This Bauble was preferred of Bees –

This Bauble was preferred of Bees –
By Butterflies admired
At Heavenly – Hopeless Distances –
Was justified of Bird –

Did Noon – enamel – in Herself
Was Summer to a Score
Who only knew of Universe –
It had created Her.


    -Fr863, J805, fascicle 38, 1864

.
I would guess that this poem was given to a friend accompanied by a flower. This was a signature gesture from Emily. The “This” would have pointed to a specific flower, probably some beauty from Emily’s garden, but it would have been understood by the recipient to be about herself. 

Without the original referent, though, the “This” points to any flower, and then, finally, to any recipient.

A bauble is a showy, often cheap, trinket. So from the get-go Dickinson is making a statement about value. What may seem like just a worthless bauble is preferred by bees. Butterflies admire it too. (Do butterflies admire flowers? Maybe butterflies admire flowers because, unlike them, they are rooted to the ground?) 

We already have a solid idea here. The beauty in ourselves that we may judge as shallow is necessary and beloved by nature itself. But Dickinson takes the idea deeper as the poem continues.

At Heavenly – Hopeless Distances –
Was justified of Bird –

Now the flower, or the recipient, is seen to be like heaven, hopelessly far away, and therefore justifies the very reach of the wings of the bird. If one wishes to reach this recipient, this bauble that is so much more than just a bauble, then one must grow wings. It justifies the flight itself. What does it mean to grow wings metaphorically? One might say that this poem itself is the bird, and the heightened language, the song, of this poem, is the bird in flight. It has reached its flower, you.

(We may ask ourselves here, what sort of wings will get us across the hopeless distances to the heaven of the beloved?)

Did Noon – enamel – in Herself

The density of this line is staggering. Dickinson thinks of noon, in the intensity and heat of the sun, as maturity itself. Dew is for the young.* Confronting “the man of noon” as she calls it, is where the flower becomes a gem-like flame. (Enamel refers back to bauble, so we might be led to think we were talking about a gem here if we weren't told that this is something “preferred by bees,” which makes it clearly a flower.)

This enameled in noon image comes from an astute observation by Dickinson. On a literal level, a flower becoming enameled as the sun gets hotter is a way of saying it becomes glossy. Glossy petals, such as buttercups, appear more glossy in full, direct sunlight. The visual effect is a result of the specialized structure of the flower petals. From the internet: "Glossy flowers have flat, smooth epidermal cells that act like a mirror, bouncing light in a narrow, specular band."

On a figurative level though, this enameling is symbolic of the recipient taking the heat, the pain, and, in light of it, shining back. This flower in noon is enameled "in Herself."

Was Summer to a Score

Summer to a score could have a few meanings. On the literal level, a flower might have a score of summers. And a buttercup, to use our earlier example (and my guess as to the original flower that was with this note) can live up to 20 years, or a score of summers. But also the syntax could read here that the flower was summer to a score of others, bees and butterflies and birds. Therefore it is understood that the recipient, too, has a score of summers to live, and is, in turn, summer to score of others. The reader, in other words, is all the sweetness of life for as long as She summers. One other meaning that I can't help but read here is score as in score of music. She is like summer itself set to a score of music.

All of this does the recipient represent, and yet all the flower/reader can ultimately know about the universe itself is that She is somehow alive in it, alive and attracting bees and butterflies, alive and justifying wings, alive and becoming hard and beautiful in the noon heat of the sun.

Who only knew of Universe –
It had created Her.

We are left to wonder in the mystery, in the isness of it all. This reminds me of Whitman’s lines in Song of Myself:

Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the beams,

Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

buttercup enameled in the sun, 

summer to a score

*a passage from an 1852 letter from Emily to Sue:

"You have seen flowers at morning, satisfied with the dew, and those same sweet flowers at noon with their heads bowed in anguish before the mighty sun; think you those thirsty blossoms will now need ought but –dew? No, they will cry for sunlight, and pine for the burning noon, tho’ it scorches them, scathes them; they have got through with peace, they know that the man of noon, is mightier than the morning and their life is henceforth to him. Oh, Susie, it is dangerous, and it is all too dear, these simple trusting spirits, and the spirits mightier, which we cannot resist! It does so rend me, Susie, the thought of it when it comes, that I tremble lest at sometime I, too, am yielded up." 

Thank you to the anonymous reader that pointed this passage out to us in the comments to Fr857.

Soil of Flint, if steady tilled—

Soil of Flint, if steady tilled—
Will refund by Hand—
Seed of Palm, by Libyan Sun
Fructified in Sand—


-Fr862, J681, Fascicle 38, 1864


We can add this poem to the imagined Emily Dickinson Book of Epigrams.

A prose translation of this poem would go something like this, “Rock that is steadily tilled will bear crops. Likewise, a seed, even in sand, will bear fruit.”

These platitudes may be wise ones, but in prose they sound trite. Dickinson, however, does several things, with extreme concision, to raise the poem to an entirely different level.

First, there is the juxtaposition of two similar, but opposite, ideas. Both the eater (the farmer) and the thing eaten (the seed) labor toward the same end. Put another way, the object of our desire (represented here by food) is as tenacious as the desire itself (represented in the act of tilling). This is a powerful thought.  The fruit longs to grow as much as we long for it to grow. This thought may be expanded into matters of the heart: what we want wants us back.

Second, the sheer music of the poem. One useful way to read Dickinson is to attend closely to every consonant and vowel as you speak them aloud, then notice how they recur and echo across the lines. The poem opens with an s sound; listen to how it threads its way through the poem. Do the same with the l, f, and d sounds and you start to get a sense of the sonic intricacy at play. Then consider the vowel system, the clustered i sounds in flint, tilled, and will prepare the ear for the broader a sounds of hand and sand. There is pleasure in the subtler echoes as well, such as the u sound in refund in the second line answered by the u in fructified in the fourth. Fructified is, in itself, a luxurious word to pronounce. Dickinson binds her idea together with exquisitely stitched sound.

Third, word choice. “Refund,” for instance, is a strange and striking word to use. A refund typically follows a return, yet here the earth takes the “fund” of labor invested in it and gives it back, enriched. The word brings the poem into the realm of economics. We are talking about a gift economy here, but one that takes hard steady work. 

The idea of the earth “handing” you this refund is funny as a personification too. "Will refund by hand." It’s as though stalks were arms from which corn is passed directly into your grasp.

The word palm in the third line deepens this effect. While it refers literally to the seed of a palm tree, the surrounding language of hands encourages a pun. After the idea of being “handed” a refund, the fruit seems to rise from the seed and offer itself to you, resting in the palm.

Finally, there’s the exoticism of the second example. A palm seed growing in Libya, a place Dickinson never visited, introduces an element of Otherness. The flint belongs to home soil while the sand lies on the far side of the world. The foreign setting makes the image feel charged, as if the seed planted in sand were the seed of a lover. The poem grows and expands outward, from the familiar to the distant, while remaining contained.


      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

"seed of palm fructified in sand"

P.S. A kind reader pointed out in the comments that in the fascicle there is more to this poem, a whole stanza more. The confusion is because just the second stanza was given to Sue, so the poem, like many of Emily Dickinson's poems, survives in two forms.  The first stanza as it appears in the fascicle is:

On the Bleakness of my Lot

Bloom I strove to raise –
Late – my Garden of a Rock
Yielded Grape – and Maise –

It's nice to know that Dickinson was able to get blooms on her bleak garden of a rock. This is promising! I take these blooms, here represented as grape and maise, to be the poems themselves.

"bring tea for the tillerman/ steak for the sun"

They say that “Time assuages” —

They say that “Time assuages” —
Time never did assuage —
An actual suffering strengthens
As Sinews do, with Age —

Time is a Test of Trouble —
But not a Remedy —
If such it prove, it prove too
There was no Malady —


     -Fr861, J686, Fascicle 38, 1864

I reached out to one of my favorite poets, Jennifer Moxley, to ask if she would like to respond to poem 861 on Prowling Bee. The following is the insightful and moving essay Jennifer sent me in reply:

The poem is not making an argument; it is asserting a verity. Against self-care axioms such as “time heals all wounds” and similar dictums we twenty-first centurions have swollen and then sanded into facile measures meant to smooth over the hard bits of life, as if to make it sweet despite daily tweets meted out by the death cult currently in power, Dickinson posits, as is her wont, a wholly contrarian view. With a bossy certainty that brooks no argument, she lets us have it: if your suffering lessens with time, then it wasn’t real in the first place. The juggernaut “they” who say “time assuages” are lying.

Dickinson equates abstract mental “suffering” to concrete bodily “sinews.” Sinews are the stuff that binds muscle to bone, the fibrous connective tissue we call tendons. The most cursory of research proves her simile medically unsound (sinews slacken with age), but no matter. It is poetically pleasing, which is what counts here.

Or perhaps she’s using the word “sinews” in the sense of “strength, energy, force” (OED), which was not uncommon in her time? If such is the case, she would not only be comparing one abstraction to another (suffering to strength) but also making a fascinating argument against senescence. I love the slipperiness of this proposition.

In the second stanza “suffering” is synonymized to “Trouble.”Not like “car trouble,” but more like what Gordan Gano meant by “trouble” when he sang “I’ve got girl trouble up the ass,” or Pound meant in “Cantico del Sole”: a “disturbance of mind or feelings; worry, vexation; affliction; grief; perplexity; distress” (OED). Time will “test” trouble, that is, time will determine whether or not it’s genuine.

Dickinson’s poem assuages my worry that I am ill because I cannot heal from the death of my mother. Recently I awoke in the night with my mother’s body in mine and became all cramped with thoughts of her extreme solitude when facing death. I was three thousand miles away. Her hand was empty of my hand, her ear of my voice. “What is wrong with me,” I thought, “that such a pain can still prick with such freshness.” My mother died thirty-five years ago. “Nothing is wrong with you,” the poem becalms, “your suffering over the death of your mother is genuine.” Time does not turn suffering sweet, but poems can.

“I grieve that grief can teach me nothing,” Emerson wrote after he realized that the death of his precious little son Waldo had left him fundamentally unchanged, “neither better nor worse.” Is his view at odds with Dickinson’s? “[S]ome thing which I fancied was a part of me, which could not be torn away without tearing me, falls off from me, and leaves no scar,” he continues in his essay “Experience.” Emerson regrets that suffering is not educative, nor does it “carry [us] one step into real Nature.” Which says nothing of whether or not suffering is a genuine malady, only that it cannot be alleviated by any argument about its value as a vehicle of growth. In this reading Emerson is in concert with Dickinson in protesting any pandering to our pain. True suffering cannot be assuaged, nor does it contort or better us through its lessons.

How do I fold the wisdom of these awesome forebears into my long-held conviction that the poet’s visionary birth is precipitated through a painful confrontation with finitude? Orpheus suffers the death of Euridice. Whitman the death of the she-bird at the New Jersey shore. In the wake of these experiences they become true poets. These stories recount metamorphoses, but are they also tales of education? Is the poet better or worse for such experiences? Better not to put a value on awful change, Emerson says, lest it become a formula. Whereas when Dickinson writes, “actual suffering strengthens,” perhaps she means both that with time suffering grows in intensity, but also that it can make us more powerful. At least as poets.   

      —Jennifer Moxley

No Notice gave She, but a Change—

No Notice gave She, but a Change—
No Message, but a Sigh—
For Whom, the Time did not suffice
That She should specify.

She was not warm, though Summer shone
Nor scrupulous of cold
Though Rime by Rime, the steady Frost
Upon Her Bosom piled—

Of shrinking ways—she did not fright
Though all the Village looked—
But held Her gravity aloft—
And met the gaze—direct—

And when adjusted like a Seed
In careful fitted Ground
Unto the Everlasting Spring
And hindered but a Mound

Her Warm return, if so she chose—
And We—imploring drew—
Removed our invitation by
As Some She never knew—


       -Fr860, J804, Fascicle 38, 1864


Dickinson does thing sometimes where you don't know at first if the subject of the poem is alive or dead. It gets slowly revealed to you. And the effect is that there is a kind of dual set of meanings between the dead and the living. It makes for a riddle of sorts. Complicating the riddle is the idea that Dickinson wrote of herself as one whose life “closed twice” before it finally closed for good [Fr485]. The riddle has crossed over into a metaphor; the dead as a metaphor for the living. 

No Notice gave She, but a Change—

When you first read the poem the riddle starts with the first line. What does it mean "She" didn’t give notice? What kind of Change are we talking about? It wasn't until the end of this stanza that I started to realize that this poem might be about death. 

No Message, but a Sigh—
For Whom, the Time did not suffice
That She should specify.

The only message, we now understand, is her final sigh for Someone, because she ran out of time to say more before She died.  In typical Dickinsonian fashion, we are focusing on the moment of transition, that final "sigh." Dickinson had a deep fascination with death scenes.*

She was not warm, though Summer shone

Nor scrupulous of cold

What's the point of telling us that a dead woman is cold in the summer time and doesn't care about (isn't scrupulous of) the cold? Isn't that obvious? It's pointing toward a "lack of feeling."  It begins to seem to me around this point in the poem that Dickinson is talking about a woman who is still physically alive, but feels dead inside. 

The next line is a new clue to the riddle, and a new complication too.

Though Rime by Rime, the steady Frost
Upon Her Bosom piled—

Rime by Rime is a pun on Rhyme by Rhyme. The poetry is thereby equated with the frosty cold of death. The poetry is piled on her breast like layers of frost. And this is why she is “not scrupulous of cold.” The one in pain becomes insensitive to it, numb.

But as soon as you invoke poetry, the words of the poem point back to the poet, who, I would now posit, is talking about herself. Her poetry is like frost piled on her bosom, the bosom being a symbol of both the erotic and maternal. Her lack of both lover, and perhaps, child, is part of what drives her poetry. Pining and poetry are brilliantly linked together in the phrase, "Rime by rime." 

Leave it to Dickinson to rhyme rhyme with rime. 

Of shrinking ways—she did not fright
Though all the Village looked—

Okay, so now if we can agree that the living-dead woman in this poem is Emily, then we can read this poem as autobiographical and think of Dickinson shrinking back from society, which she was starting to do more and more in 1864 when this poem was written down in fascicle 38.

Of shrinking ways she did not fright. She wasn’t afraid to shrink from the prying eyes of the village. She did it courageously. You can also read shrinking back as dying too, since this is about a dead woman after all. Dickinson is letting us know she is not frightened of disappearing.

But held Her gravity aloft—
And met the gaze—direct—

Imagine being a villager in 1864 and walking by her house, curious about the reclusive genius poet who lives there, and you catch Emily, at her writing desk in her window, staring straight at you with gravity held aloft? It gives me chills. 

And the idea of the gravity still being held aloft, in her poems, is uncanny too. It’s eerie, as if, from the grave, she was still meeting our gaze directly from her poetry. She is staring at me. At you.**

What is perceived as shrinking then is actually rising. Gravity, which can be taken in two ways here, is the sober weight of pain. The word itself is a pun between "grave" and "heaviness."  She holds this up high to meet our gaze. Perhaps she only shrinks back so that she may have the wherewithal to bravely rise up. This is not a shrinking back born of timidity. Quite the opposite. She is meeting our gaze directly, no fear, rising up, aloft, holding up the weight of grief itself.

And when adjusted like a Seed
In careful fitted Ground
Unto the Everlasting Spring

In succumbing to the death of self, she plants a seed. The body buried, “careful fitted,” in the ground is a seed into the “Everlasting Spring.” Spring is another word with a double or triple meaning here. It can mean springtime, everlasting, but it can also link back to “aloft,” the soul then lifting up from the ground like a flower springing from the earth. It takes the breath away the way Dickinson wields words.

And hindered but a Mound

First you think the woman has died so she “hindered” the earth. But its weird because a mound isn’t a mound until the woman is put into it. So how does she hinder the mound? It's not going into the earth that hinders the mound, but springing out of it. The idea here is that "She" hinders the mound as the seed sprouts, metaphorically, from the earth.

Still one wonders what this line is doing here. What else could Dickinson possibly mean by mound here? The first meaning is a burial mound, by why call attention to a burial mound being hindered? Could mound be a slant allusion to pregnancy? Has the narrator, the dead living woman, somehow hindered a pregnancy, or had her pregnancy hindered? The clues point to a possibility.

Or is "mound" perhaps a metaphor for death as birth? A funeral mound becomes a pregnant mound. That makes sense for a woman springing from her Grave toward the Everlasting. She is being born from death.

Her Warm return, if so she chose—

What does it mean that a woman can return from the grave if she chooses too? Well, it makes sense if the woman is still alive, but feels dead. So then is the warm return the poet’s return to society? 

And We—imploring drew—

If the woman is Emily, then who is the We? The riddle just had a new complication added to it. Is the poet taking on the voice of the villagers staring in her window?

Removed our invitation by
As Some She never knew—

The freezing woman, frozen by cold pain, can no longer know or be known. She is dead to the world, but in that death of self she is looking at us face to face, the grave poem held aloft.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

*The following scene is described in Alfred Habegger's biography of Emily Dickinson, "My Wars Are Laid Away In Books." 

When Emily was 14 she had a friend/cousin named Sophia Holland. Emily described her in a letter as a "friend near my age & with whom my thoughts & her own were the same." When this friend died Emily was allowed to watch "over her bed." 

"It seemed that to me I should die too," Emily recalled, "if I could not be permitted to watch over her or even to look at her face."

This is from Habegger:

"Emily prevailed on the doctor to allow one last look. She took  off her shoes and quietly stepped to the sickroom, stopping in the doorway. There Sophia

'lay mild & beautiful as in health & her pale features lit up with an unearthly - smile. I looked as long as friends would permit & when they told me I must look no longer I let them lead me away.' Then, 'I shed no tears, for my heart was too full to weep, but after she was laid in her coffin & I felt I could not call her back again I gave way to a fixed melancholy. I told no one the cause of my grief.'"

** Before the great poet and songwriter David Berman died a few years ago he wrote a song called "Snow is falling in Manhattan" with these lines, eerie in the way that Emily's are.


Songs build little rooms in time
And housed within the song's design
Is the ghost the host has left behind
To greet and sweep the guest inside
Stoke the fire and sing his lines.

Purple Mountains,"Snow is Falling in Manhattan." 

(As I post this, snow is falling on Manhattan)

Who Court obtain within Himself

Who Court obtain within Himself
Sees every Man a King—
And Poverty of Monarchy
Is an interior thing—

No Man depose
Whom Fate Ordain—
And Who can add a Crown
To Him who doth continual
Conspire against His Own

    -Fr859, J803, Fascicle 38, 1864



The language of royalty litters Emily Dickinson's poems. Words like "King," "Monarchy" and "Crown" show up dozens and dozens of times. 

One of Dickinson’s aims seems to be to depose our idea of King and replace it with something more worthwhile. She inverts the norm and shows us in poem after poem how true royalty is something earned. 

This poem explores inner sovereignty, the idea that true wealth comes from self-mastery. Someone who has “court within Himself” is a king regardless of poverty. Conversely, someone who works “against his own” inner self cannot be given a crown and no external wealth can compensate.

Who Court obtain within Himself / Sees every Man a King—

If someone possesses their own inner royal court, which I personally take to mean cultivating both Truth (integrity) and Beauty (inner richness), then it follows that they will be able to recognize the inherent nobility in all people. Equality is rooted in inner worth, not external hierarchy. 

Being able to see every man (and woman) as King is a beautifully democratic ideal.

 
And Poverty of Monarchy / Is an interior thing—

A King may be poor inside, with an impoverished inner world and a lack of self-government. True monarchy is psychological, not material.

I think about this often. It has become apparent to me that people who have exterior wealth are often living in inner poverty, and vice versa. In my travels I've noticed there is so much more laughter and dancing in the poorer countries that I’ve been to than there are the rich ones. If you are looking beneath the surface, then the meek do, indeed, inherit the earth.

No Man depose / Whom Fate Ordain—

Your deepest Self, your inherent nature, your “Fate,” has made you sovereign. If you are rooted in this Self, then no external force can take that away. It’s the idea that inner authority is “ordained” by who you fundamentally are, not by what society grants you. No one can “depose” you then, because this kind of power is not external in the first place.

And Who can add a Crown
To Him who doth continual
Conspire against His Own

If a person constantly undermines themselves, through self-doubt, self-sabotage, guilt, shame, etc, then no “crown” can fix it. A crown (any external validation) is meaningless for someone at war with their own mind.

Dickinson’s poems comprise a masterclass of lessons in living a meaningful life. Keep court within, not without. If you don't conspire against your own mind then you will find that you won't conspire against anyone else's mind either. You will see everybody as divinely appointed.

One great thing about this poem is that it begins and ends with an echo of the sound of the word CROWN. You see it in the opening of the poem in the phrase “Court obtain,” and then the poem ends with “Conspire against his own” which is a drawing out of the sound of "Crown," as if hidden with the sound of the word "CROWN" is the idea: “ConspiRe against His OWN.”

Emily Dickinson is King.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Hailee Steinfeld playing Emily Dickinson. 

The crown of flowers is a nice touch.

Time feels so vast that were it not

Time feels so vast that were it not
For an Eternity—
I fear me this Circumference
Engross my Finity—

To His exclusion, who prepare
By Processes of Size
For the Stupendous Vision
Of his diameters—


    -Fr858, J802, Fascicle 38, 1864

In order to understand the scope of this poem I think it helps to first get in touch with a visceral feeling of awe for Eternity. You know, you are a little kid and you are looking up at the stars and trying to understand infinity, and you realize, intuitively, that you cannot, that there are limits to your understanding. We think in terms of cause and effect. Which came first the chicken or the egg? Therefore, how could there be no beginning? No end? How are we even alive in all of that beginninglessness and endlessness? 

Does the limit of existence reveal something, or does it swallow us?

I'm thinking of Whitman's line, "The clock indicates the moment... but what does Eternity indicate?"

I can feel a tension in this poem between the poet wanting life to end because the pain of it "feels" so vast, and, simultaneously, wanting it to go on. I think we all feel that tension in our lives don't we? This poem, through the idea of Eternity, gives us relief from both our pains and our fears. The pains have an end, but they also have an end goal, as they are somehow part of the processes of a larger design. This larger design, itself, the circles that subsume our circle, gives our finite lives meaning. 

Let’s take it line by line here.

Time feels so vast that were it not
For an Eternity—

This opening puts immediately into an immense philosophical idea. Time feels vast, which might be a problem, something that would swallow us up, if it wasn’t for something far greater than time, Eternity.

The verb “feels” adds subjectivity. This is not a cosmic statement, but the poet's inner experience. 

I fear me this Circumference
Engross my Finity—

Circumference is a whole thing with Dickinson. Like the word Eternity, Circumference is one she uses over and over in her poems and that, itself, has an ever-expanding circumference of meaning. In one of her letters she tells T.W. Higginson, “My business is circumference.” In this case she seems to be using it to mean not just a limit of understanding, but that of time itself, which surrounds her very existence. She says she fears that this circumference would engross her finite life. This refers back to time. So the circumference of time would swallow her up, if it wasn’t for that thing beyond the circumference of time, Eternity.

To His exclusion, who prepare
By Processes of Size

The first stanza sets up the second. I fear I would be swallowed by time, but this would be to exclude Him (Eternity), who prepares by processes of size. Our time is a circle in service to a larger circle, which is in turn in service to a larger circle, ad infinitum. Without Eternity’s presence, He would be excluded, or at least inaccessible, because the only “space” is the closed-in temporal circle.

But He is preparing something using “processes of size," meaning He works on a scale beyond ordinary human measures. We might well ask, preparing what? But here, perhaps, is where faith comes in that these processes are not small nor simple. They’re dynamic and ever expansive.

For the Stupendous Vision
Of his diameters—

The poet intuits that whatever is being prepared for is “Stupendous.”

“Diameters” suggests lines crossing through circles, measuring their full span. If circumference is the outer boundary, diameter is a way to penetrate or bridge across circles. So His vision is not confined by the boundary of time. He spans it, sees through it, connects across it.

Dickinson recognizes her own finitude, but rather than surrendering to despair, she takes comfort in Eternity. God is not a distant or remote figure here. He actively prepares the cosmos. But His preparation is not small-scale. It happens “by Processes of Size.” His “vision” spans much more than temporal bounds, traversing them through “diameters.”

This is not simplistic consolation. It's a metaphysical model. Her finite self is preserved by positing a divine order so vast and geometrically coherent that it encompasses even the circumference of time itself. This is a metaphysical prayer, a vision of how divinity secures our finiteness. The poem builds a bridge, through “diameters,” between a limited human existence and a boundless divine reality.

Many Dickinson poems seem to be written to survive the thought and this is one of them. 

I’m reminded of this line from Rilke, “To all the unsayable sums, joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.”

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. In researching this poem I came across a charming and insightful doctoral thesis on the use of Circumference in Dickinson’s poetry by a CK Mathew. It is very warm and insightful. From the preface:


In my mind Emily Dickinson has always been the woman in white: an
enigmatic and ghostly figure who wafted through my imagination with
no let or hindrance, taking my breath away each time she appeared. I
must have been a young lad entering his teens when I came across her
poems, and though much of what she wrote was incomprehensible to
me in those early days, she fascinated me for no clearly identifiable
reason. The power of her words to stun me, to make me start and
shiver, to set me off into a reverie, was obvious from the start. As I
grew, I learned to seek for her hidden meanings, for her new insights,
the unmatched compression and concentration of her lexicon, and the
quaint strangeness of the manner of her expression.
Throughout the busy schedule of my decades in the civil service,
she used to wander in and out of my life, in the form of a collection
of poems someone had left behind.

As superannuation neared, and the prospect of doing nothing
loomed large, Emily called out to me again. It was time to finally get
to know this mystery woman better, to understand her through dogged
research and study and to finally try to make some sense of who and
what she really was. I registered myself as a Ph.D research scholar and
proposed a detailed examination of the philosophical
meaning of ‘circumference’ in her poems. Over four years I scoured
through the libraries at the University at Jaipur, the USIS at New Delhi
and the American Studies Research Centre at Hyderabad. 

Doing this along with the onerous official duties
was difficult, but Emily often proved to be the escape I longed for,
from files and meetings and the daily political machinations that had
become a part of my official life. What bliss, what joy as she beckoned
me into her world.

And thus I obtained for myself
the honour of adding the honorific of ‘Doctor’ to my name. Friends
and colleagues wondered why I was overjoyed in acquiring this new
title on a subject which has no practical use in the real world. But then
Emily had taught me that the real world was within.
It was the culmination of a life-long fascination with the poetess
who, without warning or notice, used to walk though my imagination.

She rose to His Requirement – dropt

She rose to His Requirement – dropt
The Playthings of Her Life
To take the honorable Work
Of Woman, and of Wife –

If ought She missed in Her new Day,
Of Amplitude, or Awe –
Or first Prospective – or the Gold
In using, wear away,

It lay unmentioned – as the Sea
Develope Pearl, and Weed,
But only to Himself – be known
The Fathoms they abide – 



     -Fr857, J732, Fascicle 38, 1864



This poem seems to tell the story of a woman who rose to the requirements of her husband. She dropped all of the playthings of life so she could get down to the honorable work of being a wife. This she does without mentioning it. This leads to a major loss of prospects for gold and awe for the woman, but also to a gain in pearl, and weeds, which is shared only with the husband, since only he can truly fathom his wife.

This poem may be read as a justification of this difficult rising up to requirement, or as a condemnation of it, depending on how you look at it. And honestly, after reading it several times, I'm not 100% sure which way it leans most, toward gratitude or bitterness. 

Let's say that if this poem was written from the perspective of a wife subjugating herself and her talents for the sake of a man, then it may be read as damning. This tracks with Dickinson who did famously stay single.

But the poem can also be read as accepting and admiring of the woman who puts her own desires aside and rises to the difficult occasion of marriage. This woman not only meets the requirements of being a good mate, but in the difficulty of doing so, in trading the loss of all that prospective gold, she gains pearls, which she lovingly shares with her beloved. 

How can this poem be seen as so pro-marriage and against at the same time?

My own take is that Dickinson did position herself, in a way, between the two perspectives. She somehow held off traditional marriage like Penelope at the loom holding off suitors, but at the same time she appears to have married Someone; Christ, or Poetry, or Sue, or Charles Wadsworth, or (your guess here), in her heart. And she appears to have taken those vows very seriously. Consider the white dress she exclusively wore the last few years of her life.

This poem makes me think about gender, and my own role as a husband, but really, I feel far more sympathy for the wife in this poem than the husband. We all do, don't we? As Bob Dylan says, "You gotta serve somebody." We all drop the playthings of our life, a little at least, when we are wed, and then even further when we become a mother or father. We rise, in some way or other, to the requirements of the Other. 

Is there bitterness in this? It depends on the circumstances. That word "requirement" is suspect, though, is it not? It sends me back to critique. A man, back then especially, might require his wife’s obedience by might. "Require" carries a hint of violence. Do this or else! If this poem is one about an enforced requirement, that makes it dark from the get-go.

If ought She missed in Her new Day,
Of Amplitude, or Awe –
Or first Prospective – or the Gold
In using, wear away,

What do we miss of Amplitude and Awe, or of "first prospective" during our work days?  What would the prospects of your day be if left to your devices? The first "prospective" of the day is the richest too because that is where our fullest energy is.

We use our gold up for others, which can lead to bitterness. But in exchange we find pearls, which is a joy. 

Are these pearls a consolation prize, or is it where the truer value lies?

Although Dickinson never did get married, you might say that she did rise to her father’s requirements. These are things to keep in mind when considering the psychological roots of this poem. It is also worth remembering that she seems to have risen, during the last 15-20 years of her life, to some more esoteric requirements of her own choosing. The difference between those two kinds of marriage is part of the tension of this poem.

It lay unmentioned – as the Sea
Develope Pearl, and Weed,

The repression of awe creates a compression, as if a pearl were being formed fathoms deep. I think that the "weed" is apt in this poem, the way it becomes a setting for that pearl. Imagine them together and you have, in two words, a world of visual splendor.

Weed could be read as a kind of treasure in itself, or it could be read as a symbol of disuse. Like, maybe a pearl or two was formed, but what about all that other potential? It's all gone to weed.

But only to Himself – be known
The Fathoms they abide –

The He in this poem, then, could be A. Lover, B. Father, C. God, D. Poetry, F. all of the above. It’s very hard to know. That’s why you have to see how you fit into the poem yourself. If we can agree that we are all the She, then what is the He for you? The He in the poem for which I rise is my wife, my children, my students, my family, my friends, the downtrodden in the world, and finally myself too. 

But as I rise to these requirements, my singing self, from deep within my own fortress of solitude, is, perhaps, richer for having withdrawn to such inner depths. The Himself that knows and recognizes the "Fathoms" that "abide" within me is, for lack of better word, God.

That resonates with me.

But what if I try to take on the Husband side of this poem? As a husband myself, does this resonate with me too? Well, I don’t require anything of my wife. I make requests yes, but not requirements. However I do require certain behaviors from my daughters, so perhaps that is where I should focus my own attention here when looking at the man's side of this poem. Perhaps I need stop requiring anything from my daughters? 

I want to make sure I don't tamp down any of their Amplitude or Awe, nor squelch their Prospects for Gold, due to adherence to my requirements.

One more thing I want to mention is that line about how all those fathoms “lay unmentioned." The poem seems to be saying that the woman humbly does the work and doesn't mention the pains. But then this poem does a curious thing and goes ahead and mentions it anyway. And therein is another crux. Is it good not to mention it? or should it absolutely be mentioned? 

Either way, bitter and/or proud, the result of all this work is the pearl, which I take to be the poem itself.

That last word, “Abide,” is so beautiful here. These poems, these pearls, amidst all of the weeds, abide for us.

Dickinson, I like to believe, rose to her own requirements. And though it appears to have been hard on her, the pressure left us with a strand of nearly 2000 pearls. “The fathoms they abide.”

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. I'm looking again at the first line, She rose to His Requirement – dropt

How about the tension between "rose" and "dropt" here? It is a prime example of the way Dickinson reaches toward the parodoxically contradictory nature of Truth in her poetry, and here she does it in just one line. It's as if ballast was being dropped from a balloon rising up to sky. 

This itself is in contrast to the fathoms of the ocean that ends the poem.