The Poets light but Lamps—

The Poets light but Lamps—
Themselves—go out—
The Wicks they stimulate—
If vital Light

Inhere as do the Suns—
Each Age a Lens
Disseminating their
Circumference—


      -F930, J883, Sheet 15, 1865


This poem clues us into the fact that Dickinson thought about the legacy of her poetry. In the last few commentaries on Prowling Bee, I've been thinking about the uncanny private/public double-nature of Dickinson’s poetry. This poem shows us the public side of that face. 

The vocation of poet is one Dickinson took quite seriously. And what is it that poets are charged to do?

The Poets light but Lamps—
Themselves—go out—

Poets light the Lamps of readers long after they themselves are gone. These poems help illuminate the Truth for us.

Two of my favorite Dickinson poems are variations on this theme. The first is F802.

The spry Arms of the Wind
If I could crawl between
I have an errand imminent
To an adjoining Zone—

I should not care to stop
My Process is not long
The Wind could wait without the Gate
Or stroll the Town among.

To ascertain the House
And is the soul at Home
And hold the Wick of mine to it
To light, and then return—

The Town is the people of the world, the house is yours and the candle flame of the poet has somehow made it past the “The spry arms of the wind” to reach your wick. (How does the poet do this? Through the contained fire of extremely well-made poems.)

The second one is this, F322:

Good Night—Which put the Candle out?
A jealous Zephyr—not a doubt—
Ah, friend, You little knew
How long at that celestial wick

The Angels—labored diligent—
Extinguished—now—for You!
It might have been the Light House Spark—
Some Sailor—rowing in the Dark—

Had importuned to see—
It might have been the waning Lamp
That lit the Drummer— from the Camp—
To purer Reveille—

The lamp-light of the poem is meant to help us safely row to shore, and to wake us up to “purer Reveille.” In turn, we can Light the candle of others, provided a “jealous Zephyr” doesn’t put out this flame that the Angels have labored so diligently to light for you.

The next lines depend on what "vital" refers to. Is it "wicks" or "they" (the poets)?"

The Wicks they stimulate—
If vital Light

Inhere as do the Suns—

Its hard to say if Dickinson means that the poet's light has to be inherently vital, or if she means that the reader’s wick has to have vital light inherent within it in order to be lit. Perhaps she is saying both at once. There has to be Light inherent in both the poet and the reader for the transfer to take place. You have to keep your wick flammable.

Each Age a Lens

As long as poetry has this inherent vital “light,” then each age can read it through their own unique lens. I think of Shakespeare here, and maybe Dickinson was thinking of him too. The way we interpret Shakespeare has much to do with the age we are living in.  We read Shakespeare differently in 2026 than we did in 1856. “Age” can also refer to how old we are. We also read Shakespeare differently at 60 than we did at 20. The most important thing is not the subjective angle of the perception, so much as the vital light inherent in the work. If that Light is there, then poetry will stand up to countless interpretations.

It’s uncanny that Dickinson had this sense of her own legacy, especially considering her aversion to publishing. She seemed to foresee that her poems would one day be interpreted in various ways across the ages. Using this poem as a catalyst, a whole study could be made of the way an understanding of Dickinson’s poems has changed over time.

Each Age a Lens
Disseminating their
Circumference—

“Circumference” is one of Dickinson's favorite words, and represents a life-time of the poet's consideration. A study could also be made (and probably has been made) of looking at the many meanings of this word in Dickinson's oeuvre. She famously wrote to T.W. Higginson. “My Business is Circumference.” In this poem you get one of the possible meanings Dickinson might be hinting at in this statement. The image of the poet here is a candle shining through the lens of a lamp, illuminating the reader in its circle of light.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

I've none to tell me to but Thee

I've none to tell me to but Thee
So when Thou failest, nobody.
It was a little tie—
It just held Two, nor those it held
Since Somewhere thy sweet Face has spilled
Beyond my Boundary—

If things were opposite—and Me
And Me it were—that ebbed from Thee
On some unanswering Shore—
Would'st Thou seek so—just say
That I the Answer may pursue
Unto the lips it eddied through—
So—overtaking Thee—

      -F929, J810, sheet 14, 1865

I sometimes ask my high school students, would you rather be loved or understood? They usually say: understood. This is a poem about being understood. Most of us know the feeling of finding someone who seems to "get us." You so want to express yourself to them, to tell “you” to them. 

I've none to tell me to but Thee

The pronoun “Thee” is often indicative of God, but here it appears to refer to a person. As we see later in the poem, this Thee has a face and lips. One possibility is Emily’s sister-in-law and dearest friend Susan Gilbert. When this poem was written Emily and Sue had been very close friends for 15 years, since they were school girls. To read Emily’s schoolgirl letters to Sue is to read some of the most beautiful love letters ever written. And, some 15 years after this poem was written, Emily would write to Sue, “With the exception of Shakespeare, you have told me of more knowledge than any one living. To say that sincerely is strange praise.” This poem then, if written to Sue, was written in the middle of a decades long, complex and quite fruitful relationship between these two. 

The reason Emily wrote more poems (250+) to Sue than to anyone else is because Sue understood them better. Like attracts Like. You might even go so far to say that Sue was a kind of co-author of these poems as they appear to be made up of a shared private language.

The thing that brings both you and I into this poem is that Emily had the foresight to create a universal poetry out of this private shared language, another level of communication that transcends the original relationship. She creates a poetry that speaks to us, directly, not just Sue. We have replaced Susan (or whomever) as reader. Emily is telling herself to "Thee," meaning now, "You," and there is no one else she can tell it to. 

You are "Thee," but in the alchemy of love poetry, you are also the self, the “me,” because your “I” has transposed itself to become the “I” of the poem. You too know what it is like to need to tell “me” to someone who understands, even if that someone is only an ideal reader, a supposed person. (We don't all have Susans after all. I guess we do though, shout out to Susan Kornfeld). 

The second line lowers the boom:

So when Thou failest, nobody.

In other words, "When you fail, I have nobody." Is this a guilt trip then? A number of Emily’s poems around this time do have a bit of that quality to them. (See the poem that Emily wrote on the same sheet of paper as this one for the nearest example).

“Fail” is an oft-used word in Dickinson's poetry and can mean "die" as well as "not succeed." Think of the famous poem of hers, “I died for beauty” (F488) which has the lines, He questioned softly “Why I failed?” / "For Beauty," I replied —. In that poem the word “fail” takes on a rich meaning. What does it mean to fail for beauty?

In the poem under discussion, she is using the word "fail" in a different way. It’s more emotionally complex here. It has a bite to it, I think, the kind that comes from hurt. (One can only imagine how Sue felt when reading these poems. Did it make her pull away more? or less?)

It’s still awesome though. Taken as a whole, these poems to Sue can be seen as an attempt to “tell me” to her, to glean all of the nuanced genius of the poet's self, all the emotional complications of the psyche, all of the courageous loyalty of the heart, all of the deeply considered philosophy, and to "tell" it, which means to present it in the loveliest words possible, as a poem, probably accompanied with a flower.

Dickinson told T.W. Higginson in a letter, “When I state myself, as the Representative of the Verse- it does not mean -me- but a supposed person.” But I think she's being a bit coy. To “tell me," on the contrary, is to attempt to get as close to a non-supposed person as possible. The tension between the supposed person and the non-supposed person helps create the strange alchemy of poetry.

I know that when I write poetry, there is often both an abstract supposed-reader in my mind, and at the same time an actual friend. It's a function of the literary "I." Otherwise, paraphrasing Frank O'hara in his great poetry manifesto on Personism, "Why not just pick up the phone?" 

In the previous commentary I mentioned the fact that Emily kept copies for herself of the poems that she wrote for specific people. Why did she do this? This "copy" is for someone, but who? I think it is meant for the "nobody" mentioned in this line, an anonymous “supposed” person who may read this poem. The copy is, ultimately, addressed to its idealized future reader, You. The private-public face of a poem has a function; a way of bringing the world into the self, and the self to the world. 

But it can be confusing for the reader too. The private and public faces of a poem sometimes point in opposite directions; the poem both masks and reveals. The face of the poem may "spill/ Beyond...Boundary." (!)

It was a little tie—

This line is short and curt. It’s a little tie. Speaking of form, its cool how Dickinson forgoes the stanza break you expect after “tie,” which thus ties the two stanzas together. The unique stanzaic-form of this poem goes, 443443 4434443. One more little formal observation is that a dash (like the one that ends the line) may be loosely defined as “a little tie." 

It was a little tie—
It just held Two

These two lines function like a little mini-poem inside the larger one. "The Two" in this case are, I believe, the essential and original Two, Emily and Sue. But of course as soon as you read the poem then the Two, the new essential Two, is Emily and You.

The tie is the words, the poem, where you meet on the page. 

It just held Two, nor those it held

“Nor those it held," meaning, "and not even those two it held." That tie has been broken, by "Thee," by Sue (or Kate or Charles or You), so now it no longer holds Two. 

It just held Two, nor those it held
Since Somewhere thy sweet Face has spilled
Beyond my Boundary—

You have to like the surrealism in the line, “Somewhere thy sweet Face has spilled.” I wonder how Dalí would paint this line?

Another formal observation: look at the way the three lines enjamb; the sound of the lines together has a sense of spilling out from the comma after "Two," spilling beyond the boundary. 

The word “Boundary,” is worth stopping to ponder too. Dickinson wrote (in another letter to Higginson,) “My Business is Circumference.” You will see this concept explored, in one way or another, in many of Dickinson’s poems. Suffice to say, when she talks about Boundaries, she means business.

If things were opposite—and Me
And Me it were—that ebbed from Thee

In the second stanza she’s saying, basically, we are different, you and I, because I care more. I’m more dependable, more loyal. If I wandered away from you, I’d come back when you really needed me. Where you failed, I would have succeeded.

She is telling of herself. This is who she is. Loyal to a fault. 

It’s telling that she doubles down on the “Me” in this second stanza. There is an implicit extra emphasis on that second "Me" of the stanza. The sense I get is, "Let Me tell Thee who Me is: Me is not Thee, because I wouldn't do to Thee what Thou art doing to Me."

And Me it were—that ebbed from Thee
On some unanswering Shore—

(In my mind I hear a rhyme of Poe's "Plutonium Shore" in "unanswering Shore" here. It may be coincidence, but The Raven was published in 1845, and was widely known, so it may well be an unconscious borrowing.) 

The “unanswering Shore” line leads David Preest to the conclusion that this poem may have been written for Kate Anthon, because Kate was in Europe at the time it was written and therefore unavailable to Emily. Or if you are a Charles Wadsworth proponent, you might see "Unanswering Shore" as pointing to Wadsworth's move to the West Coast. When it comes to biographical takes, I tend to most often read Sue as "Thee," but it is worth saying that there are different possibilities. I love the mystery. It adds a layer of intrigue to these poems.

The metaphor works for any relationship though. The beloved has become the Ocean, and the lover, represented by the land, can't hear the Ocean for some reason. So the Shore says to the Ocean, keep trying to reach me. Keep asking...

Would'st Thou seek so—just say

If I don’t answer you the first time, then its just because I didn't hear you. Please just ask again, and I’ll come running. I can relate to this scenario. Dickinson puts it into epic poetic terms. The land is ebbing away from the ocean (reversing the usual perspective of the ocean ebbing from the land), and the Ocean is now losing the land. If I can't hear you, call again, says the poet. 

Would'st Thou seek so—just say
That I the Answer may pursue
Unto the lips it eddied through—

The Shore is now pursuing the receding Ocean so it can hear what it has to say. But look at the way it happens. If we are following the metaphor, then the water of the ocean, even as it is ebbing away, eddies back to shore, calling back to it. “Eddied” is a great verb here. An Eddy is a current of water running contrary to the main current. This counter-current creates a circular motion, like a tide-pool. (Whitman, Dickinson's contemporary, uses the metaphor of words eddying too. He also has the great line about the crooked inviting fingers of the sea that I was reminded of here.)

The poet says she will follow the eddying pleas of the receding ocean straight to its lips. The lip of the Ocean (one pictures the edge of the wave) is not just the place from which speech comes, but also where the kiss happens. The lips of the Shore who “tells me” to the Ocean, meets the lips of the Ocean who “tells me" to the Shore. They meet in the middle, expressed as a kiss. There, the ear becomes the mouth, the mouth the ear, the “Me” becomes an “Us.”

So—overtaking Thee—

The ocean is being overtaken by the land. The tide has risen. The wave has come back to shore. Or rather, to follow the weird inversion of the metaphor, the Shore has come back to the wave. The two are drawn together in a kiss. When the “Me” overtakes “the Thee,” then both are gone. There is only “Us” left.

It's possible to think of going out to kiss the Ocean as meaning "death by drowning." The "Me" is overtaken in the overtaking of "Thee."

Finally, one last formal thing. Note the way that extra line of tetrameter in the second stanza, the final 4 of the 4434443, suspends the final rhyme. This makes the poem feel subtly breathless, which gives the sense of the effort in the overtaking; the undertaking of the overtaking.

This poem overtakes me. Why? Because I can relate. I understand the feeling of finding someone who really understands you. And the frustration of losing that. It's human. It understands me. 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S.

“I have seen it. What?
Eternity. It is the sun
Matched by the sea”

-Arthur Rimbaud

The Bird must sing to earn the Crumb

The Bird must sing to earn the Crumb
What merit have the Tune
No Breakfast if it guaranty

The Rose content may bloom
To gain renown of Lady's Drawer
But if the Lady come
But once a Century, the Rose
Superfluous become—


    -F928, J880, sheet 14, 1865

Was Emily writing these poems for just anyone? What was the “crumb” this poet earned with her song? What breakfast did these poems “guaranty” her?

These poems, this drawer of roses, an astonishing number of them, mean so much to us, but what do we, in turn, matter to Emily’s day to day life?

Or did Dickinson’s poems have a more pointed audience? Well, we do know that many of Dickinson's poems were given (often with a flower attached) to her  friends, and we also know know that the largest majority were given to Emily’s sister-in-law, Susan Dickinson. So I think it's fair to say that some, if not all, did have specific personal intentions.

But the ambiguity remains nevertheless. Is Sue the Lady in this poem then? Or is this Lady here meant to be something, or someone, more divinely ethereal?

The poem works either way. And sometimes I think Emily did too. But mostly I think this was for Sue. I bet this “song” was delivered to her with a red rose to underscore its message. It's implicitly asking, will this rose be shoved into a drawer with the rest? Will you finally come and visit me?

If you read this poem after F925, “The Lady Feeds Her little Bird,” which was written on the sheet before this one, sheet 13,  you begin to see a pattern. These poems were meant for a single Lady, one who lived right next door to Emily. This Lady wasn’t like Emily, who preferred to stay in the confines of her own garden. For interminable weeks on end Sue would get caught up in her own family and social life, ignoring her faithful friend (not to mention one of the world's greatest poets). After all, Sue could just look out of her window toward Emily’s, now and then, just offer the merest crumb, and the Bird would be fed breakfast. I can feel the deep sigh in these poems, the pathos.

Another poem in this Lady/Robin “series” is F810:

The Robin for the Crumb
Returns no syllable
But long records the Lady's name
In Silver Chronicle.

The wonder is that Dickinson did just that, she "records," in her poetry, the "silver chronicle" of her adoration for Sue. This chronicle was beautifully enough rendered that it would last long past the lifetimes of the friends. 

But the irony is that Dickinson doesn’t record "the Lady’s name.” We just know her has "The Lady" in these poems. What makes the poetry last, perhaps, is in the way it is so deeply personal and yet transcends the personal at once. Would we remember these poems if they all said "Susan" instead of "Lady?" By making it anonymous it includes the general reader. We are all the Bird looking for crumbs from the Lady’s hand. We are all hoping for breakfast, for a break in our fast. 

And if we are the Bird, we are also the Lady. If these poems are generalized to include us too, then what are the crumbs we may give to the hungry ghost of the poet? We may give Her our attention. She kept the roses for us by imbuing them with us much beauty and love as her genius could muster. 

***

"The Bird must sing to earn the crumb." Does this line reveal the secret of Emily's Dickinson's vocation? It's like the kid who learns to play guitar to impress the girl. Would Emily ever have become a poet if she hadn't had Sue to show her what a true feast is like, and then, terribly, if she hadn't been strung along by her for the rest of her life with nothing but a crumb here and there? 

***

Another irony to this poem is that the majority of the poems we have from Emily Dickinson come from her drawer, not Sue's. She kept a copy for herself. Why? Because they existed for her as objects of attention and beauty beyond their intended use. These "roses in song," kept for us in her own drawer, remain fresh and fragrant, and far from superfluous.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Vincent Keeling

P.S. One thing about this poem worth considering is where Dickinson places the stanza break. She lets it follow sense rather than form. She could have easily followed traditional form by putting the break after the first verse, but instead she uses the break to split up the ideas of "bird" and "flower." In other words, it functions more like the end of a paragraph than a stanza. I won't go so far as to say that this is a crack of reality in lyric's fault line, but it may be seen from a certain position as seismic. Because if this is a song, then the melody would be broken. The song bird is reduced to prose. The melody is presumed missing.

Each Second is the last

Each Second is the last
Perhaps, recalls the Man
Just measuring unconsciousness
The Sea and Spar between.

To fail within a Chance —
How terribler a thing
Than perish from the Chance's list
Before the Perishing!


          -F927, J879, sheet 14, 1865


In the first stanza I see a man who is in a shipwreck and is holding onto the spar (the mast), about to go under. This might be the end he thinks. He’s measuring how long it will be until he loses consciousness. Each second could “Perhaps" be his last. But maybe there's still hope?

The second stanza is where the philosophical heft of the poem comes in:

To fail within a Chance —
How terribler a thing

To die while there is still a chance of survival is more terrible...

Than perish from the Chance's list
Before the Perishing!

To be on "Chance's list" means you're still among those who might survive, so to "perish from Chance's list" means possibility has ended. In other words, it is worse to die while still having a chance to live than to be doomed from the start.

To return to the metaphor of the sailor drowning: if he is going to die anyway, it would've been easier to go down with the ship than to stay alive a little longer struggling to live, dying of thirst or exposure, which are fates worse than drowning.   

This metaphor could apply to love, or even faith. I think this poem can be seen as an examination of hope. The cruelty lies in being suspended between hope and loss. Hope is "terribler" because possibility intensifies suffering. 

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" it says on the doorway to hell in Dante's Inferno. But Dickinson might hang her sign on hell's exit: "Abandon all hope, ye who exit here."

"Be Mine the Doom" she says in F919.

I think if you read the poem backwards, you arrive again at that first line, "Each second is the last." That line, by itself, is powerful. There is no hope for the future in this line, but there is great emphasis on the present.

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Alfred Guillou, "Adieu", 1892

P.S. In a letter to her niece Emily asked her to keep an apartment for Aunt in her heart, "call it Endor’s Closet." This must, I think, refer to the witch of Endor. Why does Emily refer to herself the witch of Endor? In the Bible, the "Witch of Endor" is a necromancer whom King Saul consults in 1 Samuel 28. Saul, the king of Israel, seeks wisdom from God in choosing a course of action against the assembled forces of the Philistines. He receives no answer from Yahweh. Having driven out all necromancers from Israel, Saul searches for a medium anonymously and in disguise. His search leads him to a woman of Endor, who claims that she can see the ghost of Samuel rising from the abode of the dead. The voice of the prophet’s ghost, after complaining of being disturbed, berates Saul for disobeying God, and predicts that Saul will perish with his whole army in battle the next day. Saul is terrified. The witch of Endor comforts Saul when she sees his distress and insists on feeding him before he leaves. The next day, his army is defeated as prophesied, and Saul commits suicide.

If I’m getting this reference right, Emily is identifying here with the witch of Endor; a medium who reveals the future (Saul's doom), no matter how uncomfortable this truth may be. The witch is working in opposition to Yahweh, but not, we note, without compassion for Saul. She feeds and comforts him.

P.P.S. I'm not sure I agree that hope is "terribler." Hope may intensify the pain, but it also motivates the struggle for survival. It can keep you alive. Things do, often, get better. 

I stepped from Plank to Plank

I stepped from Plank to Plank
A slow and cautious way
The Stars about my Head I felt
About my Feet the Sea.

I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch—
This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience.

       -F926, J875, sheet 13, 1865


Stepping into an Emily Dickinson poem often feels like walking onto a precarious plank. You go slowly and cautiously. When I get to the line in this poem “The Stars about my head I felt” I am suddenly immersed in the immensity of the poem. I feel myself under the dizzying expanse of the night time sky. Then there’s a line break and I look down at the equally dizzying expanse of the Sea. Vertigo sets in. I am suspended there between these two giants, dwarfed.

I had a dream once I was riding on a cloud over the ocean and was suddenly freaked out by the precariousness of my position. How am I being held up by a cloud??? It was a metaphor for the seemingly impossible buoyancy of life. This poem feels a little like that. How do we stay suspended between these twin abysses? Any wrong move and we may fall.

There is an earlier poem, F340, "I felt a funeral in my brain," dated 1862, that could stand as a sequel:

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down—
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing—then—

"I felt a funeral in my brain" Andrew Bird, Phoebe Bridgers

Is it okay to fall? Is it a good thing to be "Finished knowing"? 

In the poem that was written down by Emily's hand directly above this one (on the same sheet of paper, sheet 13) there is a bird that falls slowly. Tom C pointed out in the comments (see F925) that the word “fall” is worth considering. Tom's astute comment reminded me of other uses of the word "fall" in Dickinson’s oeuvre, especially the lines from F754,

Still at the Egg-life –
Chafing the Shell –
When you troubled the Ellipse –
And the Bird fell –

Does "fell" mean the bird died or flew? 

I'm now thinking of the famous poem F372, "After great pain a formal feeling comes," where the feet mechanically go around in the air, 

The Feet, mechanical, go round—
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought—

This further reminds me that any time Dickinson uses the word “feet” in a poem, which is often, she seems to simultaneously mean metrical feet. (Metrical feet are the rhythmic units in poetry). It's self-referential: Dickinson's actual feet become synonymous with her poetic feet. So then "step by step" can also mean something like beat by beat. Try re-reading the poem with this idea in mind. Reading these poems may feel precarious, but writing them must have felt even more so.  Along these lines, the last couplet of this poem is worth thinking about.

This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience.

If we think of the feet in this poem as metrical feet, then the precarious gait of the rhythm in Dickinson’s poetry suddenly appears to be an effect of heart-break. I’d never thought of the word choice and and clipped conciseness, both of which change up the gait of Dickinson's poems, as a product of pain and survival's subsequent fears, but in this poem, for the first time, I do.

However, the gait of this poem isn't precarious. The metrical feet in the earlier poem, "After great pain a formal feeling comes," F372, go all awry, but the gait in this poem stays in perfect iambic 4/3 march-step. And unlike in the earlier poem, "I felt a funeral in my brain," F340, where she falls from the plank, here, she doesn't. She's learned "a slow and cautious way." This poem is the sequel.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. My dream of riding clouds :

SEA OF BOOKS

I tell myself before going to bed that I want to have a good dream and remember it. And I do. This morning I had a dream where Eve and I were in an old Victorian house on an island belonging to her family. While exploring the house I found an old book in the bookshelf that explained how to ride clouds. I showed the instructions to Eve and we decided to follow them. First we took a boat out to sea. When we reached the right spot a cloud came down and we got on. The cloud took us a mile or so up in the sky and we just floated there. It was so comforting to the eye to see so much water around us, like the eye was seeing itself. But then the rational fears kicked in. Fear of falling. How could we be supported by a cloud? Fear of being lost. What if the cloud just keeps drifting and we don't come back? But, alas, we didn't fall off and, lo, the cloud eventually returned us to the ship. This is a metaphor for the seemingly impossible buoyancy of life if ever I dreamed one. We took the ship back to the island.

After we settled in I went back to look at the book again. This time I noticed that the whole bookshelf was stained in a dark sea-blue light, which made it hard to distinguish the books. I finally found the book I was looking for. I started leafing through. It was incredible. On some pages the words were cut out of the page, so you could only read them if you held the book up to the light. Other pages were made of wood with words and decorative leaves carved in relief. There were many fantastic pictures. On one page a woman, a nurse-maid, appeared before me to tell an old story. I listened, wrapped up in the story, rapt. The book was full of surprises. When I finished reading the book I noticed that there was now writing carved into my hand, all the way through, so you could see it backwards on the back of my hand. I held it up to the light in wonder. I didn't look to see what the writing said, but it was in a beautiful script, the same as in the book. The writing had somehow transferred from the book. I don't think it matters what the writing said. What matters is that there was writing carved into my hand... Kafka's "I am writing", Book of John's "In the beginning was the Word," the original impulse of communication, relationship itself. These words I am now writing were what was written in my hand.

The Lady feeds Her little Bird

The Lady feeds Her little Bird
At rarer intervals—
The little Bird would not dissent
But meekly recognize

The Gulf between the Hand and Her
And crumbless and afar
And fainting, on Her yellow Knee
Fall softly, and adore—


        -F925, J941, sheet 13, 1865


When researching this poem I came across a post on Instagram that asked for interpretations of it. The first one was admirably succinct:

“Humble Acceptance in face of retreat of time or affection.”

Emily gives us this idea in the guise of a charming allegory. It begins with... The Lady... 

This Lady could be Emily’s best friend Sue, or it could be Lady Fortune, or even Mother Nature. (It’s probably not the Virgin Mary though, since you don't picture Her forgetting about you.) This Lady is regal, but fickle. We don't know anything else about her except that she has a yellow knee. Why yellow? Is yellow the color of the Lady's dress, or of Her skin? Is yellow meant in a more cosmic way, like the color of the Sun or Moon?

In the first line this yellow Lady, who we imagine is dressed in fine regalia, is feeding her little pet Bird. 

Then line two drops a bomb. The Bird (the poet) is getting fed by The Lady at rarer and rarer intervals. The Lady, it would appear, seems to be forgetting about her little bird. Perhaps the bird no longer amuses her. Perhaps she has other interests? 

We’ve all been there. For whatever reason the person we admire who is paying attention to us begins to do so less and less. We lose favor.

What's a girl to do? She does something unexpected and transformative.

The little Bird would not dissent
But meekly recognize

The Bird would not dissent. A double-negative. Dissent is a funny word to use here too. Dissent means “to publicly disagree with an official rule or a popular idea.” Private feelings may be another matter.

What is being meekly recognized?

The Gulf between the Hand and Her

It’s an acknowledgement of how far the Bird, in its poverty, is from the Lady. But the trippy thing about this line is that the distance is between the "Hand" of the Lady and "Her," the Lady. It's as if the hand is still feeding the bird, but the arm is elastically stretching further and further. In other words, the distance begins to happen before the loving stops. 

And crumbless and afar
And fainting,

The ghosted poet feels bereft. And yet, dying, the little song-bird will... 

Fall softly, and adore—

The image of the fainting bird falling softly to its death is a sad one, yet there is a levity here. The bird is falling softly. And the reason the bird is falling so softly is because she is being held aloft in her adoration of the Lady.

Fall softly, and adore—

What a beautiful line. It has a hymn-like tone to it, almost religious, except that there's a twist; the merciful He is here a merciless She. 

The usual narrative is "Hell hath no fury like a woman spurned," but Dickinson upends that expectation. Instead of anger, she is "falling softly, and adoring." It's a monumental shift. The poet can love without being loved in return. 

There is a William Blake poem that is apropos here: "The Angel that presided o’er my birth/ Said, “Little creature, form’d of Joy and Mirth,/ “Go love without the help of any Thing on Earth.” That's what the little bird is doing here with her song, loving with her own inner strength.

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Lesbia and her Sparrow by Edward Poynter

Notes: Dickinson's poem may be riffing off of Catullus’ 1st century BC poems about his lover Lesbia and her pet bird. She likely knew them from studying Latin in school.  Here’s an interesting take on them. And here’s the poem.

Sparrow, my Lady's pet,
with whom she often plays and holds to her chest,
to whom she gives her fingertip as you peck away,
and whose sharp bites she likes to provoke
whenever it pleases her
to play some dear little game
(it’s a small relief for her longing, 
so that her passion might quiet down).
Oh – if only I could play with you as she does,
and alleviate the troubles of my melancholy mind!

On that dear Frame the Years had worn

On that dear Frame the Years had worn
Yet precious as the House
In which We first experienced Light
The Witnessing, to Us—

Precious! It was conceiveless fair
As Hands the Grave had grimed
Should softly place within our own
Denying that they died.

      -F924, J940, sheet 13, 1865


Here you have a poem about a framed photograph, which is in turn framed by a house; a frame inside a frame inside a frame. 

On that dear Frame the Years had worn

The frame is dear. Dickinson is not telling us who is in the photograph in the frame in the center of this poem, but we find out in the last line that it is someone who "died," so we can infer that it is a loved one, maybe a family member, or maybe some writer Emily revered. (We know she had images in her room of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot.) 

The memory of this person is kept alive through the image in the frame, which is as precious as the House “in which We first experienced Light.” "Light" could mean a few things. I take it as literal first. It refers to the house in which we were born, where we first opened our eyes and saw physical light. (Whatever may be meant metaphorically by "Light" is up to the reader).

This is especially pertinent because the house that Emily was born in, where she first saw “Light,” is the same house she was in when she wrote this poem 35 years later, and the same one in which she would die some 20 years after it was written. The house itself is a frame for memories. In fact, you can go to the Dickinson homestead tomorrow, if you wish, and walk inside of this frame, Emily’s ghost all around.

"Precious" is repeated twice in this poem, underscoring it. And look at the way that first stanza sets up that second “Precious!” for maximum impact: there are four lines of iambic meter that roll nonstop before pausing for a comma, a beat, then a dash at the end of the stanza: 

The Witnessing, to Us—

which resolves after a suspenseful stanza break into... 

Precious!

What is so precious? "The Witnessing, to Us—" It is the witnessing of life, the framing, epitomized the image of a loved one.

The poem though is missing the photograph. We can't see who is in this frame, so in a sense it is less about the actual photograph than it is about "The Witnessing."  

(I'm reminded of hearing Southern Baptists preachers shout, “Can I get a witness!”)

Since the photo is absent, the poem turns its attention to the reader witnessing the poem. You put your own photo there. The poem reminds us to give witness, and to give our love a solid frame to help keep it precious.

Not only is the memory double-precious, but the person we love is "conceiveless fair,” which is to say so fair that you can’t even conceive of it. Could you explain the physical beauty of one you loved in such a way that another could conceive of it? No, and not even a photograph could do that. A photograph is only an aid to memory.

As Hands the Grave had grimed
Should softly place within our own

Wow. That image of grimy skeleton reaching up out of the grave and softly placing before us the image of its past living self is worthy of a great ghost story. It’s a very haunting way of seeing a photograph, tender and terrible at once.  

Denying that they died.

The idea that the dead, through the photograph, are denying to us that they died is touching. Through our memories the dead deny -and defy- death itself.

The photograph is to the face as the poem is to the mind. In the poem we have the mind of Dickinson framed, as if her grimy skeleton hand is reaching up out of the grave and softly placing the words within our own.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

They won't frown always—some sweet Day

They won't frown always—some sweet Day
When I forget to tease—
They'll recollect how cold I looked
And how I just said "Please."

Then They will hasten to the Door
To call the little Girl
Who cannot thank Them for the Ice
That filled the lisping full.

        -F923, J874, sheet 13, 1865

This poem is slippery. The trick is to reconcile the ice in the second stanza with the cold in the first. Let's plunge into some possible meanings. 

My initial reading of this poem was about a little girl in trouble who is imagining how much she’ll be missed when she’s dead. The key to this interpretation is the line, “They'll recollect how cold I looked.” How can you not think of a corpse when you read this line, especially knowing Emily's penchant for having the narrator of the poem speak from beyond the grave? In this narrative the girl can no longer say thank you because she’s dead. The ice at the end that filled her lisping full was given to her by her parents as she was dying to wet her parched lips and give her final comfort, which all comes a little too late.  In this interpretation the point of the poem is to be kinder because some day the little girl who is annoying to you because of her teasing will be dead. Or something like that. 

It's a viable reading of the poem, but there is another way to read this narrative, in which the ice filling the mouth has a different meaning. The second interpretation is about a little girl who is angry for being violently punished for teasing and runs away.  This little girl has been teasing her sister and brother, (or maybe her parents), making fun of them by lisping and mocking them. Her siblings (or her parents) out of anger punish the little girl by filling up her mouth with ice.

The little girl asks them to stop because the ice is cold. "They'll recollect how cold I looked." She says “please.” (In both readings that "please" has real pathos, hanging there like it does.) You have to imagine how painful this punishment would be to a little girl, the sting of the ice. But, alas, the "please" is not heeded, so she runs away. The siblings/parents call out the door to her, but its too late.

The siblings/parents are no longer frowning at the little girl's teasing, now they are smiling, happy the girl is gone on this "sweet" day. 

They won't frown always—some sweet Day

Or is the day "sweet" for the girl because she has gotten away from her tormentors? I think it is likely meant to be the latter. It's not happy for the siblings/parents, we know, because they are hurrying to the door to call the girl back. 

Then They will hasten to the Door
To call the little Girl

But the girl is gone, and therefore cannot "thank them" for the ice they stuffed into her mouth.

Who cannot thank Them for the Ice
That filled the lisping full.

In this reading of the poem, "Who cannot thank them" is meant to be sarcastic. The girl does not stick around to "thank" the siblings/parents for this violent act. 

There is a possibility that the gratitude is meant to be sincere rather than sarcastic, that the chastened girl has learned her lesson about teasing others, and is grateful for the lesson. But I don't think so. I think Dickinson is baring her teeth. 

This poem was a real head-scratcher. I had to do a double-take.

Reading it again I see a little girl who is saying one day I'll be dead and they'll be sorry they stuffed my mouth with ice to stop my teasing. They'll wish they had their teasing girl back again. As a HS teacher I can relate. I often find myself frustrated with students who are teasing each other, but when they graduate, these are often the kids I miss the most. 

Do you have a different interpretation? If so, I'd love to hear it. 

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. This poem reminds me of one by Ron Padgett. I looked everywhere for this poem and couldn't find it, so I reached out to the poet himself, who generously sent it along to me. You can find it in Very Collected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2025). Here it is.

The Value of Discipline

I am very disappointed in you Myron. 

You are a very smart boy, 

and we had high hopes for you. 

And now this. 

I don't know.

Go to your room.

Myron heads toward his room,

but does his head hang low?

No way!

He is looking straight ahead

and feeling a hot black liquid

trickle through his heart. 

Great galleons

bound through the rough seas

and on them bearded men

are shouting sailor things

as if to the wind.

Back in his room

the objects look older.

What joy to make them walk the plank!

Avast! Avaunt! Splash! Garrr!