Of Bronze—and Blaze—
The North—Tonight—
So adequate—it forms—
So preconcerted with itself—
So distant—to alarms—
And Unconcern so sovereign
To Universe, or me—
Infects my simple spirit
With Taints of Majesty—
Till I take vaster attitudes—
And strut upon my stem—
Disdaining Men, and Oxygen,
For Arrogance of them—
My Splendors, are Menagerie—
But their Competeless Show
Will entertain the Centuries
When I, am long ago,
An Island in dishonored Grass—
Whom none but Daisies, know.
F319
(1862) 290
It took me a few readings,
but I eventually realized that Dickinson is describing the northern lights, or aurora
borealis. After leafing through some reference books I found that other readers
agreed with me. One said that the puzzle was spoiled in early editions of
Dickinson’s poetry because some clever editor, clearly not trusting his
readers, titled it “Aurora.” But the clues to the puzzle come early in the
poem: “Bronze—and Blaze” indicate power, color, and light. The blaze comes from
the north at night, it is distant and majestical, and will continue the “Competeless
Show” for centuries. Dickinson also qualifies the occurrence by the word “Tonight”:
the blazing event doesn’t happen every night, like sunset or the rise of
Polaris, despite the fact that it will continue to entertain for centuries.
The
aurora’s power “Infects” her, and the word is an interesting choice, intensified
by the “Taints of Majesty” she is infected with. It’s as if watching the light
show introduced a virus. She becomes arrogant, strutting about on her “stem” like
a foolish flower, “Disdaining Men” and even the common air that mortals
breathe.
This
first, long, stanza is about the aurora as a complete cosmic entity. It is
distant, causes no alarms, and in its remote self sufficiency is completely unconcerned
with either the universe or the awe-struck poet. This bridging, “To Universe,
or me,” is very Dickinsonian in the link between the cosmos and the human
consciousness (something Walt Whitman was exploring at the same time). Time and
again we see in her poetry an aesthetic affiliation with the natural world—not only
in contemplation and enjoyment, but also in a psychic or spiritual resonance.
It
is the absolute independence of the northern lights that seeps into Dickinson’s
poetic consciousness causing her, at least temporarily, to become infected with
the notion that she could also be grandly independent. Or, perhaps, that her
poems might be entire of themselves, distant, complete, and “preconcerted”—that
is, somehow organically unified before coming into final or written form.
![]() |
Aurora captured by Space Shuttle (rear fin in foreground) |
The second stanza contrasts the poet’s “Menagerie” of poems, which she
ironically calls her “Splendors,” to the aurora’s “Show” that, in a class of
their own with no competition, will “entertain” people for hundreds of years,
long after the poet is buried, known only to the daisies in the field. Regarding that verb “entertain,” Helen
Vendler writes in Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries that Dickinson
“does not have the Auroras ‘impress’ the Centuries—nor does she introduce a
hyperbolic verb such as ‘stun,’ ‘amaze,’ or ‘astound’; no, the purpose of the
Auroras is to ‘entertain.’ It is as though the Creator and the Poet were both
artists, and God had decided to ‘entertain’ the Centuries with his ‘Show’ in
the heavens, while the poet, in a lesser way, entertains a briefer span of
years with her circus ‘Menagerie’” (p. 123).
When
Dickinson writes that after burial her body will be “An Island in dishonored
Grass,” she returns to the idea of infection and taint. Her corpse dishonors
the field. Yet she is known by the daisies, and one supposes that they are
nourished by her decomposing flesh. Perhaps these daisies, too, will one day
strut in falsely-appropriated majesty beneath the northern lights.
The North was the clue to me that this wasn't an ordinary sunset. Once she got to the line about strutting upon her "stem" with arrogance, I knew she was transitioning to her being the poet, "adequate-erect-with power to choose and to reject!"
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