If Others want to see
It can be had on Window Panes
Some Hours in the Day.
But not for Compensation —
It holds as large a Glow
To Squirrel in the Himmaleh
Precisely, as to you.
F506 (1863) J862)
Light has its own existence, never needing compensation, shining equally on the poor as well as the rich, the squirrel as well as the squire. Its glow is available to all, even shut-ins who can enjoy the sunlight shining through a window.
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| Cotswald abbey; photo by author |
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ReplyDeleteBilly Collins (1988) warned us not to "tie the poem to a chair with rope / and torture a confession out of it" (Kornfeld, 1/15/2014, F508), but ED’s poems have both sound and sense, and the latter is rarely easy to understand. For example, this seemingly simple poem (F506) poses at least three riddles: What is “Light”? (Line 1), What is “Compensation” (Line 5), and Who is “you”? (Line 8, poem’s last word).
ReplyDeleteTo answer these questions, it helps to know that ED composed two variants of F506, Variant A in 1863, which ended with the word “me” and a dash [—], and Variant B in 1865, which ended with “you” and a period[.] (Franklin 1998). Franklin further informs us that “The earlier manuscript, in ink on embossed notepaper as if intended for a recipient, remained in ED's possession, unaddressed, unsigned, and unfolded”. The poem above is Variant B.
Below is Variant A with ED’s dash punctuation and last word “me” instead of “you”. The dash after “Day” suggests ED wanted the reader to enjamb Line 5 with Stanza 1 and leave Stanza 2 with three lines, which makes better sense to me:
“Light is sufficient to itself —
If Others want to see
It can be had on Window Panes
Some Hours of the Day —
But not for Compensation —
It holds as large a Glow
To Squirrel in the Himmaleh
Precisely, as to me —"
After a night or three of subconscious simmering, it dawned on me that the poem’s first word may mean lowercase light, like sunlight, or it may mean capitalized “Light”, like spiritual or poetic light, as in “Aha, I see the Light!”. And capitalized “Compensation” may or may not mean money. You can’t buy poetic “Light” with money.
If we interpret capitalized “Glow” as the spiritual value of “Light” and capitalized “Squirrel in the Himmaleh” as a poor backwoodsman, then spiritual “Light” is equally valuable to both a poor man and to ED [“me”], or for “you”, depending on which variant we read. But, who is “you” in Variant B?
I propose that Variant A was meant for Sue but never sent, and Variant B was meant for readers of ED’s Fascicle 36. It probably wasn’t meant for Reverend Wadsworth. He was a recovering poet who considered poetry a waste of time (Habegger 2002, p. 379).
Interesting. Thank you for the research and comment
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