The Heaven vests for Each
In that small Deity
It craved the grace to worship
Some bashful Summer’s Day –
Half shrinking from the Glory
It importuned to see
Till these faint Tabernacles drop
In full Eternity –
How imminent the Venture –
As One should sue a Star –
For His mean sake to leave the Row
And entertain Despair –
A Clemency so common –
We almost cease to fear –
Enabling the minutest –
And furthest – to adore –
-F717, J694, fascicle 35, 1863
Let's start with a literal take on this poem. It's a poem about the sun. The word sun does not appear in this poem, so you might classify it among Dickinson's riddle poems. Nearly all of Dickinson’s poems function like riddles. That’s one (of many) reasons they are so addictive. Trying to figure them out is a bit like doing a crossword puzzle (if the answers pointed toward your own soul.) But some of her poems aren’t just like riddles, they are riddles.
Heaven gives (vests) us each the thing we crave, the Sun, though it’s brightness makes us bashful on a summer day. We shrink from its intensity, even though we asked for (importuned) it, and meanwhile, as we are shrinking back, the very thing we craved begins to away as the sun begins to set. And yet, though it goes away and we are left in darkness, the next sunrise is imminent. During the darkness of the night we are in despair, and we have the nerve to ask the sun to leave its place among the stars in the sky to come down and relieve little old (mean) us. And of course, it does. The sun rises again in the morning. This mercy (Clemency, which also means good weather) is actually so common, coming as it does every day, that we almost stop fearing it will go away for good. This good fortune allows us to see even the smallest things far away and to adore them.
Let's look at the symbolic possibilities of this poem. The Sun functions as a kind of double metaphor here. First it is a metaphor for the Deity (God,) but note that this is a "smaller Deity". This conflation of religious and romantic love adds a couple layers of complexity. It's very common in Dickinson’s poems, but if you aren't familiar with it, it can be difficult to get a handle on. This idea of a smaller deity, a heaven of a smaller size, fit just for one, is prevalent in the fascicles that precede this one. The idea in this poem is that the sun is a small star, but one made for each of us. But there is a second idea here that the small deity is the beloved, whomever that may be. It helps to keep both in mind as we read this poem.
I think a good candidate for the beloved in this poem is Sue. I’m basing this off of two clues. The first is that the poem employs the word “sue,” which, owing to the fact that Dickinson so deeply loved her sister-in-law (and was probably in love with her too,) may not be just a coincidence. Secondly, Sue lived with Emily’s brother in the next house over. Emily would’ve likely seen Sue nearly every day. At night it might’ve felt like despair to be without her. But in the daytime there she would be again, just like the sun. This is all conjecture, and it's fun to speculate. But I think it is worth pointing out the word “Each” in this poem. “The Heaven vests for Each/ in that small Deity”. Dickinson could easily have written, “The Heaven vests for me.” Furthermore “Each” is capitalized. These poems, though they may not have had any readers besides Dickinson in her own lifetime, were still written for the benefit of “Each” of us, like road maps, or like “the Light House Spark” for “Some Sailor rowing in the Dark” (F322).
You might surmise that Dickinson turned her lovers into suns and moons and bees and flowers in her poems in order to disguise them, and there is probably some truth in that, as her affairs did have good reason to be kept secret, but I think paramount reason is so that we might be able to make them our own. The Sun, or small Deity, in this poem, has its parallel in our own lives, even if is only the actual sun itself
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
A couple notes:
* That “it” in the third line gives us a little inkling of the trouble of parsing Dickinson. Does that “it” refer back to “each” or to “The Heaven”? It would make the most sense grammatically to connect it to The Heaven, since that is the subject of the sentence. But it would be strange for Heaven to crave the grace to worship, so it makes the most logical sense to connect “It” back to “Each.” This becomes more apparent in the second stanza as “it” (each) is shrinking from the Sun. When you are limning a poem, there is a decision tree based on thousands of tiny decisions of logic and meaning. In Dickinson, they are all important, down to the tiniest detail. It’s part of what makes her so uncannily good. One miscalculation can throw the poem’s intent far off course.
* To crave the grace to worship is an ironic phrase. Grace is meant to be something freely given, something we don’t deserve. In the poem preceding this one in fascicle 35 we find out that the pearl only comes when we have stopped craving the pearl. Grace would seem to be something like this. However, in this poem, the thing we so brazenly asks for comes every day, if only we had the patience to wait through the night.