So set it’s Sun in Thee —

So set it’s Sun in Thee —
What Day be dark to me —
What Distance far —
So I the Ships may see —
That touch how seldomly —
Thy Shore?

     — F940, J808, sheet 17, 1865


Adam is on vacation. We are grateful to Tom Clyde for taking up the mantle to write the commentary for F940:

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Here we have a short poem in six lines, posing a single question.

Yet it contains multitudes.

In one reading of this poem, we stare down into a well of unspoken sadness. The poet seems to be stating that she is fine, FINE I TELL YOU. “What Day be dark to me?”

We suspect, however, that she is full of longing and loneliness, despite her protestations. She
aches for someone who is no longer physically present.

In another reading of the poem, we find ourselves focusing on the power of devotion to transform the world. Love can make dark day light! Love can make that which is far near! Reading the poem in this way teaches us how geographical distance or emotional estrangement might be overcome with the right attitude.

A third way through this poem is to read it with eros in mind. When we listen to it this way we soon discover that it is full of sensual detail, only half-concealed by metaphor, like a dress falling from a shoulder.

These are three possible readings of many.

Somehow, in this single rhetorical question spanning six lines, Dickinson covers a space as large as the globe and as small as the body.

How does she do so much with so few words?

Let’s look more closely, line by line.

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Dickinson starts us off with a six-syllable fragment. At first we find it hard to get our bearings.

Who is talking to whom?

So set it’s Sun in Thee—

(The apostrophe in “it’s,” by the way, is simply a case of Dickinson’s quirky habit. She writes it
as if it’s a contraction, but in this line it clearly functions as the possessive “its.” So let’s not get hung up on that part.)

We notice first, if we read this first line aloud, how the alliterative “s” sounds in “So” and “set”
and “it’s” and “Sun” are sliding past us as we move forward.

Dickinson launches us into this poem like a vessel sliding into water. Sssss ss sss ss. We only come to rest at the very end of the line, on the soft sand of “Thee.”

So set its Sun in Thee—

Who is talking to whom? Now we know. Importantly, the poet is addressing a “Thee,” not a “You” — that is, she is talking to someone she loves. She is arrested by that person. Has come to rest on that person.

We read on:

So set it's Sun in Thee—
What Day be dark to me—

In line two we find out who the “it” was in line one: it was the “Day.” So the question of the poem begins to emerge…

As long as the sun, which shone on the speaker earlier, now shines on her beloved too, then what day could possibly be dark?

Note that after we rest on the sandy bottom of “Thee” at the end of that first line, the alliteration of the “s” sound now shifts to the alliteration of a “d” sound. From “set it’s Sun” to “Day be dark.”

Also, I don’t know about you, but for me that hard rhyme of “Thee”/“me” helps me hear those “d”s in “Day” and “dark” as little waves, knocking against us.

Yet the underlying logic of these two lines of rhyming six syllables is still, we have to admit, a little obscure.

We understand that the poet, although technically in darkness at her location, does not feel her day is dark on a subjective level. Why? Because she knows that the sun is still setting where someone she loves resides.

But WHY should this mere knowledge lighten her day? After all, she is still not with this other person.

Why should just knowing some atmospheric phenomenon— the rotation of the earth causing a reddening of the horizon at the longitude which marks the location of her beloved — have anything to do with her experience of the sky at her own location?

Is she fooling herself?

Or is she devoted beyond reason?

We might ask out of our own experience: does simply knowing that someone we love is in light… make it light for us? This is an extravagant claim for the power of the imagination.

I mean, let’s think of some examples of how this might work:

● Can we taste M&Ms just because our loved one tastes them?

● Would we feel refreshed just because we happened upon a Facebook Live stream of our loved one swimming?

I would suggest that this is a reach.

Perhaps, though, Dickinson means to imply that, in some inexplicable way, when we love we are the same person as our beloved?

That’s amazing, if true.

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But how would this transformation, an Ovidian metamorphosis, feel, if this really does occur?

Let’s read on to find out:

What Distance far—

Ok, here in the third line (can you believe we are only at the third line??) we get more on the same theme. And also another “d” word, another little wave against our vessel.

We saw already that time collapses in love. Seeing the sun now makes the fact that I saw it earlier immaterial… because I see it again now with thee.

This third line (“What Distance far—“) makes it clear that, to Dickinson, both time and space are collapsed by love. Distance is no longer “far” at all; you are near to me because you see the same sun.

So far, Dickinson seems to be saying that love makes us… commingled.

Indistinguishable.

Maybe even identical?

Again, is this folly? Wishful thinking? Deep commitment?

We can read it either or both ways.

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Fourth line:

So I the Ships may see —

Here is where Dickinson begins to explain what sustains her, at last. She sees ships, messengers, passing from her to her beloved. (Maybe actual ships? Or are these “ships” letters, flowers, poems?)

This transit of “ships” is enough to form a kind of connective tissue.

Recall how the poem started with the sound of a ship hitting the water. Sss. Then, with a gentle thud, against the th of “Thee.” Now it seems to be lifting off the sand with this “sh” sound (followed again by the “s” in see as it gains speed).

Next line:

That touch how seldomly—

No matter how infrequently these “ships” — these letters, these missives, these flowers, these poems — reach the one she loves, it is enough. They have transformed time and space and brought her to the only place that matters.

The final line is just two syllables:

Thy Shore?

Isn’t it beautiful, the way that Dickinson connects the metaphor serving as the conclusion of the poem — a fleet of ships sailing “seldomly” but ceaselessly to the beloved — back to the original “Thee” of the first line? “Thee” folds into “Thy.” Not any shore. Thy shore.

And by this addition she deepens it too. Dickinson doesn’t say that ships “seldomly” touch “Thee,” but rather “Thy Shore.” That comforting “sh” sound again, as our ship meets sand.

The poet’s beloved has become a shore, a ground, a grounding. A continual shipping route takes her there in an eternal circle. Time and space are immaterial. We are here.

This ending moves me a lot.

(Aside: My mother, who is 84, currently has dementia. And when she sees me she often says in wonder: “When I am with you, everything makes sense.” She doesn't worry about memories or meals or the schedule for the day. During my visits, she doesn’t worry about a thing. We are together and that is all she needs. It is an incredible honor to be someone’s shore.)

That touch how seldomly—
Thy Shore?

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Back to the three possible ways through that I mentioned at the beginning.

The first — as a poem containing a deep well of unspoken sadness. Even though Dickinson asserts that these “ships,” following their assigned route from her to her beloved, are enough…she does not quite convince, does she?

The poet is merely seeing these ships disembark. Her role is passive. We can imagine those old black and white film clips of friends and family members frantically waving their handkerchiefs in the air as a passenger ship disembarks. Isn’t the poet alone, even in a crowd, on that metaphorical wharf? We suspect so.

Also, she acknowledges that they “seldomly” touch the shore of the beloved. Has there been a slow-down in shipping? Have there been storms? Accidents at sea? There is the implication of an untold story there — of a loss and falling-off from some better state of affairs.

Finally, when she mentions the “Dark,” we sense that the poet has a visceral sense of that dark. It is not a stranger to her, even while she says she banishes it. Nor is “Distance far” a stranger to her. Read this way, the poem feels harrowing. It seems to invoke the power of the imagination as a plea for relief.

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As for our second way through — as a tribute to the devotion of a lover — this way emphasizes the poet’s act of will.

Read this way, the entire poem is a defiant question posed in the face of doubt. Oh yeah? She seems to be saying. Watch me.

She will be there at the dock watching those ships depart… her cheeks flushed in the wind, her eyes just as bright as ever, lit by her unfading love for her beloved. We can admire the irrational and metamorphic power of love. Dante’s Beatrice. Marcel’s Albertine.

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Finally, how about the erotic reading of this poem?

I left this for last because it hit me last. On my tenth or twentieth reading, I suddenly I heard it.

So set it’s Sun in Thee—

The sun is setting in the beloved. Not over. Not on or about. In.

This is an intimate preposition for Dickinson to use. From this first line of the poem we are somewhere very personal, quiet, between the lover and the loved one.

There’s dark. There’s distance. But they are banished.

And then the last three lines of the poem have a hushed tone. They sound almost like a seduction.

So I the Ships may see—
That touch how seldomly—
Thy Shore?

Sh — ss — th — ss — th — sh.

Read these lines aloud to hear their undeniable sensuality, full of soft combinations of consonants.

Next there’s the choice of the verb “touch” in the second to last line. These same ships, which the lover saw off, now touch the beloved.

That touch how seldomly—

The erotic charge of that “seldomly,” which can be read as increasing the anticipation.

But, most of all, the gorgeous two-word ending, “Thy Shore.”

I cannot read this, now, without thinking of the shore as the body, the softness of somebody’s skin. What happens when we touch another and land on his or her shore?

There is a thrill knowing that a letter or a poem reached someone we love, partly because we know that person now holds it in their hands. And the same goes for the recipient, knowing that it began its journey in another’s room, desk, bed. No wonder people used to perfume the pages of the letters they sent.

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This poem contains multitudes.

Eat your heart out, Walt.

        

        -Tom Clyde

A ship leaving port in 1911, closer to Dickinson's time than to ours