Adrift! A little boat adrift!
And night is coming down!
Will no one guide a little boat
Unto the nearest town?
So Sailors say -- on yesterday --
Just as the dusk was brown
One little boat gave up its strife
And gurgled down and down.
So angels say -- on yesterday --
Just as the dawn was red
One little boat -- o'erspent with gales --
Retrimmed its masts -- redecked its sails --
And shot -- exultant on!
- F 6 (1858)
Here we have two competing versions of what happens to the little boat: Sailors say it sank at dusk (the "So Sailors say" can be read as "Sailors said that"), while angels say that the little boat (we assume it is the same boat) fixed itself and "shot' on exultantly. The tension in the poem comes from the first stanza where we see the little boat adrift with night coming and no help in sight. We read this to mean a soul floundering with death at hand. Other citizens of the sea only see a sad death, sadder when we think of the soul gurgling 'down and down' as opposed to ascending to heaven.
But! even though the soul was tired and had even been defeated by the storms of life, it managed to right itself at the end and go on, we assume, to heaven. Dawn is the arising of the sun, life and birth;whereas dusk is nightfall or death, so Dickinson is not making the symbolism difficult here.
She uses the ballad or hymn structure for the first two quatrains with the second and fourth lines rhymed. The last stanza is five lines with the third and fourth lines rhymed. The extra line, "And shot--exultant on!" provides the happy ending to the ballad. It could be a refrain if this were indeed a hymn.
The imagery is conventional: the sea of life, the little boat of the soul, the storms of life, the need to adjust the sails; and so is the message. It's a nice little poem, but not one of my favs.
I think another read is that it's not two competing versions of what happened. In the morning, the sailors set out, exultant, ready to weather the storm, but they were worn out by dusk and lost the battle with the gale. If death is to be read into the poem, so should life. The day is the life, the struggle. When angels tell the story of the boat, they are optimistic and only see the beauty of the good fight to live early in life. When the sailors tell the story, they focus on the negative, forgetting their strength and exultation earlier in their life. It's all the same day. Is one life, and the angels rejoice about living while the sailors get fixated on dying.
ReplyDeleteThat makes sense. Yet it is confusing to me in the poem that at yesterday's dusk the boat foundered, according to sailors; yet at yesterday's dawn, the boat righted itself and sped on, according to angels. It would seem the righting and speeding on would be the subsequent morning -- unless there are two boats and this is a comparison. One boat gives up and sinks; the other lives through the night and exultantly survives by taking action agains calamity.
DeleteI'm just now thinking of this, as I haven't revisited this poem until your thoughtful comments. Thanks!
I found this poem both conventional and hopeful. What ‘people say’ if taken seriously is often a problem.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your blog and all comments!
The answer to the contradiction is that Emily is contrasting different views of the soul. Humans, the 'Sailors' who share our 'voyage' through physical life, see only the demise of the body and the death / loss of the human being at the end of his/her life, the dusk. The angel see the liberation of the soul, the dawn of a new stage of life, and the continuation of the being on the seas of a different plane
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree. You said it much more clearly than I did -- thanks!
DeleteBeautifully expressed. I displayed a copy of this at my brothers funeral because I felt it was so fitting, and described his new journey escorted by angels. Thank you so much.
Delete.
ReplyDeleteED left two early sailing poems, On this wondrous sea (F3.1853) and A little boat adrift (F6.1858), both set in small boats battling storms, one sailed by a pilot ferrying a passenger, the other pilotless and adrift with a passenger who fortunately knows how to retrim masts and redeck sails. The storm obscures the little boat, but two groups of witnesses describe its fate as best they can.
ReplyDeleteThe first, seasoned sailors, swears the boat surrendered to the storm’s strife at sunset and sank. The second, a host from heaven, say the boat survived the storm and, just as red dawn broke, retrimmed its masts, redecked its sails, and shot exultant on.
We jury members must judge which we believe, veterans of stormy seas or angels who watched from a higher place. As this is not a court of law, I vote both say the truth. By standards of her day, the passenger, a poet, succumbs to strife, sinks gurgling down and down. She’s 27, unmarried, has no paying work, cannot sew, grows flowers instead of food, and sits stuck in spinsterhood scribbling unpublished poetry that no one understands. Some say she’s mad, hiding at home, wearing white every day.
But she and angels set standards different than those her peers espoused; she carefully considered the ways of her world and took a different road. Certain that someday her poetry would gather crowds of spectators, she trimmed her mast, redecked her sails, and shot exultant on.
Both sailing poems express optimism about the poet’s future. In March 1853 ED sent Susan the naively optimistic poem ‘On this wondrous sea’ (F3). Both women were 22 and ED hoped that they might spend their lives together in a “calm harbor in the west” (see comments on F4, ‘I have a little bird in spring’). Given the evidence of the “wrenching” letter of September 1854 (H L17, ‘Sue -- You can go or stay’) and painfully hopeful poem included in the letter (‘I have a little bird in spring’, F4), the late March, 1853, news of Susan's engagement to Austin must have shattered ED. As far as we know, she wrote no poetry in 1855, 1856, or 1857.
ReplyDeleteIn 1858, after four years of healing and Susan’s 1856 marriage to Austin, ED comes back strong. In two realistically optimistic poems she announces her self-confidence that she will join the small host of immortal poets (‘Adrift! A little boat adrift!’, F6, summer 1858):
“So angels say -- on yesterday --
Just as the dawn was red
One little boat -- o'erspent with gales --
Retrimmed its masts -- redecked its sails --
And shot -- exultant on!”
and triumphantly announces to the world that she will love Susan “forevermore” (‘Two sisters have I’, F5, late 1858):
“I spilt the dew --
But took the morn --
I chose this single star
From out the wide night's numbers --
Sue - forevermore!