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
Yet sanctifies the Mind—
With fair association—
Afar upon the Wind
A Bird to overhear
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.
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.
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
Note: 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.
*It's almost a shame to lay the poem 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.
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