By Butterflies admired
At Heavenly – Hopeless Distances –
Was justified of Bird –
Did Noon – enamel – in Herself
Was Summer to a Score
Who only knew of Universe –
It had created Her.
-Fr863, J805, fascicle 38, 1864
.
I would guess that this poem was given to a friend accompanied by a flower. This was a signature gesture from Emily. The “This” would have pointed to a specific flower, probably some beauty from Emily’s garden, but it would have been understood by the recipient to be about herself.
Without the original referent, though, the “This” points to any flower, and then, finally, to any recipient.
A bauble is a showy, often cheap, trinket. So from the get-go Dickinson is making a statement about value. What may seem like just a worthless bauble is preferred by bees. Butterflies admire it too. (Do butterflies admire flowers? Maybe butterflies admire flowers because, unlike them, they are rooted to the ground?)
We already have a solid idea here. The beauty in ourselves that we may judge as shallow is necessary and beloved by nature itself. But Dickinson takes the idea deeper as the poem continues.
At Heavenly – Hopeless Distances –
Was justified of Bird –
Now the flower, or the recipient, is seen to be like heaven, hopelessly far away, and therefore justifies the very reach of the wings of the bird. If one wishes to reach this recipient, this bauble that is so much more than just a bauble, then one must grow wings. It justifies the flight itself. What does it mean to grow wings metaphorically? One might say that this poem itself is the bird, and the heightened language, the song, of this poem, is the bird in flight. It has reached its flower, you.
(We may ask ourselves here, what sort of wings will get us across the hopeless distances to the heaven of the beloved?)
Did Noon – enamel – in Herself
The density of this line is staggering. Dickinson thinks of noon, in the intensity and heat of the sun, as maturity itself. Dew is for the young.* Confronting “the man of noon” as she calls it, is where the flower becomes a gem-like flame. (Enamel refers back to bauble, so we might be led to think we were talking about a gem here if we weren't told that this is something “preferred by bees,” which makes it clearly a flower.)
This enameled in noon image comes from an astute observation by Dickinson. On a literal level, a flower becoming enameled as the sun gets hotter is a way of saying it becomes glossy. Glossy petals, such as buttercups, appear more glossy in full, direct sunlight. The visual effect is a result of the specialized structure of the flower petals. From the internet: "Glossy flowers have flat, smooth epidermal cells that act like a mirror, bouncing light in a narrow, specular band."
On a figurative level though, this enameling is symbolic of the recipient taking the heat, the pain, and, in light of it, shining back. This flower in noon is enameled "in Herself."
Was Summer to a Score
Summer to a score could have a few meanings. On the literal level, a flower might have a score of summers. And a buttercup, to use our earlier example (and my guess as to the original flower that was with this note) can live up to 20 years, or a score of summers. But also the syntax could read here that the flower was summer to a score of others, bees and butterflies and birds. Therefore it is understood that the recipient, too, has a score of summers to live, and is, in turn, summer to score of others. The reader, in other words, is all the sweetness of life for as long as She summers. One other meaning that I can't help but read here is score as in score of music. She is like summer itself set to a score of music.
All of this does the recipient represent, and yet all the flower/reader can ultimately know about the universe itself is that She is somehow alive in it, alive and attracting bees and butterflies, alive and justifying wings, alive and becoming hard and beautiful in the noon heat of the sun.
Who only knew of Universe –
It had created Her.
We are left to wonder in the mystery, in the isness of it all. This reminds me of Whitman’s lines in Song of Myself:
Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the beams,
A bauble is a showy, often cheap, trinket. So from the get-go Dickinson is making a statement about value. What may seem like just a worthless bauble is preferred by bees. Butterflies admire it too. (Do butterflies admire flowers? Maybe butterflies admire flowers because, unlike them, they are rooted to the ground?)
We already have a solid idea here. The beauty in ourselves that we may judge as shallow is necessary and beloved by nature itself. But Dickinson takes the idea deeper as the poem continues.
At Heavenly – Hopeless Distances –
Was justified of Bird –
Now the flower, or the recipient, is seen to be like heaven, hopelessly far away, and therefore justifies the very reach of the wings of the bird. If one wishes to reach this recipient, this bauble that is so much more than just a bauble, then one must grow wings. It justifies the flight itself. What does it mean to grow wings metaphorically? One might say that this poem itself is the bird, and the heightened language, the song, of this poem, is the bird in flight. It has reached its flower, you.
(We may ask ourselves here, what sort of wings will get us across the hopeless distances to the heaven of the beloved?)
Did Noon – enamel – in Herself
The density of this line is staggering. Dickinson thinks of noon, in the intensity and heat of the sun, as maturity itself. Dew is for the young.* Confronting “the man of noon” as she calls it, is where the flower becomes a gem-like flame. (Enamel refers back to bauble, so we might be led to think we were talking about a gem here if we weren't told that this is something “preferred by bees,” which makes it clearly a flower.)
This enameled in noon image comes from an astute observation by Dickinson. On a literal level, a flower becoming enameled as the sun gets hotter is a way of saying it becomes glossy. Glossy petals, such as buttercups, appear more glossy in full, direct sunlight. The visual effect is a result of the specialized structure of the flower petals. From the internet: "Glossy flowers have flat, smooth epidermal cells that act like a mirror, bouncing light in a narrow, specular band."
On a figurative level though, this enameling is symbolic of the recipient taking the heat, the pain, and, in light of it, shining back. This flower in noon is enameled "in Herself."
Was Summer to a Score
Summer to a score could have a few meanings. On the literal level, a flower might have a score of summers. And a buttercup, to use our earlier example (and my guess as to the original flower that was with this note) can live up to 20 years, or a score of summers. But also the syntax could read here that the flower was summer to a score of others, bees and butterflies and birds. Therefore it is understood that the recipient, too, has a score of summers to live, and is, in turn, summer to score of others. The reader, in other words, is all the sweetness of life for as long as She summers. One other meaning that I can't help but read here is score as in score of music. She is like summer itself set to a score of music.
All of this does the recipient represent, and yet all the flower/reader can ultimately know about the universe itself is that She is somehow alive in it, alive and attracting bees and butterflies, alive and justifying wings, alive and becoming hard and beautiful in the noon heat of the sun.
Who only knew of Universe –
It had created Her.
We are left to wonder in the mystery, in the isness of it all. This reminds me of Whitman’s lines in Song of Myself:
Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.
I and this mystery here we stand.
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
buttercup enameled in the sun,
summer to a score
*a passage from an 1852 letter from Emily to Sue:
"You have seen flowers at morning, satisfied with the dew, and those same sweet flowers at noon with their heads bowed in anguish before the mighty sun; think you those thirsty blossoms will now need ought but –dew? No, they will cry for sunlight, and pine for the burning noon, tho’ it scorches them, scathes them; they have got through with peace, they know that the man of noon, is mightier than the morning and their life is henceforth to him. Oh, Susie, it is dangerous, and it is all too dear, these simple trusting spirits, and the spirits mightier, which we cannot resist! It does so rend me, Susie, the thought of it when it comes, that I tremble lest at sometime I, too, am yielded up."
Thank you to the anonymous reader that pointed this passage out to us in the comments to Fr857.
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