The good Will of a Flower

The good Will of a Flower
The Man who would possess
Must first present
Certificate
Of minted Holiness.


   -F954, J849, sheet 20, 1865

This poem begins with the good Will of a Flower. First, let’s state the obvious. Flowers may have a natural benevolence, but they don’t have wills. So then what are we talking about here? I’ll go out on a limb and say Dickinson probably had a woman in mind here. A flower attracting a bee may be seen as analogous to a woman attracting a lover. Flowers open up for bees as a woman might open for a lover. But the crucial difference between the two is that a woman does have a will. A flower opens for any bee willy nilly, but a woman will not.

If you want a woman’s good Will, her willingness, she must first be “certain” of your intentions. Here Dickinson jokingly gets at the idea of certitude with the term “certificate.” One must be wholly, certifiably, trustworthy. Holy.

                     

“Minted,” like Certificate, is another arch word choice here. Like certified, to mint a coin originally meant to stamp it with the official state seal. So here it means something like being officially stamped by heaven itself.

A modern equivalent to this sentiment might be heard in the Beyoncé song, “All the Single Ladies (Put a ring on it.)”

"Don't treat me to these things of the world

I'm not that kind of girl, your love is what I deserve"

Putting a ring on a finger doesn’t certify holiness, as a billion broken marriages can attest to, but that’s the idea anyway.

You can read the word possession in this poem in a couple of ways, and the reading of the poem changes depending. In the above reading, the one I think Dickinson largely means, we are talking about romantic possession, which is something different than merely possessiveness. She often uses the word “Mine” when writing about her beloved. There is a kind of possession that may be seen as pure, and therefore "holy." It’s that feeling of wanting to be loved by one uniquely special person, who is in turn loved by you, exclusively.

In this reading you are choosing a lasting love over temporary desire.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. One can't help but wonder if this poem was written for a suitor, and, even more tantalizingly, if it was sent to one with a flower.

P.P.S. An alternative reading, one that Dickinson may or may not have had in mind, but is suggested nonetheless by its vocabulary:

I mentioned in the comments to the poem previous to this one that in Billy Collins’ introduction to an Emily Dickinson Selected Poems he talks about the way she plays Latin and Anglo-Saxon words against each other. This poem is another good example of this. 

If you focus on the just the tone of the two languages, the poem takes on a different meaning. 

The language begins simply, directly. The flower has a good Will, a natural generosity. But look at what happens when Dickinson introduces the person who wants to possess the flower:

Must first present 

Certificate 

Of minted Holiness.

Possess, present, certificate are Latinate words, formal and bureaucratic.  And then comes the wonderful contradiction of “minted Holiness.” Minted suggests something manufactured, like a coin. Yet holiness should be inward and sacred. The poem's language shows us a conflict, natural goodness versus the human desire to own and regulate.