No Notice gave She, but a Change—

No Notice gave She, but a Change—
No Message, but a Sigh—
For Whom, the Time did not suffice
That She should specify.

She was not warm, though Summer shone
Nor scrupulous of cold
Though Rime by Rime, the steady Frost
Upon Her Bosom piled—

Of shrinking ways—she did not fright
Though all the Village looked—
But held Her gravity aloft—
And met the gaze—direct—

And when adjusted like a Seed
In careful fitted Ground
Unto the Everlasting Spring
And hindered but a Mound

Her Warm return, if so she chose—
And We—imploring drew—
Removed our invitation by
As Some She never knew—


       -Fr860, J804, Fascicle 38, 1864


Dickinson does thing sometimes where you don't know at first if the subject of the poem is alive or dead. It gets slowly revealed to you. And the effect is that there is a kind of dual set of meanings between the dead and the living. It makes for a riddle of sorts. Complicating the riddle is the idea that Dickinson wrote of herself as one whose life “closed twice” before it finally closed for good [Fr485]. The riddle has crossed over into a metaphor; the dead as a metaphor for the living. 

No Notice gave She, but a Change—

When you first read the poem the riddle starts with the first line. What does it mean "She" didn’t give notice? What kind of Change are we talking about? It wasn't until the end of this stanza that I started to realize that this poem might be about death. 

No Message, but a Sigh—
For Whom, the Time did not suffice
That She should specify.

The only message, we now understand, is her final sigh for Someone, because she ran out of time to say more before She died.  In typical Dickinsonian fashion, we are focusing on the moment of transition, that final "sigh." Dickinson had a deep fascination with death scenes.*

She was not warm, though Summer shone

Nor scrupulous of cold

What's the point of telling us that a dead woman is cold in the summer time and doesn't care about (isn't scrupulous of) the cold? Isn't that obvious? It's pointing toward a "lack of feeling."  It begins to seem to me around this point in the poem that Dickinson is talking about a woman who is still physically alive, but feels dead inside. 

The next line is a new clue to the riddle, and a new complication too.

Though Rime by Rime, the steady Frost
Upon Her Bosom piled—

Rime by Rime is a pun on Rhyme by Rhyme. The poetry is thereby equated with the frosty cold of death. The poetry is piled on her breast like layers of frost. And this is why she is “not scrupulous of cold.” The one in pain becomes insensitive to it, numb.

But as soon as you invoke poetry, the words of the poem point back to the poet, who, I would now posit, is talking about herself. Her poetry is like frost piled on her bosom, the bosom being a symbol of both the erotic and maternal. Her lack of both lover, and perhaps, child, is part of what drives her poetry. Pining and poetry are brilliantly linked together in the phrase, "Rime by rime." 

Leave it to Dickinson to rhyme rhyme with rime. 

Of shrinking ways—she did not fright
Though all the Village looked—

Okay, so now if we can agree that the living-dead woman in this poem is Emily, then we can read this poem as autobiographical and think of Dickinson shrinking back from society, which she was starting to do more and more in 1864 when this poem was written down in fascicle 38.

Of shrinking ways she did not fright. She wasn’t afraid to shrink from the prying eyes of the village. She did it courageously. You can also read shrinking back as dying too, since this is about a dead woman after all. Dickinson is letting us know she is not frightened of disappearing.

But held Her gravity aloft—
And met the gaze—direct—

Imagine being a villager in 1864 and walking by her house, curious about the reclusive genius poet who lives there, and you catch Emily, at her writing desk in her window, staring straight at you with gravity held aloft? It gives me chills. 

And the idea of the gravity still being held aloft, in her poems, is uncanny too. It’s eerie, as if, from the grave, she was still meeting our gaze directly from her poetry. She is staring at me. At you.**

What is perceived as shrinking then is actually rising. Gravity, which can be taken in two ways here, is the sober weight of pain. The word itself is a pun between "grave" and "heaviness."  She holds this up high to meet our gaze. Perhaps she only shrinks back so that she may have the wherewithal to bravely rise up. This is not a shrinking back born of timidity. Quite the opposite. She is meeting our gaze directly, no fear, rising up, aloft, holding up the weight of grief itself.

And when adjusted like a Seed
In careful fitted Ground
Unto the Everlasting Spring

In succumbing to the death of self, she plants a seed. The body buried, “careful fitted,” in the ground is a seed into the “Everlasting Spring.” Spring is another word with a double or triple meaning here. It can mean springtime, everlasting, but it can also link back to “aloft,” the soul then lifting up from the ground like a flower springing from the earth. It takes the breath away the way Dickinson wields words.

And hindered but a Mound

First you think the woman has died so she “hindered” the earth. But its weird because a mound isn’t a mound until the woman is put into it. So how does she hinder the mound? It's not going into the earth that hinders the mound, but springing out of it. The idea here is that "She" hinders the mound as the seed sprouts, metaphorically, from the earth.

Still one wonders what this line is doing here. What else could Dickinson possibly mean by mound here? The first meaning is a burial mound, by why call attention to a burial mound being hindered? Could mound be a slant allusion to pregnancy? Has the narrator, the dead living woman, somehow hindered a pregnancy, or had her pregnancy hindered? The clues point to a possibility.

Or is "mound" perhaps a metaphor for death as birth? A funeral mound becomes a pregnant mound. That makes sense for a woman springing from her Grave toward the Everlasting. She is being born from death.

Her Warm return, if so she chose—

What does it mean that a woman can return from the grave if she chooses too? Well, it makes sense if the woman is still alive, but feels dead. So then is the warm return the poet’s return to society? 

And We—imploring drew—

If the woman is Emily, then who is the We? The riddle just had a new complication added to it. Is the poet taking on the voice of the villagers staring in her window?

Removed our invitation by
As Some She never knew—

The freezing woman, frozen by cold pain, can no longer know or be known. She is dead to the world, but in that death of self she is looking at us face to face, the grave poem held aloft.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

*The following scene is described in Alfred Habegger's biography of Emily Dickinson, "My Wars Are Laid Away In Books." 

When Emily was 14 she had a friend/cousin named Sophia Holland. Emily described her in a letter as a "friend near my age & with whom my thoughts & her own were the same." When this friend died Emily was allowed to watch "over her bed." 

"It seemed that to me I should die too," Emily recalled, "if I could not be permitted to watch over her or even to look at her face."

This is from Habegger:

"Emily prevailed on the doctor to allow one last look. She took  off her shoes and quietly stepped to the sickroom, stopping in the doorway. There Sophia

'lay mild & beautiful as in health & her pale features lit up with an unearthly - smile. I looked as long as friends would permit & when they told me I must look no longer I let them lead me away.' Then, 'I shed no tears, for my heart was too full to weep, but after she was laid in her coffin & I felt I could not call her back again I gave way to a fixed melancholy. I told no one the cause of my grief.'"

** Before the great poet and songwriter David Berman died a few years ago he wrote a song called "Snow is falling in Manhattan" with these lines, eerie in the way that Emily's are.


Songs build little rooms in time
And housed within the song's design
Is the ghost the host has left behind
To greet and sweep the guest inside
Stoke the fire and sing his lines.

Purple Mountains,"Snow is Falling in Manhattan." 

(As I post this, snow is falling on Manhattan)