The Color of a Queen, is this—

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

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


       -Fr875, J776

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

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

 

amber and beryl, like fire and ice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

iodine

Bravo for this, the way Dickinson captures in sound and image all the colors of the sky, spanning all the glory and terror of nature.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

If Blame be my side—forfeit Me—

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

         -Fr874, J775, Fascicle 39


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

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

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

The Evergreens as seen from Emily's house.

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

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

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

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

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

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

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

It is a lonesome Glee—

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

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


     -Fr873, J774, 1864, fascicle 39

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

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

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

A Bird to overhear

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

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

Delight without a Cause—

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

The Rhodora

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

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

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

Arrestless as invisible—
A matter of the Skies.

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

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

Here is the relevant stanza from that great poem:

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

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

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

    -/)dam Wade DeGraff

Svetlana Melik-Nubarova, Birds, 2019

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

Deprived of other Banquet,

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

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

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


    -Fr872, J773, 1864, fascicle 39


Deprived of other Banquet
I entertained Myself—

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

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

 

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

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

At first—a scant nutrition—
An insufficient Loaf—

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

But grown by slender addings
To so esteemed a size

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

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

To so esteemed a size

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

'Tis sumptuous enough for me—

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

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

And almost to suffice

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

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

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

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

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

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

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S.


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

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

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

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

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

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

The hallowing of Pain

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

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

    -Fr871, J772, 1864, fascicle 39



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

The hallowing of Pain
Like hallowing of Heaven,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But was Emily really so severe?

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

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

In the opening lines, 

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

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

What would that cost be? Pleasure right?

But isn't poetry a pleasure?

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

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

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

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

None can experience sting

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

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

     -Fr 870, J771, fascicle 39, 1864

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

In the next stanza the thought continues,

Want—is a meagre Art
Acquired by Reverse—

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

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

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

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

The Poverty that was not Wealth—
Cannot be Indigence.

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

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

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

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

What I see not, I better see—

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

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

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

      -Fr869, J939, 1864

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

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

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

Let's go through the poem.

What I see not, I better see—

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

Through Faith—my Hazel Eye
Has periods of shutting—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Till jealous Daylight interrupt—
And mar thy perfectness—

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

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

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Fairer through Fading — as the Day

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

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


    -Fr868,  J938, 1864

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

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

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

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

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

Let's look at that content:

Fairer through Fading

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

— as the Day
Into the Darkness dips away —

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

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

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

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

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

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

The next stanza rallies!

Rallies Her Glow, like a dying Friend —

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

Teasing with glittering Amend —

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

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

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

Through an expiring — perfect — look —

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

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

Glittering.


       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

My daughter Lucia in the glitter of a sunset

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