It makes no difference abroad —

It makes no difference abroad —

The Seasons — fit — the same —

The Mornings blossom into Noons —

And split their Pods of Flame —

Wild flowers — kindle in the Woods —

The Brooks slam — all the Day —             [Brooks] brag

No Black bird bates his Banjo —

For passing Calvary —

Auto da Fe — and Judgment —

Are nothing to the Bee —

His separation from His Rose —

To Him — sums Misery —

                       Fr686, J620 1863

In a typical move, Dickinson starts this poem off with an aphorism:

It makes no difference abroad —

The Seasons — fit — the same —

Dickinson packs a lot into this aphorism and the rest of the poem will tease out its possibilities. The poem, as I read it, gathers together around that word "fit". Check out the way the poet emphasizes it by marking it off between dashes. It seems quite fitting.

The word “fit” is, syntactically, doing, at least, double duty here. On one hand it might mean that the seasons fit together in the circular process of time. (For a terrific poem based on THAT idea, take a look at Dickinson’s poem Fr667. ) But it also may mean that the seasons fit each location, both here and "abroad", the same. I think it is useful to keep both senses of the word "fit" in mind while reading the rest of the poem: the seasons fit together with each other and they also fit wherever they are.

So this aphorism might be reminding us that it doesn't matter where you are from, everyone is subject to the process of time. The full import of this will not be clear until we get to the third stanza of this poem where things fitting together will be juxtaposed in stark contrast to things that do NOT fit well together.

The second couplet in the poem is also about the process of time, but here Dickinson scales down from the larger temporal unit, the season, to the smaller one, the day. She extends the aphorism in these lines to the realm of pure poetry…

The Mornings blossom into Noons —

And split their Pods of Flame —

From large to small, everything blossoms. Both the season and the day split their pods into flame. The sun shines brightest in the summer and at noon. It’s the same way both down and up the scale. In the longer seasons of our life we have our summer noons too. In fact every eon blooms, and every second too, if we could only learn to see that fast and slow.

Here we remember that the poem also constitutes a measurement of time. It blossoms and “splits its pod into flame” too. Indeed, it is with this very line that this poem catches fire. 

Dickinson uses the imagery of the day blossoming to transition to flowers in the next line:

Wild flowers — kindle in the Woods —

The season, the morning, the wild flowers in the woods, and, by extension, our wild selves, are (or once were, or soon will be) on fire.

My daughter, Sofia, among flaming flowers --

                                                                  

Then the poem transitions from flowers to brooks, and in so doing we move from seeing images of bright fiery sunrises and flowers to hearing the thunderous sound of slamming water.

The Brooks slam — all the Day —

“Brooks slam” is such a slamming way to put it.  This poem slams us with the feeling that the world is vibrantly but violently alive.

The next lines set us up for the poem’s counterpoint…

No Black bird bates his Banjo —

For passing Calvary —

The word bates means to lessen, and with this word Dickinson brings us a new idea; birds don’t lessen their music for passing Calvary. Calvary is shorthand for the place Jesus was crucified. So the sense is that birds don’t stop their music (nor brooks their slamming, nor flowers their blossoming), even for Christ's dying on the cross. One might choose to read this as proof of an unfeeling universe, in opposition to merciful Christ, but I don't think that's what the poet is getting at. The mentions of Auto da Fe and Judgment in the next stanza do not show Christianity in a merciful light. Rather, the word "passing" clues us in to the fact that nature transcends, in time, any human drama that may now, or then, be unfolding. (We see in F670 that for Dickinson, Calgary was ALWAYS unfolding, for everyone.)

This view of nature's endurance in the face of religion reminds me of Caravaggio's painting "Conversion of Paul the Apostle", where the powerful and foregrounded horse is nonchalantly stepping over the Awestruck Paul.

Why did Dickinson choose a black bird and a banjo I wondered? Why not a lark and a lyre? This question led me to some interesting answers. For one thing there is, following the slamming Brook, the battering sound of the B in the line “No Black bird bates his Banjo”. It has a percussive quality that bounces much like a banjo might. The connection between a black bird’s song and the sound of a banjo was, at first, a surprising one, but then I listened to the black bird’s song in this clip and it wasn’t hard to imagine the “notes” played on the banjo.

Though perhaps there is another reason Dickinson uses the word Banjo. When this poem was written the Civil War was raging, a war fought largely over the issue of slavery. The Black bird playing a banjo (note that the word Black is capitalized, drawing our attention to it) may evoke a black banjo player, since the banjo is an instrument that came to America on slave ships from Africa. With this in mind, these lines feel like an assuring assertion that the music of the black banjo-player will continue unabated despite the tragic consequences of the Civil War and slavery. 

The next lines introduce the idea of religious intolerance into the poem…

Auto da Fe — and Judgment —

Are nothing to the Bee —

Auto da Fe, literally meaning “act of faith”, is a phrase that commonly refers to the burning of a heretic by the Spanish Inquisition. You can see in this pointed detail where doubt begins to darken the doorstep. If there is a worse perversion of "faith" than the Inquisition I'm not sure what it would be. Here we’ve returned to the idea of “fire”, though now it isn’t the ecstatic “flame” of a summer noon and the beautiful “kindle” of flowers we are talking about, but, in sobering counterpoint, fire now refers to the horrific burning of men and women for their beliefs. One kind of flame is extraordinarily beautiful, the other is quite the opposite. We are left to untangle the difference between the two.

None of this matters to the bee, though. The only thing that matters to the bee?

His separation from His Rose —

To Him — sums Misery —

These final lines complicate the poem. A new vector of meaning, the idea of separation from an object of desire, is introduced. The word “separation” hearkens back to “fit” at the beginning of the poem. I read this as saying the seasons may fit in with each other, but we won’t always fit with the seasons. The bee in the winter time is separated from the rose.

The idea that nature won’t stop its blossoming despite Judgment is, perhaps, a comforting one, but if you are caught up in the tragedy of being persecuted for beliefs, nature may appear quite callous in its indifference. That is the way I read Helen Vendler's and David Preest's takes this poem, each emphasizing nature’s indifference to suffering, rather than nature's triumph over suffering. I think this poem has it both ways. The poet may point us toward the perpetual return of spring, but, being human, she also empathizes with the plight of humanity. You can feel this in the word “brag”, the alternative word Dickinson has for “slam”. “The brooks brag — all the day.” This implies that the brook is rubbing its ebullience in our troubled faces. For any (for the many!) caught up in horrors caused by prejudice, the exuberance of nature might feel like a slap in the face. It may feel as if it is burning us, slamming us.

Perhaps in these final lines the poet is revealing her own ambivalence. She appreciates and takes comfort in time's ever-blooming beauty, despite man's cruelty, but also, like the bee, feels the pain of separation from the rose and summer.

This poem is complex in its ideas, but the music of the language helps everything fit together. Read the poem outloud and listen for all of the consonant blends involving "l" and "r". They trip wonderfully off the tongue and give the poem a kindling energy.

— /)dam Wade I)eGraff