Sweet Mountains–Ye tell me no lie–

Sweet Mountains–Ye tell me no lie–
Never deny Me–Never fly–
Those same unvarying Eyes
Turn on Me–when I fail–or feign,
Or take the Royal names in vain–
Their far–slow–Violet Gaze–

My Strong Madonnas–Cherish still–
The Wayward Nun–beneath the hill–
Whose service–is to You–
Her latest Worship–When the Day
Fades from the Firmament away–
To lift her Brows on You–

    -F745, J722, Fascicle 36, 1863

Sweet Mountains–Ye tell me no lie–

Mountains, literal mountains, do not lie. They are the very symbols of the unsymbolic fact. They represent solid thingness, isness.

It took me awhile to get that aspect of this poem. I kept wanting to make religious metaphors out of those mountains, since that is what the poem seems to be doing. But this is a poem, I've come to realize, about doing the opposite; turning the abstract metaphor back into a mountain. In this way, this poem "turns" on the reader.  

Never deny Me–Never fly–

The second line of this poem looks, at first, like a plea: Please “Never deny me! Never fly!” and, because of the dash after "lie," which may be read as a period, you can read it this way. But, if we see this line as, instead, continuing from the first line, with a comma after "lie" instead of a period, then the poem is saying that the mountains don’t lie to you, nor do they deny you, and nor will they fly from you. There’s no reason to beg them not to, because they won’t! Dickinson is crazy clever, using that slippery syntax to turn the line from a plea to fact, which, it turns out, is a key to understanding the entire poem. 

The land itself, those large reminders of the earth below us, which are also rising above us, are unvarying. We can count on the earth.

Those same unvarying Eyes
Turn on Me–when I fail–or feign,
Or take the Royal names in vain–
Their far–slow–Violet Gaze–

It is ourselves who cannot be counted on. It is we who “feign” (lie), not the mountains. We deny. We fly. While we “fail or feign,” the mountains “turn on us” with those unvarying eyes, eyes with a “far–slow–Violet Gaze–” (It is we, really, who are turning, just as it is we who are lying. The mountains doen’t turn. They stay steady.) These eyes of the mountains are far-seeing, unlike ours. They are, unlike ours, slow. They take the long view you might say.

The gaze of the mountain is violet. Why? I can think of two reasons. One is that it is sunset. Of course it isn’t sunset for the mountains so much as it is for the viewer. The mountains are too far-seeing to be affected by days and seasons. It isn’t the end of the day for the mountain, but for us. In poetry-parlance the end of a day means the end of a life. We will see this idea confirmed in the next stanza.

But violet is also the color of a flower, and perhaps this mountain is covered with wild violets. The suggestion, at any rate, is there. These mountains are "sweet" like that.

The Sweet Mountains are reconfigured, in the first line of the second stanza, as Strong Madonnas. Sweet Mountains = Strong Madonnas. Notice how Dickinson subtly ties the two together with those initial consonant sounds. Madonna is old Italian for “My Lady.” The mountains aren’t masculine here, as one might expect, but feminine. (One thinks of breasts perhaps?)

Madonna is also a common epithet for Mary, mother of Jesus. Dickinson is having fun here, as she often does, with re-appropriating religious nomenclature. This is funny because she has just intimated to us in the first stanza that the mountains "turn on" her for taking the Royal Names in vain. But when we realize that the mountains are steady, undeniable and far seeing, we get that they are not a bit worried about our taking the “Royal Names in vain.” So here, in the second stanza, she is playing very loose with "Royal Names." (This is a very subtle joke and I didn’t get it until I was writing about it. The pleasures of the deep Dickinson dives are manifold.)

My Strong Madonnas–Cherish still–
The Wayward Nun–beneath the hill–

Again, that “Cherish still” seems like a plea, but once you realize that the pleas in the first stanza are, in fact, facts (mountains don’t fly), then you see that “Cherish still” is, also, a fact. These strong ladies, these mountains, cherish the wayward nun no matter what. And by this point in the poem, "wayward," has become tongue-in-cheek. The Poet is less a wayward nun, and more a mountain herself with a far slow gaze. 

“Whose service is to You”

“You,” here, means the mountains, but it also means the reader. She is rendering you a service, by helping you plant your feet on the solid ground, and by aligning your eyes, like she has done, with the far slow gaze of the mountains.

If you keep the double meaning of “You” in mind, then those last lines of this poem are quite moving,

Her latest Worship–When the Day
Fades from the Firmament away–
To lift her Brows on You–

Ah, Emily. How can we not love you?


    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

"Their far–slow–Violet Gaze–"

Note: One funny little part of this poem I didn't account for is the phrase "beneath the hill."

My Strong Madonnas–Cherish still–
The Wayward Nun–beneath the hill–
Whose service–is to You–

It is hard to read "beneath the hill" and not think of the wayward nun being buried in the ground. Since we are reading this poem posthumously, it is possible to read these lines as presaging the future: "My strong Madonnas still cherish the wayward nun who is (now) buried beneath the hill and whose service is to You." The poet is still giving service, in the Whitmanic sense, by bequeathing her body to the earth, although, humbly, she has become a hill instead of a mountain, but she's also still giving service to You, in her poetry, and in this very poem. Her future readers, then, are

"Her latest Worship–When the Day

Fades from the Firmament away–"

and she is lifting "her brows on You."

She dwelleth in the Ground—

She dwelleth in the Ground—
Where Daffodils—abide—
Her Maker—Her Metropolis—
The Universe—Her Maid—

To fetch Her Grace—and Hue—
And Fairness—and Renown—
The Firmament's—To Pluck Her—
And fetch Her Thee—be mine—

    -F744, J671, Fascicle 36, 1863


When I first read this poem I assumed from the first line that it was about a woman buried in the ground. But then as I read further and further into the poem this reading no longer made sense. I was stuck. I did some research and found the following helpful information from David Preest:

“We are saved from guessing the name of the flower in this riddle poem, because Fanny Norcross, Emily’s cousin, noted on her copy of the poem that Emily had sent it to her ‘with a crocus,’ and the crocus does indeed dwell and live her life in that ground where the daffodils are biding their time before they appear next. This explanation of the poem is derived from Judith Farr’s book, The Gardens of Emily Dickinson.’”

Ah, thank you David, Judith and Fanny.

Once you have this “key” to the poem, then it is quite lovely to think of the crocus, the first flower of spring, having a maker (and, by extension, all of creation) as its bustling metropolis and the universe as its maid, with the firmament (the sky) bringing the flower grace and hue (color) and fairness (beauty) and renown (fame). That's the job of the firmament and the universe, but the job of plucking the flower and giving it to her cousin Fanny, belongs to Emily.

To fetch Her Grace—and Hue—
And Fairness—and Renown—
(is the job of) The Firmament's—To Pluck Her—
And fetch Her (to) Thee—be mine—

If people can be compared to flowers (a comparison Dickinson has made in other poems,) then the wonderful idea of this poem can be transferred to the self. All of creation is our city, the universe is our maid, and the sky brings us grace and color and beauty and fame. This idea can be seen in a poem from earlier in this fascicle, with mother nature showing us infinite affection and infiniter care. 

It may be the work of the firmament and the universe to take care of us, but it’s the pleasure of the poet to pluck this grand conception of ourselves, put it in a poem, and give it to us.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff