To wait an Hour—is long—

To wait an Hour—is long—
If Love be just beyond—
To wait Eternity—is short—
If Love reward the end—


   Fr884, J781, fascicle 39, 1864


The basic gist of the poem is that the promise of love makes a long time feel short, and the lack of it makes a short time feel long. That’s not such an original thought, but it's one worth, perhaps, preserving in a poem, a reminder of the absolute value of love.

There are some cool things that make this poem stand out. The first line, for instance, is made longer with that little dash. It doesn’t need to be there. But putting it there makes you stop and sigh. To wait an hour— (sigh)—is long—.

Then you get your “if” statement. It’s only long "if love be just beyond." "Beyond" here means "beyond one's grasp," but it also brings a new dimension in this poem, especially when paired with the introduction of Eternity in the third line. Are we talking about “the great Beyond” here, as in, “the afterlife?” If so, then is the poet just waiting to die...with the possibility of love on the other side? If that's the case, then this poem has a new meaning, one which takes it into the anguished anxiety that can be felt in a crisis of faith. When seen in this light the poem becomes fraught with doubt.

Another slick form/content move is that the third line, the one with "Eternity" in it,  is 4 poetic feet (8 syllables) long, whereas the rest of the lines are 3 poetic feet (6 syllables). It goes on an extra measure than the rest of the poem does, stretches out like eternity itself does.

The dash in this third line repeats the placement of the dash in the first one, but this time it doesn’t signal time so much as SURPRISE! To wait Eternity—(surprise!)—is short—. Eternity feels like nothing when you’re working toward love that is certain.

There are paradoxes to consider here. If love is "just beyond," then is there really any waiting for it at all? You are waiting…for nothing? That isn’t really waiting. Or rather, you are just waiting for the end of your misery.

The second paradox is in the third line. To wait an eternity means NEVER getting to the end, so, in the fourth line, the reward of love becomes a kind of joke.

The rub of these paradoxes is considerable, but the emotional gist here is that without love life can feel like an endless hell, but with love it can go by in a zip. So therefore try to find yourself true love, in whatever way you can. Sometimes just a dog’ll do.

This great painting of Emily and her dog Carlo 

is by Nate B Hardy. It's the cover image of his album 

of terrific song versions of Dickinson poems, "Down, Carlo!"

What can you do? You kind of want to reach through time and tell Emily to get out of the house more. And yet, if you could, would you? Insufferable waiting sure can make room for some timeless poetry.

Maybe it's the other way around, though, and in this poem Emily is reaching through time to tell you to get out of the house. Take the dog for a long walk. Maybe you'll meet someone worth the risk?

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

A South Wind — has a pathos

A South Wind — has a pathos
Of individual Voice —
As One detect on Landings
An Emigrant's address.

A Hint of Ports and Peoples —
And much not understood —
The fairer — for the farness —
And for the foreignhood.


    -Fr883, J719, fascicle 39, 1864


One intriguing pattern I’ve noticed in Dickinson’s poems is the reversal of signified and signifier. For instance, in this poem, what is it that is signified? Is it the South Wind or the Emigrant? At first it seems to be the South Wind that’s the subject and the Emigrant, the metaphor. But it’s the other way around. Once you make that turn-around, then you realize it’s the Emigrant that carries “a pathos of individual voice,” not the wind. 

So when you get to that line “And much not understood,” the pathos becomes clear. 

In the last two lines of the poem the poet shows her affinity for the foreigner:

The fairer — for the farness —
And for the foreignhood.

By tying the F R N sounds of "fairer— for the farness—" to "foreignhood," Dickinson makes it all seem like a natural fit. The next word would have to be "friend." 

Also she coins a term here, "foreignhood," which has the advantage of making a solid rhyme in both sound and meaning with "understood." 

Here the poet leads us from the pathos of separation toward an attitude of welcome and acceptance, a message as necessary today as it was back then. 

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

The Truth—is stirless—

The Truth—is stirless—
Other force—may be presumed to move—
This—then—is best for confidence—
When oldest Cedars swerve—

And Oaks untwist their fists—
And Mountains—feeble—lean—
How excellent a Body, that
Stands without a Bone—

How vigorous a Force
That holds without a Prop—
Truth stays Herself—and every man
That trusts Her—boldly up—

      Fr882, J780, fascicle 39, 1864

Dickinson was not only an extremely perceptive philosopher, but she could put her thoughts down so perfectly that they have the inevitable ring of Truth.

Keats wrote “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

Dickinson proves that argument here in a poem that purports a truth about Truth itself in such a beautiful way that it seems to be undeniable.

It’s like a riddle poem. What is the one force that doesn’t move? What stands without a bone? What holds us up without a prop? 

The answer is given to us. Truth.

The real riddle though is...what is Truth? And the answer to this riddle is the questions themselves.

By logical inversion, if what we find gives us confidence, and holds us up, that’s how we know it is the Truth.

What is it that does that for you? Inquiring minds want to know.

One thing that does this for us is Beauty:

First there is the beauty of the music in the sounds of the poem. You are subtly swayed by the internal slant-rhymes in the first stanza: Stirless, force, this, best, confidence and oldest. There is another set in the end-rhymes of Move and swerve.  

Along with the consonance and rhyme, there is also an intricate rhythm at play here. The poem has pushed the beat of the poem forward in a number of ways. The first line is iambic trimeter but it’s a half beat short. That missing beat springs us into a line double the length. That long second line sets us up for an iambic pattern that is then disrupted by the two emphatic single-syllable spondees in the third line.

The poem continues its rhythmic brilliance. The next three lines are strict iambic trimeter which sets us up for a seventh line that’s tetrameter (4 beats). The push of a beat past trimeter in that line sets us to resolve with one more trimeter in the 8th line.

The meter set-up of this poem is one of a kind. If you read it through and pay attention to JUST the meter you will hear and feel how the rhythm propels you forward.

There is also great beauty in the concrete images. 

oldest Cedars swerve—

And Oaks untwist their fists—
And Mountains—feeble—lean—

These images are essential. This poem would be purely abstract without them. Oldest Cedars swerve. What a verb swerve is here. To think of a cedar tree swaying, and perhaps falling, as a swerving presents a fantastic image to our eyes. But then we get the oaks untwisting their fists, which is an even more remarkable image. It feels as if the oaks are letting go of their pent-up anger, releasing their tension, unknotting their knottiness. You can see the fist of the tree in your mind literally twisting up into a fist as it grows and then untwisting as it dies. 

UN

The last image is of mountains leaning feebly. Can you picture that? It's a funny image, a wink at the muscle-bound man. 

Paradoxically, the concrete, like the mountain, is what is ephemeral while the abstract, Truth, is what lasts. Truth is abstract because it must be. Anything that is described must, by its nature, fade away.

So the poem ends as it begins, in the pursuit of something beyond names, to something Truer than the transient.

We are left with little else in the end but to take comfort in poetry. That's one kind of Truth. Maybe that's what Keats was getting at. 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. One subtle thing about this poem is the question of what "boldly" refers to. At first it seems to be point to the reader. If we are bold, Truth holds us up. But the lack of a dash between "boldly" and "up" means, I think, that "boldy" qualifies Truth. 

Truth stays Herself—and every man
That trusts Her—boldly up—

In other words, Truth, that "vigorous Force," is what is bold. There is a will to it. It IS what is holding us up, the life force itself.