—
Believes all sham
But Paradise—

Credits the World—
Deems His Dominion
Broadest of Sovereignties—
And Caesar—mean—
In the Comparison—
Baseless Emperor—
Ruler of Nought—
Yet swaying all—

2.

Baseless Emperor—
Ruler of Nought—
Yet swaying all—

Grown bye and bye
To hold mistaken
His pretty estimates
Of Prickly Things
He gains the skill
Sorrowful—as certain—
Men—to anticipate
Instead of Kings—

The Way I read a Letter’s – this –

The Way I read a Letter’s – this –
‘Tis first – I lock the Door –
And push it with my fingers – next –
For transport it be sure –

And then I go the furthest off
To counteract a knock –
Then draw my little Letter forth
And slowly pick the lock –         (+slily, softly)

Then – glancing narrow, at the Wall –
And narrow at the floor
For firm Conviction of a Mouse
Not exorcised before –

Peruse how infinite I am
To no one that You – know –
And sigh for lack of Heaven – but not
The Heaven God bestow –

   -Fr700, J636, Fascicle 33, 1863


Imagine reading this poem the way Emily tells us in the poem that she reads a letter. First you take it into your bedroom and lock the door. Then you push on the door just to make sure it’s locked (because you know how sometimes you lock the door but it’s not all the way closed like you thought, so it’s still possible for someone to barge in?) The idea here is that you will need the most private space to get the full transport from the poem. Also, make sure you go as far away from the door as you can get, just to counteract any knock, should you receive one. Even one decibel less can make a difference! Then after you have locked yourself away, take the poem, and slowly unlock IT, with an emphasis on slooowly. Slowly (slily and softly) unlock the poem. But wait, before you read it, look along the floor to make sure not even a mouse can interrupt you. All clear? Okay, NOW you can read the poem with full transport.

What does the poem say?

It says how infinite you are.

Girl Reading Letter by Johannes Vermeer 

 
I think this gets at something essential about Dickinson’s poetry. It’s only in the small private space that the largess of the soul can be discovered, not in “public, like a frog”.

There is something curiouser and curiouser happening in this poem, like what happens to Alice in Wonderland. There is a reducing down in size, an effect Dickinson accomplishes here with word choice. The word “narrow” is used twice and there’s the word “little”. A mouse is mentioned. But it is, paradoxically, in that small, locked away space that the vastness of infinite self is discovered. The contrast helps you feel the effect of this sudden opening at the beginning of the last stanza. That infinity seems so much larger after locking away and narrowing down.

Peruse how infinite I am
To no one that You – know –
And sigh for lack of Heaven – but not
The Heaven God bestow –

Look at what Dickinson does in the last stanza. First that singular line, “Peruse how infinite I am”. Though the narrative of the poem is about looking over a letter from a lover, there is a doubleness here, because you are ALSO perusing a poem. You are perusing the lasting words of the poet, who becomes, herein, the infinite “I am”. This has a resonance with the biblical “I am”, except the end of this poem let’s you know that the biblical is not exactly what we are talking about here. “Peruse how infinite I am” If, in a thousand years, you had JUST this one line surviving from this poem, in the way that we only have one line fragments of certain Sappho poems, then “Peruse how infinite I am” would still resonate in the aura of the eternal.

But the sentence doesn’t stop at the line break. The line enjambs and carries over into the next one. “Peruse how infinite I am/ To no one that You – know–”. The reader is infinite TO the one who writes her the letter, but, lest you, like the little mouse, try to pry and see who it is from, save your questions. It is no one YOU know. The way Dickinson sets off the “know” in dashes makes that word hover importantly there, makes knowing itself hover there. It’s not someone YOU know, it is private. Love is, by necessity, between two people, and therefore private. But also, on the meta mystical level, when one is infinite, and, in turn, is seen by one who is infinite, how can there be any knowing? It is beyond the knowable.

Though it’s hard to imagine Emily was thinking about future biographers here, it's funny the way a line like this seems to be purposely teasing us readers who would love to know who that letter is from. This is not the right question it seems to be telling us. Emily Dickinson tells us HOW she reads, but not WHO the letter is from, since the letter writer is, like the poet, infinite and unknowable.

The last two lines of this poem continue the theme we saw in the previous fascicle, the idea of earthly love -and the momentarily infinite gaze between lovers- versus a heavenly love, which lacks the only thing we can truly know in this moment.

She keeps driving that point home, poem after poem.

- /)dam Wade l)eGraff