A little Road— not made of Man—

A little Road— not made of Man—
Enabled of the Eye—
Accessible to Thill of Bee—
Or Cart of Butterfly—

If Town it have—beyond itself—
'Tis that— I cannot say—
I only know— no Curricle
that rumbles there
Bear Me—


       -F758, J646, Fascicle 34, 1863

The surface reading of this poem goes:

There is a road that the eye can see, 

accessible to the way of the bee 

and butterfly, but not to me. 

It's fanciful, with those butterfly carts, and a bit wistful too at the end. There's a sighing wish to be able to follow those bees and butterflies and take to the skies. 

But just as Dickinson wants to know where this sky-road leads to, we wish to know where this poem is going. Can we follow it? Some clues:

1. The first idiosyncrasy I notice is the odd lay out of the final lines. The way this poem is laid out in the fascicle is exactly as I have shown it above. 

The way the lay out makes most sense to me, scansion-wise, is,

I only know— no Curricle
that rumbles there bear Me—

This matches the 4/3 hymn meter rhythm that runs through the rest of the poem, but it isn’t the way Dickinson did it.

A compromise, and the way Christanne Miller has it in "Poems Preserved," goes like this,

I only know— no Curricle that rumbles there
Bear me— 

I imagine Miller made this decision because “that” is not capitalized in the fascicle, which leads you to think it may belong to the line above it. Also “Bear” is capitalized, which, since it is a verb, indicates that it gets its own line. 

This all may seem like a petty thing to worry about, but with Dickinson the power is so often in the subtleties.

Here’s one theory as to why Dickinson laid out this poem the way she did. If you laid the last two lines out in hymn meter, according to 4/3 patterning, it would put an iambic emphasis on the “Me” at the end of the poem, because you are following along to an iambic rhythm. In the Dickinson handwritten version, though, the “Bear Me,” sitting as it does by itself, becomes trochaic, and therefore the emphasis is on the word “Bear.” The emphasis is more on the “bearing,” the carrying, than on the “Me.” That’s a very small, very significant change. Also having that short final line carries the sense of a plea, almost a command: “Bear Me!”

This all makes even more sense when you read the poem that proceeds this one in Fascicle 34, which, is about requiring a “Thee” for “Bliss.” You need a lover to be carried into the skies. Or, in other words, in keeping with this poem, you must be born by your lover if you are going to “rumble” to the heavens.

If we go with this reading, then Dickinson is asking her lover, in the most subtle of ways, to bear with her, and, further, to bear her into the air, unto that road to Bliss.

2.

The “bee” and the “butterfly,” if you are following the Dickinson-lover-mystery-game, both seem to be code names, which also adds to the mystery of what’s happening here too.

If we view Dickinson’s entire oeuvre as one masterwork than the bee is an ever accruing symbol of deep meaning to Dickinson. It is also, always, I believe, an actual bee. Same with the butterfly.

We have a few new words in this poem. Thill. A thill is one of the two shafts that extend from the body of a cart or carriage, on either side of the animal that pulls. And we have “curricle,” which is a two wheeled racing chariot. It’s a great word here, because it carries within it the latin root curriculum. This also makes you think of “current.” The Curricle would "rumble" through the sky. It's the sound of thunder!  There is now a current of air in the picture; a storm breeze. Now I think of the Dickinson classic, one of earliest poems , F26,

In the name of the Bee –
And of the Butterfly –
And of the Breeze – Amen!

3. The road not made of man is a clue of sorts to the meaning of this poem too. There is something beyond us, a road through the sky, in the spiritual realm. It reminds me of the lyrics from The Grateful Dead's song, "Ripple."

Let it be known there is a fountain
That was not made by the hands of men.

There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night.

4.  Another thing to consider is the doubleness of “eye” and “I” in the second line, “Enabled of the eye.” The way this is worded may mean that only the eye is able to follow the road of the butterfly and bee, but it may also mean that the road is enabled BY the eye. It wouldn’t exist without being seen, just as this poem would no longer exist if it was no longer being read.

Thus, deep philosophy may be gleaned from this seemingly simple poem:  our "eye" enables the vision of the way, but, paradoxically, it's a Reality beyond our own making.  

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

 A curricle

Notes: 

1. The way the final lines of this poem are printed in most online versions is

I only sigh,--no vehicle
Bears me along that way.

Why is this common version so different from the fascicle? Well, Dickinson does provide “sigh” and “vehicle” as alternative word choices in the fascicle, so that change is fair game. “Sigh” is more romantic and full of pathos than “know,” and “vehicle” is a more common word than “curricle.” But the final lines have been changed completely. Did some early editor try to “fix” the ending by adding that phrase “along the way.“ 

In a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Dickinson explains why she didn’t like to see her poems in print. She comments in the letter about her famous poem which begins, “A narrow fellow in the grass."

“Lest you meet my Snake and suppose I deceive it was robbed of me – defeated too of the third line by punctuation. The third and fourth were one – I told you I did not print – I feared you might think me ostensible."

Inevitably some publisher would try to “fix” her careful arrangement of the poem and “defeat” it. The last thing a publisher would wish to do is make Dickinson ostensible, right? So, it matters. This is also an argument that the best way to read the poem is probably the original handwritten one.

 Here is a photo of the original published version of the poem here. You can see that the publisher not only changed the syntax of "Narrow Fellow in the Grass," but also imposed a title upon the poem.

2. I’ve noticed that in another poem, with “Bee” in it Dickinson uses the verb “Bear." See F642, in which there appears to be a pun on “honey bear” in the line “A honey bear away.” I don’t know if there is anything to this coincidence, but it has me curious regarding bears and bees in Dickinson's lexicological landscape.