Always Mine!

Always Mine!
No more Vacation!
Term of Light this Day begun!
Failless as the fair rotation
Of the Seasons and the Sun.

Old the Grace, but new the Subjects —
Old, indeed, the East,
Yet upon His Purple Programme
Every Dawn, is first.


     -F942, J839, sheet 17, 1865


There are often several ways to read an Emily Dickinson poem, and sometimes those ways of reading are contradictory. If our goal is to understand the poem, do we try to exhaust the possibilities in the poem and then leave it up to the reader to take it from there? Or do we choose a reading that is meaningful to us? (“Write about what you know”). Do we skew academic or personal? While I understand the dangers of misinterpretations in subjective readings, I’m still inclined to lean in that direction. In a recent post, for instance, Tom Clyde described how a poem resonated with him concerning his mother’s Alzheimer's, a very personal reading, and I found it to be the most meaningful part of his explication.

I can read this poem in a few different ways. One way you can read it is as an expression of desire for a posthumous union with God after death, waking up into an eternal day. You might also read it as a love poem, a kind of epithalamium for a wedding. I could go through the poem and show how each line supports both of those readings. And that might be helpful to you, especially if you are heaven or marriage-bent.

But what feels most meaningful to me is to read this poem in terms of the eternal now. This is how this poem arrives in me.

It may have an undercurrent of longing in it, a kind of wishful thinking, but it isn’t written in a future tense. It is written with an immediacy of already being in a state of union with Light.

Always Mine!

“Mine” is a possessive word, one which sets off an alarm in my mind. (I once heard “mine” referred to as a “four letter word.” Sometimes I think of the word as a mental landmine, a mindmine.) But if I set my own prejudice aside, something else takes hold, something more child-like, but also very difficult. The poet has achieved something difficult with these words, a feeling of permanent connection. Just reading the two words alone with that emphatic exclamation point gives one a feeling of inclusion in this union.

No more Vacation!

This line takes a minute to process because in order for it to follow from the line before it can’t mean “vacation” the way we usually think of vacation, as a break from work. Vacation here means something closer to a vacating. If something is always yours, then you no longer need to be apart from it. There’s a subtle irony to the word “vacation” here, a kind of vacation from vacations.

There’s also a tremendous relief in the line indicated by that second exclamation point. No more being apart!

Term of Light this Day begun!

That third exclamation point really underscores the poet’s astonishment. If this is a wished for union, the emphasis shows that the poet wishes for it desperately. But again, the poem is very much in the present tense. “This day begun!” As I write this, it is morning. In the morning the day feels full of endless possibility. I read the lines as if I was saying them to myself: “Term of Light this Day begun!” It feels like an ecstatic incantation.

The word “Term” following from the word “vacation” sets us up for the metaphor of “school” that will run through the rest of this poem. We are learning something, along with the poet.

“Term” is an interesting word because it indicates that something will end. (It comes from the latin word for boundary). But we already have a kind of paradox in this poem. If something is “Always,” then how can it have a termination? The crux of this paradox is where I think the power of this poem resides. The next lines will take us even deeper into the dizzying union of the particular with the eternal.

Failless as the fair rotation
Of the Seasons and the Sun.

What a gorgeous set of lines this is. The Term of Light is as failless as the rotation of the seasons (year) or sun (day). In other words, the term of light may end, but it always comes back around again. That’s why it is “Always”.

The poet is waking up to the idea that she will always be waking up, and it begins now, with this morning. “This day begun!”

The word "fair" has a double meaning here too. Fair usually means beautiful in Dickinson's lexicon, but it can also mean "just," and here I think there's a touch of both. Light is balanced with darkness, that's just. But it always comes back around in the morning and that's beautiful.

Old the Grace, but new the Subjects —

"Subjects" has a few meanings here. There is the continued pun with school and the idea of studying new subjects for a new term. But subjects also means selves here (new days, new seasons, new births). Again we remember the resonant term from F935, “harrowing Grace.” The eternal return might not include our subjective self, harrows the self like a farmer harrows wheat, but, if you align yourself with the "Failless" rotation of the sun itself, with Old Grace, then the day is “always” yours. The moment is yours.

Old, indeed, the East,
Yet upon His Purple Programme
Every Dawn, is first.

The first stanza has an interesting trochaic rhythm. If you read it out loud you’ll see how the escalating excitement of the first three exclamatory lines sets up the flow of the next two lines. Also every line ends with a soft “n” sound which gives the sense of the day going on and on.

The rhyme of the second stanza is more clipped. The second stanza is still in a trochaic rhythm, but the second and fourth lines stop short, putting even more emphasis on “East”and “first”. There is a cool pay-off for this in the last line where you get the N sound of ‘dawn,” which was set up in the first stanza, but you also get the new rich rhyme of "first" with its counterpart "East." The old Grace goes on and on, but the subjects are always new, always first. Firstest.

In the poem just before this one on sheet 17 a boy drowns and reaches out in anguish. Meanwhile, over his head is spread water lilies. That’s a similar idea, in a way, to this poem, the eternal return of old grace.

Old, indeed, the East,

This line points to the fact that the sun rises in the east. But the word “East” has a deep set of meanings for Dickinson. In this poem there is, perhaps, an allusion to Eastern philosophy. In Eastern thought (which is older than Western thought,) there is emphasis on the eternal return. Western thought, by contrast, is more about a teleological directive. There is, then, a kind of Eastern ideal in this poem, which can be found in much of Dickinson’s work. In this manner, a poem like this one stands side by side with Dickinson's famous Transcendentalist neighbors Whitman, Emerson, Fuller and Thoreau. 

And yet—every dawn is first.

I think in this line you get a sense of the poem's original impulse. The poet has recovered a child's ability to see the familiar as unprecedented.

That phrase “Purple Programme” is telling. Dickinson imagines the East almost as a headmaster (or, as she would call it, a preceptor) laying out a curriculum. Every morning a new lesson appears on the horizon. And the curriculum never becomes stale and gray because the day's particular presentation is always unique and grand. Purple is a royal color. 

Each morning is the first day of school. Light is the curriculum.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S.

I think of William Blake’s lines,

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy.
He who kisses the bird as it flies
Lives in Eternity’s sunrise.

The difference is that Dickinson embraces the binding to joy in the use of the word "mine." That difference may seem small, but I think it points toward an important bridge between two opposing points of view. 

How the Waters closed above Him

How the Waters closed above Him
We shall never know —
How He stretched His Anguish to us
That — is covered too —
Spreads the Pond Her Base of Lilies
Bold above the Boy
Whose unclaimed Hat and Jacket
Sum the History —


       -F941, J923, sheet 17


A boy has drowned. All that is left behind is his hat and jacket. That’s the scenario. It’s what Dickinson does with that scenario that leaves us shaking our heads.

How the Waters closed above Him

What might Dickinson mean by this line? She means, first, the literal experience. She is wondering how the boy experienced the loss of air. But the word choices give us more to consider. Waters closing above one is ominous. It’s as if the water itself has agency and is purposely closing over the boy. Even the plural of Water adds to the effect. She could have, and almost anybody else would have, written it singular: Water. But the plural adds to the feeling of being overwhelmed. And it is also notable that this closing is coming from “above.” In this first line Dickinson may be speaking literally about an actual drowning, but she takes us into the metaphoric realm of the psychological and even the spiritual.

We shall never know —

We can’t ever know what the terrible experience of drowning, or dying, feels like for another. We are each  alone in our suffering.

How He stretched His Anguish to us

I’m reminded here of the Covid pandemic. Over 20 million people died world-wide and many of these people were quarantined and alone, separated from family. Each dying person was surely stretching Anguish out as they were struggling for breath. They must’ve felt so utterly alone in their suffering. I can only imagine the crisis of faith in such a circumstance. 

That — is covered too —

This line is saying that the experience of reaching for help in suffering cannot be known by those on shore, as it is covered up. The word “cover” here adds to the ominous suffocating feeling that the poem evinces. There is a pun here too because the poet is “covering,” like a reporter, the experience of panic. So “cover” has at least three layers here; drowning and being “covered” by water; experience being unknown and “covered” over, and the revelation of the unknowability of another’s experience being “covered” by the poet..

Spreads the Pond Her Base of Lilies

This line is so deeply Dickinsonian in its implications.

It appears that the same force that closed the waters above the boy is now spreading lilies above his head. That phrase from F935 comes back to me here, "harrowing Grace.” Out of terror sprouts beauty. This beauty is, on one hand, unfeeling, and certainly no help to the dying boy. Nature goes on being beautiful in the face of terror which is somehow even more terrifying.

On the other hand (the hand of the poet) these lilies are laid out in sympathy. The carefully wrought beauty of this poem is like a pond spreading lilies above the boy. It is an elegy. “Spreads the Pond (Poet) Her Base of Lilies.”

Bold above the Boy

Because the B sound itself is so Bold, we can’t help but notice its preponderance here, Base/Bold/aBove/Boy. It sounds like bubbles coming up from under the water!

The word Bold here is perfect. To be bold can have a positive connotation, as in "to be courageous." Sometimes it can have a negative one though too, as in "to be rude." Both ideas seem to be at play here. Dickinson’s sympathies are with the boy, but her understanding is with the eternal return of nature. The poet seems to be admonishing the Waters though (and maybe herself) for being so bold as to spread beauty in the face of tragedy.

Whose unclaimed Hat and Jacket
Sum the History —

It’s a ghostly image, the hat and jacket left behind. It adds to the uncanny effect of the poem.

There's a symbolic meaning of “hat and jacket” too I think. The things that protect and keep us warm in life go unclaimed in death. Together they “Sum the History.” This is the Sum of what we amounted to in life, the vestments (the attachments) that kept us warm against the impending cold.

"If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry," wrote Dickinson in a letter. This one is freezing cold. And yet the beautiful lilies boldly remain, for what it's worth, as well as that Hat and Jacket. 

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Monet's Water Lilies

So set it’s Sun in Thee —

So set it’s Sun in Thee —
What Day be dark to me —
What Distance far —
So I the Ships may see —
That touch how seldomly —
Thy Shore?

     — F940, J808, sheet 17, 1865


Adam is on vacation. We are grateful to Tom Clyde for taking up the mantle to write the commentary for F940:

*

Here we have a short poem in six lines, posing a single question.

Yet it contains multitudes.

In one reading of this poem, we stare down into a well of unspoken sadness. The poet seems to be stating that she is fine, FINE I TELL YOU. “What Day be dark to me?”

We suspect, however, that she is full of longing and loneliness, despite her protestations. She
aches for someone who is no longer physically present.

In another reading of the poem, we find ourselves focusing on the power of devotion to transform the world. Love can make dark day light! Love can make that which is far near! Reading the poem in this way teaches us how geographical distance or emotional estrangement might be overcome with the right attitude.

A third way through this poem is to read it with eros in mind. When we listen to it this way we soon discover that it is full of sensual detail, only half-concealed by metaphor, like a dress falling from a shoulder.

These are three possible readings of many.

Somehow, in this single rhetorical question spanning six lines, Dickinson covers a space as large as the globe and as small as the body.

How does she do so much with so few words?

Let’s look more closely, line by line.

*

Dickinson starts us off with a six-syllable fragment. At first we find it hard to get our bearings.

Who is talking to whom?

So set it’s Sun in Thee—

(The apostrophe in “it’s,” by the way, is simply a case of Dickinson’s quirky habit. She writes it
as if it’s a contraction, but in this line it clearly functions as the possessive “its.” So let’s not get hung up on that part.)

We notice first, if we read this first line aloud, how the alliterative “s” sounds in “So” and “set”
and “it’s” and “Sun” are sliding past us as we move forward.

Dickinson launches us into this poem like a vessel sliding into water. Sssss ss sss ss. We only come to rest at the very end of the line, on the soft sand of “Thee.”

So set its Sun in Thee—

Who is talking to whom? Now we know. Importantly, the poet is addressing a “Thee,” not a “You” — that is, she is talking to someone she loves. She is arrested by that person. Has come to rest on that person.

We read on:

So set it's Sun in Thee—
What Day be dark to me—

In line two we find out who the “it” was in line one: it was the “Day.” So the question of the poem begins to emerge…

As long as the sun, which shone on the speaker earlier, now shines on her beloved too, then what day could possibly be dark?

Note that after we rest on the sandy bottom of “Thee” at the end of that first line, the alliteration of the “s” sound now shifts to the alliteration of a “d” sound. From “set it’s Sun” to “Day be dark.”

Also, I don’t know about you, but for me that hard rhyme of “Thee”/“me” helps me hear those “d”s in “Day” and “dark” as little waves, knocking against us.

Yet the underlying logic of these two lines of rhyming six syllables is still, we have to admit, a little obscure.

We understand that the poet, although technically in darkness at her location, does not feel her day is dark on a subjective level. Why? Because she knows that the sun is still setting where someone she loves resides.

But WHY should this mere knowledge lighten her day? After all, she is still not with this other person.

Why should just knowing some atmospheric phenomenon— the rotation of the earth causing a reddening of the horizon at the longitude which marks the location of her beloved — have anything to do with her experience of the sky at her own location?

Is she fooling herself?

Or is she devoted beyond reason?

We might ask out of our own experience: does simply knowing that someone we love is in light… make it light for us? This is an extravagant claim for the power of the imagination.

I mean, let’s think of some examples of how this might work:

● Can we taste M&Ms just because our loved one tastes them?

● Would we feel refreshed just because we happened upon a Facebook Live stream of our loved one swimming?

I would suggest that this is a reach.

Perhaps, though, Dickinson means to imply that, in some inexplicable way, when we love we are the same person as our beloved?

That’s amazing, if true.

*

But how would this transformation, an Ovidian metamorphosis, feel, if this really does occur?

Let’s read on to find out:

What Distance far—

Ok, here in the third line (can you believe we are only at the third line??) we get more on the same theme. And also another “d” word, another little wave against our vessel.

We saw already that time collapses in love. Seeing the sun now makes the fact that I saw it earlier immaterial… because I see it again now with thee.

This third line (“What Distance far—“) makes it clear that, to Dickinson, both time and space are collapsed by love. Distance is no longer “far” at all; you are near to me because you see the same sun.

So far, Dickinson seems to be saying that love makes us… commingled.

Indistinguishable.

Maybe even identical?

Again, is this folly? Wishful thinking? Deep commitment?

We can read it either or both ways.

*

Fourth line:

So I the Ships may see —

Here is where Dickinson begins to explain what sustains her, at last. She sees ships, messengers, passing from her to her beloved. (Maybe actual ships? Or are these “ships” letters, flowers, poems?)

This transit of “ships” is enough to form a kind of connective tissue.

Recall how the poem started with the sound of a ship hitting the water. Sss. Then, with a gentle thud, against the th of “Thee.” Now it seems to be lifting off the sand with this “sh” sound (followed again by the “s” in see as it gains speed).

Next line:

That touch how seldomly—

No matter how infrequently these “ships” — these letters, these missives, these flowers, these poems — reach the one she loves, it is enough. They have transformed time and space and brought her to the only place that matters.

The final line is just two syllables:

Thy Shore?

Isn’t it beautiful, the way that Dickinson connects the metaphor serving as the conclusion of the poem — a fleet of ships sailing “seldomly” but ceaselessly to the beloved — back to the original “Thee” of the first line? “Thee” folds into “Thy.” Not any shore. Thy shore.

And by this addition she deepens it too. Dickinson doesn’t say that ships “seldomly” touch “Thee,” but rather “Thy Shore.” That comforting “sh” sound again, as our ship meets sand.

The poet’s beloved has become a shore, a ground, a grounding. A continual shipping route takes her there in an eternal circle. Time and space are immaterial. We are here.

This ending moves me a lot.

(Aside: My mother, who is 84, currently has dementia. And when she sees me she often says in wonder: “When I am with you, everything makes sense.” She doesn't worry about memories or meals or the schedule for the day. During my visits, she doesn’t worry about a thing. We are together and that is all she needs. It is an incredible honor to be someone’s shore.)

That touch how seldomly—
Thy Shore?

*

Back to the three possible ways through that I mentioned at the beginning.

The first — as a poem containing a deep well of unspoken sadness. Even though Dickinson asserts that these “ships,” following their assigned route from her to her beloved, are enough…she does not quite convince, does she?

The poet is merely seeing these ships disembark. Her role is passive. We can imagine those old black and white film clips of friends and family members frantically waving their handkerchiefs in the air as a passenger ship disembarks. Isn’t the poet alone, even in a crowd, on that metaphorical wharf? We suspect so.

Also, she acknowledges that they “seldomly” touch the shore of the beloved. Has there been a slow-down in shipping? Have there been storms? Accidents at sea? There is the implication of an untold story there — of a loss and falling-off from some better state of affairs.

Finally, when she mentions the “Dark,” we sense that the poet has a visceral sense of that dark. It is not a stranger to her, even while she says she banishes it. Nor is “Distance far” a stranger to her. Read this way, the poem feels harrowing. It seems to invoke the power of the imagination as a plea for relief.

*

As for our second way through — as a tribute to the devotion of a lover — this way emphasizes the poet’s act of will.

Read this way, the entire poem is a defiant question posed in the face of doubt. Oh yeah? She seems to be saying. Watch me.

She will be there at the dock watching those ships depart… her cheeks flushed in the wind, her eyes just as bright as ever, lit by her unfading love for her beloved. We can admire the irrational and metamorphic power of love. Dante’s Beatrice. Marcel’s Albertine.

*

Finally, how about the erotic reading of this poem?

I left this for last because it hit me last. On my tenth or twentieth reading, I suddenly I heard it.

So set it’s Sun in Thee—

The sun is setting in the beloved. Not over. Not on or about. In.

This is an intimate preposition for Dickinson to use. From this first line of the poem we are somewhere very personal, quiet, between the lover and the loved one.

There’s dark. There’s distance. But they are banished.

And then the last three lines of the poem have a hushed tone. They sound almost like a seduction.

So I the Ships may see—
That touch how seldomly—
Thy Shore?

Sh — ss — th — ss — th — sh.

Read these lines aloud to hear their undeniable sensuality, full of soft combinations of consonants.

Next there’s the choice of the verb “touch” in the second to last line. These same ships, which the lover saw off, now touch the beloved.

That touch how seldomly—

The erotic charge of that “seldomly,” which can be read as increasing the anticipation.

But, most of all, the gorgeous two-word ending, “Thy Shore.”

I cannot read this, now, without thinking of the shore as the body, the softness of somebody’s skin. What happens when we touch another and land on his or her shore?

There is a thrill knowing that a letter or a poem reached someone we love, partly because we know that person now holds it in their hands. And the same goes for the recipient, knowing that it began its journey in another’s room, desk, bed. No wonder people used to perfume the pages of the letters they sent.

*

This poem contains multitudes.

Eat your heart out, Walt.

        

        -Tom Clyde

A ship leaving port in 1911, closer to Dickinson's time than to ours