When Summer days are flown!
Thy music still, when Whipporwill
And Oriole—are done!
For thee to bloom, I'll skip the tomb
And row my blossoms o'er!
Pray gather me—
Anemone—
Thy flower—forevermore!
- F 7 (1858)
Here Dickinson personifies herself as the humble, hardy, and early-blooming anemone. She wants to be her loved one's summer in winter, his music when birds are gone. This is like the delight brought by anemones--colorful flowers that bloom when all else might still lie under snow, and all the more valuable because of it.
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| The lovely anemone uprooted.jessicareeder.com |
The poem emphasizes eternal life: the loved one is no longer dependent on the seasons for blossoms and bird song, and his him/herself ready to 'bloom' in paradise. The anemone itself, harbinger of spring, represents a triumph over death. This powerful image is what Dickinson wants to take for herself--to be the anemone, a forever flower. I read somewhere that Dickinson liked the 'humble' flowers such as anemone, but here the anemone is glorious and brave.
Written in hymn stanzas—quatrains in alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter—Dickinson uses several internal rhymes to give the poem a song-like quality:
- thee / be
- still / whipporwill
- bloom / tomb
- row / o'er
- me / anemone
My favorite part of this poem is the phrase "row my blossoms o'er." It delivers a beautiful visual while at the same time indicating the love Dickinson bears for the poem's subject.
Great reading and picture helps. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThe way I read it is that Emily hopes to deliver the joys of summer, not only after summer has passed, but after she herself has passed. That her memory, and presumably her poetry, will continue to provide consolation even after her own death - she'll 'skip the tomb' and 'row my blossoms o'er!' to continue being the loved one's Anemone, forevermore
ReplyDeleteGreat interpretation :) I also read it as Emily living on even after her body is no longer there.
DeleteI like this interpretation, too.
DeleteI agree with Michael.
ReplyDeleteThe writer is the one who “skips the tomb” and rows “my blossoms o’er”, presumably over River Styx.
For thee to bloom, I'll skip the tomb
And row my blossoms o'er!
Pray gather me—
Anemone—
Thy flower—forevermore!
Anemones grow in the physical world, not the underworld, and the living lover can gather them forevermore.
Kornfeld, S, The Prowling Bee, 17 June 2012 http://bloggingdickinson.blogspot.com/2012/06/rearrange-wifes-affection.html
ReplyDelete‘Summer for thee’ (1858) is the third time ED has ended a poem or paragraph with “forevermore”. The first was an 1852 letter to Susan, who was in Baltimore for a year teaching high school math:
ReplyDelete“Your precious letter, Susie, it sits here now, and smiles so kindly at me, and gives me such sweet thoughts of the dear writer. When you come home, darling, I shan’t have your letters, shall I, but I shall have yourself, which is more — Oh more, and better, than I can even think! I sit here with my little whip, cracking the time away, till not an hour is left of it — then you are here! And Joy is here — joy now and forevermore! (H L13, April 5, 1852).
ED’s second known use of “forevermore”, which Franklin lists chronologically close to ‘Summer for thee’ (F7, 1858), was a poem sent to Sue, ‘Two sisters have I’ (F5, 1858), which ends”:
“I spilt the dew --
But took the morn --
I chose this single star
From out the wide night's numbers --
Sue — forevermore!”
ED used “forevermore” a third time to end ‘Summer for thee’ (F7), which she also sent to Susan:
“For thee to bloom, I'll skip the tomb
And row my blossoms o'er!
Pray gather me—
Anemone—
Thy flower—forevermore!”
Given these precedents, my guess is that ED’s third known use of “forevermore”, the final word in ‘Summer for thee’, also refers to Susan, not an unidentified male.
ED got the last laugh from her grave. In 1890, her brother Austin channeled ED’s “forevermore” in a letter to his lover, Mabel Loomis Todd:
“Conventionalism, is for those not strong enough to be laws for themselves, or to conform themselves to the higher law where harmonies meet . . . [we are] part of one existence forevermore.”
Thanks for including Austin’s excerpt, although it makes me cringe! His reasoning reminds me of that dastardly Raskolnikov, and look how things turned out for him! If you start your own blog with these observations and arcana, I’m definitely a reader! Best, 🎩
Delete