He
was weak, and I was strong – then –
So
He let me lead him in –
I
was weak, and He was strong then –
So
I let him lead me – Home.
'Twasn't
far – the door was near –
'Twasn't
dark – for He went – too –
'Twasn't
loud, for He said nought –
That
was all I cared to know.
Day
knocked – and we must part –
Neither
– was strongest – now –
He
strove – and I strove – too –
We
didn't do it – tho'!
F221
(1861) 190
Isn’t
this just the way with new lovers? First one partner is bashful, or “weak,” and
then the other. To be strong, typically, would be to resist temptation while to
be “weak” is to give in. But the
poet here associates strength with the drive for sexual completion. First the
narrator is the strong urging one. She invites him in. But then she has second
thoughts, perhaps, while his valiant manhood asserts itself. And so, she,
weakly trying to resist temptation, gives in to him and lets him lead her “Home.”
That is a nice way of saying the union was deeply satisfying – more than just a
gratification. It had the sense of rightness and belonging as coming home.
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A famous pair of lovers who had trouble parting at dawn |
The
second stanza sets up a series of parallel structures: “’Twasn’t” this or that.
The door was handy and the dark hardly mattered for they were together. The
lover didn’t say anything – and that was just fine for the narrator because she
didn’t want to know anything he might have said. They were, by that time,
communicating on a deeper level.
But
then, like Romeo and Juliet who hear the lark sing and know they must part, the
lovers hear the knock of dawn. Alas, both were “weak” and although they each
tried to separate, neither had the strength. The last line has a delicious
ambiguity: “We didn’t do it – tho’!” In today’s vernacular the line might be
read as indicating that although they spent the night together they had no sex.
Cuddle points! It seems more likely, though that when “Day knocked” and they
tried to part, they couldn’t do it. They lingered together, the naughty pair,
dawdling in bed doing who-knows-what.
The
poem lacks the Christian and maidenly virtues espoused by most good citizens of
the day. It’s more in line with the delight Walt Whitman professed for all
things physical. However, it may be that like Whitman, the chaste poet is
simply celebrating the heady bliss of love and desire.
I can’t help being reminded of a few
verses from 2 Corinthians (6-10), though, and I wonder if Dickinson didn’t also
have these verses in mind. Paul is writing to the Corinthians who are part of
his long-distance ministry. He says he won’t boast about his “surpassingly
great revelations” (a sly way of not boasting, no?) but instead will boast
about his weakness, his “thorn in the flesh” – and don’t we all wish we knew
just what that thorn was! Anyway, he reports that when he prayed to be free of
the weakness that the Lord “said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my
power is made perfect in weakness.’” And so Paul concludes that he “delights in
weakness … For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
Read
with these verses in mind the poem becomes quite funny in its Paul-like
conflation of weakness with strength.
In
any case, the zig-zagging role reversals of who is weak and who is strong – but
how they both got what they wanted, is all quite delightful. I like the verb
“strove” in the last stanza. It lends a Herculean sense to their struggle to
separate. All in all it’s a light treatment of secret passion, as if two
children got away with something forbidden and wonderful.
"He" is my shadow!
ReplyDeleteI'd like that, except for the parting at Day. Wouldn't that be when the shadow would appear? I must admit that on re-reading this poem, I'm mystified.
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