Protection asked of me—
Befriend them, lest Yourself in Heaven
Be found a Refugee—
-Fr805, J1096, early 1864
This is a rare straight-forward poem from Dickinson, and one that speaks to our moment now as well as any. One can imagine this poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, or written on a sign held by any one of the millions of protesters last week at one of the "No King" rallies.
The poem recalls Matthew 25: 41-46: "Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was hungry, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me."
Is this poem meant, as it seems, to be a proverb for the general public, or is there something more personal in its use of the pronoun "me?" Thinking about the issues of her time, I wonder if slavery is on Dickinson's mind here. Her “preceptor” and friend, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, was a famous and outspoken abolitionist. There is a really great book about Dickinson’s friendship with Higginson called “White Heat” by Brenda Wineapple, that gives a lot of context for all of this, and also serves as terrific character study of Higginson, who was quite the guy. Dickinson never wrote directly about the issue of slavery, for whatever reason, but there are many oblique references to it, and perhaps this poem is one of them.
If the “me” is not just a generalized “me,” but, in fact, the author, then we could ask, what protection might have been asked of Dickinson? Here I think of that passage in Whitman’s Song of Myself,
“The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside,
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak,
And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him,
And brought water and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and bruis’d feet,
And gave him a room that enter’d from my own, and gave him some coarse clean clothes,
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass’d north,
I had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock lean’d in the corner.”
On the whole I tend to favor Dickinson’s poems over Whitman’s, but here I find Whitman’s testimony much more moving and inspiring for its specificity than Dickinson’s. Whitman is bravely putting himself out there and doing, through his poem, what Dickinson only suggests in hers.
“The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside,
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak,
And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him,
And brought water and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and bruis’d feet,
And gave him a room that enter’d from my own, and gave him some coarse clean clothes,
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass’d north,
I had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock lean’d in the corner.”
On the whole I tend to favor Dickinson’s poems over Whitman’s, but here I find Whitman’s testimony much more moving and inspiring for its specificity than Dickinson’s. Whitman is bravely putting himself out there and doing, through his poem, what Dickinson only suggests in hers.
So, perhaps Dickinson is chastising herself here for not doing more?
The turn around in this poem is well-put. You will eventually become the stranger that you turn away. It’s a truth well worth reflecting on, then and now.
The turn around in this poem is well-put. You will eventually become the stranger that you turn away. It’s a truth well worth reflecting on, then and now.
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
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