The lonesome for they know not What—

The lonesome for they know not What—

The Eastern Exiles—be—

Who strayed beyond the Amber line

Some madder Holiday—

And ever since—the purple Moat

They strive to climb—in vain—

As Birds—that tumble from the clouds

Do fumble at the strain—

The Blessed Ether—taught them—

Some Transatlantic Morn—

When Heaven—was too common—to miss—

Too sure—to dote upon!

                                                            F326 (1862)  262

There’s an addictiveness involved as the “Eastern Exiles” struggle to once more experience something they knew from some “madder Holiday.” Dickinson purposely leaves the nature of what the experience was and who the exiles might be to the reader’s imagination. Even they are not sure of what it is they long for: they are “lonesome” for something, but “they know not What.”

            Today we might think of hallucinogens or opiates that take the drug user beyond the “Amber line” that signals the breaking of dawn in the East. They travel to a place not available to the rest of us. But there were no hallucinogens that Dickinson would have been familiar with, though she probably knew about opium. More likely she is suggesting the altered state that the mystic or the poet or the mad might enter when caught up in vision.

            Once having tasted this “honeydew,” as Coleridge referred to it in his famous poem, “Kublai Khan,” they try “in vain” to recapture the experience. Alas, to do so is to be like birds who fly too high and then “tumble from the clouds.”

At Buddha's death, he enters Parinirvana--
the Final Nirvana of transcendent being.

            The last stanza reinforces the idea of a vision state. The exiles, “Some Transatlantic Morn,” were part of the “Ether” – that invisible matterless substance that was once believed to permeate the cosmos, or, alternatively, the divine spirit. Either way, once they were within it they found heaven everywhere, “too common—to miss” and so real that they felt no need for worship or to “dote upon” it. The experience, however, may never be repeated. The poor exiles now live in a state of loneliness for that place. “Ever since,” they have tried to climb “the purple Moat” of the night sky back to the land where sunrise comes from.

            Dickinson read and admired (and even met, much to her joy) Ralph Waldo Emerson. One of the philosopher’s most famous essays is “The Oversoul,” published in 1841. In this contemplation of the human soul, Emerson explores both Eastern philosophy and Plato. In one passage he writes,

within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.

The infusion of Eastern thought, the sense of a unifying ether in which “every part and particle is equally related,” might well underlie Dickinson’s poem with its own reference to the east. To see and experience it would certainly bring a sense of enlightenment or joy—or poetic power—that one would forever be trying to recapture.

There came a Day—at Summer's full,

There came a Day—at Summer's full,

Entirely for me—

I thought that such—were for the Saints—

Where Resurrections—be—

The Sun—as common—went abroad—

The flowers—accustomed—blew,

As if no soul the solstice passed—

That maketh all things new.

The time was scarce profaned—by speech—

The symbol of a word

Was needless—as at Sacrament—

The Wardrobe—of our Lord—

Each was to each—the sealed church,

Permitted to commune this—time—

Lest we too awkward show—

At “Supper of the Lamb.”

The Hours slid fast—as Hours will—

Clutched tight—by greedy hands—

So—faces on two Decks—look back—

Bound to opposing Lands—

And so when all the time had failed—

Without external sound—

Each—bound the other's Crucifix—

We gave no other Bond—

Sufficient troth—that we shall rise—

Deposed—at length—the Grave—

To that new Marriage—

Justified—through Calvaries of Love!

                                                                                      F325 (1862)  322

The summer solstice is the peak of summer in solar terms: it’s the longest day of the year. Coming in June, it also coincides with beautiful bloomings, birds, and butterflies. Add to that a rendezvous with a secret lover and what could be more perfect? Well, the narrator of this poem admits that she and her lover are “Bound to opposing lands” as if they were two passengers on a ship looking towards opposite shores. The lover has his life, where he has commitments (probably a wife, as Dickinson’s love interests at this time were married), and Dickinson has her own commitments at home and to her poetry.

            She sets the stage as if for a story: “There came a Day…” It was solstice, the sun and flowers were doing their normal thing. Amid this lovely plenty were two lovers, silent as if to speak would be to profane the magic time. One doesn’t talk during Communion. It was, she continues, as if they were in a sealed church, so holy did the hours feel. The two were “Permitted” to have this stolen time together because (in a bit of wild speculation) otherwise they would be falling all over each other when they met up in heaven at the  “‘Supper of the Lamb.’” Heaven forfend!

            When finally their time was up they pledged over each other’s crosses that they would meet beyond the grave in a heavenly and eternal marriage. This, the poet claims, is justified because of all the suffering, the “Calvaries,” they have suffered because of their love.

            Dickinson touched on something similar in “Title divine, is mine” where she, “Empress of Calvary,” was “Betrothed, without the Swoon

God gives us Women.” In “A Wife—at daybreak—I shall be,” Dickinson implies that the night of her death she goes to bed a “child” but will wake in heaven as a wife. This idea of an eternal and perfect union must have been sustaining to her, for otherwise the “Calvaries” she suffered might have been too much to bear.

            The poem has a regular ballad or hymn structure: iambic tetrameter alternating with iambic trimeter and an ABCB rhyme scheme. I can easily imagine it declaimed or sung.

Put up my lute!

Put up my lute!

What of—my Music!

Since the sole ear I cared to charm—

Passive—as Granite—laps my music—

Sobbing—will suit—as well as psalm!

Would but the "Memnon" of the Desert—

Teach me the strain

That vanquished Him—

When He—surrendered to the Sunrise—

Maybe—that—would awaken—them!

                                                            F324 (1862)  261

The poet’s solo audience is neither enthusiastic nor discriminating. While this person (although it’s not entirely crazy to think the audience might be Carlo her dog … but it is more likely it is either editor Samuel Bowles or her stern impassive father) “laps” her work, he is unfortunately as unresponsive “as Granite.” Who wants the Great Stone Face for an audience? Might as well put up the lute! Worse, it doesn't matter if the mood is tragic and emotional--"Sobbing"—or hymnal and religious. The response is the same.

            It seems contradictory to me that the “sole ear” is both lapping up her music—and music is surely a metaphor for her poetry—and being passive as a rock no matter what she writes. Perhaps she means he, if it is a man, mouths words of praise and beseeches her for more yet shows no real response. Perhaps, if it is Carlo, he laps at her with his tongue as she reads, yet is ultimately not moved by poetry. Hey, he’s a dog!

Jean Leon Gerome painted this
scene with the Memnon statues in  1858

            The second stanza refers to Memnon, the Ethiopian warrior king, son of Eos the dawn goddess. “Memnon” means “ruler of the dawn.” He brought an army to Troy and personally fought against Achilles, who killed him. Zeus granted him immortality. One of the Colossi of Memnon, still standing across the Nile from Luxor, was broken in a 27 BC earthquake. For years afterwards, until the Romans tried to repair it, its  remaining lower half of this statue was heard singing at sunrise.

            Dickinson makes loose reference to these aspects of the Classical Greek myth. She has the shattered statue in mind, conflating the earthquake “strain / That vanquished Him” with the sunrise song he is said to sing each day. If only her poetry had that kind of power, she muses, she might wake up her audience.

            Although in the first stanza she has only one listener, at the end it is clear she is hoping for a larger readership of her work, for she wants to write to “awaken—them.” I wonder what she would think if she knew how many people are aware of and awed by Emily Dickinson!

Read—Sweet—how others—strove—

Read—Sweet—how others—strove—

Till we—are stouter—

What they—renounced—

Till we—are less afraid—

How many times they—bore the faithful witness—

Till we—are helped—

As if a Kingdom—cared!

Read then—of faith—

That shone above the fagot—

Clear strains of Hymn

The River could not drown—

Brave names of Men—

And Celestial Women—

Passed out—of Record

Death of Archbishop Cranmer
Joseph Martin Kronheim, 1887,
Foxe's Book of Martyrs

Into—Renown!

                                                            F323 (1862)  260

Emily Dickinson included Foxe’s Book of Martyrs in her go-to reading (along with Shakespeare and Keats). There is sort of a morbid attraction to all the sufferings and hideous goings-on the woodcuts and verbal descriptions portray. But in this poem, Dickinson exhorts herself and someone she calls “Sweet” to be inspired by the martyred saints examples. “Read—Sweet,” she says, about what trials the saints went through until we ourselves have more courage. Just reading about their experiences is so beneficial that it is as if the Kingdom of the dead martyrs had actually and actively helped them.

            The second stanza is a simple paean to the martyrs. “Read,” she continues, about their amazing and brave faith. They might have died but they earned ‘Renown.’”

            The three repetitions of “Till we” in the first stanza begins the poem with a liturgical feel. “We” will read the martyr stories until we are “stouter,” “less afraid,” and “helped.”  In the second stanza three lines begin with two accented syllables (spondees) to create a magisterial pace and to emphasize the words: “Clear strains,” Brave names,” and “Passed out.” 

Good Night—Which put the Candle out?

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—

                                                            F322 (1862)  259

Dickinson immediately signals that she has bigger, more mysterious things in mind than who blew out the candle by using the pronoun “Which” rather than “Who.” The “Candle” may on the simplest level be a candle that lit someone’s way from drawing room to bed, for in Dickinson’s day there were no electric lights, but the poem takes us immediately to the stars. It was not some careless person who accidentally blew out a household candle.

            Instead, the poet addresses the Zephyr, the Greek god of the west wind  standing here for all mild winds. It blew out a star, the “celestial wick” that angels “labored” over with great diligence. I picture a night with a few stars shining; but then some wind pushes a cloud over a star and its brightness immediately vanishes. The Zephyr, the poet supposes, was “jealous” over that twinkling beam in the heavens.

In this detail from Botticelli's Birth of Venus, Zephyr blows
the newly-fledged goddess to shore on a half shell.

            She continues, chastising the Zephyr: that little star might have been the one thing guiding a sailor lost at sea to some safe harbour—as if it were a lighthouse beaming light to guide ships around rocky shores. Or, perhaps the star was the last light a dying drummer from the war (the Civil War was raging at this time) saw as he slipped from this world into the next where the trumpets would play a “purer Reveille.”

            The spondee “Ah, friend,” introduces a not of wistfull sadness as the poet contemplates the dark spot in the sky that once twinkled with light. The sadness continues with images of death as the sailor now has no way to navigate and the Drummer has lost his way to heaven. The message is a heavy one: no matter how diligently the angels work on our behalf, the casual act of a jealous Zephyr, standing here for all gentle winds, can wipe out there efforts in one small puff. 

Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple

Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple

Leaping like Leopards to the Sky

Then at the feet of the old Horizon

Laying her spotted Face to die

Stooping as low as the Otter's Window

Touching the Roof and tinting the Barn

Kissing her Bonnet to the Meadow

And the Juggler of Day is gone.

                                                            F321 (1862)  228

The sun really does have a spotted face

The sun blazes gold on the eastern horizon as it rises; its blaze is quenched in the purple hues of the of late evening. The sun does seem to sail up pretty quickly, but I’m not sure I agree that it leaps “like Leopards”—and that’s one leopard too many, if one is to be picky. But perhaps Dickinson is thinking of Helios driving his horses with the sun chariot across the sky. But Dickinson likes to use leopards in her poems—at least she has in two previous ones (here and here).

            The next lines take us to day’s end. Like a human woman, day’s face becomes “spotted” as it progresses through time. But before she dies, she stoops as low as the river bank where the otter makes its home, shedding her last light on the roof, painting the barn with sunset colors, and leaving a final kiss of light with the crown of the sun as she sinks beneath the western horizon.

            In the last line, where daylight or the sun is named “the Juggler of Day,” we see the sun not as Helios or an old woman or as leopards but rather as a circus performer dressed as modern-day clowns in blazing golds and purples and with a heavily-marked or spotted face. This, then, is the image of day—an actor staging dazzling feats for the enjoyment of the audience who might stop from time to time throughout the day to admire the performance.

            Dickinson makes use of the present progressive tense to carry the poem in a rush—as if the day flew by in one seating: blazing, quenching, leaping, laying, stooping, touching, and kissing. Quite a show! The words begin each of their lines with a trochaic emphasis that  provides a forward energy. It’s almost acrobatic.  

There's a certain Slant of light,

There's a certain Slant of light,

Winter Afternoons—

That oppresses, like the Heft

Of Cathedral Tunes—

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us—

We can find no scar,

But internal difference,

Where the Meanings, are—

None may teach it—Any—

'Tis the Seal Despair—

An imperial affliction

Sent us of the Air—

When it comes, the Landscape listens—

Shadows—hold their breath—

When it goes, 'tis like the Distance

On the look of Death –

                                                F320 (1862)  258

Slanting winter light and cathedral music bring a solemn and even transcendent joy to many people. Dickinson speaks of the “Heft” of “Cathedral Tunes” and the gravitas of such music is meant to open us to the divine. Likewise, the sun’s rays breaking through the chill clouds of winter may also inspire a sense of awe-full grandeur. Because the sun does not rise so high in the heavens in winter as it does in summer, shadows are more pronounced—particularly as the afternoon passes. The slanting light, though, delivers little warmth. Cathedral music likewise accentuates both shadow and light in its drama of sacrifice, sin, and salvation. Did Dickinson find little true warmth there? Did the composer and musician’s art bring as little comfort as cold light?

            To Dickinson, both winter light and cathedral music convey oppression. We are weighed down by … what? The shadows that limn the light? The reminder of death and the unknowable mysteries beyond?

            Besides oppressing, winter’s slanting light seals an inner despair. It is “an imperial affliction” rather than the sort of uplifting experience Dickinson portrays in her sunrise and sunset poetry. The afflicted light is “Sent us,” but by whom the poet remains silent. The result, though, is a “Heavenly Hurt” that leaves “no scar.” We are changed from the inside, “Where the Meanings, are.”

            The message of the light cannot be taught nor explained. Its hurt is specific to each soul who encounters it.

            What makes this poem so provocative and so powerful—indeed, this is one of Dickinson’s most widely anthologized and quoted poems—is Dickinson’s judgment that certain moments that open us to the Divine deliver “Despair” rather than hope or joy. A certain slant of winter light accentuates the dead season without delivering warmth. In 1862 when Dickinson wrote this, there was no end in sight to the Civil War. This must have added to any existential depression she may have had.

N. Arizona, winter afternoon

            But I suspect Dickinson was contemplating eternity, death, and salvation here (as in so many of her poems). The “Heavenly Hurt” might not mean that God is afflicting us but that a certain type of light in winter reminds us of the cold, distant cosmos, and of the brevity of human life. There is a winter ahead for each of us. The season is a useful metaphor for death—as are shadows. A certain slant of winter’s light accentuates the shadows as well as the bare trees and bushes.

            Throughout her poetry, Dickinson uses spring, conventionally enough, as a metaphor for re-birth, for life beyond death, and therefore for hope. Winter’s light offers the opposite. Despair is an unforgivable sin, signifying that the sufferer has no belief in either salvation or life after death. Dickinson’s claim that despair is sent from “the Air,” surely a metaphor for heaven, is a bitter one.

            In the last stanza, the world itself seems full of dread. The landscape, although lit with the afternoon sun, nonetheless “listens,” and here we are reminded again of the cathedral tunes, as if something momentous is occurring. The idea is developed further in the next line: “Shadows—hold their breath” knowing that when the light fades, they too will fade, swallowed up by the blackness of night. In the dark nothing can be seen. There is a blankness there, certainly in the distance. And that is what death looks like. The absence of light – the inability to see.

            The poem is both rich and suggestive for all its abstractions. There are no specific details: no taste, touch, color, scent or other sensory elements. Instead we go back and forth between the heavenly realm where the hurtful light originates and from where it gains significance, and the earthly recipients: people—the “us,” the landscape, and shadows. It ends in Death, and that is perhaps the most appropriate way to end a poem about the afternoon light on a winter’s day.

Of Bronze—and Blaze—

Of Bronze—and Blaze—

The North—Tonight—

So adequate—it forms—

So preconcerted with itself—

So distant—to alarms—

And Unconcern so sovereign

To Universe, or me—

Infects my simple spirit

With Taints of Majesty—

Till I take vaster attitudes—

And strut upon my stem—

Disdaining Men, and Oxygen,

For Arrogance of them—

My Splendors, are Menagerie—

But their Competeless Show

Will entertain the Centuries

When I, am long ago,

An Island in dishonored Grass—

Whom none but Daisies, know.

                                                            F319 (1862)  290

It took  me a few readings, but I eventually realized that Dickinson is describing the northern lights, or aurora borealis. After leafing through some reference books I found that other readers agreed with me. One said that the puzzle was spoiled in early editions of Dickinson’s poetry because some clever editor, clearly not trusting his readers, titled it “Aurora.” But the clues to the puzzle come early in the poem: “Bronze—and Blaze” indicate power, color, and light. The blaze comes from the north at night, it is distant and majestical, and will continue the “Competeless Show” for centuries. Dickinson also qualifies the occurrence by the word “Tonight”: the blazing event doesn’t happen every night, like sunset or the rise of Polaris, despite the fact that it will continue to entertain for centuries.

            The aurora’s power “Infects” her, and the word is an interesting choice, intensified by the “Taints of Majesty” she is infected with. It’s as if watching the light show introduced a virus. She becomes arrogant, strutting about on her “stem” like a foolish flower, “Disdaining Men” and even the common air that mortals breathe.

            This first, long, stanza is about the aurora as a complete cosmic entity. It is distant, causes no alarms, and in its remote self sufficiency is completely unconcerned with either the universe or the awe-struck poet. This bridging, “To Universe, or me,” is very Dickinsonian in the link between the cosmos and the human consciousness (something Walt Whitman was exploring at the same time). Time and again we see in her poetry an aesthetic affiliation with the natural world—not only in contemplation and enjoyment, but also in a psychic or spiritual resonance.

            It is the absolute independence of the northern lights that seeps into Dickinson’s poetic consciousness causing her, at least temporarily, to become infected with the notion that she could also be grandly independent. Or, perhaps, that her poems might be entire of themselves, distant, complete, and “preconcerted”—that is, somehow organically unified before coming into final or written form.

Aurora captured by Space Shuttle (rear fin in foreground)

The second stanza contrasts the poet’s “Menagerie” of poems, which she ironically calls her “Splendors,” to the aurora’s “Show” that, in a class of their own with no competition, will “entertain” people for hundreds of years, long after the poet is buried, known only to the daisies in the field.  Regarding that verb “entertain,” Helen Vendler writes in Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries that Dickinson “does not have the Auroras ‘impress’ the Centuries—nor does she introduce a hyperbolic verb such as ‘stun,’ ‘amaze,’ or ‘astound’; no, the purpose of the Auroras is to ‘entertain.’ It is as though the Creator and the Poet were both artists, and God had decided to ‘entertain’ the Centuries with his ‘Show’ in the heavens, while the poet, in a lesser way, entertains a briefer span of years with her circus ‘Menagerie’” (p. 123).

            When Dickinson writes that after burial her body will be “An Island in dishonored Grass,” she returns to the idea of infection and taint. Her corpse dishonors the field. Yet she is known by the daisies, and one supposes that they are nourished by her decomposing flesh. Perhaps these daisies, too, will one day strut in falsely-appropriated majesty beneath the northern lights.

She sweeps with many-colored Brooms—

She sweeps with many-colored Brooms—

And leaves the Shreds behind—

Oh Housewife in the Evening West—

Come back, and dust the Pond!

You dropped a Purple Ravelling in—

You dropped an Amber thread—

And how you've littered all the East

With duds of Emerald!

And still, she plies her spotted thrift,

And still the Aprons fly,

Till Dusk obstructs the Diligence—

Or Contemplation fails.

                                                            F318 (1862)  219

Thrift, for coloring the sky pink

This is among my favorites of Dickinson’s many sunset poems. In previous ones she has uses imagery of the sea and the ships that sail on it, colored gemstones such as chrysolite, a “shroud of red,” the “evening blood,”  a “purple stile” that children cross at the end of the day, or a pirate crouching over his plundered gold. But in this poem it’s a housewife who creates the colors as she sweeps the sky with her “many-colored Brooms.”

            Dickinson playfully chastises the housewife for leaving behind some of the broom whisks in the pond, creating purple and amber streaks, and for littering the opposite sky “with duds of Emerald.” These would be the little earrings of pale green stars that begin to appear on the eastern horizon as night falls.

            Even so, the housewife continues her chores, flapping the cloud aprons and sweeping away—this time with the pink thrift. It finally grows so dark that her efforts can no longer be seen, or, the poet adds, “Contemplation fails.” With this last phrase I picture Dickinson watching the sunset conjuring up image after image as the evening sky changes. She keeps this up until it is dark or until her imagination runs out. I’m betting that dark falls first.

            This is another poem in hymn or common ballad form (you can sing it to the tune of “Amazing Grace” or “The Yellow Rose of Texas).

Delight is as the flight—

Delight is as the flight—

Or in the Ratio of it,

As the Schools would say—

The Rainbow's way—

A Skein

Flung colored, after Rain,

Would suit as bright,

Except that flight

Were Aliment—

"If it would last"

I asked the East,

When that Bent Stripe

Struck up my childish

Firmament—

And I, for glee,

Took Rainbows, as the common way,

And empty Skies

The Eccentricity—

And so with Lives—

And so with Butterflies—

Seen magic—through the fright

That they will cheat the sight—

And Dower latitudes far on—

Some sudden morn—

Our portion—in the fashion—

Done –

                                                           F317 (1862)  257

To properly enjoy the poem it helps to flesh it out a bit. Dickinson likes leaving out the occasional word, and her imagery skips and alights here and there like the butterflies she includes. She begins by claiming that our delight in life is in the flight of it. By ‘flight’ she means the arc and duration. The “Ratio of it” is the height over the curve, duration over distance: how far or high did you go in life before your time was over?

            But flight seems to have additional meaning, for if the ratio were all, then rainbows would “suit” our desire for delight. But then Dickinson qualifies that statement by writing “Except that flight / Were Aliment.” Since “Aliment” is nourishment, the poet seems to be saying that each of us needs flight—we can’t just admire the rainbow.             Dickinson’s description of a rainbow as “A Skein / Flung colored, after Rain” is another of her homely, feminine images. The housewife gathers up some brightly-colored yarn and flings it into the sky to make the rainbow. The image is picked up again in the next poem where a housewife sweeps up the sky with many-colored brooms, dropping a “Purple Ravelling” into a pond.

            In this poem she concentrates on the ephemeral nature of life and beauty. As a child she asked the sunrise (“the East”—source of wisdom) if the “Bent Stripe” of rainbow would last. She didn’t yet know that they weren’t the “common way.” A sky without a rainbow seemed an “Eccentricity.” But over time she learned that rainbows, lives, and butterflies all come and go, their “magic” heightened by the knowledge (or “fright”) that they will move on to farther latitudes one day. To “Dower” these latitudes is to enrich them. It’s nice to think that when “Our portion” on earth is done that we will grace the next stage.

The poem skips in its own ephemeral manner with short lines and skipping rhymes. “Flight” maintains its centrality with rhymed words throughout the first and third stanzas: flight, bright, flight, fright, sight. Dickinson adopts an intimate and conversational tone, beginning with a philosophical musing (Delight is in the ephemerality of beauty and life and the ratio of duration to existence), then reminisces about rainbows she saw as a child, and then concludes as if wrapping up a story to a child, saying that we are like rainbows and butterflies, too: magic while here but then suddenly gone to far-off latitudes.

            

If I'm lost—now—

If I'm lost—now—

That I was found—

Shall still my transport be—

That once—on me—those Jasper Gates

Blazed open—suddenly—

That in my awkward—gazing—face—

The Angels—softly peered—

And touched me with their fleeces,

Almost as if they cared—

I'm banished—now—you know it—

How foreign that can be—

You'll know—Sir—when the Savior's face

Turns so—away from you—

                                                           F 316 (1862)  256

I’ve stared at this poem for a while, read a few other commentaries on it to see if there is anything I’ve missed, and am unimpressed. It’s bitter in the sort of way that one is when lashing out over some hurt.

            Here, the poet begins nicely enough: She may be lost now, but she finds consolation—even joy—in knowing that once in the past the “Jasper Gates” opened to her and Angels touched her. She adds a dig, however, by following that sentiment up with an “Almost as if they cared.” Translating this into the dynamics of a human love relationship—which I think the poem is clearly an analogy of—we have a woman saying, “well, even though you rejected me, I have the happiness that at one time you blazed with love for me … almost as if you cared.” The bitterness overpowers the wonderful memory that the poet says shall be her “transport” or joy.

            The last stanza descends. The gentleman, instead of perhaps gently ending the relationship, has “banished” the poet. But he shouldn’t get complacent about it, she says, for when he goes up to the Pearly Gates, he’ll get a dose of his own medicine when Jesus sends him packing. The poem, I think, is weakened by this patently vindictive ending. 

Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned," as playwright William Congreve wrote in 1697.