You cannot put a Fire out —

You cannot put a Fire out —
A Thing that can ignite
Can go, itself, without a Fan —
Upon the slowest Night —

You cannot fold a Flood —
And put it in a Drawer —
Because the Winds would find it out —
And tell your Cedar Floor —
                              F583 (1863)  J530


This is an odd little poem. It's easy to take away the notion that the subject is passion or creativity, yet the images themselves tauntingly resist paraphrase or logical analysis.
        First, you can put a fire out. And something burning might well go out on a slow night (whatever that is, precisely), especially if there is nothing to fan the flames. Second, while it is clear that floods can't be folded away in drawers, the reason given is that "the Winds would find it out". Clearly the flood wouldn't stay in the drawer whether or not the winds discovered it and told the floor.

"DancingFlames" by Oscar 

        But while the metaphors defy a logical unpacking, it is easy enough to substitute passion or creativity for both Fire and Flood. I'm going to conflate both qualities into Poetry, for Dickinson's opus has both in abundance. Such poetry ignites the poet, burning within despite any lack of fan or stimulation. Such poetry is like a flood. Poets, like Dickinson herself, might fold the poems away in a drawer, but they will be found out as surely as the flood will spill upon the floor. 

I find it easy to read the poem's subject as passionate love. It is hard indeed to put that fire out and it might burn all the stronger on quiet nights. Neither is it easy to keep secret. Despite all efforts, the prying wind will "find it out" and tell. 

Dickinson draws on homely, female images for this sketch. It is the homemaker or housekeeper who tends the fire, the women who fold things away in drawers and worry about the floors. The paradox at the heart of the poem is the disparity between the domestic scene and the raw power of fire and flood.

Both stanzas are in standard ballad form. The "f" alliterations in the important words help unify it: fire, fan, fold, flood find, and floor.

I'm sorry for the Dead — Today —

I'm sorry for the Dead — Today —
It's such congenial times
Old Neighbors have at fences —
It's time o' year for Hay,

And Broad — Sunburned Acquaintance
Discourse between the Toil —
And laugh, a homely species
That makes the Fences smile —

It seems so straight to lie away
From all of the noise of Fields —
The Busy Carts — the fragrant Cocks —
The Mower's metre — Steals —

A Trouble lest they're homesick —
Those Farmers — and their Wives —
Set separate from the Farming —
And all the Neighbors' lives —

A Wonder if the Sepulchre
Don't feel a lonesome way —
When Men — and Boys — and Carts — and June,
Go down the Fields to "Hay" —
                                                             F582 (1863)  J529

Dickinson dabbles with the lyric pastoral ballad here in this tip of the hat to Romantic Era poets such as William Wordsworth. She includes the brawny, "Sunburned" farmers and their wives toiling, laughing, and driving their horse-drawn hay carts. Unlike the Romantics' hushed, lush, reverent tones, however, Dickinson adopts a rather perky colloquial voice. And unlike the Romantics' somber meditation on Death and the transience of life, Dickinson's poem is a rather facile comparison between the living farmers and the dead. The living are cheerfully working away, particularly in the "time o' year for Hay", while the dead are confined in their narrow graves. She worries about whether or not they are "homesick" or "lonesome". She doesn't express any notion that they might be in some better place, some heaven; so despite the perky tone the underpinning of the poem is rather grim.

Hay cock by a congenial fence (or wall, if you will)

While Dickinson must have known farm families and seen them at work and play, she never spent a season at work in a field. And although she is capable of extending her imagination to very challenging situations, in this poem she relies on stereotypes. Harvest is a very "congenial" time, what with all the laughing and talking over fences. Dickinson oddly phrases this chatting as "Discourse" which, for me, throws a bit of a wrench into the diction. Their "homely" sort of laughter makes even the old, weathered fences smile. The scene might be out of a Budweiser commercial. All it needs are a few frothing mugs.
        In the last stanza we see the men and boys with their hay carts rolling down the country roads to start the haying. Dickinson wonders if such a sight doesn't make the dead feel lonesome. This is something of an inverted metaphor. I think (without digging for evidence) that the image of folks going gaily on to Harvest time in the glorious light of June, is more often likened to going off to Heaven's harvest. Death usually creates the "Mower's metre" with his mighty scythe. 

Loading up the hay cart

        Instead, the dead farmers and their wives are now "set separate" from any discourse about their neighbor's doings, from any of those lively farm activities, and far, far away from the bucolic glories of June. The poem ends as a stark contrast between the activities, however idealized, of the living and the stiff and complete immobility of the dead.

Of Course — I prayed —

Of Course — I prayed —
And did God Care?
He cared as much as on the Air
A Bird — had stamped her foot —
And cried "Give Me" —
My Reason — Life —
I had not had — but for Yourself —
'Twere better Charity
To leave me in the Atom's Tomb —
Merry, and nought, and gay, and numb —
Than this smart Misery.
                            F581 (1863)  J376

The speaker in this poem begins by addressing someone real or theoretical who perhaps asked her if she had prayed about something – no doubt something related to her "Misery". The speaker's response is emphatic and frustrated. "Of Course" she says. But to what effect? "Nothing. I might as well have been a bird stamping on air demanding things." 
        The fifth line is a transition from the speaker's complaining about God to another person to her complaining directly to God – or perhaps to a beloved. While the nature of her grievance is not entirely clear, it is easy to read the poem as saying that the speaker thinks she would be better off dead than living in "smart Misery". "You gave me life," she points out bitterly to God. "But it would have been 'better Charity' to have left me as undifferentiated matter."

That seems pretty harsh. A close reading, however, suggests the speaker is equating "Life" with animation: spiritual, emotional, or intellectual. The "Atom's Tomb" would be existence on the other end of the spectrum: mindless banality. Sure those atoms are merry and gay as they careen carelessly around. But their very lack of purpose and awareness means they are ultimately interred in entropic numbness and "nought". Thus, Dickinson's interleaved list of "Merry, and nought, and gay, and numb". 

        The speaker is lashing out here, but her pain and frustrations are not new themes for Dickinson. She writes in many poems about just what this "smart Misery" is: it is existential loneliness; it is an "imperial affliction"; it is plumbing the disturbing depths of the soul; it is unanswered prayer.
        And it might also be an impossible or tormented love affair. The implied "You" might well be someone the speaker loves passionately. She might have prayed to God to help her cope or even help the affair develop. God does not intervene, and the speaker then chastises the beloved. "You awoke my dreams and my passion," she might be saying in this reading. "But you should have left me "gay, and numb".

The "Atom's Tomb" is an interesting image, for atoms cannot be confined in any but the most sealed environment. The atoms are their own tomb – lifeless unless animated in some way to coalesce into awareness and being. The slant and sight rhyme of the words add interest to the poem, too. The following line starts with "Merry" and this "m" sound draws out the "m" in the preceding "Tomb". The passage "Merry, and nought, and gay, and numb" trips more easily off the tongue than any other line in the poem, the new "n" words, "nought" and "numb" setting it off. The contrasting last line with its three adjacent accented syllables, "this smart Misery" ends the poem with a return to the "m"s, now spiked with the frustration that pervades this poem. 

We see — Comparatively —

We see — Comparatively —
The Thing so towering high
We could not grasp its segment
Unaided — Yesterday —

This Morning's finer Verdict —
Makes scarcely worth the toil —
A furrow — Our Cordillera —
Our Apennine — a Knoll —

Perhaps 'tis kindly — done us —
The Anguish — and the loss —
The wrenching — for His Firmament
The Thing belonged to us —

To spare these striding spirits
Some Morning of Chagrin —
The waking in a Gnat's — embrace —
Our Giants — further on —
                                 F580 (1863)  J534


The poem begins as a simple claim that we see "Comparatively" – through contrast and likeness. The Berkshire Hills, for example, are impressive on their own, but travel to Switzerland or view Edward Church's exotic and panoramic paintings of the Andes (the "Cordillera") as Dickinson surely did, and they would seem much more homely and modest. 
The poem presents revelation in such terms.  One might live so close to a Sagamatha, or Mt. Everest, that it seems just a towering "Thing". The entirety of it is too big for our scale, too shrouded in clouds, and so we cannot even 'grasp' the segment we are familiar with. But in the poem's metaphoric dawn, the clouds burn off. The revelation of the full mountain – the towering epiphany it represents – comes with such a searing blaze of truth that our quotidian existence seems "scarcely worth the toil". The once-grand Cordillera now seems no more remarkable than a farmer's furrow.

But then Dickinson pivots to what strikes me as the Fall and Adam and Eve's resultant loss of Paradise. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge against the instructions of God, they were cast out of Eden to live in suffering and toil. We have no personal memories of this casting out, no racial memory of Paradise – and that is a good thing. How else could we endure? And so it is indeed "kindly – done us" by that same God that those paradisical days are lost in the veils of time and myth. Else, we would be living daily with "Anguish", "loss", "The wrenching – for His Firmament" – and for, most keenly, "The Thing belonged to us".

Thomas Cole, Expulsion from the Garden of Eden

Dickinson employs some of her sharpest sarcasm in the final stanza. God's kindliness is to spare those "striding spirits" – poets and mystics and dreamers – "Some Morning of Chagrin" in realizing the magnitude of loss. This is biting understatement as it stands, but Dickinson sharpens it further. The "chagrin" isn't just remorse and regret but the waking up realizing we are in a "Gnat's – embrace". We are in the furrows. Those high peaks, those giants, those angels – they are all "further on". 
Unlike her Calvinist peers, Dickinson's bitterness isn't directed against Eve as the vessel of Sin, but against the one who wrenched paradise away from humanity's grasp. It's a very physical, even violent verb. The Lexicon list of meanings is grim: " Confiscation; grabbing; wresting; violent seizing; taking away by force". That towering "Thing" we glimpse is our lost patrimony of Paradise.

This reading is congruent with Thomas Cole's famous 1828 painting "Expulsion from the Garden of Eden" which Dickinson was no doubt familiar with (Judith Farr, The Passion of Emily Dickinson, p 69-70).


Dickinson addresses brief glimpses of heaven in "I've known a Heaven, like a Tent" [F357] where heaven appears, dazzles, then "Pluck[s] up its stakes, and disappear[s]", leaving "no Figment of the Thing / That dazzled, Yesterday".  But there is no wrenching away in that poem, perhaps (if my reading of the current poem is correct) because its subject is heavenly heaven rather than the earthly paradise of Eden.

Dickinson addresses the suddenness of insight or epiphany in "Our lives are Swiss" [F129] where at times we get a glimpse of a much larger – and yearned for – world. In that poem there are "Curtains" that shield us from that unattainable vision. Again, that poem lacks the bite of this one. It has a yearning tone for what is glimpsed, but no sense of loss or anguish.
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The Soul unto itself

The Soul unto itself
Is an imperial friend —
Or the most agonizing Spy —
An Enemy — could send —

Secure against its own —
No treason it can fear —
Itself — its Sovereign — Of itself
The Soul should stand in Awe —
                          F579 (1863)  J683


Dickinson writes here about how self mastery and self dereliction play out at the deepest level ¬– within the soul. She presupposes a multiplicity of manifestations within the soul –which in its complexity and emanations we might today think of as the psyche. 

Dickinson depicts a multiplicity of selves in various other poems.  In  "One need not be a Chamber—to be Haunted—" [F407], finding "Ourself behind ourself, concealed" is cause for fright. Encountering one's own self in some "lonesome Place" is worse than finding an assassin in the bedroom.
In "If your Nerve, deny you" [F329], the "you" is a sort of Controller positioned above the "Nerve" as well as the soul. "If your Nerve, deny you – / Go above your Nerve" …/  If your Soul seesaw – / Lift the Flesh door". I've been calling this sort of controller entity the aware Self. 

Al Sayed

In this gnomic little poem there is an inner Soul that seems to be at the mercies of a more active soul. This active soul might be a lordly or "imperial friend" to the inner, but it might also be a corrosive, invasive force, a "Spy" – one Dickinson finds as "agonizing" as any sent by an enemy. Who better knows our vulnerabilities and weaknesses? Who best, then, to undermine our self sovereignty with agonies of doubts and fears?

Ah, but when the Soul is sovereign and "Secure against its own", then that inner soul should "stand in Awe". Dickinson herself expressed a kind of awe in "Through the straight Pass of Suffering" [F187] where the martyrs' souls are steadfast as a compass needle is to the "North Degree".
        "The Soul selects her own Society" [F409] shows a different sort of sovereign soul. This one is self contained, self directed – and extremely discriminating. 

The Angle of a Landscape —

The Angle of a Landscape —

That every time I wake —

Between my Curtain and the Wall

Upon an ample Crack —

Like a Venetian — waiting —

Accosts my open eye —

Is just a Bough of Apples —

Held slanting, in the Sky —

The Pattern of a Chimney —

The Forehead of a Hill —

Sometimes — a Vane's Forefinger —

But that's — Occasional —

The Seasons — shift — my Picture —

Upon my Emerald Bough,

I wake — to find no — Emeralds —

Then — Diamonds — which the Snow

From Polar Caskets — fetched me —

The Chimney — and the Hill —

And just the Steeple's finger —

These — never stir at all —

                    F578 (1863)  J375

This poem is an interesting contrast to the previous one where she views heaven as a small town where everything is downy and dewy. Here, the poet considers only the small view afforded by the gap between a window curtain and the wall. Although she can only see a small portion of a few things, the tableau offers a richness and complexity entirely missing from the charming scene of heaven. The minimalism of items reminds me of one of her last poems:

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,

One clover, and a bee,

And revery.

The revery alone will do,

If bees are few.

                                            (F1779,  J1755; undated)

Dickinson claims the mind can extrapolate an entire ecosystem given a single bee and its one clover. As Milton wrote in Paradise Lost, "The mind is its own place, and in it self / Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n." In the current poem, the speaker finds jewels, opulence, and a meditation on time by looking out one "ample Crack" each morning. She goes on to create an interesting tension between the richness of living systems and the static patterns of the manmade.

Portrait of Lady Ponsonby in Venetian costume
by Liotard,1742-43

Compared to the vast panoramas of Edward Church and the majestic landscapes of Connecticut and Hudson river painters of her day, Dickinson's slice of window affords a very limited vantage – and one that forms an interesting parallel with her life. While some of her loved ones lived very expansive and social lives; while some were avid travellers or uprooted themselves to another continent, Dickinson was beginning to draw into herself and hearth. Yet her daily glimpse of apple bough, chimney, hill, and weather vane tip are sufficient to vault her imagination into realms more vast and penetrating than those of her compatriots.

She begins the poem by setting the scene. Whenever she wakes she sees a small "Angle" of the landscape that "Accosts" her eye as if it were as rich as the costly velvets and satins of Venetian nobility. Yet she sees nothing more than an apple bough, the brickwork of a chimney, the crest of a hill, and "Sometimes" the point of a weathervane. Her brief sketch conveys the warm red of apples and the brown of its branch, the ruddy bricks of a chimney lined in white mortar, the foliage or meadow of a hill, and the dark arrow of the vane. Rich and Venetian indeed!

New England steeple, by Heather Wilkinson Rojo

As the seasons progress the apple tree first loses its apples, then its emerald leaves. These are replaced by winter's snowy diamonds. In contrast to the apple bough, the chimney and hill remain the same. In an interesting shift, we reenvision the weathervane as part of a church steeple. So while the "Vane's forefinger" shifts in and out of view depending on the wind, the "Steeple's finger" never moves at all. 

        Dickinson scholar Cynthia Wulff and noted critic Helen Vendler make quite a bit out of the static vision that remains once the snow has fetched the diamonds from their "Polar Caskets". 

Wulff begins her reading by seeing the landscape in a role of violence: it "pushes its way into the speaker's bedroom and 'Accosts [her]". At the end, Wulff concludes, the static landscape is little more than a "Design of desolation" (Emily Dickinson, p.287-8). "All that remains is the immovable, elemental structure – an outline sketched with mutilated remnants". 

        Vendler contends that the poem initially brims with life but ends with death, moving "from wedding garment to shroud" (Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentary, p. 159-60). She reads the poem as a "heartbreaking picture of a once-enhanced Nature which, with the death of its participatory observer, itself suffers rigor mortis." 

With all due respect to Wulff, I don't see the landscape as pushy. The speaker does says it "Accosts my open eye", but the Lexicon defines "accost" as "encounter", "speak to", or "approach" – any of these definitions make more sense in the poem than "aggressively confront", which "accost" often means today. Instead, I take the speaker to be rather dazzled by what she sees. Dickinson is making the point that there are riches in an apple bough and hill, in the patterns of bricklaying and the occasional glimpse of a weathervane as it charts the winds. The vision, which might seem banal to some, is opulent to her (Vendler's word).

        I also don't find the last stanza to be describing "mutilated remnants" or "rigor mortis". Dickinson may be contrasting life with death: non-living things are fixed whereas the living things have various fates. Humans will die. The view out the window may go unobserved or the house itself might be altered or taken down. The apple tree cycles through its changes and will eventually die. The weathervane might outlive a human but will eventually grind to a halt.

        But I think Dickinson is simply contrasting the dynamic changes of the season against the backdrop of more permanent fixtures. The apple bough is the focus, the feature of most interest. The weathervane is also of interest,  as its entry into the tableau is only occasional and so to be looked forward to. The rest is backdrop. The chimney, the hill, and the steeple's finger, upon which the weathervane is anchored, "never stir". I like that the changeable vane is more interesting than the steeple. 

      These contrasts provide rich and inspiring morning viewing. I find the poem an excellent  reminder to look closely beyond my own window.

I went to Heaven –

I went to Heaven –
'Twas a small Town –
Lit – with a Ruby –
Lathed – with Down –

Stiller – than the fields
At the full Dew –
Beautiful – as Pictures –
No Man drew –
People – like the Moth –
Of Mechlin – frames –
Duties – of Gossamer –
And Eider – names –
Almost – contented –
I – could be –
'Mong such unique
Society –
              F577 (1863)  J374

Dickinson seems to be describing a saccharine Christmas card in this light poem. Picture the classic little Christmas-card town, blanketed with snow, lit by a great star or perhaps the moon. There is usually a snowy meadow and charming hamlet. If there are people they are sedate and peaceful, or if children, innocent and wide-eyed. No one appears to be working unless it is a man pausing from cutting firewood to admire the sky. I like to gaze at such pretty scenes and would be "Almost – contented" to live there.


     Dickinson, of course, adds her great poetic dexterity to limning this sketch that differs in only one important way from the card I described: she is describing Heaven. She would find a kindred spirit in G.B. Shaw who wrote, "heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation" The Statue, Man and Superman, Act III [Don Juan in Hell]. Of course, Shaw was being quite tongue in cheek – but so is Dickinson who I think is lampooning popular conceptions.

Elizabeth M. Kurella

She creates a very static heaven. It is "Stiller – than the fields / At the full Dew" and its people no more dynamic than the lace moths from Flanders. Their duties are feather light, and even their names are soft and downy: Celestine, maybe, or Alma for the feminine; Aurelius or Sebastian for the masculine. 
She is tactfully droll at the end. She could be "Almost" content among "such unique" people. Yes, and Tom Sawyer enjoyed the Sunday School picnic.

For your enjoyment: a Youtube  of Carla Bruni singing the poem accompanied by lots of stills of winged and gossamer maidens.

The difference between Despair

The difference between Despair
And Fear, is like the One
Between the instant of a Wreck
And when the Wreck has been —
The Mind is smooth —
No Motion — Contented as the Eye
Upon the Forehead of a Bust —
That knows it cannot see —
                                    F576 (1863)  J305

Dickinson has explored the numbness of despair in earlier poems. Here she depicts it through contrasting similes. The difference between Despair and Fear is like the difference between a wreck and its aftermath. The reader must expend thought on the wreck and its aftermath to determine how to assign Despair and Fear for she introduces one set in seemingly the reverse order of the other. 
        At least that was the conclusion my first reflection on the poem led me to: fear is like the terror at the "instant of a Wreck"; despair is like the deathly-still water that swallows and conceals it, a state of mental depletion and paralysis. To continue with Dickinson's second simile, despair is like a stone eye that knows it cannot see, something like the "Quartz contentment" that follows the "great pain" depicted in an earlier poem ("After great pain, a formal feeling comes",  F372).
        Yet further reflection led me to also appreciate the similes in the order Dickinson presents them. Perhaps the moment of wreck is like a moment of despair when all hope is lost. Perhaps the aftermath is like the unrelenting and underlying fear that catastrophe might strike again. The mind retreats from seeing, blindering itself as one blinders a skittish horse. Knowing it cannot see the smash-up and debris, the mind stills into a motionless state. Dickinson says it is "Contented" but qualifies that contentment as that of the self-blindered: it is like the eye of a statue, but one that knows it cannot see, knows it would be even more fearful if it could.  

Bust of Sophocles, whose famous
protagonist blinded himself

Yet earlier poems, such as F372 mentioned above, support a reading of the poem that likens fear to the wreck and the aftermath to despair. In "From Blank to Blank" [F484], the mind is likewise "smooth", the narrator likewise taking some comfort in blindness: "'Twas lighter to be blind". In "I lived on Dread" [F498], Dickinson presents fear as a useful state, one that stimulates the soul, urging it on whereas "To go without the spectre's aid / Were challenging Despair." Together, the three poems (and there are others) depict despair as a state of being "numb – and vitalless" (F498).  

Ultimately I think Dickinson chose aesthetics rather than strict parallelism in her ordering of Despair and Fear. Leaving "Despair" at the end of the first line leaves a sadness hanging in the air; one pauses at it; white space follows it. There is an assonance with "Fear" in the second line that balances it. Further, it establishes one of her typical meters: lines one, two, and four in iambic trimeter; line three in iambic tetrameter. 

The poem is composed as two stanzas put together (Johnson has them split). Dickinson does vary the meter in the second stanza for emphasis. "The Mind is smooth" is only two poetic feet; the first part of the next line, "No Motion", metrically goes with it. Breaking up the line forces us to focus on that image of smoothness. It isn't right. The mind seems lobotomized. The long-vowel spondee of "No Motion" further emphasizes the wrongness of the image. 

I don't think this is Dickinson's most memorable poem on Despair but it is particularly effective in using the unconstructed simile of a wreck and its aftermath to convey emotion. Each reader must fill in just what it means to experience and outlive catastrophe.

I'm saying every day

I'm saying every day
"If I should be a Queen, Tomorrow" —
I'd do this way —
And so I deck, a little,

If it be, I wake a Bourbon,
None on me – bend supercilious —
With "This was she —
Begged in the Market place — Yesterday."

Court is a stately place —
I've heard men say —
So I loop my apron — against the Majesty
With bright Pins of Buttercup —
That not too plain —
Rank — overtake me —

And perch my Tongue
On Twigs of singing — rather high —
But this, might be my brief Term
To qualify —

Put from my simple speech all plain word —
Take other accents, as such I heard
Though but for the Cricket — just,
And but for the Bee —
Not in all the Meadow —
One accost me —

Better to be ready —
Than did next Morn
Meet me in Aragon —
My old Gown — on —

And the surprised Air
Rustics — wear —
Summoned — unexpectedly —
To Exeter —
                                        F575 (1863)  J373

Dickinson is a poet of many things, and here she is a poet of delight. This is a poem of dress up and pretend without any bite or twist. The game is to dress and talk like the nobility in case she were to miraculously become a queen. "Better to be ready", she says, than to be caught in her "old Gown" and gawking in "the surprised Air / Rustics – wear" when they are unexpectedly summoned to court. 

Real Queen: Catherine
of Aragon

        Does the poet give any reason for playing this game? No. But it's fun and the fun becomes apparent as the poem progresses. It's all about dress up, not governance or royal privilege. 


First, Dickinson must deck herself out "a little" so the nobles won't superciliously sneer about her begging in the marketplace the day before. She loops her apron in, perhaps, swags that mimic fancy court dress styles. Then she pins the drapes with pretty yellow buttercup flowers. Content that those of higher rank won't outshine her, she then turns to her speech.
        She pitches her voice high, probably in simpering tones. I love her metaphor here: she perches her tongue "On twigs of singing". Divine. Next, because she might have a very "brief Term" to make a suitable impression, she adopts a fancy accent. 

Would-be queen

        All this effort goes for very little show, however, as the poet's only witnesses in the meadow are the Cricket and the Bee. But, she cheerfully concludes, it's best to be prepared. 

Dickinson scatters end rhymes throughout the poem and varies the stanza lengths and meters, giving the poem a casual, spontaneous air. I can see her delivering this poem to a young audience, curtseying, speaking in some funny accent, and brandishing some buttercups.

I know lives, I could miss

I know lives, I could miss
Without a Misery —
Others — whose instant's wanting —
Would be Eternity —

The last — a scanty Number —
'Twould scarcely fill a Two —
The first — a Gnat's Horizon
Could easily outgrow —
                                                        F574 (1863)  J372

Dickinson is making a comparison between the people she cannot do without, no more than two, to those she could miss without any misery. While I want to read the poem as saying that there are oodles and oodles of folks she could do without, a close reading is less clear.
        The last two lines are a bit ambiguous: could the number of lives missed "Without a Misery" "easily outgrow" the gnat's horizon? If so, then the expendable lives could easily outgrow a radius of, say, a couple of feet (the scope of a bumblebee, according to one source). That's a small base to start with and although the phrasing doesn't limit the number of people, it doesn't necessarily follow that it includes almost everyone the poet knows. It might as easily mean ten people as a hundred. 

If it is the gnat's horizon that could easily outgrow the number of expendable lives, then there really are only a few people she could miss without misery. If this is the case, the poem is saying, "there are two people I can't do without and a number of folks I don't give a fig about".  
Of the two readings, I prefer the former. It seems a better contrast to the two essential people, and contrast seems to be what this poem is about. But smitten as I am with the phrase "Gnat's Horizon" (which would be great fun to work into a conversation), it just doesn't establish a dramatic contrast. It doesn't allow us to conclude that Dickinson doesn't care for many people.  
Instead I think she is emphasizing how much she cares for two people. It's a bit of hyperbole, but she claims that every moment she misses one of them would be an "Eternity". That's quite a burden for the lucky two. 

It was a quiet way —

It was a quiet way —
He asked if I was his —
I made no answer of the Tongue
But answer of the Eyes —
And then He bore me on
Before this mortal noise
With swiftness, as of Chariots
And distance, as of Wheels – 
This World did drop away
As Acres from the feet
Of one that leaneth from Balloon
Upon an Ether street.
The Gulf behind was not,
The Continents were new —
Eternity it was before
Eternity was due.
No Seasons were to us —
It was not Night nor Morn —
But Sunrise stopped upon the place
And fastened it in Dawn.
                                      F573 (1863)  J1053



Dickinson is one of our foremost imaginers of death. Sometimes she imagines fading through the centuries in a grave or tucked into the "mysterious Drawers" of earth (F417); sometimes she fancies a glorious and royal Heaven; sometimes she conceives of death as a journey crossing a sea or traversing the "Forest of the Dead" (F453). This poem falls into the journey category and reminds me of "Because I could not stop for Death" (F479). In that famous poem a kindly gentleman caller, Death himself, takes the narrator on an otherworldly carriage ride where she learns only gradually that the carriage horses' heads "Were toward Eternity".  This poem also has a male companion or guide who ushers the narrator into eternity before she realizes it.
  The experience begins – and continues – quietly. Someone asks the speaker if she is his. At first we think he may be a lover and that the narrator is shyly agreeing to an assignation, answering only with her eyes. Eyes are the windows to the soul and the lover sees "yes". When he takes her in his arms and bears her "Before this mortal noise", we know it is an immortal lover, perhaps Jesus. Their journey together sounds marvelous: he carries her as swiftly as if driving a chariot, its wheels carrying them aloft. The narrator seems to enjoy the view, looking down as the world drops away as if they were traveling in the basket of a hot-air balloon. This is an idyllic abduction, a seduction from life. 
        But instead of seeing the familiar landmarks of her life pass before her, as did the narrator in "Because I could not stop for Death," everything she sees is new: there is no more shore line, no more curve of Cape Cod; the land itself is unfamiliar as if she were traversing an entirely different continent. 
At this point she realizes that she is in that "undiscovered country" of eternity, compactly noting that hers was a too-early death: "Eternity it was before / Eternity was due". By having "before" as the last word in the first line, Dickinson creates a nice ambiguity. We first read the line "Eternity it was before us" as if she were looking at an immeasurable vista. But reading on we discover that "before" belongs with the next line: they had reached eternity before it was due. She thinks she has died prematurely. But maybe eternity always seems premature.
        The eternity in this poem is no crumbling granite tomb, no sward of green or boulevard filled with stately angels. Instead, the narrator and her companion become transfixed in one "Place" where it is never winter or summer, never night or morning, but always and forever sunrise. Dickinson portrays it rather dramatically by saying that the sun "stopped upon the place / And fastened it in Dawn". The couple sees the sun about to rise and usher in a new day. Instead, it stops its routine to fasten the place where they wait in eternal dawn as if buttoned together a tableau.
        Dickinson often uses dawn as a metaphor for rebirth or resurrection. But here it is stasis. The rebirth turns out to be the symbol of itself; a constant new day with all the promise that can be no promise. There is no day ahead in which to do things. 
        I cannot tell if Dickinson means the image to be one of cheer or one of diminishment. "Fastened" is rather neutral; it doesn't suggest a joyous state, but neither is it harsh by Dickinsonian standards (think "riveted" or "stapled" – fastening verbs of choice in other poems). It certainly implies a lack of freedom. We fasten something so that it cannot move or go beyond a limited area. We also fasten something to us because we want it always. In that way eternity would be a constant state of awakening.

One could read this poem as if it were an assignation. It is Juliet wanting to fix time forever at daybreak with her Romeo. But perhaps it is a mystic union with the man/god where at the apex all becomes radiantly new in one entire, timeless moment pregnant always with possibility.

The Day came slow — till Five o'clock —

The Day came slow — till Five o'clock —
Then sprang before the Hills
Like Hindered Rubies — or the Light
A Sudden Musket — spills —

The Purple could not keep the East —
The Sunrise shook abroad
Like Breadths of Topaz — packed a night —
The Lady just unrolled —

The Happy Winds — their Timbrels took —
The Birds — in docile Rows
Arranged themselves around their Prince
The Wind — is Prince of Those —

The Orchard sparkled like a Jew —
How mighty 'twas — to be
A Guest in this stupendous place —
The Parlor — of the Day —
                                   F572 (1863)  J304

Sunrise approaches slowly until suddenly, at 5 a.m., it springs like rubies suddenly uncovered – a metaphor mixing the animal with the mineral – or, in a masculine, martial simile, like the light from musket fire. Dickinson pivots to the distaff side when describing how the purple of night is covered over as the rising sun shakes out its Topaz cloth as if the lady of the house were unpacking the linen for the day's use.

Photo: John O Neill

        The "Happy Winds" begin to shake the trees, the rustling of their leaves and branches percussive and musical, like tambourines. The birds line up on fence and branch amid the stirrings of their "Prince", for it is his breath that helps them soar. 
     

  The last stanza is problematic with its dewy orchard sparkling in the morning light "like a Jew". Did Dickinson believe that Jews are decked out with diamonds – and this a result of both acquisitiveness and ostentation? Did she never question this assumption?  Domhnall Mitchell makes the following comments about that in an article, "Temperance in Emily Dickinson's Writing, published in The Emily Dickinson Journal in November, 2006:

Bolt of silk cloth

Dickinson appears to play on the anti-Semitic stereotype of the miserly in one poem ["I Came to buy a smile – today" (Fr258)], and on the acquisitive in [this one]. Both works were enclosed privately in letters to friends, but they were also recorded in the fascicles. In other words, these are not throwaway or confidential remarks: they were preserved, which suggests a lack of self-consciousness about the images being deployed—a sense that they were acceptable to people other than herself. Had the references been made in letters only, one would have thought that Dickinson knew that they were suspect, but knew too that they would have no wider, public, impact. That she recorded them suggests an assumption of cultural approbation—and indeed others in her social circle felt confident enough to publish similar expressions, 

It is a casual anti-Semitism. The morning is glorious, she regards this "Parlor – of the Day" as a "stupendous place". Had there been an intended bite, the  jumble of simile and metaphor wouldn't have been so ecstatic. Nonetheless, I take Mitchell's point about the anti-Semitic stereotype – which cannot be casually dismissed.

Two butterflies went out at Noon

Two butterflies went out at Noon 
And waltzed upon a Farm —
And then espied Circumference
And caught a ride with him –
Then lost themselves and found themselves
In eddies of the sun
Till Gravitation missed them –
And both were wrecked in Noon –
To all surviving Butterflies 
Be this Fatuity
Example – and monition
To entomology
                                                     F571 (1863)  J533
                      

Alternate versions of this poem have engendered many papers and discussions, which I won't address here. Johnson's version comes from fascicle 16, written in 1862; an incomplete revision, filled with alternative words and phrases, was written in 1878. Franklin takes his version from Fascicle 25, dated 1863. I limit my discussion to Franklin's version but do include Johnson's below because there is quite a discrepancy.  

This poem seems something of a parable – a light-hearted version of the Icarus and Daedalus legend, a warning not to fly too high or too close to the sun. On the other hand, it seems a nature poem along the lines of "A Bird came down the Walk" (F359) where Dickinson contemplates the natural world with a cosmic twist. I find it easy to read it metaphorically with the butterflies as thoughts and an entomologist/poet waving her butterfly net in hot pursuit. 

           The story is simple: two butterflies venture out at noon, dancing about the flowers – no doubt mating and sipping nectar. I'm not sure what they "espied", "Circumference" being ambiguously abstract here, but it might have been the wind pushing clouds along the curved top of the sky. Such a wind would surely cause little butterflies to lose their way, pulled higher and higher as the heat of the sun creates rising eddies in the wind. The story has a sad ending for "both were wrecked in Noon". Their little excursion lasted less than an hour. 
          Dickinson ends the poem by citing the butterflies' foolishness as a warning to "all surviving Butterflies" and to entomologists. Don't fly so high that the earth can no longer hold you; don't go chasing off after something that will lead you too far astray.

The poem is written in regular ballad or hymn form. You have to like a poet that rhymes "fatuity" with "entomology". I also like the internal rhyme of "espied" with "caught a ride". 



Johnson's version:

Two butterflies went out at Noon –  
And waltzed upon a Farm —
Then stepped straight through the Firmament
And rested, on a Beam —

And then — together bore away
Upon a shining Sea —
Though never yet, in any Port —
Their coming, mentioned — be —

If spoken by the distant Bird —
If met in Ether Sea
By Frigate, or by Merchantman —

No notice — was — to me —      

I tried to think a lonelier Thing

I tried to think a lonelier Thing
Than any I had seen —
Some Polar Expiation — An Omen in the Bone
Of Death's tremendous nearness —

I probed Retrieveless things
My Duplicate — to borrow —
A Haggard Comfort springs

From the belief that Somewhere —
Within the Clutch of Thought —
There dwells one other Creature
Of Heavenly Love — forgot —

I plucked at our Partition
As One should pry the Walls —
Between Himself — and Horror's Twin —
Within Opposing Cells —

I almost strove to clasp his Hand,
Such Luxury — it grew —
That as Myself — could pity Him —
Perhaps he — pitied me —
                                     F570 (1863)  J532

I've had a phrase in my head for years and always want to credit it to Pope but can never ascertain if he said it or not, or who did: "the bird who presses its breast against a thorn to sing". Maybe I got it as a quote in Colleen McCullough's Thorn Birds or something. I'm reminded of it by this poem where Dickinson subjects herself to an intense thought experiment, seeking to imagine the loneliest "Thing" she can. That Thing turns out to be her "Duplicate" or double.
         The poet makes her purpose clear: this is an expedition of "Expiation", some cleansing through an extreme, "Polar" experience. Dickinson has associated northerly polar regions with God before, notably in "My period had come for Prayer" (F525) where she steps "upon the North" to look for God. In "Through the Straight Pass of Suffering" (F187) she compares the faith of the martyrs to a compass needle which "to the North Degree / Wades – so – through Polar Air!" but in this poem she is going for the bitter, remorseless cold where she can feel Death in her bones. 
         Dickinson doesn't give any clues about why she seeks expiation, but it clearly involves making contact with her Duplicate. She probes "Retrieveless things" to "borrow" him. Perhaps that is the realm of the dead for surely all who pass there become retrieveless. She doesn't want to keep or reanimate this soul, but merely form some fleeting connection. Just the idea that such a creature is possible brings her a "Haggard Comfort". Dickinson's surmise that he exists "Somewhere – / Within the Clutch of Thought" strengthens the word likeness of "Expiation" to "Expediton", for on this trip Thought is its own realm. The other meaning of "clutch" – to grasp – suggests the difficulty of this thought expedition. 

The Count of Monte Cristo as prisoner

         What makes the imagined potential creature her Duplicate is that he too is an outcast, someone "Of Heavenly Love – forgot". Dickinson implies that Heavenly Love has been extended to all others; only she and "one other Creature" are forgotten. Could it be that the expiation involves an actual person, now dead? Some soul mate? To reach him she plucks at the partition between life and death as if she were a prisoner and he, "Horror's Twin", was in a cell on the opposite side. The phrase suggests that the plucking prisoner/poet is the Horror. 
         Dickinson makes a similar ambiguous identification with horror in "That after Horror – that 'twas us"  (F243) where a brush with death is like having a "Face of Steel" look at you with a "metallic grin": "The Cordiality of Death – / Who drills his Welcome in". The terror of this encounter explains perhaps why in the current work the poet "almost strove" to take her Duplicate's hand. She doesn't want a closer brush with death than the "Omen in the Bone". 
This encounter is a truly lonely moment. She clearly senses the Duplicate; he seems to be within reach. Yet having struggled to find him, to borrow him, she stops short of touch.  But the poem does end with a bit more than the hoped-for "Haggard Comfort". She imagines a bond of pity between them, and this is "Luxury". It's a dark place when pity passes for luxury, but it is a place of truth. Not many dive into the depths without the safety net of heavenly love.  Who could pity a Horror? Perhaps only "Horror's Twin".