Give little Anguish —

*Note: the following poem is out of Franklin order because I inadvertently omitted it earlier.



Give little Anguish —
Lives will fret —
Give Avalanches —
And they'll slant —
Straighten — look cautious for their Breath —
But make no syllable — like Death —
Who only shows the Marble Disc —
Sublimer sort — than Speech —
                               F422 (1862)  J310

In this wisdom poem Dickinson claims that people will fret over small problems but after suffering an avalanche of anguish will, once over the initial shock, respond with deathly quiet. Dickinson considers this muteness a "Sublimer" response than "Speech". We don't use forms of "sublime" in this way today and so it is difficult to know just what she is getting at. Among the eight meanings of the word in the Webster's Dictionary of Dickinson's day, the Dickinson Lexicon considers "Fearful; terrible; awe-inspiring" to be the sense of it in this poem (you must register at the site to get the poem references; the definitions are available to all).
        When a person dies, only a gravestone remains to speak directly for the corpse, and even that "Marble Disc" has few words. It is the silence of the grave that is terrible, that opens our imaginations to the most fearful conjectures. When someone is struck by some terrible woe, they will stagger but (for the sake of this poem) "Straighten" again. They check their breathing as if it might have stopped. But they do not speak. They become like a gravestone, their bodies markers for the silenced spirit. It's a fearsome thing, Dickinson is telling us, when words can't come.

        The next poem chronologically, "The first Day's Night had come" (F423), anatomizes the avalanche aftermath from a first-person point of view. The day after a terrible event, the poem's speaker tells her soul to sing, but "She said her Strings were snapt – / Her bow – to Atoms blown".  Perhaps that explains the silence in this poem.

The poem is written in iambic tetrameter. The first four lines might be considered two tetrameter lines divided into shorter lines for emphasis. The rhymes are so slant as to be subliminal, with the exception of Breath and Death – a classic pairing. Instead, Dickinson chooses strong, interesting words throughout, densely packing meaning. The assonances of Anguish and Avalanches are enriching and strengthen those already strong words; the use of "Lives" rather than "people" or "men" sets up a resonance with "Death" in its surprise appearance later in the poem. The alliteration of "slant", Straighten", "syllable", and "Sublimer"  slides the simile of numb anguish to death into the last of that string of "s" sounds, "Speech" – a harsh-sounding word (like 'screech') that stops the poem just as speech itself stopped.  

I like to see it lap the Miles —

*Note: the following poem is out of its Franklin order as I accidentally omitted it earlier.


I I like to see it lap the Miles —
And lick the Valleys up —
And stop to feed itself at Tanks —
And then — prodigious step

Around a Pile of Mountains —
And supercilious peer
In Shanties — by the sides of Roads —
And then a Quarry pare

To fit its sides
And crawl between
Complaining all the while
In horrid — hooting stanza —
Then chase itself down Hill —

And neigh like Boanerges —
Then — prompter than a Star
Stop — docile and omnipotent
At its own stable door —
              F383 (1862)  J585

Helen Vendler includes this poem in her wonderful collection, Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries. I really have not much to add to her commentary, but I can summarize a few of her points. Vendler notes that Dickinson's father was a backer of the railroad whose eventual station was located close to the Dickinson house. Dickinson would have been able to hear its "horrid – hooting stanza" as she wrote.
       Vendler has some fun listing the different animals the train is seemingly like: it laps and licks as a cat would; it neighs like a horse and also like a horse has a stable. It can also peer in shanties (superciliously!), pare down quarry walls and then crawl between them, and it has a "prodigious step" like a giant. Most interestingly, it is both "docile" and "omnipotent".
       

She makes other points about the poem, but she doesn't account, I don't think, for its charm. At least it has always charmed me! I, too, like to see the train lap the miles – but I like it better in this poem than in real life, for Dickinson has created a cartoon train. The entire poem unfolds as if it were an old Disney black and white. I follow each line and have no trouble visualizing the action. Frankly, it never occurred to me to question the mixed metaphors. Each segment of the poem seems another stage in a journey and I am along for the ride.
       Part of the energy comes from the use of "and". It goes here and it does this and that, and then finally it is home. It's a headlong adventure. The language is also fun. Lapping and licking the miles and valleys is fun, as is the train taking a break at a tank like a thirsty horse before it's off again. (Presumably imbibing the miles and valleys didn't quench its thirst.) The prodigious step is another fun phrase and image as is the Pile of Mountains. I see the train as a giant inch worm raising itself up and coming down on the other side of the hill. 
        It's not uncommon to see or imagine seeing people looking out the window of a passenger train at the yards along the other side of the track . There is something supercilious about it, but Dickinson has the train itself become like a snobbish passenger.
       Perhaps the most fun image is that of the mighty train carving its track through a rock quarry, and then having to crawl through, "Complaining all the while". Those hooting stanzas were probably painfully familiar to Dickinson. In Vendler's final paragraph she writes, "The train is Dickinson's self-parody, a bad poet."

I must confess that I always thought Boanerges was the name of some famous war horse. Vendler corrects me: in Aramaic it means "Sons of Thunder" and Jesus called James and John, two disciples, by this name. The Dickinson Lexicon lists an additional meaning as a "loud orator" or "vociferous preacher". Google helped me find it used in an 1862 manuscript about evangelists. In referring to a Mr. Bell, author Madison Evans writes, "He has a strong, deep voice, and his loud, rapid, and  sometimes vociferous utterance has won for him the sobriquet, Boanerges. … He closes every discourse  with a powerful exhortation, in which his voice sometimes  rises to the highest pitch" (from "biographical sketches of the pioneer preachers of Indiana"). I wonder if this frontier Boanerges also ended up at his own stable door "docile and omnipotent". That's another fun image.

Mute – thy Coronation —

* Note: This is the first of four older poems that I present out of order. In reviewing the blog I realize I had omitted a few. Unfortunately, I don't think the site's architecture allows me to insert the poems where they chronologically go.


Mute  – thy Coronation —
Meek – my Vive le roi,
Fold a tiny courtier
In thine ermine, Sir,
There to rest revering
Till the pageant by,
I can murmur broken,
Master, It was I —
                   F133 (1860)  J151

This poem reflects the meek worshipful voice of the Dickinson who wrote the Master letters and, a year later, refers to herself as her master's "little Hound" and  "little Spaniel" in F237 and F251. Here she is a quiet little thing enjoying the preeminence of her beloved. Her own cheers, Long live the King, are "Meek" as if she didn't want to draw attention to herself. She is completely silent for the "Coronation". She refers to herself as a "tiny courtier" and requests that Master just fold her into his royal ermine somewhere. When all the pageantry is over she can tell him who she is. Among the most pathetic parts of the poem is that when she tells him it will be a "murmur" and she will be "broken". 

Can't you just imagine a tiny poet
tucked into this ermine robe?

     Talk about a mood killer! If Master is about to receive some great honor, or if he has suddenly earned some fame, this little poem would set him back. Who would want such a self-pitying little courtier?

It should be noted, however, that this was a poem written in private and probably not with publication or an audience intended. If we all had our pity-party poems published we would be a humbler people.

On the positive side, I rather like the image of a miniature courtier hiding in the ermine, and I like the way the "Mute", "Meek", and "Fold" begin the first three lines with an effect quite opposite to the pathos of the words. One suspects the poet doth protest too much. It is the "broken" that rather stops the poem cold for me.

It knew no lapse, nor Diminution —

It knew no lapse, nor Diminution —
But large — serene —
Burned on — until through Dissolution —
It failed from Men —

I could not deem these Planetary forces
Annulled —
But suffered an Exchange of Territory —
Or World —
                                                  F568 (1863)  J560


This difficult poem begins as the previous one did – with a referent-less "It".  In my searches I found the "it" interpreted as a comet (http://www.battle-axe.org/English/Emily_Dickinson_Verse.html), and as the summer of Higginson's scheduled but missed visit (David Preest). I found no references to it in my collection of Dickinson scholarship (admittedly a small library). I dismiss the comet idea as something that would not fail "from Men". I dismiss the summer idea for the same reason and also because it is not large enough to for the poem. So what is left?
      Perhaps readers are more imaginative, but I come up only with two ideas for what grand thing failed because of people but whose failure could be seen as an Exchange or transformation. The first candidate would be something like the status quo, whatever Dickinson perceived that to be. It fits with both stanzas and is an interesting perspective on the Civil War. Life had continued, "large – and serene", until the war began. Dickinson, however, doesn't find the familiar systems and seasons "Annulled" but rather exchanged for something else. It will be a new world but the "Planetary forces" will still be operant.  
        My second and favored option is that Dickinson is writing about Higginson himself. The second stanza is taken nearly word-for-word from the letter (L280) she wrote him upon learning – in the newspaper – of his departure for South Carolina to command the first federally authorized Black regiment. The one variant is that in the letter Dickinson writes "I would not deem" rather than  "could not deem".
      In her letter Dickinson links Higginson to natural and cosmic forces similar to those in the poem. Expressing her disappointment about the missed visit and her discovery that Higginson had gone off to war, she writes, "I found you were gone, by accident, as I find Systems are, or Seasons of the year, and obtain no cause – but suppose it a treason of Progress – that dissolves as it goes." The simile of Higginson's actions to those of Systems or Seasons becomes a metaphor in the poem: like the sun he "Burned on" without "lapse" or "Diminution" until the human failures that resulted in war. 
      The second stanza has a droll quality. She could not imagine that such a planetary force could be "Annulled" or dead; only that it was transported.

In thinking about this poem as one written about Higginson, I wonder if she wasn't writing something of an elegy. In the letter she says, "I should have liked to see you, before you became improbable". She doesn't avoid the danger of battle but she uses euphemisms for death: "Annulled" in the poem and becoming "improbable" in the letter. Read this way the poem seems a very private one. She sees Higginson as a force of nature, one that burns like the sun but is also large and serene. She imagines his dissolution (death) at the hands of other men but cannot imagine that such a life force could be extinguished. Instead, she frames his imagined death as an "Exchange of Territory – / or World". 
      There are further passages in the letter that seem to have inspired the poem. Dickinson closes by saying, "Should you, before this reaches you, experience immortality, who will inform me of the Exchange?" Not only is the idea of an exchange of territory introduced, but the passage is written in the same sad, droll tone as the close of the poem.

Dickinson's line in the letter about the "treason of Progress" is intriguing in the context of the War. Is the price of Progress death? Is that what she means by "dissolves as it goes"?

It knew no Medicine —

It knew no Medicine —
It was not Sickness — then —
Nor any need of Surgery —
And therefore — 'twas not Pain —

It moved away the Cheeks —
A Dimple at a time —
And left the Profile — plainer —
And in the place of Bloom

It left the little Tint
That never had a Name —
You've seen it on a Cast's face —
Was Paradise — to blame —

If momently ajar —
Temerity — drew near —
And sickened — ever afterward
For Somewhat that it saw?
                           F567 (1863)  J559


Dickinson presents a disturbing account of the effect of glimpsing 'Paradise'. She begins the poem with a mystery. Some condition, the "It" of the first stanza, is causing a wasting decline in the subject. The affliction doesn't respond to medicine; neither does it require surgery. Consequently both illness and pain are dismissed as causes. The second and third stanza describe the symptoms: hollow cheeks, weight loss, and the gray pallor of a corpse or plaster cast. In the final five lines Dickinson tells us the afflliction took place after a glimpse of Paradise. 

Is Dickinson really suggesting that a vision of heaven is sickening, or is Paradise here a metaphor for some earthly parallel – a lover, perhaps, or the chance of fame? I can imagine that a glimpse of a desired but unattainable situation might leave one depressed or even despairing. But although Dickinson earlier wrote numerous poems about a paradise with crowns, angels, glory, and happy maidens dancing, she also spent a lot of time facing what she sometimes referred to as an abyss or a pit [F515, F508] – and sometimes as despair. In "There's a certain Slant of light" [F320] she claims the "Seal Despair" is "An imperial affliction /  Sent us of the Air". Paradise can deliver its searing "Heavenly Hurt" in a shaft of autumn light. No, Dickinson wrote most powerfully of heaven when most heretical, and so I think she means this "Paradise" as Paradise (or at least that which awaits in the hereafter).
        The poem reminds me of one Dickinson wrote a year earlier –  "It was not Death, for I stood up" [F355]. That poem also describes an existential affliction through negative propositions: "It was not Death, for I stood up"; "It was not Frost …"; "Nor Fire…". What the poet does tell us in that poem is that what she experienced was "like Chaos – Stopless – cool – / Without a Chance, or Spar – / Or even a Report of Land – / To justify – Despair." While we don't know what the subject in this poem experienced when the door to Paradise stood temporarily ajar, we do know the outcome – a sickening "ever afterward".
        It is almost tempting to read this poem as one of a gentle death. The subject wasn't ill or suffering any pain. He or she, or most likely the poet, somehow had the opportunity to see Paradise after which began the downward spiral. Perhaps the glimpse created an irresistible longing for the eternal Home. But Dickinson doesn't allow that interpretation. The soul had great "Temerity" – audacity or persistence" –  in seeking out its vision. But once achieved, there was no resultant rapture, no giving over this life for a better one hereafter. Instead, the subject "sickened" as if the vision carried some infection, some deadly " internal difference ".

Perhaps most interestingly, Dickinson asks if Paradise is to blame for this soul's affliction. Perhaps it is the persistent visionary who is to blame. If a private door is open and you dare to approach and look within, who is to blame for any resultant shock? 
        But this is the poet's and the visionary's risk. It is she who must dare to look, to face both Paradise and the abyss or, as Dickinson implies, to face that which is both at once. As she wrote in F230, "For this – accepted Breath".

But little Carmine hath her face —

But little Carmine hath her face —
Of Emerald scant — her Gown —
Her Beauty — is the love she doth —
Itself — exhibit — mine —
                                                                F566 (1863)  J558

This short poem seems a graceful note to accompany a flower to a friend. It might be a single rosebud or a tulip as neither would yet show the full carmine red of their petals. The scantiness of the emerald gown suggests that there is only a leaf or two on the flower stalk. But sometimes less is more. Besides, the true beauty of the flower is the love with which it is presented. The poet is clothing the blossom with her love and that will make up for any lack of carmine or foliage.

Reverse cannot befall

Reverse cannot befall
That fine Prosperity
Whose Sources are interior —
As soon — Adversity

A Diamond — overtake
In far — Bolivian Ground —
Misfortune hath no implement
Could mar it — if it found —
                        F565 (1863)  J395

Dickenson claims here that those fine things we develop in our hearts and souls, our inner Prosperity, cannot be harmed the way our wealth or health can be. Our interior substance is no more subject to the  'slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune' than is a buried diamond. 
        The first stanza contrasts the inner and outer prosperity. Dickinson's own family lost a small fortune in her grandfather's time. Her father regained much of it, and consequently the poet probably had good opportunity throughout her life to observe poverty and prosperity in both internal and external manifestations.

        The second stanza introduces the metaphor of a diamond. That precious gem is top of the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, and that means it is pretty impervious. That is Dickinson's metaphor for the prosperous soul. Should misfortune even find it, it has no way, no tool to harm it.

Bolivia, where the fabled Potosi mine is located, is more known for silver than diamonds, but the metaphor doesn't need to be exact to succeed. 

She hideth Her the last —

 She hideth Her the last —

And is the first, to rise —
Her Night doth hardly recompense
The Closing of Her eyes —

She doth Her Purple Work —
And putteth Her away
In low apartments in the sod -
As Worthily as We.

To imitate Her life
As impotent would be
As make of Our imperfect Mints,
The Julep — of the Bee —

                                                            F564 (1863)  J557

We can no more burn as brightly as the sun than make a julep as tasty as bees' honey. Dickinson likens the sun's course to human lives, but the superlative sun is the first to rise and the last to bed. Restful night is no real compensation for the brightness of her eye. After the purpling light that comes with sunset she puts herself to bed "in the sod" just as humans are laid in the earth for burial.

        Unlike mortals, the sun rises anew every morning. For this and for her brightness, it would be folly to try to "imitate Her life." Likewise, we might make a refreshing drink out of mint, mint juleps to be precise, while the bee makes honey. Its julep is far more perfect.

 

Sun - great; bees - wonderful;
julep - pretty darned good

I love honey, but even with "imperfect Mints," a julep is pretty hard to beat. Start with good bourbon, add sugar and mint to taste and toss in a mound of crushed ice. Yum!

Dickinson assigns the sun a feminine identity rather than the more traditional masculine. Shakespeare, for example, pegs the sun as a "he" as in Sonnet 18 where "Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines". The image of the sun as masculine reaches us from the earliest folklore and philosophy, however. The sun's potency brings life from earth and its fire is reflected in the clash and fire of war. Its light brings reason (traditionally masculine) and its movement (Yang / masculine) spurs the rhythm of days and seasons.

        In this poem, however, the Sun is a busy housewife, putting in long days and going to sleep only after her work is done. She puts herself to bed in contrast to earlier Dickinson poems where Mother Earth tenderly tucks her children "in her mysterious drawers" when their lives are over ("The Months have ends – the Years – a knot –"  [F417]). It is a homely, thoroughly female, and I much prefer it to the idea that the sun is a sky god's eye watching us.

The Brain, within its Groove

The Brain, within its Groove
Runs evenly — and true —
But let a Splinter swerve —
'Twere easier for You —

To put a Current back —
When Floods have slit the Hills —
And scooped a Turnpike for Themselves —
And trodden out the Mills —
                           F563 (1863)  J556

The verbs in the last stanza dramatize the impossibility of a brain ever going back to its comfortable groove or, if you will, rut, once derailed. The first stanza begins calmly, both in language and image. The brain is running "evenly – and true" in its accustomed channel. It encounters some setback or glimpses some new truth or vision, but nothing cataclysmic. It is a "Splinter" not a logjam, not a stick of dynamite. Dickinson's insight is that sometimes a splinter is all it takes to set a life, or at least a mental life, careening out of control.
       

The second stanza looses the calm current of the millrace. The floodwaters "slit" the hills, an image managing to be surgical, violent, and yonic at the same time. A turnpike has been "scooped" out of the earth as if a giant trowel has been wielded against the landscape. The last image is that of the mills and factories "trodden" into oblivion. It is wild nature against the careful constructs of man. Such a flood can never again be tamed to its small channel.

It depicts perhaps part of the poet herself and helps account for the energy beating against the bounds of language in her poetry.

'Twas Love — not me —

'Twas Love — not me —
Oh punish — pray —
The Real one died for Thee —
Just Him — not me —

Such Guilt — to love Thee — most!
Doom it beyond the Rest —
Forgive it — last —
'Twas base as Jesus' — most!

Let Justice not mistake —
We Two — looked so alike —
Which was the Guilty Sake —
'Twas Love's — Now Strike!
                                                                F562 (1863)  J394

In this ironical poem, Dickinson lashes out at a lover who seems to have blamed her for loving him too much. In a neat rhetorical twist, she separates herself from the quality of Love. It's a courtroom drama, appropriate for a poet in a lawyerly family. The poet plaintiff begins by naming Love as the culprit, the one who "died for Thee". He, Love, is the "Real one". The poet, then, is the seemingly rational one who would never give over her life to someone.  

Perhaps the argument has a parallel to cases where the defendant blames the passion of the moment – rage, jealousy, fear – in seeking to avoid the severest penalty. Part of the poem's irony is that unlike those negative emotions, the speaker is trying to throw Love under the bus.
  The irony sharpens to heavy sarcasm in the second stanza: " Oh, and it was such guilt, wasn't it, to love you more than anything. Yes, that dooms it beyond anything else; love should be the last thing forgiven. Why, my Love was almost as base as Jesus'!" 
The poem concludes with a direct address to the Judge. The speaker and Love may seem like the same person, but which one is guilty? Which one had the most at stake? Why, it was love. Dickinson ends the poem with a farcical urging for "Justice" to "Strike" the guilty love right away. Since Dickinson introduced Jesus into the poem, it is hard not to remember that he, like poor love, suffered capital punishment.

It's a difficult, highly compressed poem. I may be reading it all wrong. David Preest shares this reading, but I read a first-page snippet from scholar Bernhard Frank in Explicator who said that the "thee" (addressee) and the "He" (referent) are God and Christ. That's all the snippet showed, so I am unable to follow the argument. I assume that in the first stanza Jesus is dying for his father, God.  
I'm sticking with Preest here. The speaker at the end is almost daring the judge/lover to strike down love. There's an impudent tone to it that seems fitting in a poem to a lover not wanting such intensity, perhaps, from the woman.

Trust in the Unexpected —

Trust in the Unexpected —
By this — was William Kidd
Persuaded of the Buried Gold —
As One had testified —

Through this — the old Philosopher —
His Talismanic Stone
Discerned — still withholden
To effort undivine —

'Twas this — allured Columbus —
When Genoa — withdrew
Before an Apparition
Baptized America —

The Same — afflicted Thomas —
When Deity assured
'Twas better — the perceiving not —
Provided it believed —
                   F561 (1863)  J555)


Advising us to "Trust in the Unexpected" is a far different thing than to simply expect and be ready for the unexpected. The latter is prudent while trust seems rash – even if one believes in beneficial divine intervention or great favors from fate. If Dickinson is urging the reader to trust in the unexpected, she does not make a strong case for it. In fact, I'm not sure what to make of this poem, even the first line, so I'll take it stanza by stanza, each being a separate example.
        First, Captain Kidd is known for burying treasure, not finding it; the treasure he did bury he never got to enjoy. His career was riddled with ill fortune and ended with his neck in a noose. Dickinson would have been familiar with him, as Kidd patrolled the New England Coast on behalf of New York and Massachusetts provinces in the late 1600s. He later buried chests of gold and silver on New York's Gardiners Island before sailing to Boston to be tried for piracy. Consequently, what Dickinson means by his being "persuaded of the Buried Gold" isn't clear to me. Perhaps this was a story current in Dickinson's time. But if he were persuaded that there was buried gold to be had, why would this example count as trusting the unexpected? What is Dickinson getting at?

The Alchymist in Search of the

Philosophers' Stone, Joseph Wright, 1771

        As for the second stanza, no philosopher has ever found the apocryphal stone that would turn lead into gold; perhaps the "old" one "discerned" such a treasure, but that isn't nearly as good as producing or finding one. Even Isaac Newton, a towering genius who studied the Bible and believed in prophecy and divine intervention, was never successful despite his years of alchemical efforts. Was it trust in the unexpected that led him to discern? That discernment, however, seems a result of a philosopher's study, not some happenstance idea – particularly if it never bore fruit.  
        The stanza on Columbus is not clear to me. Perhaps it says that Columbus' trust in the unexpected lured him on even after his home city of Genoa declined to support his proposed journey. He ventured forth even before knowing about the "apparition" later named America. If this reflects Dickinson's intent in the stanza, it still isn't strong evidence to support her claim. Columbus believed he could sail to the East Indies. He wasn't trusting the unexpected but banking on his sense of geography. He never did admit (or realize?) that he had reached a new continental area. It seems likely to me that a sailor venturing into new waters would be armed against the unexpected rather than trusting it. 
        Finally, Thomas is an example of someone who did not trust in the unexpected. Encountering a man who others considered to be Jesus, recently executed and buried, Thomas had to actually feel one of his wounds before offering his trust. In this case, perhaps Thomas should have trusted the unexpected.

Maybe Dickinson is counseling us to trust our inner compass, even if the outcome would be unexpected to the outside world.

Or maybe she is being ironical.

Readers, I hope you have insights to share!