Spring is the Period

Spring is the Period
Express from God.
Among the other seasons
Himself abide,

But during March and April
None stir abroad
Without a cordial interview
With God.


     -F948, J844, sheet 19, 1865


Spring is the Period
Express from God.

The word "Period" is shorthand in Dickinson for the idea that something will come to an end. This is a poem about beginnings, but a reminder of the end is right there at the beginning of the poem. 

“Express” is another word to consider here. It can mean "to send quickly," but also "to communicate what you think and feel." Both meanings are at play. I also think of another definition of the word, which is to remove milk from a mother's breast using pumping in order to be able to feed it to a baby in a bottle. Spring is God’s expressed milk.

This first sentence ends, we note, with a period instead of the usual dash. It sets us up for the second longer sentence:

Among the other seasons
Himself abide,

But during March and April
None stir abroad
Without a cordial interview
With God.

Spring is a gift from God says the first sentence, but the second says that none get there without a friendly, but officious meeting with God.

The word interview is derived from the Middle French entrevue (meaning "to see each other"). The term in 1865 would have been used to describe official meetings. Neither of the two most common modern definitions, the job and journalistic interview, existed back then in the way we understand them today.

Why does Dickinson call an encounter with God an interview rather than a meeting or communion? It turns God from an abstract theological presence into something like the top brass of spring, interviewing the natural world before letting it loose.

The word "cordial" has the connotation of being friendly but formal. “None stir abroad / Without a cordial interview / With God.” could merely mean that everything that comes out into the world in spring has a direct encounter with God, but the tone of the words "cordial interview" hint at something more going on. “Cordial," with it's bureaucratic tone, carries some irony. 

“Cordial” can have that slightly too-polite quality. It's warm and friendly, but also perhaps the kind of phrase you'd use about a meeting with someone who has power over you. It might be a stretch, but I can hear a little menace in the understated irony of this word, like in the Godfather: 

"Don Corleone has requested 'a cordial interview' with you before you leave, signore." 

I'm playing devil's advocate a little bit here, but I do think there's a hint of a power dynamic in the poem. 

Mostly though the term "cordial interview" is light and humorous. God is conducting interviews with the things that are about to emerge, the flowers and birds. If, after a long difficult winter, God's going to have a little talk with us in March or April, what does He say? The reader of this poem, along with the birds bees and butterflies, is being interviewed. God asks you, "So, what are your summer plans?"

Or, to quote the poet Mary Oliver, "What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Maybe Dickinson had this kind of cordial in mind as well?

P.S. The phrase "none stir abroad" reminds me that Emily did not go abroad. She stayed at home, like a flower that refused the cordial interview and kept her own company instead.

P.P.S. I like how the emphatic "d" at the end of God seems to be the impetus for the rhyme scheme of this poem. If you've spent much time in church, you've might've heard how preachers like to emphasize that "d" when they say the word "God." In the Midwest, where I grew up, the sound was sometimes given its own syllable. GawDah. 

In this poem we get a great rhyme scheme with that emphatic ending D sound, which acts like a bass drum thud driving the rhythm. 

1 and Duh

1 and Duh

1 and 2 and 3 

1 and Duh

1 and 2 and 3

1 and Duh

1 and 2 and 3

1 and Duh

D is an interesting letter, meaning-wise. It is generally thought that the letter started out as an pictogram of "door," and you can see it if you look at the letter. It does look like a door, albeit a hobbit-door. 

But the sound of the letter is more like a door shutting than opening. Thud! If you turn the sound of it way up, like, say, in the word "DeaD," it's scary. It carries a touch of terror when that closing door sound comes so emphatically at the enD.

I made slow Riches but my Gain

I made slow Riches but my Gain

Was steady as the Sun

And every Night, it numbered more

Than the preceding One

All Days, I did not earn the same

But my perceiveless Gain

Inferred the less by Growing than

The Sum that it had grown.

-F947, J843, sheet 19, 1865

This is a poem that seems to be taking measure. It's as if Dickinson looked at her growing body of work, nearly 1000 poems by this point, and marveled. She marks the occasion, of course, with another poem. It's a flex meant to encourage the reader to keep going. She's standing on top of a hard-won mountain and looking at those of us at the bottom, as if to say, come on, you can do it! One step at a time. 

I made slow Riches but my Gain

Was steady as the Sun

This poem seems like investment advice, but the poet's sense of wealth is not the same as the banker's. After all, if a gain is as steady as the sun, what does that mean? What does the sun “gain” in its rotation except for the day itself? What does it gain other than itself, steadily? 

What does this have to do with “slow Riches?" Well, for one thing, if you "slow" down you can better appreciate the day. But also, over the course of a lifetime, you accumulate experience.

And every Night, it numbered more

Than the preceding One

The poet is gaining just by living. She gains Days. And if one is living these days doing the labor of love, then one gains an inner well-being that far surpasses any worldly wealth. 

All Days, I did not earn the same

The more worthwhile your days are then the better the experience of your life will be. If you are paying attention, then slowly, without anyone else (including yourself) perceiving the subtle changes, you will suddenly find you have grown taller, so to speak. 

But my perceiveless Gain

Inferred the less by Growing than

The Sum that it had grown.

There’s a catch 22 here. It’s difficult to perceive growth until after you've grown because how else can one measure? (It's like the job applicant that needs a job so he can list the experience he needs to get the job).

So then this final stanza is reminding us to have faith in the process. It's encouragement to keep going the best one can, a little at a time. Some days will be better than others, but don't worry about it, just keep going. 

This poem is filled with the light of the Sun and love for the reader. We are the beneficiaries of Dickinson's daily diligence. The question is, what will we do with it? Garner our own slow Riches.

-/)dam Wade I)eGraff

Dying! To be afraid of thee

Dying! To be afraid of thee
One must to thine Artillery
Have left exposed a Friend —
Than thine old Arrow is a Shot
Delivered straighter to the Heart
The leaving Love behind.

Not for itself, the Dust is shy,
But, enemy, Beloved be
Thy Batteries divorce.
Fight sternly in a Dying eye
Two Armies, Love and Certainty
And Love and the Reverse.

     

        -F946, J831, sheet 19, 1865

This is a difficult poem, so let's break it down slowly. The first thing I notice here is the use of the possessive pronoun “thine.” It gives the poem an immediate tone. The use of thy and thou was already antiquated in Dickinson’s time, but it was prevalent in the Bible and Shakespeare, which was by far the most popular literature in Dickinson’s America. It has a sense of personal devotion to it, and of the divine.

The second thing I notice is the military language; artillery, arrow, enemy, batteries, fight, army. We are in an epic battle and it involves the heart.

The third thing I take note of is the exclamatory gerund that ushers us into this poem: “Dying!”

This is not a word said in jest. It is a word excruciatingly juxtaposed between life and death. It is death made agonizing. In this poem Dying refers both to an actual death and heartbreak at once. It is the feeling of being inside the process of dying of heartbreak. 

The next thing I notice is syntactical confusion in the first four lines. My first question is, what does the “thee” refer to? It takes some close reading to understand that the “thee” points back to “Dying,” as if Dickinson is personifying not just death, but the act of dying itself. She’s addressing a verb.

And what is she saying to the Agent Of Death? “To be afraid of thee/ One must to thine Artillery/ Have left exposed a Friend.”

In order to be afraid of dying, one must lose a Friend in the act. In other words, the fear is in exposing the one you love to your death. If you know that your death will break the heart of someone that loves you (your Friend), then it is much more painful to die. Exposing yourself to love gives death its sting. 

My daughter told me last week in a birthday card that she would be “horrified” to have a different dad than me. This was simultaneously the sweetest thing I've ever heard and terrifying. That paradox sums up the way this poem affects me.

Than thine old Arrow is a Shot
Delivered straighter to the Heart
The leaving Love behind.

These lines make me dizzy with their genius. It’s tough to sum up. First you have to contend with that “Than.” What does "than" modify? I believe it refers to “straighter.” I think these lines are saying that the shot to the heart is straighter “than” it would be otherwise, if love is left behind. (Dickinson’s sophisticated use of grammar sometimes leaves me behind.)

So this is saying, then, that the more you are exposed (to friendship), the quicker the arrow of death hits the center of the Heart. It’s difficult to get at this paradox, but it’s something that can be felt. You grip your literal heart when you think about the pain you feel leaving a loved one when you die, and, worse, that a loved one will feel after you die. The thought itself kills you.

Now that we’ve unraveled some of the syntax and ideas here, at least a little, try going back and re-reading the first six lines out loud, taking note of their tightly controlled meter, form and diction. It’s highly stylized, and yet it could hardly be more authentically felt. 

The next lines keep up the level of difficulty and poetic depth,

Not for itself, the Dust is shy,
But, enemy, Beloved be
Thy Batteries divorce.

The Dust here, I think, is a wry synecdoche of man. Man, made of dust, is shy of love, because love makes death more intense. Without it, death loses its bite and we are no longer so afraid of it. But then, without love, we are just dust!

The highly condensed syntax here goes something like this:

(It’s) Not for itself (for love), that the Dust (the man) is shy, But, (for the) enemy, (Death, because of whom, the) Beloved be (the one that) Thy (Death's) Batteries divorce (from me.)

To put it a little more simply: It’s not for love itself that we are shy, but because the parting from the lover in death will be such an assault. That's what one has to deal with when taken from a Friend in death, and worse, not just being taken from love, but realizing the pain that will be felt by the one left behind.

We feel this more than we understand it intellectually. We feel it in the sound of the words themselves. “Thy Batteries divorce” carries the sense of “battering” and the pain of parting in its plosives: BaTTeries DiVorce.  Also, subtly, the “Thy” here does not feel reverential. It now carries a bit of spit, like the Shakespearean insult. (Shakespeare uses it this way often, like "Thou lily-livered boy" in Macbeth, or, in Twelfth Night, when Sir Toby Belch advises Sir Andrew on how to write a challenge letter to a rival: "If thou 'thou'st' him some thrice, it shall not be amiss." Sir Toby is explicitly telling Sir Andrew to use the word thou as a deliberate insult to provoke a fight.) And finally, "divorce" is such an ugly word in its connotations. We feel all of that in this line, in our gut.

Fight sternly in a Dying eye
Two Armies, Love and Certainty
And Love and the Reverse.

The way Dickinson uses “divorce” to set up the rhyme of “reverse” is, as the kids say, sick.

Okay, we are inside of a “Dying eye" now. There is a fight happening. You might say we are each of us, in some way or another, inside of this dying eye, in a battle-zone, always pushing and pulling toward and away from love in our dance with exposure.

There are two sides. One is going toward the certainty of love. The other is the reverse, going away from the certainty of love. The closer you get to the first, the center of the heart, the more the departure from love, the reverse, is felt. It’s a conundrum that haunts all of us. 

The “Reverse” at the end of this poem is a sliding modifier. It has (at least) two possible referents: Certainty and Love, and there’s a third implied, which is life itself. We want to progress toward love and certainty, but we are always to be met in our advance with that which reverses us from love, which is death. 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes:

1. In the Christanne Miller collected Dickinson we get a note: "Poem sent to Gertrude Vanderbilt who had recently recovered from a bullet wound, after being shot by her maid's rejected suitor on March 20, 1864." Make of that what you will. 

2. 

I confess that I didn't much care for this book, but I include the cover here because Faulkner achieves the same kind of immediacy in the title that Dickinson does in the first line of this poem.

Good to hide, and hear 'em hunt!

Good to hide, and hear 'em hunt!
Better, to be found,
If one care to, that is,
The Fox fits the Hound—

Good to know, and not tell,
Best, to know and tell,
Can one find the rare Ear
Not too dull—


      -F945, J842, sheet 18, 1865

What an undull poem.

Let’s start with that first line, and the wonderful weirdness of it.

Good to hide, and hear 'em hunt!

If we are talking about an actual Hound and Fox here, then I would presume it would not be so pleasurable to listen to the hounds hunt, even if you were hidden. If the Hound gets you, you’re done. 

Something else is going on. Why would it be good to "hear ‘em hunt?" Dickinson makes being hunted sound down-right pleasurable.

I think this is a meditation on erotic and romantic pursuit. She is recognizing the desire of being desired, and, also, the necessity of evading capture. We have a suitor situation going on here.

Dickinson was reserved and reclusive. She mostly hid from the world. She was a bit like Penelope that way, weaving and unweaving her poems to keep the hounds at bay, until the fitting one, Odysseus, arrived on the scene.

Likewise, in Dickinson's poems she hides from her readers. In a sense, we are all hounds on the hunt for that fox. We are all prowling bees in pursuit of the flower.

In that case then you could say it is we who are the “'em” in “Good to hide, and hear ‘em hunt!”

Funny, right?

Also funny is the use of the word ‘em. You can just hear Emily saying this to her niece Mattie (Susan’s daughter) with whom she was close. Imagine them playing hide and seek with the other cousins. In a closet together Emily whispers in delight, “It’s good to hide and hear ‘em hunt, ain’t it Mattie?”

After that terrific first line Emily goes one better,

Better, to be found,

Better to be found, but then there’s a caveat. It's better to be found by the right hound. We find out at the end of this stanza that it's only a fitting hound that can find the fox. It has to be the right suitor, a dogged Hound as wily as the Fox.  

The next line is great too.

If one care to, that is,

The fox wants the hound to care enough. This is part of why it is so elusive. We have a case of playing hard to get. How much does the caller care? Enough to keep calling? Let's find out.

The next line is the capper,

The Fox fits the Hound—

Not only does the right hunter get the right prey, but the right prey gets the right hunter. The two creatures give each other what they need. The fox's elusiveness intensifies the hound's desire, and the desire, in turn, intensifies and heightens the union.

There is also a very funny pun here on the word “fits." The Fox fits the hound, or, in other words, the Fox has the Hound in fits. 

The second stanza is parallel to the first. They both start by telling us what’s “good.”

Good to know, and not tell,
Best, to know and tell,

Hiding and hearing 'em hunt is good, and, likewise, keeping your secret is good. Being found is better, and, likewise, sharing yourself with someone who genuinely wants to know who you are is better. The hunt is evidence of that desire. There is a pleasure in knowing you are worth pursuing by a hound that is worthy of you.

Can one find the rare Ear
Not too dull—

The way this poem is set up, the Hound and the Ear are one. If the Hound is fitting, or sharp enough (“not too dull”) or, conversely, if the ear is rare enough, or cares enough, then the fox is happy to be caught/ heard. Note that subtle rhyming interplay between "care" in the first stanza and "rare ear" in the second. It is a rare ear that cares enough.

The Ear may be read as that of the reader, whether that was Sue, initially, or you, now. Sue, we know, was an ideal reader for Emily, which is why more poems were given to her than anyone else in Emily’s life. Emily once wrote of Sue that she had learned more from her than anyone else save Shakespeare. The Hound fit the Fox. 

But of course the ear is also that of anyone reading the poem. Emily is telling us, in riddles, who she is. We just have to listen very carefully.

I love this poem because it reminds me that I can't be too dogged in my pursuits, and on the other side of the divide, that I can't be too wily with my secrets.   

-/)dam Wade l)eGraff

A rejoinder to this poem by the great Belle and Sebastian:

"Fox in the snow, where do you go
To find someone that will do?
To tell someone all the truth before it kills you
They listen to your crazy laugh
Before you hang a right
And disappear from sight
What do they know anyway?
You'll read it in a book.
What do they know anyway?
You'll read it in a book tonight."

A Moth the hue of this

A Moth the hue of this
Haunts Candles in Brazil.
Nature's Experience would make
Our Reddest Second pale.

Nature is fond, I sometimes think,
Of Trinkets, as a Girl.

    - F944, J841, sheet 18, 1865


This poem recalls one of Dickinson’s earliest extant poems, F32, written seven years before this one (according to Franklin’s system of dating the poems). In that poem the poet puts a trinket on to be in keeping with the fashion of autumn. 

It’s fascinating to see the threads that Dickinson weaves through her work. In F541 Dickinson wrote about Butterflies in Brazil. In F687 the “Mighty Merchant” offers the poet Brazil in exchange for what she really wants. Trinkets, butterflies and Brazil are all part of Dickinson’s vast Lexicon. They all symbolize something essential to her.

 A Moth the hue of this
Haunts Candles in Brazil.

This poem starts out with a mystery pronoun, “this.” We never find out what "this" is. Does it refer back to the hue of the moth? or to something else? The “this” is hereby elevated to the level of ineffable possibility, just as "It” was in the poem previous to this one, F943.

I’m curious what specific hue it is that Dickinson is comparing to a moth that “haunts Candles in Brazil.” My best guess is that she is referring to the flush of a lover’s skin, because what else would so haunt Dickinson’s Candle?

The idea of a moth haunting a candle is such a brilliant reversal. Normally the moth is drawn to the flame, but here the moth is the trinket, the object of desire. We always assume that it's the moth that is drawn to the flame, but maybe we have it backwards?

Nature's Experience would make
Our Reddest Second pale.

This poem is made up of three distinct, but interconnected couplets. All three are worthy on their own. In this middle phrase we have the amazing idea of a "Reddest Second" of our lives. Not the reddest minute or hour, but the the Reddest Second. Can you recall your Reddest Second? I blush just thinking about it. Dickinson points out to us that this moment, however red it may have been for us, pales in comparison to the full experience of Nature Herself. That is a humbling but awesome thought. 

And yet, 

Nature is fond, I sometimes think,
Of Trinkets, as a Girl.

As below, so above.

This poem appears to be, in part, about the erotic attraction of beauty. There's something almost flirtatious about it. The moth is attracted to the candle; Nature is attracted to beauty; the girl is attracted to ornaments. Everything is being pulled toward beauty. 

A trinket often has the connotation of something of low value, something trivial and frivolous. But hold on. In this poem the stakes are high, life and death. We have the potential perishing of the moth in the flame due and all the human drama this implies. (Maybe those moths haunt the candles because they now ghost moths.)

So, is Natural beauty in this poem being lowered to the level of a trinket? Or, is the trinket being raised to the level of a prime mover? 

        -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. Meanwhile, what about that red moth from Brazil?

Here's one:

 



And here are a few more incredible moths, all quite stunning examples of Nature's trinkets. 

     

I cannot buy it—'tis not sold—

I cannot buy it—'tis not sold—
There is no other in the World—
Mine was the only one

I was so happy I forgot
To shut the Door And it went out
And I am all alone—

If I could find it Anywhere
I would not mind the journey there
Though it took all my store

But just to look it in the Eye—
"Did'st thou?" "Thou did'st not mean," to say,
Then, turn my Face away.

      -F943, J840, sheet 18, 1865

The language of this poem is that of a classic riddle:

I cannot buy it—'tis not sold—

What is “it?" We are never told the answer to this riddle. We just get “it” repeated four more times. It is repeated so often in this short poem that it becomes conspicuous. What is “It?” It is IT. Dickinson seems to be pointing to the essential but unnamable thing, the IT factor.

The mystery of this poem is a microcosm of the mystery at the heart of much of Dickinson’s poetry. What is “IT?” Is it God? Is it a lover? Is it poetry? You start to wonder if defining “it” isn’t precisely beside the point. The problem of definition is at the root of Dickinson’s poetics.

“It,” in the final stanza, has a face. The poet is looking at “It” in the Eye and then turns her own face away. The word “Eye” leads us to believe it is a human face we are looking at here, and maybe it is, but the singular “Eye” makes us wonder. Still, the “it” is given an Eye and, presumably, a face. “It” moves toward being known in a body. The poem moves in this way from impersonal to personal, toward the final "my Face.”

In the first line we learn, importantly, that this mysterious “It” cannot be bought or sold.

This is worth deep consideration. As a father I can say, without hesitation, that there is literally no amount of money, or anything else, I would trade for my children’s life. The idea of putting a price on them is anathema.

Here I want to suggest a potential connection between this kind of priceless love and the uniquely uncommodifiable property of poetry. Poetry is special, in part, because it generally operates outside of the marketplace. This is especially true of Emily Dickinson, who shied away from publication and fame.

I’ve been reading the novels of Joy Williams, a writer who is a big fan of Dickinson and often reminds me of her. In Williams’ novel “The Quick and The Dead” there is an eight-year-old girl named Emily. From the novel: “Emily didn’t know what pagan was. Possibly she might like to be one. But what she really wanted was to be a triggerman, or a poet. She did not want to work in sales.”

Sounds about right. ("My life had stood a loaded gun.")

There is no other in the World—
Mine was the only one

This is the romantic ideal of there being only one person for you. It’s an ideal seemingly sewn into the seam that binds Dickinson’s poetry together. Who was this “Mine” that was the only one? Maybe we are talking about Sue here, since a copy of this poem was given to her.

But maybe this “Mine,” this “no other in the World” wasn't so much a someone as a something else altogether. It could be, for instance, poetry. A reader commented on the use of “Mine” on the poem before this one, F942, saying that it reminded them of F411, "Mine—by the Right of the White Election!" In other words, it is about vocation. The mystery deepens.

I was so happy I forgot
To shut the Door And it went out

If we are talking about a lover, then this is strange. Is Dickinson saying don’t get so happy with your relationship that you let your lover go out of the house? I don't think so. This sounds more like protect your peace of mind than protect your relationship, doesn’t it?

At any rate the general sense I get here is that you have to stay on guard, which is difficult to do if you get too comfortable and happy.

If I could find it Anywhere
I would not mind the journey there
Though it took all my store

Is “it” beyond place too? It is not (apparently) “Anywhere.”  There is nowhere to “journey” to. So it is beyond place. And, again, it is beyond price, beyond “store.”

But just to look it in the Eye—
"Did'st thou?" "Thou did'st not mean," to say,
Then, turn my Face away.

This is the most difficult part of the poem because of a very odd syntax. If “It” is a relationship, then these lines seem to be saying “Did’st thou” really leave? Because if thou did'st, I believe "Thou dids’t not mean” to, after which the poet forgives and turns away. And maybe that IS what's going on here.

But the way the line fragments is intriguing. 

Thou dids’t not mean,” to say,

seems to be a warning against signifying, against “meaning” itself. “It” doesn’t “mean” anything because meaning, like definition (and price and place and happiness) is a desire outside the realm of "it." When you look for meaning, you risk losing what it is your desire.

The final line, “Then, turn my Face away,” becomes, then, a negation of meaning, which, perhaps, is where one encounters “it.”

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Always Mine!

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

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


     -F942, J839, sheet 18, 1865


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

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

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

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

Always Mine!

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

No more Vacation!

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

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

Term of Light this Day begun!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Old the Grace, but new the Subjects —

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

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

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

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

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

Old, indeed, the East,

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

And yet—every dawn is first.

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

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

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

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S.

I think of William Blake’s lines,

He who binds to himself a joy

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

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

How the Waters closed above Him

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


       -F941, J923, sheet 17


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

How the Waters closed above Him

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

We shall never know —

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

How He stretched His Anguish to us

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

That — is covered too —

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

Spreads the Pond Her Base of Lilies

This line is so deeply Dickinsonian in its implications.

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

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

Bold above the Boy

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

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

Whose unclaimed Hat and Jacket
Sum the History —

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

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

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

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Monet's Water Lilies