Of Tolling Bell I ask the cause?

Of Tolling Bell I ask the cause?
"A Soul has gone to Heaven"
I'm answered in a lonesome tone—
Is Heaven then a Prison?

That Bells should ring till all should know
A Soul had gone to Heaven
Would seem to me the more the way
A Good News should be given.

     -F933, J947, sheet 15, 1865

This poem reminds me of John Donne’s famous line, “For whom the bell tolls.” But here the question changes to, “For why the bell tolls.”

Is the bell tolling to extol our pain or our joy? The basic impulse of this poem is that we take the funeral bell to be a bad omen, but, if we are going to heaven, shouldn’t the sound of the bell signal Good News?

This poem is a slippery one though, full of little reversals.

One of the first things I needed to make sense of in this poem is what it means when the S of “Has” in the first stanza turns into the D of “Had” in the second. The poem considers the difference between “A Soul haS gone to Heaven” and “A Soul haD gone to heaven.” That single change of letter changes the tense which makes the difference between a soul haS left, sad, and a soul haD arrived, happy.

Of Tolling Bell I ask the cause?

The response to the question comes not from the tone of the bell, but from the "lonesome tone" of the one being questioned. The “tone” is a reflection of the person, in other words, not the bell.

"A Soul has gone to Heaven"
I'm answered in a lonesome tone—

A follow up question might be: who is it that the poet is asking? Is this some random person out on the street? (It could be, Dickinson's bedroom writing window faced a main road that lead to a graveyard only a few hundred yards from her house, the same one she is buried in now).  Or is the poet asking herself? Who is it that is feeling lonesome?

This seems to be a poem, on the surface, that calls out the hypocrisy of believers, asking them why, if they truly believe, they are treating celebration like a loss. Death should be a celebration! But I think that is a facile reading. If you read the poem backwards, which one should try to do with a Dickinson poem, the "lonesome" reasserts itself and the celebration turns back into what it is for the mourner, a loss. 

Is Heaven then a Prison?

Read frontwards this question is asking us why we would grieve death if it frees us from life. But read backwards, this line points to the living, and to the less-lonely past. Is heaven then a prison? There's a contravalence in this poem, a tension introduced in that telling word, “lonesome.” It's the secret hinge in this poem.

What good is the bell's musical chime of celebration to the one left behind? It serves as a reminder, perhaps, of the hope of something better for the bereaved, but it doesn’t take away the pain of the loss. The pain of loss is so great that it makes the bells themselves sound mournful.

That Bells should ring till all should know
A Soul had gone to Heaven
Would seem to me the more the way
A Good News should be given.

I like the rolling cadence caused by the enjambment of the second stanza, like a bell ringing out. Try it in one breath. It isn’t easy because there is no place to breathe in that stanza unless you make one. This breathless ringing is drawn out even further by the extra half-measure of the feminine-rhyme of "heaven" and "given."  

There’s another subtle reversal in the final two lines. "Good News" immediately evokes the Gospel itself. Gospel literally means good news. So if you read the poem forward then it is saying that the Good News is we don’t die, if we are believers, and therefore should rejoice at the sound of the bells.

But if you've read much Emily Dickinson, then you know the idea of Heaven is a troubled one, to say the least. And if you've learned to read the poems backward, you see that bells perhaps shouldn’t be ringing at all. Silence might be more appropriate.

Christian doctrine says that Heaven is infinitely better than Earth. Human behavior says that death is tragic. Dickinson hears irony in the ringing of those bells. Why is it that believers behave as though they don't actually believe? There’s a gap between belief and behavior that is clear as the tone of the bell.

  

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. As for the idea of reading a poem backward, note the discussion on the subject in the post for F849. Also, check out this scrap-musing from Emily, about the need to read certain poems backwards: 

Did you ever

read one of

her Poems back-

ward, because

the plunge from

the front over-

turned you?

I sometimes

often have-

many times have-

a something

overtakes the

Mind-

Our little Kinsmen—after Rain

Our little Kinsmen—after Rain
In plenty may be seen,
A Pink and Pulpy multitude
The tepid Ground upon.

A needless life, it seemed to me
Until a little Bird
As to a Hospitality
Advanced and breakfasted.

As I of He, so God of Me
I pondered, may have judged,
And left the little Angle Worm
With Modesties enlarged.


    -F932, J885, sheet 15, 1865


I’m surprised this is not one of the more famous poems. It’s funny and dark, sweet and sour, signature Dickinson.

Our little Kinsmen—after Rain
In plenty may be seen,

We start with a riddle. It’s a pretty simple one though and if you haven't figured it out by the first stanza, then you probably will by the time you get to the bird breakfasting in the second. Worms are our kinsmen. On one hand this implies a kinship among all living things (sweet) but on the other, the poet is comparing us to worms (sour).

If we are like worms, we can begin to ask a question here. Do we also come out “after Rain”? What does it mean to come out after rain? Does it mean we are metaphorically tired of the solitary pain (rain) and long for the open communion of the sun? 

A Pink and Pulpy multitude
The tepid Ground upon.

Pink and pulpy. What a pair of descriptors for humanity. Together it sounds repulsive. And why is the ground “tepid?” It’s like an alien Yelp review of humanity. "I checked out the humans and found them to be pink, pulpy and tepid. Zero stars.” (It reminds me of Thomas Hobbes review of life, “nasty brutish and short.")

A needless life, it seemed to me
Until a little Bird
As to a Hospitality
Advanced and breakfasted.

This pink, pulpy and tepid worms, our kin, seem "needless" to the poet until she notices that the worms make an excellent breakfast for birds. The implication is that we humans, if we can at least provide sustenance for the “birds,” may be worthwhile after all.

This begs the question of what it might it mean, metaphorically, to give ourselves up to feed the birds?  One answer might be in the song-like nature of Poetry. Emily, in her poems, is giving the “higher nature” in each of us, our inner bird, poems to sing. She is feeding us the poetic sustenance of Truth and Beauty.

But anything that adds purpose to our lives, that gives us wings, may do. How to do that is a question each of us must answer for ourselves.

As I of He, so God of Me
I pondered, may have judged,

This is a pithy way to say, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” I’m judging the worms, and, by comparison, humanity itself, says the poet, but am I not human? And it is perhaps even implied that we are worse than the worms, because at least the worms aren't judging anyone.

And left the little Angle Worm
With Modesties enlarged.

 Is it the worm or poet who is "left... with Modesties enlarged"? It's neat how Dickinson's use of grammar here conflates ourselves and the worms.

This realization (this... “Angle”?) of being comparable to, and indeed worse than, the Angle Worm is what gives us humility. Humility shows us Truth and Truth, set in the frame of Beauty, gives us poetry.

I’m reminded of a line from the new Odyssey film by Christopher Nolan. “The clearest view of man is from below.“ Odysseus becomes reduced to a humble beggar at the end of his Odyssey and therefore can see mankind for what it is. But here, Dickinson gives us a gorgeous metaphor for what we can aspire to be, a humble banquet for the song birds.

This poem pairs well with an earlier one, F359:

A Bird came down the Walk—
He did not know I saw—
He bit an Angleworm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw,

And then he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass—
And then hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass—

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all around—
They looked like frightened Beads, I thought,
He stirred his Velvet Head—

Like one in danger, Cautious,
I offered him a Crumb
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer Home—

Than Oars divide the Ocean,
Too silver for a seam—
Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon
Leap, plashless as they swim.

The rain/pain drives us out to the sun where we can be seen and, therefore enjoyed, by the birds, giving them sustenance for flight and song. We can offer the bird only crumbs, but it may be enough for him to "unroll his feathers" and row softer home, plashlessly dividing the "Everywhere of Silver."

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

An Everywhere of Silver

An Everywhere of Silver
With Ropes of Sand
To keep it from effacing
The Track called Land.

    -F931, J884, Sheet 15, 1865


Because of the clues of “sand” and “land” we know that descriptor in the first line, "Everywhere of Silver," refers to the sea. Dickinson could have easily written “Everywhere of Ocean,” but by saying “Everywhere of Silver” she takes it beyond any name. Instead she turns the ocean into a ubiquitous substance that is luminous and precious.

Silver is reflective. When you look at a moonlit sea you see a continuous sheet of shimmering light. That fits the word "Everywhere." The ocean ceases to be an object and becomes a field of radiance spreading across the horizon. Silver becomes the color of something whose edges are hard to locate.

Silver is liquid, fluid, whereas "Land" is fixed and narrowly defined as a "Track."  Dickinson gives the sea a glowing expansiveness that overwhelms all distinctions. Silver is not warm and earthy like gold. It feels cool and mysterious.

"Everything of Silver" makes it seem less like a body of water and more like a dazzling force, which makes the fragile survival of the "Track called Land" feel astonishing. The poem marvels at how this boundless shining infinity is prevented from erasing land protected by nothing more than "ropes of sand." 

Now let's consider the word "Track." “Everywhere” is limitless, but a "Track" is narrow. Dickinson compresses the world as we know it into something resembling a path, a way through something larger. If the sea is "Everywhere," then land is a path cut through the immensity.

But a track can also be defined as a mark left behind, like an animal’s footprint. Calling land a "track" makes it seem less like a permanent continent and more like a temporary mark on the surface of existence. Compared to the ocean's "Everywhere," land becomes merely a trace. A track is something that can be erased by the wind or waves, so the verb "effacing" becomes meaningful. You don't normally think of a continent being effaced, but you can easily imagine this little trace we happen to call "land" being effaced.

In this poem Dickinson reverses the hierarchy. What we experience as the substantial world is, from a larger perspective, only a fleeting mark against a much greater reality.

The poem's awe comes from the imbalance. In the infinite silver expanse the track somehow persists.

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

                                                     

P.S.

This poem reminds me of one we looked at recently, F926, which gives a similar sense of being precariously balanced on a track amidst an overwhelming Everywhere. “I stepped from Plank to Plank…The Stars about my Head/ I felt about my Feet the Sea.”

P.P.S.  

"In heaven the statues flow and the waters are still." -Darin Stevenson

 

The Poets light but Lamps—

The Poets light but Lamps—
Themselves—go out—
The Wicks they stimulate—
If vital Light

Inhere as do the Suns—
Each Age a Lens
Disseminating their
Circumference—


      -F930, J883, Sheet 15, 1865


This poem clues us into the fact that Dickinson thought about the legacy of her poetry. In the last few commentaries on Prowling Bee, I've been thinking about the uncanny private/public double-nature of Dickinson’s poetry. This poem shows us the public side of that face. 

The vocation of poet is one Dickinson took seriously. And what is it that poets are charged to do?

The Poets light but Lamps—
Themselves—go out—

Poets light the Lamps of readers long after they themselves are gone. These poems help illuminate the Truth for us.

Two of my favorite Dickinson poems are variations on this theme. The first is F802.

The spry Arms of the Wind
If I could crawl between
I have an errand imminent
To an adjoining Zone—

I should not care to stop
My Process is not long
The Wind could wait without the Gate
Or stroll the Town among.

To ascertain the House
And is the soul at Home
And hold the Wick of mine to it
To light, and then return—

The Town is the people of the world, the house is yours and the candle flame of the poet has somehow made it past the “The spry arms of the wind” to reach your wick. (How does the poet do this? Through the contained fire of extremely well-made poems.)

The second one is this, F322:

Good Night—Which put the Candle out?
A jealous Zephyr—not a doubt—
Ah, friend, You little knew
How long at that celestial wick

The Angels—labored diligent—
Extinguished—now—for You!
It might have been the Light House Spark—
Some Sailor—rowing in the Dark—

Had importuned to see—
It might have been the waning Lamp
That lit the Drummer— from the Camp—
To purer Reveille—

The lamp-light of the poem is meant to help us safely row to shore, and to wake us up to “purer Reveille.” In turn, we can Light the candle of others, provided a “jealous Zephyr” doesn’t put out this flame that the Angels have labored so diligently to light for you.

The next lines depend on what "vital" refers to. Is it "wicks" or "they" (the poets)?"

The Wicks they stimulate—
If vital Light

Inhere as do the Suns—

Its hard to say if Dickinson means that the poet's light has to be inherently vital, or if she means that the reader’s wick has to have vital light inherent within it in order to be lit. Perhaps she is saying both at once. There has to be Light inherent in both the poet and the reader for the transfer to take place. You have to keep your wick flammable.

Each Age a Lens

As long as poetry has this inherent vital “light,” then each age can read it through their own unique lens. I think of Shakespeare here, and maybe Dickinson was thinking of him too. The way we interpret Shakespeare has much to do with the age we are living in.  We read Shakespeare differently in 2026 than we did in 1856. “Age” can also refer to how old we are. We also read Shakespeare differently at 60 than we did at 20. The most important thing is not the subjective angle of the perception, so much as the vital light inherent in the work. If that Light is there, then poetry will stand up to countless interpretations.

It’s uncanny that Dickinson had this sense of her own legacy, especially considering her aversion to publishing. She seemed to foresee that her poems would one day be interpreted in various ways across the ages. Using this poem as a catalyst, a whole study could be made of the way an understanding of Dickinson’s poems has changed over time.

Each Age a Lens
Disseminating their
Circumference—

“Circumference” is one of Dickinson's favorite words, and represents a life-time of the poet's consideration. A study could also be made (and probably has been made) of looking at the many meanings of this word in Dickinson's oeuvre. She famously wrote to T.W. Higginson. “My Business is Circumference.” In this poem you get one of the possible meanings Dickinson might be hinting at in this statement. The image of the poet here is a candle shining through the lens of a lamp, illuminating the reader in its circle of light.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

I've none to tell me to but Thee

I've none to tell me to but Thee
So when Thou failest, nobody.
It was a little tie—
It just held Two, nor those it held
Since Somewhere thy sweet Face has spilled
Beyond my Boundary—

If things were opposite—and Me
And Me it were—that ebbed from Thee
On some unanswering Shore—
Would'st Thou seek so—just say
That I the Answer may pursue
Unto the lips it eddied through—
So—overtaking Thee—

      -F929, J810, sheet 14, 1865

I sometimes ask my high school students, would you rather be loved or understood? They usually say: understood. This is a poem about being understood. Most of us know the feeling of finding someone who seems to "get us." You so want to express yourself to them, to tell “you” to them. 

I've none to tell me to but Thee

The pronoun “Thee” is often indicative of God, but here it appears to refer to a person. As we see later in the poem, this Thee has a face and lips. One possibility is Emily’s sister-in-law and dearest friend Susan Gilbert. When this poem was written Emily and Sue had been very close friends for 15 years, since they were school girls. To read Emily’s schoolgirl letters to Sue is to read some of the most beautiful love letters ever written. And, some 15 years after this poem was written, Emily would write to Sue, “With the exception of Shakespeare, you have told me of more knowledge than any one living. To say that sincerely is strange praise.” This poem then, if written to Sue, was written in the middle of a decades long, complex and quite fruitful relationship between these two. 

The reason Emily wrote more poems (250+) to Sue than to anyone else is because Sue understood them better. Like attracts Like. You might even go so far to say that Sue was a kind of co-author of these poems as they appear to be made up of a shared private language.

The thing that brings both you and I into this poem is that Emily had the foresight to create a universal poetry out of this private shared language, another level of communication that transcends the original relationship. She creates a poetry that speaks to us, directly, not just Sue. We have replaced Susan (or whomever) as reader. Emily is telling herself to "Thee," meaning now, "You," and there is no one else she can tell it to. 

You are "Thee," but in the alchemy of love poetry, you are also the self, the “me,” because your “I” has transposed itself to become the “I” of the poem. You too know what it is like to need to tell “me” to someone who understands, even if that someone is only an ideal reader, a supposed person. (We don't all have Susans after all. I guess we do though, shout out to Susan Kornfeld). 

The second line lowers the boom:

So when Thou failest, nobody.

In other words, "When you fail, I have nobody." Is this a guilt trip then? A number of Emily’s poems around this time do have a bit of that quality to them. (See the poem that Emily wrote on the same sheet of paper as this one for the nearest example).

“Fail” is an oft-used word in Dickinson's poetry and can mean "die" as well as "not succeed." Think of the famous poem of hers, “I died for beauty” (F488) which has the lines, He questioned softly “Why I failed?” / "For Beauty," I replied —. In that poem the word “fail” takes on a rich meaning. What does it mean to fail for beauty?

In the poem under discussion, she is using the word "fail" in a different way. It’s more emotionally complex here. It has a bite to it, I think, the kind that comes from hurt. (One can only imagine how Sue felt when reading these poems. Did it make her pull away more? or less?)

It’s still awesome though. Taken as a whole, these poems to Sue can be seen as an attempt to “tell me” to her, to glean all of the nuanced genius of the poet's self, all the emotional complications of the psyche, all of the courageous loyalty of the heart, all of the deeply considered philosophy, and to "tell" it, which means to present it in the loveliest words possible, as a poem, probably accompanied with a flower.

Dickinson told T.W. Higginson in a letter, “When I state myself, as the Representative of the Verse- it does not mean -me- but a supposed person.” But I think she's being a bit coy. To “tell me," on the contrary, is to attempt to get as close to a non-supposed person as possible. The tension between the supposed person and the non-supposed person helps create the strange alchemy of poetry.

I know that when I write poetry, there is often both an abstract supposed-reader in my mind, and at the same time an actual friend. It's a function of the literary "I." Otherwise, paraphrasing Frank O'hara in his great poetry manifesto on Personism, "Why not just pick up the phone?" 

In the previous commentary I mentioned the fact that Emily kept copies for herself of the poems that she wrote for specific people. Why did she do this? This "copy" is for someone, but who? I think it is meant for the "nobody" mentioned in this line, an anonymous “supposed” person who may read this poem. The copy is, ultimately, addressed to its idealized future reader, You. The private-public face of a poem has a function; a way of bringing the world into the self, and the self to the world. 

But it can be confusing for the reader too. The private and public faces of a poem sometimes point in opposite directions; the poem both masks and reveals. The face of the poem may "spill/ Beyond...Boundary." (!)

It was a little tie—

This line is short and curt. It’s a little tie. Speaking of form, its cool how Dickinson forgoes the stanza break you expect after “tie,” which thus ties the two stanzas together. The unique stanzaic-form of this poem goes, 443443 4434443. One more little formal observation is that a dash (like the one that ends the line) may be loosely defined as “a little tie." 

It was a little tie—
It just held Two

These two lines function like a little mini-poem inside the larger one. "The Two" in this case are, I believe, the essential and original Two, Emily and Sue. But of course as soon as you read the poem then the Two, the new essential Two, is Emily and You.

The tie is the words, the poem, where you meet on the page. 

It just held Two, nor those it held

“Nor those it held," meaning, "and not even those two it held." That tie has been broken, by "Thee," by Sue (or Kate or Charles or You), so now it no longer holds Two. 

It just held Two, nor those it held
Since Somewhere thy sweet Face has spilled
Beyond my Boundary—

You have to like the surrealism in the line, “Somewhere thy sweet Face has spilled.” I wonder how Dalí would paint this line?

Another formal observation: look at the way the three lines enjamb; the sound of the lines together has a sense of spilling out from the comma after "Two," spilling beyond the boundary. 

The word “Boundary,” is worth stopping to ponder too. Dickinson wrote (in another letter to Higginson,) “My Business is Circumference.” You will see this concept explored, in one way or another, in many of Dickinson’s poems. Suffice to say, when she talks about Boundaries, she means business.

If things were opposite—and Me
And Me it were—that ebbed from Thee

In the second stanza she’s saying, basically, we are different, you and I, because I care more. I’m more dependable, more loyal. If I wandered away from you, I’d come back when you really needed me. Where you failed, I would have succeeded.

She is telling of herself. This is who she is. Loyal to a fault. 

It’s telling that she doubles down on the “Me” in this second stanza. There is an implicit extra emphasis on that second "Me" of the stanza. The sense I get is, "Let Me tell Thee who Me is: Me is not Thee, because I wouldn't do to Thee what Thou art doing to Me."

And Me it were—that ebbed from Thee
On some unanswering Shore—

(In my mind I hear a rhyme of Poe's "Plutonium Shore" in "unanswering Shore" here. It may be coincidence, but The Raven was published in 1845, and was widely known, so it may well be an unconscious borrowing.) 

The “unanswering Shore” line leads David Preest to the conclusion that this poem may have been written for Kate Anthon, because Kate was in Europe at the time it was written and therefore unavailable to Emily. Or if you are a Charles Wadsworth proponent, you might see "Unanswering Shore" as pointing to Wadsworth's move to the West Coast. When it comes to biographical takes, I tend to most often read Sue as "Thee," but it is worth saying that there are different possibilities. I love the mystery. It adds a layer of intrigue to these poems.

The metaphor works for any relationship though. The beloved has become the Ocean, and the lover, represented by the land, can't hear the Ocean for some reason. So the Shore says to the Ocean, keep trying to reach me. Keep asking...

Would'st Thou seek so—just say

If I don’t answer you the first time, then its just because I didn't hear you. Please just ask again, and I’ll come running. I can relate to this scenario. Dickinson puts it into epic poetic terms. The land is ebbing away from the ocean (reversing the usual perspective of the ocean ebbing from the land), and the Ocean is now losing the land. If I can't hear you, call again, says the poet. 

Would'st Thou seek so—just say
That I the Answer may pursue
Unto the lips it eddied through—

The Shore is now pursuing the receding Ocean so it can hear what it has to say. But look at the way it happens. If we are following the metaphor, then the water of the ocean, even as it is ebbing away, eddies back to shore, calling back to it. “Eddied” is a great verb here. An Eddy is a current of water running contrary to the main current. This counter-current creates a circular motion, like a tide-pool. (Whitman, Dickinson's contemporary, uses the metaphor of words eddying too. He also has the great line about the crooked inviting fingers of the sea that I was reminded of here.)

The poet says she will follow the eddying pleas of the receding ocean straight to its lips. The lip of the Ocean (one pictures the edge of the wave) is not just the place from which speech comes, but also where the kiss happens. The lips of the Shore who “tells me” to the Ocean, meets the lips of the Ocean who “tells me" to the Shore. They meet in the middle, expressed as a kiss. There, the ear becomes the mouth, the mouth the ear, the “Me” becomes an “Us.”

So—overtaking Thee—

The ocean is being overtaken by the land. The tide has risen. The wave has come back to shore. Or rather, to follow the weird inversion of the metaphor, the Shore has come back to the wave. The two are drawn together in a kiss. When the “Me” overtakes “the Thee,” then both are gone. There is only “Us” left.

It's possible to think of going out to kiss the Ocean as meaning "death by drowning." The "Me" is overtaken in the overtaking of "Thee."

Finally, one last formal thing. Note the way that extra line of tetrameter in the second stanza, the final 4 of the 4434443, suspends the final rhyme. This makes the poem feel subtly breathless, which gives the sense of the effort in the overtaking; the undertaking of the overtaking.

This poem overtakes me. Why? Because I can relate. I understand the feeling of finding someone who really understands you. And the frustration of losing that. It's human. It understands me. 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S.

“I have seen it. What?
Eternity. It is the sun
Matched by the sea”

-Arthur Rimbaud

The Bird must sing to earn the Crumb

The Bird must sing to earn the Crumb
What merit have the Tune
No Breakfast if it guaranty

The Rose content may bloom
To gain renown of Lady's Drawer
But if the Lady come
But once a Century, the Rose
Superfluous become—


    -F928, J880, sheet 14, 1865

Was Emily writing these poems for just anyone? What was the “crumb” this poet earned with her song? What breakfast did these poems “guaranty” her?

These poems, this drawer of roses, an astonishing number of them, mean so much to us, but what do we, in turn, matter to Emily’s day to day life?

Or did Dickinson’s poems have a more pointed audience? Well, we do know that many of Dickinson's poems were given (often with a flower attached) to her  friends, and we also know know that the largest majority were given to Emily’s sister-in-law, Susan Dickinson. So I think it's fair to say that some, if not all, did have specific personal intentions.

But the ambiguity remains nevertheless. Is Sue the Lady in this poem then? Or is this Lady here meant to be something, or someone, more divinely ethereal?

The poem works either way. And sometimes I think Emily did too. But mostly I think this was for Sue. I bet this “song” was delivered to her with a red rose to underscore its message. It's implicitly asking, will this rose be shoved into a drawer with the rest? Will you finally come and visit me?

If you read this poem after F925, “The Lady Feeds Her little Bird,” which was written on the sheet before this one, sheet 13,  you begin to see a pattern. These poems were meant for a single Lady, one who lived right next door to Emily. This Lady wasn’t like Emily, who preferred to stay in the confines of her own garden. For interminable weeks on end Sue would get caught up in her own family and social life, ignoring her faithful friend (not to mention one of the world's greatest poets). After all, Sue could just look out of her window toward Emily’s, now and then, just offer the merest crumb, and the Bird would be fed breakfast. I can feel the deep sigh in these poems, the pathos.

Another poem in this Lady/Robin “series” is F810:

The Robin for the Crumb
Returns no syllable
But long records the Lady's name
In Silver Chronicle.

The wonder is that Dickinson did just that, she "records," in her poetry, the "silver chronicle" of her adoration for Sue. This chronicle was beautifully enough rendered that it would last long past the lifetimes of the friends. 

But the irony is that Dickinson doesn’t record "the Lady’s name.” We just know her has "The Lady" in these poems. What makes the poetry last, perhaps, is in the way it is so deeply personal and yet transcends the personal at once. Would we remember these poems if they all said "Susan" instead of "Lady?" By making it anonymous it includes the general reader. We are all the Bird looking for crumbs from the Lady’s hand. We are all hoping for breakfast, for a break in our fast. 

And if we are the Bird, we are also the Lady. If these poems are generalized to include us too, then what are the crumbs we may give to the hungry ghost of the poet? We may give Her our attention. She kept the roses for us by imbuing them with us much beauty and love as her genius could muster. 

***

"The Bird must sing to earn the crumb." Does this line reveal the secret of Emily's Dickinson's vocation? It's like the kid who learns to play guitar to impress the girl. Would Emily ever have become a poet if she hadn't had Sue to show her what a true feast is like, and then, terribly, if she hadn't been strung along by her for the rest of her life with nothing but a crumb here and there? 

***

Another irony to this poem is that the majority of the poems we have from Emily Dickinson come from her drawer, not Sue's. She kept a copy for herself. Why? Because they existed for her as objects of attention and beauty beyond their intended use. These "roses in song," kept for us in her own drawer, remain fresh and fragrant, and far from superfluous.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Vincent Keeling

P.S. One thing about this poem worth considering is where Dickinson places the stanza break. She lets it follow sense rather than form. She could have easily followed traditional form by putting the break after the first verse, but instead she uses the break to split up the ideas of "bird" and "flower." In other words, it functions more like the end of a paragraph than a stanza. I won't go so far as to say that this is a crack of reality in lyric's fault line, but it may be seen from a certain position as seismic. Because if this is a song, then the melody would be broken. The song bird is reduced to prose. The melody is presumed missing.

Each Second is the last

Each Second is the last
Perhaps, recalls the Man
Just measuring unconsciousness
The Sea and Spar between.

To fail within a Chance —
How terribler a thing
Than perish from the Chance's list
Before the Perishing!


          -F927, J879, sheet 14, 1865


In the first stanza I see a man who is in a shipwreck and is holding onto the spar (the mast), about to go under. This might be the end he thinks. He’s measuring how long it will be until he loses consciousness. Each second could “Perhaps" be his last. But maybe there's still hope?

The second stanza is where the philosophical heft of the poem comes in:

To fail within a Chance —
How terribler a thing

To die while there is still a chance of survival is more terrible...

Than perish from the Chance's list
Before the Perishing!

To be on "Chance's list" means you're still among those who might survive, so to "perish from Chance's list" means possibility has ended. In other words, it is worse to die while still having a chance to live than to be doomed from the start.

To return to the metaphor of the sailor drowning: if he is going to die anyway, it would've been easier to go down with the ship than to stay alive a little longer struggling to live, dying of thirst or exposure, which are fates worse than drowning.   

This metaphor could apply to love, or even faith. I think this poem can be seen as an examination of hope. The cruelty lies in being suspended between hope and loss. Hope is "terribler" because possibility intensifies suffering. 

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" it says on the doorway to hell in Dante's Inferno. But Dickinson might hang her sign on hell's exit: "Abandon all hope, ye who exit here."

"Be Mine the Doom" she says in F919.

I think if you read the poem backwards, you arrive again at that first line, "Each second is the last." That line, by itself, is powerful. There is no hope for the future in this line, but there is great emphasis on the present.

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Alfred Guillou, "Adieu", 1892

P.S. In a letter to her niece Emily asked her to keep an apartment for Aunt in her heart, "call it Endor’s Closet." This must, I think, refer to the witch of Endor. Why does Emily refer to herself the witch of Endor? In the Bible, the "Witch of Endor" is a necromancer whom King Saul consults in 1 Samuel 28. Saul, the king of Israel, seeks wisdom from God in choosing a course of action against the assembled forces of the Philistines. He receives no answer from Yahweh. Having driven out all necromancers from Israel, Saul searches for a medium anonymously and in disguise. His search leads him to a woman of Endor, who claims that she can see the ghost of Samuel rising from the abode of the dead. The voice of the prophet’s ghost, after complaining of being disturbed, berates Saul for disobeying God, and predicts that Saul will perish with his whole army in battle the next day. Saul is terrified. The witch of Endor comforts Saul when she sees his distress and insists on feeding him before he leaves. The next day, his army is defeated as prophesied, and Saul commits suicide.

If I’m getting this reference right, Emily is identifying here with the witch of Endor; a medium who reveals the future (Saul's doom), no matter how uncomfortable this truth may be. The witch is working in opposition to Yahweh, but not, we note, without compassion for Saul. She feeds and comforts him.

P.P.S. I'm not sure I agree that hope is "terribler." Hope may intensify the pain, but it also motivates the struggle for survival. It can keep you alive. Things do, often, get better. 

I stepped from Plank to Plank

I stepped from Plank to Plank
A slow and cautious way
The Stars about my Head I felt
About my Feet the Sea.

I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch—
This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience.

       -F926, J875, sheet 13, 1865


Stepping into an Emily Dickinson poem often feels like walking onto a precarious plank. You go slowly and cautiously. When I get to the line in this poem “The Stars about my head I felt” I am suddenly immersed in the immensity of the poem. I feel myself under the dizzying expanse of the night time sky. Then there’s a line break and I look down at the equally dizzying expanse of the Sea. Vertigo sets in. I am suspended there between these two giants, dwarfed.

I had a dream once I was riding on a cloud over the ocean and was suddenly freaked out by the precariousness of my position. How am I being held up by a cloud??? It was a metaphor for the seemingly impossible buoyancy of life. This poem feels a little like that. How do we stay suspended between these twin abysses? Any wrong move and we may fall.

There is an earlier poem, F340, "I felt a funeral in my brain," dated 1862, that could stand as a sequel:

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down—
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing—then—

"I felt a funeral in my brain" Andrew Bird, Phoebe Bridgers

Is it okay to fall? Is it a good thing to be "Finished knowing"? 

In the poem that was written down by Emily's hand directly above this one (on the same sheet of paper, sheet 13) there is a bird that falls slowly. Tom C pointed out in the comments (see F925) that the word “fall” is worth considering. Tom's astute comment reminded me of other uses of the word "fall" in Dickinson’s oeuvre, especially the lines from F754,

Still at the Egg-life –
Chafing the Shell –
When you troubled the Ellipse –
And the Bird fell –

Does "fell" mean the bird died or flew? 

I'm now thinking of the famous poem F372, "After great pain a formal feeling comes," where the feet mechanically go around in the air, 

The Feet, mechanical, go round—
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought—

This further reminds me that any time Dickinson uses the word “feet” in a poem, which is often, she seems to simultaneously mean metrical feet. (Metrical feet are the rhythmic units in poetry). It's self-referential: Dickinson's actual feet become synonymous with her poetic feet. So then "step by step" can also mean something like beat by beat. Try re-reading the poem with this idea in mind. Reading these poems may feel precarious, but writing them must have felt even more so.  Along these lines, the last couplet of this poem is worth thinking about.

This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience.

If we think of the feet in this poem as metrical feet, then the precarious gait of the rhythm in Dickinson’s poetry suddenly appears to be an effect of heart-break. I’d never thought of the word choice and and clipped conciseness, both of which change up the gait of Dickinson's poems, as a product of pain and survival's subsequent fears, but in this poem, for the first time, I do.

However, the gait of this poem isn't precarious. The metrical feet in the earlier poem, "After great pain a formal feeling comes," F372, go all awry, but the gait in this poem stays in perfect iambic 4/3 march-step. And unlike in the earlier poem, "I felt a funeral in my brain," F340, where she falls from the plank, here, she doesn't. She's learned "a slow and cautious way." This poem is the sequel.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. My dream of riding clouds :

SEA OF BOOKS

I tell myself before going to bed that I want to have a good dream and remember it. And I do. This morning I had a dream where Eve and I were in an old Victorian house on an island belonging to her family. While exploring the house I found an old book in the bookshelf that explained how to ride clouds. I showed the instructions to Eve and we decided to follow them. First we took a boat out to sea. When we reached the right spot a cloud came down and we got on. The cloud took us a mile or so up in the sky and we just floated there. It was so comforting to the eye to see so much water around us, like the eye was seeing itself. But then the rational fears kicked in. Fear of falling. How could we be supported by a cloud? Fear of being lost. What if the cloud just keeps drifting and we don't come back? But, alas, we didn't fall off and, lo, the cloud eventually returned us to the ship. This is a metaphor for the seemingly impossible buoyancy of life if ever I dreamed one. We took the ship back to the island.

After we settled in I went back to look at the book again. This time I noticed that the whole bookshelf was stained in a dark sea-blue light, which made it hard to distinguish the books. I finally found the book I was looking for. I started leafing through. It was incredible. On some pages the words were cut out of the page, so you could only read them if you held the book up to the light. Other pages were made of wood with words and decorative leaves carved in relief. There were many fantastic pictures. On one page a woman, a nurse-maid, appeared before me to tell an old story. I listened, wrapped up in the story, rapt. The book was full of surprises. When I finished reading the book I noticed that there was now writing carved into my hand, all the way through, so you could see it backwards on the back of my hand. I held it up to the light in wonder. I didn't look to see what the writing said, but it was in a beautiful script, the same as in the book. The writing had somehow transferred from the book. I don't think it matters what the writing said. What matters is that there was writing carved into my hand... Kafka's "I am writing", Book of John's "In the beginning was the Word," the original impulse of communication, relationship itself. These words I am now writing were what was written in my hand.

The Lady feeds Her little Bird

The Lady feeds Her little Bird
At rarer intervals—
The little Bird would not dissent
But meekly recognize

The Gulf between the Hand and Her
And crumbless and afar
And fainting, on Her yellow Knee
Fall softly, and adore—


        -F925, J941, sheet 13, 1865


When researching this poem I came across a post on Instagram that asked for interpretations of it. The first one was admirably succinct:

“Humble Acceptance in face of retreat of time or affection.”

Emily gives us this idea in the guise of a charming allegory. It begins with... The Lady... 

This Lady could be Emily’s best friend Sue, or it could be Lady Fortune, or even Mother Nature. (It’s probably not the Virgin Mary though, since you don't picture Her forgetting about you.) This Lady is regal, but fickle. We don't know anything else about her except that she has a yellow knee. Why yellow? Is yellow the color of the Lady's dress, or of Her skin? Is yellow meant in a more cosmic way, like the color of the Sun or Moon?

In the first line this yellow Lady, who we imagine is dressed in fine regalia, is feeding her little pet Bird. 

Then line two drops a bomb. The Bird (the poet) is getting fed by The Lady at rarer and rarer intervals. The Lady, it would appear, seems to be forgetting about her little bird. Perhaps the bird no longer amuses her. Perhaps she has other interests? 

We’ve all been there. For whatever reason the person we admire who is paying attention to us begins to do so less and less. We lose favor.

What's a girl to do? She does something unexpected and transformative.

The little Bird would not dissent
But meekly recognize

The Bird would not dissent. A double-negative. Dissent is a funny word to use here too. Dissent means “to publicly disagree with an official rule or a popular idea.” Private feelings may be another matter.

What is being meekly recognized?

The Gulf between the Hand and Her

It’s an acknowledgement of how far the Bird, in its poverty, is from the Lady. But the trippy thing about this line is that the distance is between the "Hand" of the Lady and "Her," the Lady. It's as if the hand is still feeding the bird, but the arm is elastically stretching further and further. In other words, the distance begins to happen before the loving stops. 

And crumbless and afar
And fainting,

The ghosted poet feels bereft. And yet, dying, the little song-bird will... 

Fall softly, and adore—

The image of the fainting bird falling softly to its death is a sad one, yet there is a levity here. The bird is falling softly. And the reason the bird is falling so softly is because she is being held aloft in her adoration of the Lady.

Fall softly, and adore—

What a beautiful line. It has a hymn-like tone to it, almost religious, except that there's a twist; the merciful He is here a merciless She. 

The usual narrative is "Hell hath no fury like a woman spurned," but Dickinson upends that expectation. Instead of anger, she is "falling softly, and adoring." It's a monumental shift. The poet can love without being loved in return. 

There is a William Blake poem that is apropos here: "The Angel that presided o’er my birth/ Said, “Little creature, form’d of Joy and Mirth,/ “Go love without the help of any Thing on Earth.” That's what the little bird is doing here with her song, loving with her own inner strength.

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Lesbia and her Sparrow by Edward Poynter

Notes: Dickinson's poem may be riffing off of Catullus’ 1st century BC poems about his lover Lesbia and her pet bird. She likely knew them from studying Latin in school.  Here’s an interesting take on them. And here’s the poem.

Sparrow, my Lady's pet,
with whom she often plays and holds to her chest,
to whom she gives her fingertip as you peck away,
and whose sharp bites she likes to provoke
whenever it pleases her
to play some dear little game
(it’s a small relief for her longing, 
so that her passion might quiet down).
Oh – if only I could play with you as she does,
and alleviate the troubles of my melancholy mind!

On that dear Frame the Years had worn

On that dear Frame the Years had worn
Yet precious as the House
In which We first experienced Light
The Witnessing, to Us—

Precious! It was conceiveless fair
As Hands the Grave had grimed
Should softly place within our own
Denying that they died.

      -F924, J940, sheet 13, 1865


Here you have a poem about a framed photograph, which is in turn framed by a house; a frame inside a frame inside a frame. 

On that dear Frame the Years had worn

The frame is dear. Dickinson is not telling us who is in the photograph in the frame in the center of this poem, but we find out in the last line that it is someone who "died," so we can infer that it is a loved one, maybe a family member, or maybe some writer Emily revered. (We know she had images in her room of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot.) 

The memory of this person is kept alive through the image in the frame, which is as precious as the House “in which We first experienced Light.” "Light" could mean a few things. I take it as literal first. It refers to the house in which we were born, where we first opened our eyes and saw physical light. (Whatever may be meant metaphorically by "Light" is up to the reader).

This is especially pertinent because the house that Emily was born in, where she first saw “Light,” is the same house she was in when she wrote this poem 35 years later, and the same one in which she would die some 20 years after it was written. The house itself is a frame for memories. In fact, you can go to the Dickinson homestead tomorrow, if you wish, and walk inside of this frame, Emily’s ghost all around.

"Precious" is repeated twice in this poem, underscoring it. And look at the way that first stanza sets up that second “Precious!” for maximum impact: there are four lines of iambic meter that roll nonstop before pausing for a comma, a beat, then a dash at the end of the stanza: 

The Witnessing, to Us—

which resolves after a suspenseful stanza break into... 

Precious!

What is so precious? "The Witnessing, to Us—" It is the witnessing of life, the framing, epitomized the image of a loved one.

The poem though is missing the photograph. We can't see who is in this frame, so in a sense it is less about the actual photograph than it is about "The Witnessing."  

(I'm reminded of hearing Southern Baptists preachers shout, “Can I get a witness!”)

Since the photo is absent, the poem turns its attention to the reader witnessing the poem. You put your own photo there. The poem reminds us to give witness, and to give our love a solid frame to help keep it precious.

Not only is the memory double-precious, but the person we love is "conceiveless fair,” which is to say so fair that you can’t even conceive of it. Could you explain the physical beauty of one you loved in such a way that another could conceive of it? No, and not even a photograph could do that. A photograph is only an aid to memory.

As Hands the Grave had grimed
Should softly place within our own

Wow. That image of grimy skeleton reaching up out of the grave and softly placing before us the image of its past living self is worthy of a great ghost story. It’s a very haunting way of seeing a photograph, tender and terrible at once.  

Denying that they died.

The idea that the dead, through the photograph, are denying to us that they died is touching. Through our memories the dead deny -and defy- death itself.

The photograph is to the face as the poem is to the mind. In the poem we have the mind of Dickinson framed, as if her grimy skeleton hand is reaching up out of the grave and softly placing the words within our own.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

They won't frown always—some sweet Day

They won't frown always—some sweet Day
When I forget to tease—
They'll recollect how cold I looked
And how I just said "Please."

Then They will hasten to the Door
To call the little Girl
Who cannot thank Them for the Ice
That filled the lisping full.

        -F923, J874, sheet 13, 1865

This poem is slippery. The trick is to reconcile the ice in the second stanza with the cold in the first. Let's plunge into some possible meanings. 

My initial reading of this poem was about a little girl in trouble who is imagining how much she’ll be missed when she’s dead. The key to this interpretation is the line, “They'll recollect how cold I looked.” How can you not think of a corpse when you read this line, especially knowing Emily's penchant for having the narrator of the poem speak from beyond the grave? In this narrative the girl can no longer say thank you because she’s dead. The ice at the end that filled her lisping full was given to her by her parents as she was dying to wet her parched lips and give her final comfort, which all comes a little too late.  In this interpretation the point of the poem is to be kinder because some day the little girl who is annoying to you because of her teasing will be dead. Or something like that. 

It's a viable reading of the poem, but there is another way to read this narrative, in which the ice filling the mouth has a different meaning. The second interpretation is about a little girl who is angry for being violently punished for teasing and runs away.  This little girl has been teasing her sister and brother, (or maybe her parents), making fun of them by lisping and mocking them. Her siblings (or her parents) out of anger punish the little girl by filling up her mouth with ice.

The little girl asks them to stop because the ice is cold. "They'll recollect how cold I looked." She says “please.” (In both readings that "please" has real pathos, hanging there like it does.) You have to imagine how painful this punishment would be to a little girl, the sting of the ice. But, alas, the "please" is not heeded, so she runs away. The siblings/parents call out the door to her, but its too late.

The siblings/parents are no longer frowning at the little girl's teasing, now they are smiling, happy the girl is gone on this "sweet" day. 

They won't frown always—some sweet Day

Or is the day "sweet" for the girl because she has gotten away from her tormentors? I think it is likely meant to be the latter. It's not happy for the siblings/parents, we know, because they are hurrying to the door to call the girl back. 

Then They will hasten to the Door
To call the little Girl

But the girl is gone, and therefore cannot "thank them" for the ice they stuffed into her mouth.

Who cannot thank Them for the Ice
That filled the lisping full.

In this reading of the poem, "Who cannot thank them" is meant to be sarcastic. The girl does not stick around to "thank" the siblings/parents for this violent act. 

There is a possibility that the gratitude is meant to be sincere rather than sarcastic, that the chastened girl has learned her lesson about teasing others, and is grateful for the lesson. But I don't think so. I think Dickinson is baring her teeth. 

This poem was a real head-scratcher. I had to do a double-take.

Reading it again I see a little girl who is saying one day I'll be dead and they'll be sorry they stuffed my mouth with ice to stop my teasing. They'll wish they had their teasing girl back again. As a HS teacher I can relate. I often find myself frustrated with students who are teasing each other, but when they graduate, these are often the kids I miss the most. 

Do you have a different interpretation? If so, I'd love to hear it. 

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. This poem reminds me of one by Ron Padgett. I looked everywhere for this poem and couldn't find it, so I reached out to the poet himself, who generously sent it along to me. You can find it in Very Collected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2025). Here it is.

The Value of Discipline

I am very disappointed in you Myron. 

You are a very smart boy, 

and we had high hopes for you. 

And now this. 

I don't know.

Go to your room.

Myron heads toward his room,

but does his head hang low?

No way!

He is looking straight ahead

and feeling a hot black liquid

trickle through his heart. 

Great galleons

bound through the rough seas

and on them bearded men

are shouting sailor things

as if to the wind.

Back in his room

the objects look older.

What joy to make them walk the plank!

Avast! Avaunt! Splash! Garrr!

The Sun is gay or stark

The Sun is gay or stark
According to our Deed.
If Merry, He is merrier—
If eager for the Dead

Or an expended Day
He helped to make too bright
His mighty pleasure suits Us not
It magnifies our Freight


      -F922, J878, sheet 12, 1865


On the surface this poem seems to be saying that perception is everything. But under the surface the poem is saying something quite different, something about will in the face of devastation. Let's get into it:

The Sun is gay or stark
According to our Deed.

The sun seems cheerful or severe depending on what we ourselves are doing. This is thought-provoking because “Deed” is an action. The poem hinges on this word. What we do makes the difference. Easier said than done.

If Merry, He is merrier—

Before the poem goes dark, it is worth resting on this line for a second. The line is basically saying the sun seems merrier when we are merrier. But the way Dickinson has phrased it, it reads as if the Sun (with a possible pun on Son) is merrier when we are merry because He is happy for us. Those that love us are even happier than we are when we are happy. 

It’s a subtle point, but if taken it adds much to the heartbreak of this poem. It implies that, conversely, the Sun is even sadder than we are when we are sad. This dovetails with a poem written down prior to this one on the same sheet of paper, F920, where the poet hides her tears from “Him” because if she showed him her true pain He would be even more sad than she is.

If eager for the Dead

Dickinson has a chillingly concise way of putting things. Eager for the dead. Another poem written on this same sheet of paper, F921, is all about being eager (or anxious) for the dead, hoping that the newly departed won’t suffer after death. 

Or an expended Day

An expended Day is one that has come to an end. Day, in poetic parlance, can also mean "Life." The implied logic here is that we are so eager (anxious) for the dead that we ourselves are eager to die. It's an expression of extreme grief.

When we are grieving, the Sun isn’t welcome. We don’t want its brightness. The brightness throws the pain into relief and makes it worse. It "magnifies our Freight." (It's worth remembering that when we are happy it is not always welcome by those who are grieving and may even worsen the other's pain.)

Or an expended Day
He helped to make too bright
His mighty pleasure suits Us not
It magnifies our Freight

This idea is further explored in another recent poem from Sheet 11, F915, which begins with the line, “What Shall I do when Summer troubles?” 

There’s that word “do,” which echoes the word “deed” in this poem. When one is grieving what is to be “done?” The question is at the heart of both poems, but remains unanswered.

Perhaps the answer is implicit in the existence of the poem itself. A poem is a deed. It is an act. It is for someone, for some reason. In the poem we find solace born of sympathy. This may be its point. The poem commiserates with us and we are therefore less alone. This goes a little way, at least, toward helping us heal.

But there is something else happening beyond empathy. This poem says that when we grieve, “His mighty pleasure suits Us not.” We know Emily Dickinson is in intense grief since she expresses it acutely in poem after poem, yet, despite the extremity of the pain, she gives pleasure. There is great beauty in these poems. Creating beautiful language, in the face of pain, is a brave Deed.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Tales of the Sad Sun by João Bragato

Snow beneath whose chilly softness

Snow beneath whose chilly softness
Some that never lay
Make their first Repose this Winter
I admonish Thee

Blanket Wealthier the Neighbor
We so new bestow
Than thine acclimated Creature
Wilt Thou, Austere Snow?


     -F921, J942, sheet 12, 1865


As I read this moving poem over and over again it begins to seep into my bones. It's hard to express why it is so moving. The over-all impression is something beyond what any explication can convey. It is freezing and warm, sweet and sad, chilly and soft, all at once.

I remember having a conversation about art with the great poet and critic John Yau once years ago in Berkeley when I was a graduate student. We were talking about what makes art great. I told him that for me it came down in the end to "aura." A painting either had it or didn't. He asked me to explain what I meant. I told him I didn't think it was possible to explain "aura," it just is. He said, "You have to try." 

I’ll start with the newest impression:

A powerful gnome-witch is giving a stern talk to Old Man Snow. She’s admonishing Him, gently advising Him to please give extra blanket to a loved one that was buried in the late autumn. 

The neighbors, the family, (“We”) have given as a gift ("bestowed") this neighbor to the ground, to her new bed in her new neighborhood, and she will soon be tucked “beneath” the blanket of Snow’s “chilly softness.”

At first the poet is shaking her finger at the Snow, admonishing Him, but in the second stanza the stern tone has softened and become a plea. “Wilt Thou,” She asks, “please blanket with Snow his new new neighbor we have lovingly presented to you, and give a wealthier (larger) portion of the blanket to her? After all, the long-dead have become acclimated to the cold underground by now and they don’t need the insulation of the snow as much as our friend does. They're used to it, but I’m afraid our friend is going to be very cold, so won’t you please take some of the snow-blanket from the shoulders of the old cemetery residents and give a little extra to Her?”

But, alas, the Poet knows how "austere" Old Man Winter is, how chillingly severe and strict, knows Winter does not play favorites. But it doesn’t really matter because the Poet does, and therefore she is asking anyway, pleading with unyielding Winter to bend its rules and be merciful for the sake of the beloved.

***

Of course the poet knows down deep it is no use pleading for the dead. The body underground is a corpse, decaying flesh. (Perhaps there is a soul, perhaps not, but if so it can't remain there with the rotting vegetable matter for eternity anyway). The Poet knows this but nevertheless she is alive and grieving and can’t yet let go. 

She knows in her heart though that it’s really "We" that are feeling so chilly. The plea is, in the end, for ourselves. She is asking for the snow to cover us up and keep us warm. The plea is also a way of expressing her love. 

It’s a plea with the highest degree of poetic irony. I find myself wincing at the cold reality that this poem hints at, but am moved by the warm heart of it, and delighted, too, by its "wealthier" imagination. It is at turns comforting, cute, tragic, funny, fantastical, realistic, terrifying, angry, endearing, all the things.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes:

1. I would guess that this poem was written by Dickinson expressly upon the occasion of a late autumn death of a neighbor.

2. The line about "the neighbor we so new bestow" reminds me of the Whitman line, “I bequeath myself to the dirt." What a beautiful conception of death. 

3. The idea of grieving for yourself when grieving for the dead is beautifully expressed in a poem written some 15 years after this one by Gerard Manley Hopkins, Spring and All. 

4. Dickinson's conception of the world of the dead is such that before she died she left instructions that the six Irish men that had long worked for the Dickinsons would carry her casket, and that "they circled her flower garden, walked through the great barn that stood behind the house, and took a grassy path across house lots and fields of buttercups to West Cemetery [500 yards from Homestead]." It's as if she was giving herself, from the casket, one last look at the beloved flower garden, and at the same time allowing herself to be honored by the flowers therein. How very Emily Dickinson. Thanks to Larry B for this wonderful bit of biography. See the note for F847. 

5. Dickinson provides “Russian” as an alternative word for “Austere” in the final line. ‘Wilt Though, Russian Snow?” The difference between the two is worth considering. "Russian" evokes the deepest, harshest northern winter, and it also hints at foreignness. The newly dead have entered an unfamiliar country. Snow becomes a strange realm, almost another nation. I suspect Dickinson went with "austere" as her first choice because the idea of winter being severe and unyielding is important to the logic of the poem. 

6. I imagined a gnome-witch pleading with Snow here because at various times in her letters Dickinson describes herself as both. It seems fitting for this poem to think of them being hyphened together. 

Each Scar I'll keep for Him

Each Scar I'll keep for Him
Instead I'll say of Gem
In His long Absence worn
A Costlier one

But every Tear I bore
Were He to count them o'er
His own would fall so more
I'll missum them —


-F920, J877, sheet 12, 1865


This poem has an involved complexity that takes a while to unravel, but it's worth it as it has something beautiful to say about love. Let's start at the beginning:

Each Scar I'll keep for Him
Instead I'll say of Gem

I will treasure and preserve every emotional wound. But instead of calling these injuries, I'll think of them as valuable gems. Instead I'll say (they are) of Gem.

In His long Absence worn

These wounds/gems were acquired from absence from the loved one.

A Costlier one

These "gems" are precious because they were earned through suffering. The pain of missing is proof of love, and therefore something precious. "Costlier" is a pointed word here. There was a dear cost (pain), therefore the scars/gems cost more (gain).

In the first stanza the poem establishes a theme of economy. The scars have a "cost." Then the poem shifts into accounting:

But every Tear I bore
Were He to count them o'er

Now we're literally in the language of reckoning. It's an audit of tears!

Then comes:

His own would fall so more
I'll missum them —

Were he to count my tears, and see how many there really are, then, because of His love, he would cry even more tears than I am, so therefore I'll misrepresent the amount.

As she often does, Dickinson takes the language of commerce and turns it inside out. Love doesn't follow the ordinary rules of accounting. Loss is entered as profit.

Missum is a cool word. I’ve read analyses of this poem that read this as “miss some,” but I don’t think so. It's awkward. "I'll miss some them"? I also don't see Dickinson misspelling "some" to be cute. I believe it must mean mis-sum.

She is saying, "I'll make the reckoning come out wrong." She won't let him see the total of her suffering. The emotional cost is falsified out of love. It's an act of loving deception.

There's an interesting twist if "Him" is Christ. If Christ were to count her tears, he would weep more than she did. So she says she'll missum them, she'll under-report to spare even Him grief. If so, it's a pretty surprising reversal, the believer protecting the Savior. She's pulling a Christ on Christ by refusing justice in favor of mercy.

There’s an elegant symmetry in this poem. In the first stanza you are seeing the scars as gems, and in the second you are missumming tears. The poem begins by revaluing suffering. Missumming the tears is doing something similar. In both cases, reality is reframed; one act changes how she sees her own suffering, and the other changes how he will see it.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes: 

1. Poetry itself may be seen as a kind of "mis-summing." Calling scars "gems" and "mis-summing" tears are poetic moves.

2. M is a sacred sound, the sound of Mother, of home. It's the sound a baby makes when it is hungry for mom's milk. MMMM. So perhaps it is significant that the M begins and ends this poem. To drive the sound home, there is a tripling up of the M in that last line, "I'll missum them."

    

Be Mine the Doom —

Be Mine the Doom —
Sufficient Fame —
To perish in Her Hand!


      -F919, J845, sheet 12, 1865


This brief poem has a timeless aura, with all the drama and sexiness of a poem by Sappho. “To perish in Her Hand!”

“Her Hand,” I believe, refers to Emily’s sister-in-law and beloved friend, Susan Dickinson.

Perishing in the hand of the woman you love, this is sufficient fame for Emily. This is a doom that the poet can welcome as her own. It’s terribly romantic.

I would be willing to bet (at 7 to 1 odds) that this poem was sent to Sue and accompanied by a flower. The flower, once in Sue’s hand, would soon perish. It would be perishing even as she read the poem and held the flower, surely some prize from Emily’s garden. Imagine being Sue in that moment, reading this poem with the dying flower in your hand. You would understand that the flower is Emily.

I am sufficient for her, you would understand. I am hers in life and in death.

***

This poem doesn't need any biographical details to have meaning. Dickinson is hard to pin down with her pronouns. Sometimes we have a he and sometimes a she. Sometimes him can be deified as Him, and her as Her. There is a fluidity with both the male/female and the mortal/Deity in Dickinson's pronouns. The object of this poem may be exemplified in a single Her (such as Sue) or it can stand for the whole of Nature. It's powerful to read this poem if you read Her as meaning Nature.

***

It's such a miniature jewel of a poem, with that unique stanza structure of 2/2/3. It begins with that heavily syncopated first line, "Be Mine the Doom" and ends its brief iambic run with an emphatic exclamation point.

***

"Be Mine the Doom" is defiant. As long as it is in your hands, dear, bring on the Doom! There is also a bit of humorous over-the-top quality in this line, as if it is winking at us. I imagine the poet histrionically arching her eyebrows as she writes this line, making fun of her own penchant for drama. Yet the sentiment couldn't be more sincere.

*** 

I think the “sufficient Fame” is interesting here. There are enough Dickinson poems that dicker with the notion of Fame that we can be sure it was something the poet considered deeply. She knew her own worth as a poet. Even though she published almost nothing (less than a dozen poems) while she was alive, she gained a kind of mythic stature in Amherst and beyond. Sue was famous as a host and entertained the likes of Emerson and Francis Hodgson Burnett (author of The Secret Garden) in her salon. I'm sure she must've sung Emily's praises to the guests. There were also a number of other famous people of the time that Dickinson had a personal relationship with, either in person, or through letters. (See the end notes for a short list.) All of this would've helped create a local mystique. But Emily wasn't looking for fame. She repeatedly turned down offers to publish her poems.

The irony is that the more Dickinson pushed away society, the more intriguing and famous she became. (This same quality can be seen in her poems by the way; the more they try to elude us, the more we want to know what they have to say.) Still, had she not left so many great poems (nearly 2000) behind for us to find, no one would remember the locally-famous recluse. She would have her true international fame posthumously, where it wouldn't be a bother to her.

While alive  Dickinson closed her society to include just a few friends, and especially Sue, her most beloved friend for more than half of her life. That was “Sufficient Fame” for her.

And in fact this poem is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy: Emily did, in the end, perish in Sue’s hand. Sue was with Emily when she died. Afterward it is reported that Sue designed a white flannel robe for Emily and laid her in a white casket. She carefully placed heliotrope, lady's slipper orchids, and a knot of blue field violets at Emily's neck and in her hands symbolizing devotion and faithfulness. Sue also personally lined Emily’s final resting place with evergreen boughs. 


         -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

blue violet symbolizing devotion and faithfulness

Note: a short list of famous people Emily knew, all of whom helped make her a myth in her own lifetime.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson: A decorated Civil War colonel, abolitionist, and literary critic. He and Dickinson exchanged letters from 1862 until her death, acting as her literary mentor. After her death, he helped co-edit her first published poetry collection.

Helen Hunt Jackson: A highly successful novelist and poet. She was a childhood friend of Dickinson's and tried (unsuccessfully) to convince Dickinson to publish her poetry during her lifetime.

Samuel Bowles: The highly influential editor-in-chief of the Springfield Republican newspaper. He was a close family friend, and Dickinson sent him several of her poems.

Charles Wadsworth: A prominent and nationally famous Presbyterian minister from Philadelphia. Dickinson heard him preach in the 1850s, and they struck up a correspondence; he became one of the most important intellectual confidants in her life.

Mary Lyon: A pioneering educator for women, famous for founding the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. Dickinson attended the seminary during the 1847–1848 academic year and studied under Lyon's instruction.

Josiah Holland: A well-known Massachusetts doctor, writer, and co-founder of Scribner's Monthly magazine. He and his wife, Elizabeth, were close family friends and frequent correspondents.