If I could bribe them by a Rose
I'd bring them every flower that grows
From Amherst to Cashmere!
I would not stop for night, or storm –
Or frost, or death, or anyone –
My business were so dear!
If they would linger for a Bird
My Tambourin were soonest heard
Among the April Woods!
Unwearied, all the summer long,
Only to break in wilder song
When Winter shook the boughs!
What if they hear me!
Who shall say
That such an importunity
May not at last avail?
That, weary of this Beggar's face –
They may not finally say, Yes –
To drive her from the Hall?
- F176 (1860) 179
To paraphrase: the squeaky wheel gets the oil. If you make a pest of yourself, if you are just persistent enough even if you drive everyone crazy, you may well end up achieving your goal. Here the poet doesn’t ever specify her goal but it is something she wants pretty bad. She’s willing to bribe, and the example she gives is roses that she would single-mindedly hunt until every single flower between here and upper India were in her hot little hand. Nothing would stop her – and no one!
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| Roman Beggar Woman Edgar Degas |
The second example she gives is that of bird song. She would play her “Tambourin” like a bird in the woods not only through spring and summer, but winter, too. In fact, winter would only spur her to “wilder song.” So at least metaphorically, those she opportunes are flower and bird lovers. Lucky for Dickinson who was also a flower and bird lover. No doubt, though, in reaching for a metaphor she reached for the beloved things around her.
In the last stanza she is saying, so what if they hear me and grow tired of me? The strategy might work if only to get rid of me – “drive her from the Hall.” It is left to the reader to deduce who “They” may be. I’m happy with the ambiguity, though. By not spelling it out she leaves the poem open enough for readers to supply their own heartfelt desires. Surely many of us would be willing to make a pest of ourselves, go all out, give 101 percent, for that goal we dream of.
But what might the poet be wanting? A few things spring to mind: Inclusion in the lives or in important events by people she loves (perhaps the Bowles or Austin and Sue); or maybe publishers who might publish her poetry (and this is a strategy modern poets adopt as well – wear the poetry editor down until she finally publishes something); or – and this seems too easy, Heaven. She would really really like to get to heaven. I like this interpretation because she refers to herself as a “Beggar” and that is traditionally a metaphor for a supplicant for paradise. Also, the idea of a “Hall” where one petitions is akin to some of her other imagery of heaven where there are hosts of angels, buildings, hierarchies, etc. Dickinson also commonly refers to angels, and they are typically the sort of angel to whom bird song and flowers would appeal. Ultimately, however, who knows?
Dickinson makes a lot of use of rhyme although there isn’t a rhyme scheme: In stanza 1 it is AABCDB; stanza 2 is AABCCD; and stanza 3 is ABACDDC. Metrically, the poem is straightforward. Each stanza has two iambic tetrameter lines, a trimeter, two more iambic tetrameter lines followed by a final trimeter. The last stanza divides the first tetrameter into two lines in order to better emphasize her need for courage: “They” might hear her!
Another emphasis comes with the spondee, the two adjacent accented syllables, in the last stanza: “say, Yes.” These two syllables are key to the poem and so deserve the emphasis.
Whatever it was Dickinson wanted, I for one hope she got it!
"What if they hear me!" is an "Adonic" - a metric line I can't separate from Sappho's verse, myself. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adonean) That is, love poems.
ReplyDeleteI'll echo you: /who/ever she wanted, I hope she got!
Thanks - looked up in my poetry dictionary. Useful term and works well here.
DeleteI vote for literary fame as her wish. Her voice has the command presence to make others assent to her wild songs when plagued by earthly struggles.
ReplyDeleteIf the poem is akin to a flower, or bird song, then this poem is, perhaps, to get the reader ("them") to pay attention to flowers and birdsong itself, to beauty. That's the "dear business" of it. The desperate wish is not for the poet so much as for the reader, that the reader "get" the very thing they are being bribed with. It strikes me as funny that way in its irony. I want you to have this beauty it is saying, so I'll keep piling up flowers and song at your door until you finally don't need me anymore ("drive her from the hall") to point out to you that beauty is all around you. It's like the Buddha holding up a flower for the lesson. What's the lesson here? Ohhh, the flower itself.
ReplyDeleteThe poet as a beggar, begging us to get it, and even transcending frost, storms, night, winter (all metaphors for what might be keeping us from seeing the beauty) strikes me as so heroic. I will go to the ends of the earth for you this poem (and all of Emily's work) says. The poet will even transcend death to get this information to us, as, indeed, she does! For here is a missive importuning us to see the beauty around us long after the poet herself has died.
Yes, I like your reading. I like it better with each re-reading.
DeleteSusan Dickinson’s 1891 poem, ‘Minstrel of the Passing Days’, tells us what minstrel ED sought so persistently:
ReplyDelete“Minstrel of the passing days
Sing me the song of all the ways
That snare the soul in the red haze
Song of the dark glory of the hills
When dyes are frightened to dull hues
Of all the gaudy shameless tints
That fire the passions of the prince
Strangling vines clasping their Cleopatras
Closer than Antony's embrace
Whole rims of haze in pink
Horizons be as if new worlds hew
Shaping off our common quest.”
ED’s poems and letters and many scholarly publications have firmly established that Shakespeare’s depiction of Antony and Cleopatra became ED and Sue’s go-to metaphor for their relationship. ED was lovesick Antony and “siren” Sue was Cleopatra.
http://archive.emilydickinson.org/susan/zmins.html
http://archive.emilydickinson.org/susan/tmins.html
http://archive.emilydickinson.org/susan/mins_note.html
http://archive.emilydickinson.org/susan/table_of_contents.html
In Mabel Todd’s 1890 publication of this poem, the “her” in the last line of ED’s manuscript was changed to “me”. I suspect Austin asked Mabel to make that change to remove any ambiguity in Line 19 about “her”, that is, to ensure the reader knew for certain that the pesty “I" & "me” of the poem was ED.
ReplyDeleteThe “They” in Line 18 was probably Austin and Sue.
In retrospect, my comments confuse more than clarify. I’d like to try again, in reverse order.
ReplyDeleteI still think Mabel, perhaps at Austin’s request, changed the “her” to “me” in the last line of Mabel’s 1890 publication of the poem to ensure readers knew for certain that the pesky “me” of the poem was ED.
However, I think the pronoun “they” in ED’s poem is a disguise for Sue, not for both Austin and Sue. With this change, the poem reads:
If I could bribe Sue by a Rose
I'd bring her every flower that grows
From Amherst to Cashmere!
I would not stop for night, or storm –
Or frost, or death, or anyone –
My business were so dear!
If Sue would linger for a Bird
My Tambourin were soonest heard
Among the April Woods!
Unwearied, all the summer long,
Only to break in wilder song
When Winter shook the boughs!
What if Sue hears me!
Who shall say
That such an importunity
May not at last avail?
That, weary of this Beggar's face –
She may not finally say, Yes –
To drive me from the Evergreens?
To understand Susan’s 1891 ‘Minstrel of the Passing Days’ requires knowing that ED and Sue identified with Antony and Cleopatra, respectively, from the earliest days of their friendship in the late 1840s. In that light, “Cleopatra” is Sue, and ED is the “prince” and “Antony”. Of course, ED is “Minstrel of the passing days”, and, as illustrated by ED’s ‘If I could bribe them by a Rose’, she is also the pesky “Strangling vines”.
Sue closes her 1891 poem by confiding that, like many long-time dyads, their shared interest enabled them to “hew” new worlds, “Shaping off our common quest” of poetry.
“Minstrel of the passing days
ReplyDeleteSing me the song of all the ways
That snare the soul in the red haze
Song of the dark glory of the hills
When dyes are frightened to dull hues
Of all the gaudy shameless tints
That fire the passions of the prince
Strangling vines clasping their Cleopatras
Closer than Antony's embrace
Whole rims of haze in pink
Horizons be as if new worlds hew
Shaping off our common quest.”
Compare the last stanza with "The Parable of the Persistent Widow" (Luke 18/1-8):
ReplyDeleteAnd he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. 2 He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. 3 And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ 4 For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’” 6 And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. 7 And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? 8 I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
Thank you! It does seem very pertinent. I love the notion of Dickinson reading her Bible, her imagination firing up into provocative poems.
Delete