No Prisoner be—

No Prisoner be—
Where Liberty—
Himself—abide with Thee—

     -F742, J720, Fascicle 36, 1863

Dickinson poems can be useful in a variety of ways. Some are extremely complex and meant as a way to get inside of a difficult truth. See the first poem in this fascicle. Some are easy as pie. See the last poem in this fascicle before this one, which is mainly concerned about getting across the feeling of a mother’s infinite care. You don't want a knotty poem when you are trying to comfort a child.

This poem is useful in a different way. It functions as a mantra meant to liberate. It's pithy enough to memorize and say over and over to yourself, which is a good way to drum its idea into your head. Say it to yourself until you start to believe it. This would be an especially powerful thing to do when you feel like you are in prison.

What -is- Liberty? As you are saying it again and again you can turn it over in your mind and contemplate what Liberty means to you. This is a powerful question to ponder. 

You can also sing it over and over to yourself. I tried singing rounds of it in the key of D.

(D) No Prisoner be—
(D) Where Liberty—
Him (A) self—abide with (D) Thee—

Because it's so simple, you can play around with the different melodic possibilities inside the structure as you repeat it. That repetitive "ee" sound beautifully lends itself to elongating the notes at the end of each musical phrase in ascending and descending patterns. There is Liberty in playing around with it. There is Liberty in singing itself. You can sing this very poem wherever you go, in whatever prison you happen to find yourself in. In that sense this poem, itself, is the Liberty that is abiding with thee.

What might Dickinson have meant by Liberty? Well, since you have "Himself" with a capital H,  it could be Christ. Dickinson had a complex identification with Christ. He symbolizes for her the idea of dying for love. Prison (and pain in general) is suggested, in more than one of her poems, as something that may be transcended through a Christ-like love. See, for example, F739, from this fascicle, or the one about the martyr poets, F669.

"Himself" may also be a lover. There are also several poems where the "He" that sets you free is seen to be an earthly love. Both Charles Wadsworth and Sue Gilbert are possible candidates for the "Himself" of this poem.

Or it could be some strange combination of these two possibilities. A whole study could be made of the conflation between Christ and Lover in Dickinson’s poems. There are dozens of poems that center around this idea (See Fascicles 33 and 34 for more of this.)

But I think this line of questioning is largely beside the point. It is significant that the identity of Himself is left vague and open, for the sake of the reader. Christ? Buddha? Allah? Lover? Poetry? Just the -idea- of Liberty could be enough to set you free.

Try memorizing this poem, which you can do in less than a minute, repeating it like a mantra, and see what it ends up meaning for you. 

Inside the poem, itself, is the key to open the prison. But it may take a few turns of the key to unlock it.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Note: I often wonder if Dickinson read William Blake. Blake is the master of the pithy aphorism. Here is a Blake poem that also has the power to set you free:

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise