I sow my pageantry
In May—
It rises train by train—
Then sleeps in state again—
My chancel—all the plain
Today.
To lose – if one can find again –
To miss—if one shall meet—
The Burglar cannot rob – then –
The Broker cannot cheat.
So build the hillocks gaily
Thou little spade of mine
Leaving nooks for Daisy
And for Columbine –
You and I the secret
Of the Crocus know–
Let us chant it softly –
"There is no more snow!"
To him who keeps an Orchis' heart –
The swamps are pink with June.
J22, Fr29 (1858)
• Johnson notes that the "three stanzas or sections are printed and indexed as three poems ... A note accompanying them says that ED may have thought of them 'as parts of one poem, since she wrote them all on one page without her usual marks of separation." Franklin follows the three-poem scheme. The second and third he presents as separate poems, Fr30 and Fr31, discussed separately. I discuss only the first stanza here.
Ah, gardens. Banners of the seasons and the cycles. What's interesting here is the gravity with which Dickinson addresses her garden. What she sows is pageantry, and it rises in trains such as those billowing behind the bride or queen. And in keeping with royal pageantry, during the winter it "sleeps in state". There is no season of loss or death. Winter is but another banner, coequal with spring and summer.
In keeping with some of her other poems, Dickinson maintains that the stately and annual progression of her garden is her church. The added dimension is that unlike the traditional Christian arc of birth, death, resurrection, Dickinson is drawing on the cycles of annual rebirth here on earth.
As a lovely contrast with the cycles, she emphasizes the eternal Now by rhyming two dimeter lines: "In May–" with the ending line, "Today." The gravity of the poem is reinforced by the spondees that begin the poem: "All these," and "I sow–pageantry."
Count me in as a member of the Dickinson church!
• Johnson notes that the "three stanzas or sections are printed and indexed as three poems ... A note accompanying them says that ED may have thought of them 'as parts of one poem, since she wrote them all on one page without her usual marks of separation." Franklin follows the three-poem scheme. The second and third he presents as separate poems, Fr30 and Fr31, discussed separately. I discuss only the first stanza here.
Ah, gardens. Banners of the seasons and the cycles. What's interesting here is the gravity with which Dickinson addresses her garden. What she sows is pageantry, and it rises in trains such as those billowing behind the bride or queen. And in keeping with royal pageantry, during the winter it "sleeps in state". There is no season of loss or death. Winter is but another banner, coequal with spring and summer.
In keeping with some of her other poems, Dickinson maintains that the stately and annual progression of her garden is her church. The added dimension is that unlike the traditional Christian arc of birth, death, resurrection, Dickinson is drawing on the cycles of annual rebirth here on earth.
As a lovely contrast with the cycles, she emphasizes the eternal Now by rhyming two dimeter lines: "In May–" with the ending line, "Today." The gravity of the poem is reinforced by the spondees that begin the poem: "All these," and "I sow–pageantry."
Count me in as a member of the Dickinson church!
I really appreciate your thoughts on Ms D. It is good to ‘talk over’ her poems. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteR W Franklin looked at the manuscript (Fascicle 1, Sheet 4) and saw three separate poems. Thomas H. Johnson, looking at the same page, saw one. It's number 22 in his edition.
ReplyDeleteAll these my banners be.
I sow my pageantry
In May—
It rises train by train—
Then sleeps in state again—
My chancel—all the plain
Today.
To lose—if one can find again—
To miss—if one shall meet—
The Burglar cannot rob—then—
The Broker cannot cheat.
So build the hillocks gaily
Thou little spade of mine
Leaving nooks for Daisy
And for Columbine—
You and I the secret
Of the Crocus know—
Let us chant it softly—
"There is no more snow!"
To him who keeps an Orchis' heart—
The swamps are pink with June.
thank you for that, Greg! I can see it both ways: 3 poems or one poem.
DeleteED indented the last word, 'Today', in stanza one and italicized 'There' in the last line of stanza two. Both punctuations were lost in the blog software, but probably could be corrected by editing.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Larry. I checked the archive and the 'today' doesn't look indented. The 'There' was underlined, however, so that's a good catch.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOnce again, ED carefully copied three closely related poems/stanzas together onto a single page for her fascicle, without intervening lines she normally used to separate poems. Nevertheless, beginning with their first publication in ‘Bolts of Melody’ (Todd and Bingham 1945), editors have treated them as separate poems. Todd and Bingham noted that ED might have intended them to be a single poem, and Johnson (1955) printed them together, each with its own number, as did Susan K. However, Franklin (1998) atomizes ED’s single fascicle page by publishing three separated poems, each with its own number and explication. I prefer to consider ED’s fascicle page a triptych of three closely related expressions about her garden and, perhaps, her life.
ReplyDeleteStanza 1: My garden has four banners, one for each season. In spring, I plant bare soil. In summer and in fall, a procession of different species marches sequentially across my stage. In winter my garden sleeps again, my pulpit and choir loft empty and flat, as I write this poem.
Stanza 2: In winter I forget exactly where the various flowers grew. I miss them and hope to meet them again next spring and summer. A winter frost cannot kill the plants and drought cannot steal the flowers. In late winter my little spade and I leave furrows for the daisy and for columbine. We know the secret message of the crocus and chant it softly, “winter is almost over!”
Stanza 3: For those who during winter keep a summer orchid in their hearts and minds, the swamps are always pink with June.
At a deeper level, ED’s three commentaries about her metaphorical garden may express memories and hopes of love. In the beginning her life was empty darkness over the surface of the deep. And Susan said. “Let there be light,” and there was light, and the light was good, and that was the first day. But darkness followed day, and ED still struggles with the coldness of the night, keeping faith that a warm new day follows.