These – saw Visions –

These – saw Visions –
Latch them softly –
These – held Dimples –
Smooth them slow –
This – addressed departing accents –
Quick – Sweet Mouth – to miss thee so –

This – we stroked –
Unnumbered – Satin –
These – we held among our own –
Fingers of the Slim Aurora –
Not so arrogant – this Noon –

These – adjust – that ran to meet Us –
Pearl – for stocking – Pearl for Shoe –
Paradise – the only Palace
Fit for Her reception – now –

      -Fr769, J758, Fascicle 34, 1863


What a vision the poet has laid here before us. Gothic – romantic – devastating.

The poet is describing the recent death of a woman, her lover judging by the clues. It's also possible she is talking about herself, asking her lover to close her eyes for her. One triumph of this poem is that you  can read it either way. The "Us" of this poem implies both.

These – saw Visions –
Latch them softly –

It’s possible that the poet is speaking of something that has already happened, the death of a friend, or lover, but I suspect that this is a future vision. I believe Dickinson is imagining the death of a lover, or herself. If this is a vision, then it is fitting that the first thing the vision envisions is "These (that) saw visions." 

Because there is no pronoun to begin the poem, it does appear, at first, that the poet is referring to her own eyes. You don’t know at first who “These” refers to. By omitting the pronoun the poet invites you to believe it is her own eyes she is referring to. This ambiguity is strengthened in the second stanza with the use of the pronoun “we.” This gives you the sense that it might be either lover laying the other to rest,  whichever of them happens to survive the other.

It turns out Dickinson was the one who died first, and, sure enough her childhood sweetheart Sue Dickinson was there, 36 years after they first met, to softly latch Emily’s eyes. 

Well, we can’t know for sure she did that. We only know she was there to ready the body for the grave, that is all. But I don’t really have much doubt that Sue did smooth over the dimples on Dickinson’s cheek, and maybe even with this poem in mind. See more about this in the notes below. 

The use of the word “latch” is great, especially if we apply the term to Dickinson’s own eyes. She spent much of her adult life staring out of her own bedroom window, which were her eyes out into the world. This vision was the inspiration for many of her Visions beyond physical sight. The windows to the soul are being latched here too.

These – held Dimples –
Smooth them slow –

Ah, the dimples, which imply a smile, which implies happiness. Dimples are like a ripple of a smile. To have these ripples of happiness smoothed out “slow” is heart rending.

Several poems in this fascicle employ a trochaic rhythm rather than an iambic one. I think Dickinson does this, in many cases, to give extra emotional emphasis to the poem from the get-go. An all cap “THESE!” is the sense you get from switching up the rhythm to make the syllabic beat come first. "On the one!" as they say in funk music. 

Also, look at the effect of taking the “ly” off of “slow.” You expect that "ly", rhythmically, so by taking that last beat off you get an extra beat on “slow.” It gives us a slow, but emphatic, SLOOOW. You don’t notice it with the mind, but if you say it out loud, you feel it with the heart.

This – addressed departing accents –
Quick – Sweet Mouth – to miss thee so.

A quick mouth. Well, Dickinson’s wit is very quick, as is abundantly evident in nearly every single poem, but so was Susan’s. She was well known as a sparkling conversationalist. She was called “the most graceful woman in Western Massachusetts” by Samuel Bowles, and entertained Emerson, Frances Hodgson Burnett (both nearly as great as Dickinson,) not to mention such luminaries as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Law Olmstead.

It's a strange turn of phrase, “This addressed departing accents.” Who is talking to whom here? Who is departing? Who is addressing? This mouth is addressing the departing accents of the surviving listeners? How could an accent address an accent? Who is speaking and who is listening? Who is dying and who is surviving?

Also, the idea of an accent to sum up a voice is lovely. We all have regional accents, but we also each have our own accents, inimitable as fingerprints. The more carefully you listen, the more you hear them.

This – we stroked –
Unnumbered – Satin –

Here the "we" comes into the poem for the first time. It is possible Dickinson is using the royal "we” here, but I think this use of the first person plural brings the idea that stroking was mutual. The pure sensual detail of two women stroking each other’s satin hair, unnumbered times, is enough to make anyone fall into a trance. I also think it's possible that Dickinson may be referring to satin skin, which gives an even deeper sensuality to the stroking in these lines.

The line “Unnumbered – Satin –” by itself is a fragment worthy of Sappho. It’s as if the texture of satin contained, in itself, a sense of the infinite, a sensuality beyond measure. 

There is also a kind of falling away in the broken syntax of the line: "This – we stroked," falling off into "unnumbered," as if the whole phrase could not even be uttered, falling finally, breathlessly, into just "satin." It is just exquisite.

Fingers of the Slim Aurora –
Not so arrogant – this Noon –

By Aurora, here, Dickinson, means the goddess of dawn. Fingers of Aurora, I believe, must be an allusion to Homer’s Odyssey, where we find the phrase “The rosy fingers of Dawn” mentioned several times.

It's as if she were saying, "My lover's fingers (or mine) which were once comparable to the mythic rosy fingers of dawn, are not so arrogant in the harsh realism revealed in the light of noon."

These – adjust – that ran to meet Us –
Pearl – for stocking – Pearl for Shoe –

The anaphoric repetition of "These" and "This" in this poem creates a terrific rhythm. These, These, This, This, These, These.

We have made it to the feet. Feet are so important in Dickinson's poetry. 

These feet, of the beloved, that once ran toward her beloved – we can imagine the two friends literally running toward one another in a field – must now be “arranged.” That verb, "arranged," in contrast to running, is so ghastly and tender at once.

It's also worth pointing out that feet, in every Dickinson poem I've read so far, doubles as a symbol for poetic feet, and therefore for poetry itself. So to "adjust" feet may also be seen as metaphor for the metrical arrangement of the words in a poem. 

The pearl placed on the stocking and shoe elicits the very treasure of the sea itself, lovingly placed upon the body of the departed.

For me this recalls the Tempest,

“Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.”

One pearl, I believe, is meant to represent Emily, and one, Sue, but which one is the stocking and which is the shoe? Who fits into whom?

Paradise – the only Palace
Fit for Her reception – now –

Paradise. This word holds so much pathos. Is there a Paradise after death? What kind of paradise is it when your legs no longer run, your lips no longer kiss and you no longer smile? 

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

The great actress Sarah Berhardt in her deathbed. 

Not Sue, nor Emily, but she could have ably acted either's part.

Notes: 

1. This poem is very similar to two other poems in this fascicle. In Fr762, we get this scenario reversed. The woman is asking her lover to be there to close her eyes with a kiss. Another is a slightly earlier poem, Fr759, in which Dickinson describes a funeral as if it were a wedding, and the departed as if she were a bride.

2. "Susan's enactment of simple ritual for profound utterance is perhaps best displayed in the simple flannel robe she designed and in which she dressed Emily for death, laying her out in a white casket, cypripedium and violets (symbolizing faithfulness) at her neck, two heliotropes (symbolizing devotion) in her hand (St. Armand 74-75). This final act over Emily's body underscores "their shared life, their deep and complex intimacy" and that they both anticipated a "postmortem resurrection" of that intimacy." (Hart 255; Pollak 137).