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. 

I meant to find her when I came;

I meant to find her when I came;
Death had the same design;
But the success was his, it seems,
And the discomfit mine.

I meant to tell her how I longed
For just this single time;
But Death had told her so the first,
And she had hearkened him.

To wander now is my abode;
To rest, —to rest would be
A privilege of hurricane
To memory and me.


     -Fr881, J718, 1878


When you read an Emily Dickinson poem line by line, as of course you must, then the meaning may unwind in the wiliest of ways. Take this one:

I meant to find her when I came;

This is what we “find” when we enter the poem. Her. The writer whom we meant to find. It's her poem after all. But the "her" we meant to find in turn meant to find a "her." Notice the lower-case “her,” which is unusual for Emily. Why? There is something in the lower-case pronoun for me that is intimate. "I meant to find her, who I knew as a girl" is what the line suggests to me. The poem immediately sweeps me up into the regret of irretrievable loss.

Of course, as an Emily Dickinson lover you naturally want to know who she is talking about. She did attend a few girlfriends’ death beds in her life that we know of, including Sophia Holland's. She wrote beautifully about this scene in a letter to her friend Abiah Root. (See note #2 below.)

It is easy to read this poem’s death as metaphoric for the loss of a great love, such as the one she had with her friend and sister-in-law Sue, or Charles Wadsworth, or whatever your theory is, people who were still very much alive when this poem was written. But I don’t think so. Death is TOO present in this poem to be metaphorical. You can see this played out in the following lines,

Death had the same design;
But the success was his, it seems,

Here the poem takes a twist. This Death is almost predatory. “Design” is a funny word. I asked my friend, an opera singer named Eric Jones, if he had designs on a waitress we both knew and liked. He bristled at the word “design.” No, he said, I don’t have any designs on her. I don't think of it like that.” I knew what he meant and why he rejected the word. But hey, they ended up getting married a year later. Was that by design? I leave that answer up to the floor.

Does death have a design? That’s an awesome question, Emily. Death is the law of life, no doubt, but does it have to be? Was it someone in the upper office's design decision?

“Make it work!” -Tim Gunn, Project Runway.

Like Project Runway, this is a competition, between the poet and Death. Death was faster with his “design” and so "the success was his, it seems." 

IT SEEMS. I love when Dickinson slips an "it seems" in her poems. It throws everything into question. Does death really win?  

“One day you’re in, and the next day you're out.” -Heidi Klum, Project Runway.

Anyway, that’s where design gets you I guess. And death, like Michael Kors himself, is sitting there at the end and smirking. Chilling!

That leaves the one left behind, who is berating herself for not coming faster to the aid of the dead girlfriend with a potential salvation for both of them.

But the success was his, it seems,
And the discomfit mine.

According to David Preest, in the Johnson version of this poem, the one actually written in the fascicle, 15 years before this one, the word for “discomfit” is “surrender.” This is worth noting. Emily made the change from "surrender" to "discomfit" some 15 years later! That’s quite a turn of temperament, one that is perhaps befitting.

"Surrender," the word she used in 1864, would’ve been more dramatic, and it also would've played more into the idea of competition with death. "Discomfit" is less histrionic and, at the same time somehow, more resigned and sad.

I meant to tell her how I longed
For just this single time;

My best guess for this poem is that Dickinson went to see the body of a friend on her death bed, one whom she admired, and perhaps had even had a crush on, and (dun dun DUN) designs for. Here she is now, in despair, regretting the love affair that could never be. That “single time” is, as all lovers know, all you need. One day and night can feel like an eternity in a love affair.

There is something romantic, in the newer sense of the term romantic, about “For just this single time.” It’s slightly suggestive of something transcendent and fulfilling.

Only imagine if Emily had gotten there first, had beaten death to the maiden? What a difference it might have made! But the danger and the risk of making any such move both psychologically and socially would've been intense for Emily, and so perhaps she wavered. In the end, she didn’t make a move. She got there too late and it still haunts her years later. She’ll never know. But maybe, just maybe, if she at least writes a cautionary poem about it, future readers might get prodded by the poem's sharp point and not be so timid themselves. Such a tragic ending might yet be averted. 

Death is your enemy, and the enemy of your beloved too, so don’t delay, says Aunt Emily.

But Death had told her so the first,
And she had hearkened him.

At this point the poem goes full goth. Death had already seduced "her," is how I’m reading it. She “hearkened him," as if following the call of a lover.

The woman, to whom Emily wishes she had reached first, was seduced, instead, by the ease of death; she listened to it as if following a siren’s song. In other words, it was her own doing. But why? She must have been destitute, right? And so the question remains, what if Emily had arrived there first? Would the troubled girl have been mollified? Would the draw of death have been nullified? Would the poet's friend's life have been saved? Those are the stakes of this poem, and the cause of the hurricane to come.

To wander now is my abode;

In the earlier Johnson version of this poem, “abode” is “repose.” I have to say I like "repose" better here. The tension between "wandering" and "repose" is haunting. It means never resting, which sets up the next line,

To rest, —to rest would be

The tension comes to a peak in between those two “to rest”s. You can feel the poet falter here emotionally (though perfectly prettily of course, in full rhythmic control).

To rest, —to rest would be
A privilege of hurricane
To memory and me.

It's tricky grammar in that last stanza. I believe Dickinson is saying that rest would be a privilege to a hurricane. That makes most sense, in the context of this poem. It lets you know that the thoughts that she wishes to quiet are powerful and cyclical, looping through her head with mad emotion. This loss, and possibly her role in not preventing it, is like a tempest in her heart. (Maybe this is the terror she spoke of when she wrote to T.W. Higginson the year before that she had had a terror she could tell to no one?)

But there are other ways I can see for taking those lines, grammatically. If you take the line “A privilege of hurricane” by itself, there is a different idea that emerges. What is the privilege of a hurricane? Well, for one, it is to be wild and out of control. But two, there is the eye of calm in the center. I think Dickinson may be subtly getting at this idea between the lines; the necessity to allow emotional release, yet keep a cool inner eye.

But the foremost meaning here is that rest would be a privilege to the hurricane-like restlessness of...

The memory and me.

We might ask here, why is "memory" separate from "me?" (Is the memory a symbol for the "her" of this poem? Or is Dickinson emphasizing that memory and self are one and the same by presenting them together? Or is she suggesting that memory and self are quite different, yet the loss of the friendship affects both. I find it hard to get a precise reading of this decision.) But the general feeling is that the self would be relieved of its heartbreaking memory if only it too could rest, like the beloved. 

\

The poet, like the deceased before her, is now being seduced by the promise of rest in death.

The narrative arc of this poem is intense. It goes from a kind of competition with death to see who can get to the beloved first, to a deep regret over not being quick enough to get there first, to having to wander for eternity in the restlessness of guilt and lost love, hoping for death. It's got a Romeo and Juliet level of tragedy.

No wonder Dickinson changed the word from “surrender” to “discomfit” 12 years after it was written. "Surrender" suggests giving up, surrendering. "Discomfit" is just...temporary.

Maybe by 1878 the hurricane of Emily Dickinson’s heart and soul had finally begun to quiet down. We only half hope so.

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes: 

1. compare this poem to Fr813, which has the same idea as this one, in miniature.

How well I knew Her not
Whom not to know has been
A Bounty in prospective, now
Next Door to mine the Pain.


2. From Marco Ordonez's Facebook page:

Three months after her fifteenth birthday, Emily recalled this loss when writing a note of condolence to Abiah Root.

Yesterday as I sat by the north window the funeral train entered the open gate of the church yard, following the remains of Judge Dickinson's wife to her long home. [The Amherst cemetery could be seen from the second story of the Dickinsons' house on North Pleasant Street.] His wife has borne a long sickness of two or three years without a murmur. She relyed wholly upon the arm of God & he did not forsake her. She is now with the redeemed in heaven & with the savior she has so long loved according to all human probability. I sincerely sympathise with you Dear. A. in the loss of your friend E. Smith. Although I had never seen her, yet I loved her from your account of her & because she was your friend. I was in hopes I might at sometime meet her but God has ordained otherwise & I shall never see her except as a spirit above. . . . I have never lost but one friend near my age & with whom my thoughts & her own were the same. It was before you came to Amherst. My friend was Sophia Holland. She was too lovely for earth & she was transplanted from earth to heaven. I visited her often in sickness & watched over her bed. But at length Reason fled and the physician forbid any but the nurse to go into her room. Then it seemed to me I should die too if I could not be permitted to watch over her or even to look at her face. At length the doctor said she must die & allowed me to look at her a moment through the open door. I took off my shoes and stole softly to the sick room.

There she 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 I must look no longer I let them lead me away. I shed no tear, 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, though it was gnawing at my very heart strings. I was not well & I went to Boston [to visit Aunt Lavinia] & stayed a month & my health improved so that my spirits were better.*

Sophia Holland had died on April 29, 1844, when Emily Dickinson was thirteen years old. To a twentieth-century reader, unaccustomed to the presence of death in the home, Dickinson's persistence and curiosity may seem morbid, but the vigil over Sophia Holland constituted a part of Emily Dickinson's training for womanhood in mid-nineteenth-century Amherst; and if the confrontation with death inspired horror, as it seems to have done in this case, there was no adequate remedy. Dickinson's parents sent her away to Boston so that she might put the episode out of mind; however, death knew no boundaries of city or town, and she understood as much. Thus the event lingered in her imagination, crying out for redress or at least explanation.

Emily Dickinson, by Cynthia Griffin Wolff, Part One, III, «School: Faith and the Argument from Design», pp. 76-77; Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988.

The Service without Hope—

The Service without Hope—
Is tenderest, I think—
Because 'tis unsustained
By stint—Rewarded Work—

Has impetus of Gain—
And impetus of Goal—
There is no Diligence like that
That knows not an Until—


     -Fr880, J779, Fascicle 39, 1864


I always loved the word avuncular, which means uncle-like, and I wondered... is there a similar word for aunts? The word for being aunt-like, it turns out, is materteral. It’s an awkward word, almost maternal, but with a dash of turtle.

If you ever want to read a great book, and who doesn’t, then pick up "Face to Face" which Emily’s niece Mattie wrote about her. Mattie makes her aunt sound like the coolest aunt who ever lived. It’s a great read.

Perhaps it is because of Mattie’s book that I’ve begun to think of Emily as my aunt too. And the poems, certain ones anyway, sound like the kind of pithy advice an amazing, impossible aunt might give you.

This poem, for instance, is praising the virtue of giving service for no other gain than the sake of giving service.

The Service without Hope—
Is tenderest, I think—

What would service without hope mean? What is it that you would be hoping for? Maybe a change in your own life, a promotion, say? Or maybe you are hoping for a change in the person you are giving service to? What kind of hopelessness is beyond giving your service too? Can you serve a hopeless addict for example? Or what about being of service to a homeless person? 

To help the hopeless is “tenderest, “ Emily thinks.

Another possibility of serving without hope would be giving love without expecting love in return. To care for someone without the expectation of being cared for in return is rare.

Because 'tis unsustained
By stint—

Unsustained by stint, besides sounding cool, has a clever meaning. A stint is something that is, by nature, unsustained. So this is saying that the service is unsustained by something short and, itself, unsustained. In other words, if this job had an end, that promise would, ironically, keep you going. But we are talking about a job that has no end in sight, like being a mother. Emily's sly materteral humor can sometimes be found in the smallest turn of phrase. 

By stint—Rewarded Work—

Has impetus of Gain—
And impetus of Goal—

Here’s a moment in the poem where a period might help. Dashes can often be misleading. In my reading of the poem there is a period after "stint" and a new sentence starts with “Rewarded Work.” Rewarded work has impetus of gain, and impetus of goal.

We have a two-pronged argument here. First, the most tender service has no hope of gain, and second, it has no end-goal. Both require an extraordinary effort.

There is no Diligence like that
That knows not an Until—

These last lines re-word the thesis of the poem. There is no "until," you're not waiting for anything in return for what you give. Here the preposition “until” becomes a noun, “an Until.” (Anybody else hear a little auntie in that phrase)?

To serve with no hope? No goal? No gain? Can one?

You know who has that kind of love? Your favorite aunt.


       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

This that would greet—an hour ago—

This that would greet—an hour ago—
Is quaintest Distance—now—
Had it a Guest from Paradise—
Nor glow, would it, nor bow—

Had it a notice from the Noon
Nor beam would it nor warm—
Match me the Silver Reticence—
Match me the Solid Calm—


-Fr879, J778, fascicle 39, 1864f


Dickinson famously wrote, “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” From this letter we know her standard. Each poem had to come from that level of intensity.

“So cold that no fire could ever warm you" is a good description of where this poem takes you. It's cool as death. 

This that would greet—an hour ago—

“This” refers to a body. In Dickinson, corpses are often reduced to impersonal pronouns like “it” or “this.” An hour ago, this was a he or a she, someone who would have greeted you. Now it is only “this.”

Is quaintest Distance—now—

That person is now in “quaintest Distance.” To speak of death as “distance” is already thought-provoking. Is the person at any real distance at all? The word “quaint” complicates things further. It suggests something old-fashioned, even charming. A cabin can be quaint, death cannot. There is an unsettling irony in the word.

Had it a Guest from Paradise—
Nor glow, would it, nor bow—

We might assume the body has gone to be a guest in Paradise. But Dickinson imagines the opposite. If a guest from Paradise arrives, an angel, perhaps, the corpse would not glow or bow in response. The living, however, should respond with awe. The corpse does nothing. It cannot react. It is beyond reverence.

Had it a notice from the Noon
Nor beam would it nor warm—

No sunlight can warm this body. There is no “notice from the Noon.” The sun may shine, but the corpse does not register it. In contrast, we do. We can feel the beam. We can be warmed. We are the ones truly on notice.

Then comes the turn.

Match me the Silver Reticence—
Match me the Solid Calm—

At first this sounds like admiration. “Silver” evokes the pale sheen of death. (I'm reminded of Macbeth describing the murdered King Duncan as having "silver skin laced with his golden blood".) And reticence has a sense of dignified discretion to it.

But I think “Reticence” is ironic. A corpse is not discreet. It is simply dead. The word lends dignity to what is, in fact, a lifeless silence.

“Solid Calm” works the same way.  “Solid Calm” sounds desirable. Who doesn’t want to be solidly calm? Until we recognize what that calm entails. “Solid” recalls the sheer material fact of the body, dense inert matter.

On one level, the speaker seems to say: I don’t want to feel this pain anymore. Let me have that reticence. Let me be as calm too. Let me not glow or bow anymore to a wonderful guest. Let me be as cold and uncaring as the dead, because that's the way I feel after losing love.

But the poem sneakily operates by reversal. Do you really want to be like a corpse? By holding up the “silver” stillness of death, Dickinson makes us confront its cost. You cannot match that calm without surrendering warmth.

Out of this extreme cold, the poem quietly directs us back toward life. Notice the Noon. Don’t choose reticence. Go to where it is warm.

I often think about poems in terms of contra-valence. As soon as you push toward an extreme, the other side comes to the forefront. Dickinson uses this kind of reverse psychology often.

I should point out here something we've come to take for granted, which is Dickinson's unerring ear. The line "Nor beam would it nor warm" has that comforting "m" ending sound in "warm" and "beam." This gets picked up at the end of the poem in "calm" and at the beginning of the repeated word "Match." It's all soothing, whether this is pointing to death or to life depends on how you read the poem. 

It is worth mentioning the clever move in the last two lines. The two matches in those final lines match one another. Together the two matches make a match.

There is also perhaps a bit of a pun in the word "Match." "Match me" can also mean, "set me on fire." 

      

        -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Least Bee that brew—

Least Bee that brew—
A Honey's Weight
Content Her smallest fraction help
The Amber Quantity—


    -Fr878, J676, fascicle 39, 1864


This poem carries a sweet missive to us, like a bee carrying nectar from the flower back to the hive. 

It's pretty easy to understand for an Emily Dickinson poem, as if written for a child. It tells us that even the smallest bee can still make a honey to add to the “Amber Quantity” of the hive’s honeycomb. Do what you can do and be content with that. It doesn't have to be the most. 

What exactly is a "Honey’s Weight"? Well, there is no such thing, of course. It’s whatever the bee can carry. It could be any weight, as long as it is honey-sweet. It just has to be sweet right? If it’s sweet, it’s enough! This small bit of sweetness helps the whole hive.

It gives a funny feeling in the mouth that first line,  that ee, ee, aa ew vowel sequence of “Least bee that brew,” And then there’s that double B sound, which is apropos in a poem about “bees.” In fact the whole poem is a little odd. There is no rhyme. And the meter is unique in being 2/2/4/3. 

Another funny thing about this poem is the latinate language in it, the mathematical schoolmarminess of “Weight” and “fraction” and “Quantity.” It feels a bit arch, as if the poem is aware of its own status as a piece of advice and is gently making fun of itself. Also though, Emily's best friend Sue, to whom she gave many of poems too, was a mathematician and so I think Emily is playing with this. 

This poem is simultaneously letting the reader off the hook, and holding her to task. It’s okay to be the “least” if you are adding honey for the hive. But at the same time, one should be making honey for the hive. A little will do fine, says the poet, but do do a little, won’t you?

This poem is a like a single honey comb. A hive filled to capacity with honey is commonly referred to by beekeepers as a "honey-bound" hive. We can think of Emily, with her nearly 2000 poems, as queen bee of a honey-bound hive.

     -/)dam DeGraff  

P.S. I love the phrase, "The Amber Quantity." It sounds like a sci-fi book from the 1970s.

The Loneliness One dare not sound—

The Loneliness One dare not sound—
And would as soon surmise
As in its Grave go plumbing
To ascertain the size—

The Loneliness whose worst alarm
Is lest itself should see—
And perish from before itself
For just a scrutiny—

The Horror not to be surveyed—
But skirted in the Dark—
With Consciousness suspended—
And Being under Lock—

I fear me this—is Loneliness—
The Maker of the soul
Its Caverns and its Corridors
Illuminate—or seal—

 

    -Fr877, J777, fascicle 39, 1864

This poem confronts true terror. When I read the first line “The Loneliness One dare not sound” I was reminded of all of those tales of prisoners going crazy in solitary confinement.

 An exploration of solitary confinement

The word “Sound” here is a verb which means to measure the distance of. One dare not sound the absolute distance of true loneliness. Sound also is a pun on vocalizing, sounding it out, or, in other words, putting it in a poem. But that is exactly what, in a way, Dickinson is daring to do here, sound out the terror of loneliness.

That “dare not” in the first line makes you think. Dare not? Why not? Why would you dare not sound the depth of loneliness? In searching for the answer in your mind you remember the primal fear inside you and go, "Ohhhh!”

And would as soon surmise
As in its Grave go plumbing
To ascertain the size—

The poet would just as soon try to surmise (to guess, or, to understand) the true depths of loneliness as she would try to plumb the depths of the grave (death) to see just how large and all encompassing it actually is. Loneliness is overwhelmingly enormous, unfathomably large and deep, like death itself.

This is a truth most of us would rather not have to face. But Dickinson bravely does so. We hold our breath and go with her.

The Loneliness whose worst alarm
Is lest itself should see—

The worst fear is to have to truly face our fear.

And perish from before itself
For just a scrutiny—

We feel it might kill us to look at what true isolation looks like.

The Horror not to be surveyed—
But skirted in the Dark—

So we skirt around it in a thousand myriad ways, rather than looking at the horror straight in the face. 

With Consciousness suspended—
And Being under Lock—

We can’t stand to look, to imagine what it would mean to be alone with our own consciousness suspended. “Suspended” has the feeling of being raised up above, to be studied, but also has the sense here of being “kicked out,” like being suspended from school.

Why is consciousness “under Lock?” Lock makes you think a crime has been committed, the crime of self-consciousness maybe? But I think it’s more likely just meant by Dickinson to point to a feature of existence. We can only be inside our own conscious minds. We can’t truly be seen by, or see into, others' minds. We are both locked in and locked out.

I fear me this—is Loneliness—

The horror is emphasized again. “I fear me this.” Then a dash. I fear that THIS is loneliness, being locked inside our own minds.

This poem gives us pause. We can imagine how lonely Dickinson must have been at times. Her friends were mostly far away, and Sue, perhaps her truest friend, her soulmate, was only a hundred yards away, but she was busy as a mother, wife and socialite, and their relationship was, at times, fraught. 

But it’s also complicated because Dickinson also loved her solitude. She often framed loneliness as a chosen, empowered sanctuary rather than isolation. Her niece, Martha ("Mattie") Dickinson Bianchi, recalled Emily mimicking locking her bedroom door and saying, "It's just a turn—and freedom, Matty!"

There’s a push/ pull between autonomy and connection, and you can feel that tension in this poem.

The end of the poem gives us a possible out from this dilemma, a choice.

The Maker of the soul
Its Caverns and its Corridors
Illuminate—or seal—

The Maker of the soul. One might guess the Maker of the soul would be God, but the poem just previous to this one in fascicle 39 intimates that the Self is the maker of the self.

To be alive—and Will!
'Tis able as a God—
The Maker—of Ourselves—be what—

So we have “Will” in the making of our soul, and therefore we have a choice: caverns OR corridors. Caverns are hidden away, but corridors connect us to other rooms, to other people.

Illuminate—or seal— is also a choice. Do we illuminate the cavern and the corridor that is leading to it, or do we conceal it? The choice is ours, but it's is a difficult one, because it is not always easy to be in relation to others. “Just a turn --- and freedom, Mattie!” But to truly confront loneliness is akin to confronting death. Better, in the end, to leave a light on.

You might say that that is precisely what this poem is doing, confronting us with the terror of darkness only to “illuminate" the corridors leading into, and out of, our own dark caverns.

      

         -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

 

To be alive—is Power—

To be alive—is Power—
Existence—in itself—
Without a further function—
Omnipotence—Enough—

To be alive—and Will!
'Tis able as a God—
The Maker—of Ourselves—be what—
Such being Finitude!


      -Fr876,  J677, Fascicle 39, 1864


This is one of those poems that comprises an entire philosophy of life.

The first stanza makes a claim about pure existence. It is Power. One normally thinks of power as being hierarchical. You have power over something. But pure being is not power over anything. Or rather, it is power over nothing. The power resides in merely the hum of life. Feel the power in yourself.

Dickinson wrote in a letter to T.W. Higginson, "I find ecstasy in living - the mere sense of living is joy enough."

The Power here is inverse to the normal sense of dominating Power. It is the power of repose, of rest in the joy of living.

Omnipotence—Enough—

Mere existence is enough! You take a breath in and it feels good, because it is a release from breathing out, and vice versa. Marcel Proust writes, "...the act–as a rule not noticed–of drawing breath could be a perpetual delight."

This is not just Power, Emily says, but Omnipotence.

The irony is that the desire for any power over someone or something else is the very thing that takes away from the true Power you can find in the calm poise of pure being.

The first stanza by itself is, as it say, "Enough." The second stanza functions as a “but” clause. But wait, there’s more! But…

To be alive—and Will!
'Tis able as a God—
The Maker—of Ourselves—be what—

Okay, now we’re grooving. The power of our will to make of ourselves into what we will ourselves to be is God-like.

Such being Finitude!

Our lives may be finite, but the possibilities of our lives are infinite.

So we have two powers to wonder over here, the Power of pure being, and inside of our allotted time, an infinitely variable Power of will. Double wow. 

Here's the way I read the condensed syntax of those last two lines. 

The Maker—of Ourselves—be what (?)—
(considering) such being (is) Finitude!

In other words: what are we going to be considering that such being is finite? 

We don’t have forever to do our “willing.” The exclamation point that ends this poem is one of astonishment, but also one of urgency. Our possibilities may be endless, but not our time. 

Both stanzas of this poem are saying something powerful, but let's look at how they work together. There is a kind of logical progression between the two. If the Omnipotence of existence is "enough," then why will anything? The question hangs there.

What we choose to do, the idea in the second stanza, must rest on the “Enough” in the first stanza. The idea that WHAT we create may be grounded in our ability to accept our existence without any need for dominance. Our goodness can be found in that acceptance. 

If there was a book called "How Emily Dickinson can change your life" this poem would have to go in it. In the way the Power of "Will" of the second stanza rests on the Power of "Existence" of first, we have a solid foundation for virtue.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes

1. It's worth looking a little deeper into the strange syntax in this poem, and, in particular the way Dickinson uses the unit of the line.

The Maker—of Ourselves—be what—

Note that the line never lands. “Be what—” is grammatically incomplete. It leaves identity open. It forces the reader to “dwell in possibility." You feel in this line the self is unfinished. Identity is not predetermined. The act of “being” is ongoing. The syntax performs the idea of becoming.

And look at the syntax in this line,

Such being Finitude!

Instead of calmly saying “even though we are finite,” she bursts out in amazement. The fractured syntax mirrors the shock. How can something finite contain such open-ended power?

2.

The argument in this poem serves as a rebuttal to the Calvinistic thinking that was dominant in Amherst in Emily’s time. Calvinism teaches God is absolutely sovereign. Human will is fallible (“not my will, but thy will be done."). Salvation depends entirely on God’s grace.

Dickinson takes the idea of God alone being omnipotent and relocates it in existence itself.

Existence—in itself—
Omnipotence—Enough—

She also elevates human will.

To be alive—and Will!
’Tis able as a God—

That’s pretty shocking in a Puritan context.

But I don’t see these thoughts as rebellious, necessarily. It’s more subtle than that. Dickinson internalizes divinity. She collapses the distance between Creator and creature.

3. I liked many things about the TV series, Dickinson, but one thing that irked me was that it characterized Emily as being in love with Death. This poem, as well as many others, show us that she was in love with life. But I forgive the show, because Wiz Khalifa plays death, and I can imagine Dickinson digging Wiz Khalifa. Also the first time she meets him the Billie Eilish song "Bury a Friend" is playing, which is perfect.

 

The Color of a Queen, is this—

The Color of a Queen, is this—
The Color of a Sun
At setting—this and Amber—
Beryl—and this, at Noon—

And when at night—Auroran widths
Fling suddenly on men—
'Tis this—and Witchcraft—nature keeps
A Rank—for Iodine—


       -Fr875, J776, fascicle 39, 1864

Here is Emily Dickinson doing her slippery, jewel-box thing. This poem is so tightly engineered.

At a high level, the poem is trying to name an unnameable color. That color turns out to have the power and mystery of nature. It’s the color of royalty, the color of a sunset, of gemstones like amber and beryl, an aurora and iodine.

 

amber and beryl, like fire and ice

She’s circling around something constantly changing depending on the light. She keeps saying “this” like she’s pointing at it, but never actually says what “this” is.

The poem, for me, functions as a riddle which in turn functions as a kind of poetic kaleidoscope, the beauty of the words becoming the beauty of the images, like the “ber” of Amber blending into the “Ber” of Beryl. The words themselves have a gem-like flame to them. Amber and beryl turns fleeting light into a royal and lasting treasure, both in sound and image, a trove of words. Or listen to the way the slant rhyme works through so many vowel sounds in Queen/ Sun/ Noon/ Auroran/ men and iodine.

The poem is luminous all around, a dazzling display, an “Auroran width" flung suddenly on the reader in sound.

And when at night—Auroran widths
Fling suddenly on men—

In the last stanza things get downright spooky. Auroras are flung at us, and witchcraft is in the air.

’Tis this—and Witchcraft—nature keeps
A Rank—for Iodine—

The poem cycles through skyscapes, each holding its own “rank,” or a distinguished position, depending on the time of day.

There is the lushness of sunset, but there is also the bright clarity of noon. The color "noon" is blindingly bright and illuminating, and perhaps, in countering the witchcraft, clear and logical. Later in the evening there are the glimmering green curtains of Aurora. 

What to make of the iodine though? Iodine is known for creating a violet vapor. For me that would make it either the last bit of daylight as it blends into darkness or the crack of dawn when midnight blue begins to perk up. I think either are possible here, the first being more eerie, like witchcraft, but the latter being more scientifically alchemical like iodine. Either way the opposites of night and day get transmuted into one another. Both magic and rational science are evoked here in the interplay between witchcraft and iodine.

iodine

Iodine was well known during Dickinson’s time as a standard antiseptic used by American Civil War surgeons to treat battlefield wounds. So this may be at play here too, if we see iodine as representing morning light, a kind of healing of the night. (Iodine was used to prevent gangrene too, commonly known then as "mortification of the flesh." One can imagine the witchy green of the auroras in the blackened sky as the color of gangrene, and the iodine as a kind of cure.)

The auroras are flung down at us, we are overwhelmed by an unbearably enchanting and eerie beauty. It's  like a witch's spell. 

Tis (for) this—and Witchcraft—(that) nature keeps

A Rank—for Iodine—.  

Nature provides a cure for too much bewitching beauty, and that cure can be seen in the iodine dawn of a new day, the velvety violet light that wakes us up so we can go to work again in the hot noon sun. 

Bravo for this, the way Dickinson captures in sound and image the colors of the sky in their moods and  meanings.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. Those auroras flung down remind me of the the Emporer pelting the poet with rubies in Fr597. 

'Tis little I — could care for Pearls —
Who own the Ample sea —
Or Brooches — when the Emperor —
With Rubies — pelteth me —

If Blame be my side—forfeit Me—

If Blame be my side—forfeit Me—
But doom me not to forfeit Thee—
To forfeit Thee? The very name
Is sentence from Belief—and House—

         -Fr874, J775, Fascicle 39, 1864


First question: who is "Thee"? David Preest reads it as Christ, and says, "The word ‘Belief’ in line 4 suggests that Emily is pleading with Jesus." But I'm not so sure. Forfeit me, this poem says, but don't doom me forfeit you. This begs the question, does Christ forfeit us, or doom us to forfeit Him? In Christian theology, as I understand it, the answer would be no. God doesn't forfeit us. Rather we forfeit God. We make the choice.

Dickinson seemed to find so much of the divine in the earthly, and vice versa, that one can never be sure who she is talking about when she uses words like "Belief" and "Thee" and "House." But I think it makes more sense to see this poem as written to a beloved, and one close at hand too, one in the realm of "the House." It's fine if you blame me and don't love me, this poem says, but don't make me give you up by keeping yourself away from me. 

This all points to Susan Gilbert for me. She wasn't living in the house, but rather a hundred yards away in a house within sight of Emily's window. She lived there as the wife of Emily's brother Austin. For those of you who don't know, Emily had a very intimate relationship with Susan Gilbert before Austin did, one which went on, in some form or other, until Emily's death.

The Evergreens as seen from Emily's house.

Dickinson wrote in a letter to a family friend, “They say that ‘home is where the heart is.’ I think it is where the house is, and the adjacent buildings.”

The key for me though is in another poem written 13 years after this one, where that word "forfeit" pops up again. 

To own a Susan of my own
Is of itself a Bliss—
Whatever Realm I forfeit, Lord,
Continue me in this!

What is a reader to make of this poem? For me it points toward the idea that you can love someone without needing them to love you back. Is that desperate self-denial, or is it transcendence of the ego? I read it as the latter and here's why. An ego needs reassurance, but Dickinson isn't asking for the other to love her back here. All she asks is to be able to love. 

I believe that the poems that Dickinson kept for herself and transcribed into a fascicle were meant for future readers, and I think Dickinson was too smart, in her poems at least, to champion dysfunctional relationships. So I don't think she is telling us that it is okay to be pathetically clingy in a one-sided relationship, but rather is saying: don't shut yourself off from the divine to spite yourself. She is saying to Sue, essentially, that she doesn't need anything from her, except her presence. That is an example worth following. 

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. The perfect rhyme of the first couplet, "Me" and "Thee" is disrupted by the complete lack of rhyme in the second, "name" and "House," as if the "Me" and the "Thee" completely fell off the rails...

It is a lonesome Glee—

It is a lonesome Glee—
Yet sanctifies the Mind—
With fair association—
Afar upon the Wind

A Bird to overhear
Delight without a Cause—
Arrestless as invisible—
A matter of the Skies.


     -Fr873, J774, 1864, fascicle 39

The first stanza is relatively easy to follow, especially if you lay it out in prose:

The sound of a faraway bird, borne by the wind, has a lonesome glee to it, and this is a beautiful metaphor (“fair association”) for our own situation and sanctifies the mind.*

It is a lonesome Glee—
Yet sanctifies the Mind—
With fair association—
Afar upon the Wind

A Bird to overhear

In the next line we are presented with delight. Whether this delight belongs to the bird or the listener is ambiguous.

Delight without a Cause—

Why is the delight without a cause? Is it because the bird is singing only for itself?  And what is the reason for the bird to cause delight in the listener? It reminds me of the Rhodora that Emerson speaks of that grows where no one can see it. 

The Rhodora

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals fallen in the pool
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask; I never knew;
But in my simple ignorance suppose
The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.

This poem came out in a collected in 1847 and most assuredly Dickinson read it. Both of them ponder delight without a cause. Or, as Emerson puts it, "Then beauty is its own excuse for being."

But Dickinson’s version gives pause. The faraway song of the bird heard through the wind is seemingly unattainable, being overhead, far away, an invisible matter “of the skies.”

Arrestless as invisible—
A matter of the Skies.

“Arrestless” is both comforting and troubling. The beauty of nature’s song doesn't stop, it is arrestless, and transcends our life-time, but the word hints at our own restlessness, our inability to rest easily.

I am also reminded of Keats’ "Ode to a Nightingale” here too, a poem that Dickinson would have known well.

Here is the relevant stanza from that great poem:

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Emily's poem, too, has a forlorn sense of the impossible love, but it is looking, and listening, skyward, where the mind becomes sanctified, recognizing what it means to be grounded, but at the same time offering a way to ascend, through the beauty of the poem, into those same skies, a delight without cause.

And this brings us back to the first line, It is a lonesome Glee—

    -/)dam Wade DeGraff

Svetlana Melik-Nubarova, Birds, 2019

Note: That phrase "lonesome glee" reminds me of the phrase "anonymous delight" in Fr784. There's this idea that delight is anonymous and has an inherent loneliness to it which seems to run through Dickinson.

*It's almost a shame to lay the poem out in prose, helpful as it may be, because the way the poem unravels is soooo much richer. The first line, for instance, sits for a moment by itself. "It is a lonesome Glee." The "It" is mysterious. "Lonesome Glee" is "It" for a moment, is everything. The "Yet" beginning the second stanza tells us that lonesomeness is sanctifying. It's lonesome YET sanctifying. But the sanctifying of the second line also projects forward to qualify "A bird to overhear." This is a common move with Dickinson, the sliding modifier, a line which can be read both backwards and forwards in the poem. The third line can ALSO do this, with fair association applicable to being between "the Mind" and "lonesome glee," and, projecting forward, links "the Mind"  to being "Afar upon the Wind." It's dizzying stuff. But it's also thrillingly expansive. It's much richer than prose, but it demands patience.

Deprived of other Banquet,

Deprived of other Banquet,
I entertained Myself—
At first—a scant nutrition—
An insufficient Loaf—

But grown by slender addings
To so esteemed a size
'Tis sumptuous enough for me—
And almost to suffice

A Robin's famine able—
Red Pilgrim, He and I—
A Berry from our table
Reserve—for charity—


    -Fr872, J773, 1864, fascicle 39


Deprived of other Banquet
I entertained Myself—

Left bare, bereft, and yet the poet is still able to entertain herself nonetheless, and sumptuously so.

What does it mean to entertain yourself? I have one friend who will make himself gourmet dinners. Most people, including myself, are only spending the time to make a great meal if it is for someone else, but I have a lot of respect for the friend who does so for himself. 

 

I asked my HS students recently to write about what they would do if they knew they were only going to have an hour to live. Most of them said they would like to be surrounded by friends and family. But one student wrote that if she only had an hour left she would watch the sunset. And she wouldn’t take any pictures, she said, because she wanted it “to be only mine.” I thought of this poem... I entertained Myself—

Poetry is a kind of entertainment for Emily. Perhaps it wasn’t the feast of great love she once had, but through the poem, in our hands, Emily has made the best use of her great reserves of love. This poem, this entertainment, is a love letter.

At first—a scant nutrition—
An insufficient Loaf—

This self-entertaining, in lieu of a great feast, would be difficult at first.  When you no longer have enough food, the hunger, in the beginning, seems overwhelming, but eventually you get accustomed to making more of less.

But grown by slender addings
To so esteemed a size

If there was a banquet before, now you picture a few slender slices of bread. That’s all there is left. But these slender slices eventually add up, with careful cultivation, to plenty. “Slender” is doing extra work here because the word reminds us that the poet herself has grown slender for lack of sustenance. 

There is another way to take "slender addings" though. If poetry was the way Dickinson entertained herself, the soul-food that sustained her, then each slender adding is a page. Poem by poem, page by page Dickinson made a feast out of loss.

To so esteemed a size

Each slender poem that was added did amount, in the end, "to so esteemed a size," nearly 2000 astonishing poems.

'Tis sumptuous enough for me—

"Sumptuous" is a sumptuous word and it therefore helps make the poem more sumptuous.  

A great poet’s capacity for beauty is vast. Even scarcity can be made lush.

And almost to suffice

That “almost” is understated. There is no making up, perhaps, for lost love, no matter how exquisitely sumptuous the entertainment. Art does not fully replace what was lost. 

A Robin's famine able—
Red Pilgrim, He and I—
A Berry from our table
Reserve—for charity—

This stanza reminds me of all those other Dickinson poems about robins and crumbs. It’s a favorite subject of hers. If anyone with time on their hands wants a good project, please publish all of these robin poems together as a chapbook. Or better yet, make it a book that includes all of her bird poems, with a chapter on Robins. This would be a worthwhile labor of love. Thank you in advance.

By aligning herself with the "red pilgrim" robin, Dickinson frames deprivation as a spiritual journey rather than a failure. 

And what is shared? A berry, the sweetest portion of the fare.

This poem shows us why it is beautiful to be bare to the bone. It imagines life not as a banquet regained, but as a shared economy of care. This poem itself is like the berry. It's a berry good poem. It is small, concentrated and sweet. It sustains.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S.


That word "deprived" troubles me. It is deliberately vague, and therefore haunting. Was Dickinson deprived of Susan Gilbert? Of Charles Wadsworth, whom some, including her niece Mattie, believed she loved? Or was the deprivation something broader, a life constrained by gender, by family, by circumstance?

Some readers have speculated about darker possibilities within the Dickinson household, but these remain conjecture. What matters, finally, is not the precise cause of deprivation, but what Dickinson does with it. She transforms her loss into a poem with which to feed others.

Dickinson does not tell us what the banquet was. Love, vocation, marriage, health, God, recognition, bodily safety, simple happiness. That vagueness is not a deficiency, but rather the mechanism by which the poem works.

“Deprived of other Banquet” has a conspicuous absence at its center. The readers must fill it for themselves.

You could say that the poem’s generosity, then, comes from what it withholds. The less a poem insists, the more it gives. The more it names, the less room there is for anyone else to stand inside it.

Dickinson withholds the cause, but it's not because she's being coy. Rather, this is the discipline of care. A good poem wants to be used.

The hallowing of Pain

The hallowing of Pain
Like hallowing of Heaven,
Obtains at a corporeal cost—
The Summit is not given

To Him who strives severe
At middle of the Hill—
But He who has achieved the Top—
All—is the price of All—

    -Fr871, J772, 1864, fascicle 39



This poem seems pretty straight forward for Dickinson. “The summit is not given to him who strives severe at middle of the hill.” In other words, the price of getting to the top is giving it your all.

The hallowing of Pain
Like hallowing of Heaven,

The hallowing (the making sacred) of Pain is likened to the hallowing of Heaven. They are thus aligned. We are hallowed through pain, just as Heaven is. Both are obtained at corporeal cost.

This poem reads like a marathon runner's mantra. No pain, no gain.

If so, Dickinson is like a coach, and she’s cheering us up that hill. You got this. All it’s going to take is everything you’ve got! Let’s go!

But wait. Really? The severe striving in the middle of the hill isn’t severe enough? 

The Summit is not given
To Him who strives severe
At middle of the Hill—

He who strives severe at the middle of hill will not attain the top, so you must be severer still. Yeesh.

Calvinism, which was central to the belief system of most of New England in the 19th century, took great stock in the idea of suffering. Read this way the poem seems austerely Calvinistic, almost masochistic.

But was Emily really so severe?

The pleasure sneaks in though this poem. For instance, listen to what Dickinson does with the “ALL” sound in this poem. It starts with “The hALLowing of Pain, Like the hALLowing of Heaven." Then the "ALL" sound bends slightly into corporEAL and hILL, and middLE . Finally it ends emphatically with that double ALL. “ALL is the price of ALL.”

With that pleasure in mind I would propose a possible alternative reading to this poem.

In the opening lines, 

The hallowing of Pain
Like hallowing of Heaven,
Obtains at a corporeal cost—

we note it's not pain one is obtaining at a cost, but the hallowing of pain. In other words, you can read this line as saying that it is the act of making pain hallowed (holy, sacred) that comes at a cost.

What would that cost be? Pleasure right?

But isn't poetry a pleasure?

In this light, the last line, "All—is the price of All—," might have a different meaning. Severity is not all there is. It doesn't include virtues like mercy, tenderness and grace. The price of those things is an acceptance of all things. So all things must be (h)allowed, not just pain. That would be "Like hallowing of Heaven," which could be seen as the neglecting of those in hell.

Did Emily intend this second reading? Maybe, but maybe not. I think Emily did sometimes suffer from an austere Calvinistic streak (see Fr865, where she says pleasure should come with an austere trait), and I believe she had a competitive drive toward greatness too, to "achieve the top."

But on second thought, maybe this alternative reading is what Emily meant here? I've almost convinced myself of it. Or rather, it is the sound of the poem that convinces me. The lulling sound of all that allness. hALLowing hALLowing corporEAL, middLE, hILL, ALL, ALL. It sounds too lovely to be too severe don't you think?

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

None can experience sting

None can experience sting
Who Bounty—have not known—
The fact of Famine—could not be
Except for Fact of Corn—

Want—is a meagre Art
Acquired by Reverse—
The Poverty that was not Wealth—
Cannot be Indigence.

     -Fr 870, J771, fascicle 39, 1864

The first stanza is a classic bit of wisdom. We’ve seen Dickinson hammer this point home in poem after poem. (So does Buddha, by the way, and many other helpful guides besides.) Lack and fulfillment are two sides of a coin. You can’t have one without the other. But it's the untenable tension between the two that drives one, eventually, to a realization of equanimity, toward a position of balance and poise.

In the next stanza the thought continues,

Want—is a meagre Art
Acquired by Reverse—

To exist in a state of want, or, unfulfilled desire, is an art. But how do we pull off this paradox? How do you remain perpetually in a state of desire without actually having that desire filled. It's a conundrum. It's not an easy art!

Dickinson calls this a meagre Art and at first this seems to mean the "art of want" is meagre in comparison to the art of having. But knowing Dickinson, she’s being wry. She’s turning it around to instead say something like “less is more.” It’s not so much that the art itself is meagre, or is lesser, but that mastering meagreness, having less, is the art.

Meagre is an interesting word. It can mean both lacking in quantity, as in, you have less, but also lacking in quality, as in, you are less. The poet here is feeling meagre, or lesser, precisely because she once had something so great. Having once had so much more makes no longer having it that much more difficult. This is a theme we often see running through Dickinson’s poems. She seems to have experienced a love so great that everything else pales in comparison. She is therefore left contending with overwhelming want. But the intensity of this contention also drove her art. Her want drove her art. 

It leaves me as a reader in an odd dilemma. This suffering, this meagre want, is what drove Dickinson to her art. And yet, would I have wished it on her? No, I wouldn’t. But would I deprive myself, and the world, of these poems? No, I wouldn't.

The Poverty that was not Wealth—
Cannot be Indigence.

These last two lines read as an imperative: you have to make art, however meagre, because “The Poverty that was not Wealth/ Cannot be (must not become) Indigence.”

Indigence is a state of destitution. To avoid this, we make art, however meagre it might be in comparison to having our desire.

There is a funny little twist in the line “The Poverty that was not Wealth.” This is worded in such a way that you can read that line as, “The poverty that was not (the same as the poverty of) wealth…” Wealth can be seen as a worse poverty because it is always in danger of loss. Wealth is only here in passing, and will have to deal with a "reverse" eventually. The art of want, on the other hand, has less to lose. Once you have mastered the meagre, any "reverse" is for the better.  

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

What I see not, I better see—

What I see not, I better see—
Through Faith—my Hazel Eye
Has periods of shutting—
But, No lid has Memory—

For frequent, all my sense obscured
I equally behold
As someone held a light unto
The Features so beloved—-

And I arise—and in my Dream—
Do Thee distinguished Grace—
Till jealous Daylight interrupt—
And mar thy perfectness—

      -Fr869, J939, 1864

I found this poem to be very difficult to parse. One thing that helped was finally realizing that memory is the subject and not the object in the line, "No lid has memory." It's not saying that closed eyelids have no Memory, but rather that memory has no eyelids to close. In other words, you can shut your eyes to the world out of faith, but you can't shut off your memories. It seems like a small thing, but it unlocked the poem for me, like a final piece of a tricky puzzle.

A prose translation of this poem, then, might go like this:

What I do not see with my eyes, I see more clearly through faith. My hazel eye sometimes closes and loses sight, but memory has no eyelids and never shuts. When my senses are shut off, I can still see just as vividly, as if someone were shining a light directly on the beloved face. And then I rise, and in my dream I bestow upon you a singular grace, entering a moment of complete and mutual presence, until jealous daylight breaks in and interrupts.

Let's go through the poem.

What I see not, I better see—

I think of blind Tiresias here who can see the future, or that passage in Frankenstein where the unsightly creature is befriended by the old blind man. Our eyes may deceive us, but if we shut our eyes we are closer to each other, closer to the heart.

Through Faith—my Hazel Eye
Has periods of shutting—

I love that Dickinson uses her own eye color here. Dickinson’s poetry is so all-seeing that its easy to forget that there are specific eyes involved. Dickinson’s eyes have been described by her contemporaries as hazel. She described them herself once as as being the color of "sherry in the glass that the guest leaves."

The color hazel comes from the hazel nut. In this sense, it is born of the woods, just as elsewhere Dickinson has described her hair as being the color of the wren. 

Emily's specific hazel eyes, through faith, attempt to shut themselves against the specificity of the hierarchical world so they can see the inner world of the heart.

For frequent, all my sense obscured
I equally behold
As someone held a light unto
The Features so beloved—-

My friend Darin Stevenson once asked me a question that I am still pondering. What generates the light in our dreams? The light held up to the remembered features of a beloved is like that. It’s dream light, and in it the beloved is illuminated.

“Behold” is a powerful word. What does it mean to “behold” someone's features in our dreams. How can another be held in memory? What is actually being touched?

And I arise—and in my Dream—
Do Thee distinguished Grace—

These lines are wonderful. What does it mean to arise in your dream and do the beloved “distinguished Grace?” If you were dreaming of a lover, what distinguished Grace would you do with Him/Her? And distinguished by/from what? 

It makes my heart beat a little faster these lines, to imagine arising in a dream to do distinguished Grace to a lover.

“Arise” is a word like “Behold,” and “Thee,” and “Grace,” religious words that are here bent back to the lover.

The most enlightening moment for me was that in the dream God and self become interchangeable. The self is the one who is God-like, bestowing Grace on who? Thee. "I arise and in my dream do Thee distinguished Grace." It's God on God action. Who is the lover and who is the beloved?

Till jealous Daylight interrupt—
And mar thy perfectness—

Doing grace to another happens with our eyes shut, in dreams. In daylight though, because of the delusion of our senses, we are separated. There is a profound link here between jealousy (the root of our sins) and the false separation brought about through our senses. There is no jealousy in dreams, only a merging through grace. 

One further thought that is worth keeping in mind I think is that on an immediate level the "Thee" in the poem is the reader, and the distinguished Grace being bestowed by Dickinson upon the reader is the poem itself. We may not be who she was originally beholding in her memory, but through the alchemy of poetry, we are, nonetheless, the recipients of her closed-eye grace.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Fairer through Fading — as the Day

Fairer through Fading — as the Day
Into the Darkness dips away —
Half Her Complexion of the Sun —
Hindering — Haunting — Perishing —

Rallies Her Glow, like a dying Friend —
Teasing with glittering Amend —
Only to aggravate the Dark
Through an expiring — perfect — look —


    -Fr868,  J938, 1864

The music in this poem sucks you in like a siren song. You can’t stop listening. First there are those strong double Fs that begin the poem, and those Ds coming in with FaDing and Day, echoed in the next line with Darkness and Dip. "D" sounds are like deep dark percussion in Dickinson, the equivalent to bass notes in a piece of music. (I think of Robert Frost here too, "The woods are lovely, dark and deep.")

Then there’s the assonance, that strong ay sound in fair and fade and day in the first line merging, finally, into “away” in the second. The ay of "away" fades away off into the ether. Awaayyyy. 

The quadruple Hs in the second couplet, Half, Her, Hindering and Haunting, create an airy push, so that surprising P at the end of the line, “Perishing,” really pops out at you.

There is no knowing where the music is going with Dickinson because the tenor of the thought is leading the way. Somehow though it is always perfect. For example, look at “look” at the end of the poem. There is no set up for the word. It doesn’t rhyme with anything else in the poem. It defies expectation, but is just right.

Suffice to say that there is "fair" music in spades here, a sublime connection between the musicality of this poem and its content.

Let's look at that content:

Fairer through Fading

This is an oxymoron of sorts. How can something become more beautiful when it is becoming less seen? Its impending absence makes the presence more powerful.

— as the Day
Into the Darkness dips away —

The sunset, when day is fading, is the most beautiful part of it. Dickinson doesn’t go there in this poem, but this is also true of the end of the year. Autumn is the most colorful of seasons. Like a day, and a year, a life ends at its most beautiful point, fairer through fading.

Half Her Complexion of the Sun —
Hindering — Haunting — Perishing —

At twilight, half the day’s complexion is sun, and half dark. 

Hindering —  To hinder is to hamper progress. The day, the life, wants to stay, so it's hindering night. 

Haunting —  We are haunted by the lingering finality of life.

 — Perishing —  Look at how that stark word is set aside like that between dashes, followed by a break between stanzas, like a pregnant pause. What comes during the Perishing? 

The next stanza rallies!

Rallies Her Glow, like a dying Friend —

The subject is still Day. Day is rallying her “glow,” like a dying friend. I remember hearing my grandmother make a hilarious joke on her 90th birthday. I wasn’t expecting it and it seemed to sum up all of her spirit and wit and verve. She was like dying Friend rallying her glow. It was all the more poignant for being so late in the day, so late in the year, so late in the life.

Teasing with glittering Amend —

What is there for the day to amend? Is the day making up for all that noonday sinning with its brilliant “glittering” display of a sunset? Is Emily hinting that it is in atoning that our colors become most rich in tone?

Only to aggravate the Dark
Through an expiring — perfect — look —

This glittering is in defiance to the Dark. It’s flipping off the void. What does it mean to “aggravate the Dark"? It’s almost like some kind of battle of good and evil. Living life to the nth, to the last, is our final battle cry. Aggravate the dark and leave this “light” in a glittering golden display of rebellion,

Through an expiring — perfect — look —

That’s a sunset for you. Or an Autumn trove of trees in New England. Or Emily herself. The end of the poem is the poem's, the poet's, final perfect look, straight at us.

It’s not one that could be predicted. There is no set up rhyme for it, yet it’s perfect.

Glittering.


       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

My daughter Lucia in the glitter of a sunset

Stay tuned. In the next poem Dickinson continues her meditation on perfection.

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind –

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind –
As if my Brain had split –
I tried to match it – Seam by Seam –
But could not make them fit.

The thought behind, I strove to join
Unto the thought before –
But Sequence raveled out of Sound
Like Balls – upon a Floor.

    -Fr867, J937, 1864

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind –
As if my Brain had split –

That word split is often used with visceral force by Emily Dickinson, as in the start of the the amazing poem of hers which begins, “Split the lark - and you’ll find the music-” Violence can be felt in the very sound of the word: SPLIT. Splat.

The meaning of the word is rich too. There is a doubleness to "split." Something breaks, but in breaking it also gains in possibility. (Read the post on Fr849 for a deeper discussion on the word).

Cleave is another interesting word because it has a doubleness too. Cleave is a contranym, meaning it can denote two opposite things at once. It can mean coming together as well as coming apart. In this case it seems to be the latter, a cleaving apart, but maybe that third line, “I tried to match it,” hints at the other meaning, two parts cleaving back together.

What could have split Emily’s mind? Loyalty to two opposing ideals? There is all of that push and pull between herself and marriage, or herself and religion, or (you fill in the blank.) There is the possibility that something badly wounded Emily, someone close to her, which fractured her mind. To feel betrayed by love might do it.

I tried to match it Seam by Seam.

A few poems back, in Fr860,  we had the phrase “Rime by Rime,” which was a pun of rhyme by rhyme, a sly reference to poetry. I think this is a further echo of the same idea. Seam by Seam is the brain trying to match itself at the seams, but it is also, perhaps, a stitching together in poetry. To sew together verses even as you are dealing with a torn-apart and tattered mind seems to be at the heart of this poem. And there’s the other echo here, which is the pun on "seem." 

“Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'” says Hamlet, as his mind is splitting apart.

Following the word “Seams” is another rich word that is often found in Dickinson’s poems: “fit.”

But could not make them fit.

Words in Dickinson function like planets around a sun. You can’t quite get to the sun, but the definitions and connotations orbiting around it create a solar system. "Fit" is one of those words. See Fr686 for a good example of the complexities of the word “Fit.”

But of course “fit” here goes in two different directions too. The content of the poem is about not fitting, but everything in the form fits perfectly. Just look how perfectly in this poem “fit” rhymes here with “split”!

The thought behind, I strove to join
Unto the thought before –

It is a mind divided. But what is the divide? The poem doesn’t answer that question. Perhaps the divide is between want and need? Or between reason and love? Or (you fill in the blank).

But Sequence raveled out of Sound

Not only do the thoughts not fit together, but they are, somehow, out of sequence.

The word “Sound” here has a few possibilities. Sound as in noise, as in, the thoughts went out beyond sound and into silence, out into no thought.

But Sound can also mean measurement, like sounding the depths of the water. The sequence goes out beyond measure.

Sound can also mean sense, as in, a sound mind. The mind is going out of the realm of reason. There is no more sequence because reason is gone.

Ravel is yet another contranym of sorts. Ravel seems like it would mean the opposite of unravel, and sometimes it does, but usually it means the same as unravel, as I believe it does here.

But again, like we saw with cleaving apart to cleaving together, and in not fitting being fitting, there is a raveling together here in the form of the poem itself. The brain may be unwinding like a ball of yarn, but there is a winding up the yarn too, you might say, in the tight form and perfect end-rhymes of the poem.

Like Balls – upon a Floor.

These balls must refer to balls of yarn, or thread, being used to try to seam the thoughts together. The startling image here is of a woman attempting to sew, but her mind being so out of sorts that she drops the balls off her lap, just lets them go, where they unroll themselves on the floor. Note that ball is plural here, as if several threads have been dropped. Ball made plural also makes you think of a juggler having dropped all of the balls at once.

There is a letting go of the balls of thought here. The poem, with its contranyms, “cleave,” and “ravel,” is itself a contranym. It can be read as pointing toward a loss or a gain, depending on how you look at it. You can read the poem, in the frame of its poetry, as call to drop the balls and just watch them roll. 

And yet, paradoxically, even as the mind is, for better or worse, coming apart, marvelously, the poem comes together.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff