He touched me, so I live to know

He touched me, so I live to know

That such a day, permitted so,

I groped upon his breast –

It was a boundless place to me

And silenced, as the awful Sea

Puts minor streams to rest.

And now, I'm different from before,

As if I breathed superior air—

Or brushed a Royal Gown—

My feet, too, that had wandered so—

My Gypsy face—transfigured now—

To tenderer Renown—

Into this Port, if I might come,

Rebecca, to Jerusalem,

Would not so ravished turn—

Nor Persian, baffled at her shrine

Lift such a Crucifixial sign

To her imperial Sun.

                                                                                          F349 (1862)  506

Once you remember that this passionate love poem written by a proper (spinster) woman in Puritan-ish New England of 1862, you understand why Dickinson kept so many of her poems secret—and why the uncensored versions took decades to emerge after Dickenson’s death. The speaker in this poem begins almost breathlessly. She and her lover have embraced, and this experience has transfigured her. She likens her passion in the final stanza to an almost religious level.

            It’s hard to imagine a simpler and more direct opening than “He touched me.” It’s both confessional and wondering. The second line tells us that this was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence: the day when this happened, when this embrace was “permitted” will be something she will remember all her life. We know there was passion for it wasn’t a chaste embrace, but one where she “groped upon his breast,” and here I picture her clutching him as if she could not get enough.

            She was over-awed by the experience. Within his embrace (“a boundless place” as if it were all emcompassing) she was silenced, just as a small stream is silenced as it is embraced by the “awful [awe-full] Sea.” She doesn’t say how her lover responded. This poem is all about the difference this encounter made in the speaker’s life. She is “different from before” now as if she had breathed heavenly air or touched a monarch. Even her face is transfigured into something more tender and loveable.

            Dickinson concludes the poem by reflecting on the day and the embrace as if it were a religious experience. If she could come again into the haven, the “Port” that is her beloved, she would be even more “ravished” or joyful than Rebecca from the biblical book of Genesis (ch. 24). Rebecca was a young woman selected to be the wife of Isaac, the young son of Abraham. She had to travel many days to reach and marry him, no doubt in great anticipation of his reputed goodness, his wealth and position—and her own, as his wife—and also in prayerful joy at being reportedly chosen by God. This journey towards Jerusalem must have been  exciting for her. Isaac was waiting for the caravan to return with a bride, and so as soon as he saw the camels, he ran out into the road to meet them. Rebecca, as shy and proper as Dickinson, covered herself with a veil. That story ends happily, for Isaac loved Rebecca and she lived a long and fruitful life.

Mithras, Persian sun god--looking a lot
like the Statue of Liberty!

            The second religious image is a little more difficult. Who is the “Persian, baffled at her shrine”? And why would she lift a crucifix to “her imperial Sun”? One interpretation that a few scholars have suggested is that the Persian is Lalla Rookh, a young princess who travels from Delhi to Cashmere to meet her betrothed. Along the way she falls in love with a poet story teller who fortunately turns out to be the bridegroom in disguise. This interpretation has the benefit of offering a parallel with Rebecca’s journey, but suffers from involving an Indian rather than a Persian, as well as not addressing the idea of the Sun. Instead, I suggest that the Persian is a woman praying at a Mithraic shrine. Mithra was worshipped for hundreds of years as a sun god, beginning in India and Persia but ultimately spreading throughout the Roman Empire. Imagine the woman praying in her ordinary way and then suddenly seeing her sun god in front of her. She raises a sacred token in awe. That token would look much like the cross Dickinson might have worn, as the tau cross was a symbol of Mithras (as well as Tammuz, the Sumerian sun god).

            The poem’s speaker, then, is claiming she would be so moved, so ravished, to take port once again in her lover’s arms that she would exceed Rebecca’s joy and the Persian woman’s amazed reverence in the presence of her god.

            Most of the imagery in this poem has been seen in earlier poems. The special day when the two lovers shared their love and exchanged crucifixes was described in “There came a Day—at Summer's full” (F325) where “Each was to each—the sealed church, / Permitted to commune this—time—,” just as the lovers in this poem have their glorious “permitted” day. At the end of their allotted time, “when all the time had failed— / Without external sound— / Each—bound the other’s Crucifix— / We gave no other Bond.” The bond was that after death they would have a “new marriage” that would be an eternal one.

            The idea that the loved man is a sun god, or at least that the sun represents the loved man was explored in “The Daisy follows soft the Sun” where the little daisy “Sits shyly” at the sun’s feet at night, braving his irritation, in hopes of “Night’s possibility.” In “The Sun—just touched the Morning,” Dickinson describes a morning so excited about having been touched by the sun that she “felt herself supremer— / A Raised—Ethereal Thing!” just as in the current poem the speaker feels uplifted by the touch of her beloved.

Dickinson, ultimately, would be the Sea
and any beloved only a small stream--although
she thought it the reverse.

            The speaker’s sense of being silenced as she joins her small stream to her beloved’s greater Sea is also seen in “The Drop, that wrestles in the Sea— / Forgets her own locality— / As I, in Thee” (F255) The same notion is expressed in  “My River runs to thee” (F219) and “Least Rivers—docile to some sea” (F206). This last poem was part of a letter to Samuel Bowles. It is very likely that Bowles was the beloved referred to here and that he was also the “Master” she wrote three very passionate (and probably unposted) letters to.

            Structurally, the poem is written in three six-line stanzas, although the first one is separated in two parts for emphasis. The first stanza tells the reader about the day of the embrace and what it was like. The second describes the speaker’s transfiguration, and the third the joy she expects when she finally comes to the Port that is her beloved—probably in the eternal marriage she alluded to in “There came a day” (as well as in “Title divine, is mine”).

            Each stanza has two rhyming iambic tetrameter lines followed by an iambic trimeter line—both of which rhyme. The result is a very tightly knit poem. The caesuras indicated by commas and dashes give a very spoken quality to the poem as if the poet is recounting something wistfully to the reader, something she has said and thought many times before. “He touched me…” –a memory never to be forgotten.

I would not paint—a picture—

I would not paint—a picture—

I'd rather be the One

Its bright impossibility

To dwell—delicious—on—

And wonder how the fingers feel

Whose rare—celestial—stir—

Evokes so sweet a Torment—

Such sumptuous—Despair—

I would not talk, like Cornets—

I'd rather be the One

Raised softly to the Ceilings—

And out, and easy on—

Through Villages of Ether—

Myself endued Balloon

By but a lip of Metal—

The pier to my Pontoon—

Nor would I be a Poet—

It's finer—Own the Ear—

Enamored—impotent—content—

The License to revere,

A privilege so awful

What would the Dower be,

Had I the Art to stun myself

With Bolts of Melody!

                                                            F348 (1862)  505

In this concise and powerful tour of the fine arts, the poet asserts that she would rather look at paintings than paint, would rather listen to music than play an instrument, and would rather hear poetry than write it.

Drifting away like a balloon to music
photo by Nigel Pacey

Just as painting is a tactile art, Dickinson she dives inside the senses, wondering how the painter’s fingers feel as they create art of such “bright impossibility” that the viewer wants to “dwell—delicious” on them. For the air-borne art of music, Dickinson abandons herself to imagination, picturing herself as a floating balloon, transformed by “but a lip of Metal” to ride the music  out into the “Villages of Ether” (a term once meaning the invisible substance that permeates the cosmos).

When it comes to the language of poetry, Dickinson shrinks into herself, content to be but a listener (implying being a reader, too, who ‘hears’ the poetry when reading). She wants to “Own the Ear” and enter into the poem “Enamored—impotent—content.” These are three interesting adjectives: to be struck with love, to be helpless and unable to act, and to be satisfied and fulfilled. There is a sexual overtone to this, as if it each poem were an act of ravishment. This tone is carried into the last line where she wonders what the cost would be if she were granted the “privilege” of being a good enough poet to “stun” herself “With Bolts of Melody.” In this case, rather than being ravished by a good poem, she would have the “Art” to ravish herself.

Dickinson’s famous remark to Higginson about poetry, written in about this same period in her life, also reflects this intensity:

If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it.  Is there any other way?

The idea of becoming an Ear to best take in poetry is reminiscent of “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” just eight poems ago (F340), where “Being” had become but “an Ear” and “all the Heavens were a Bell.” But while shrinking into an ear in that poem was like a descent into madness, in this poem it is an entre into something as powerful and magnificent as a thunderbolt.

The power and concision of the last stanza is based not only on the strong imagery and the very fine last two lines, but in the sketchy language and punctuation. The reader must supply missing words, connect the dots, and supply appropriate punctuation. It’s as if Dickinson were writing in shorthand from some inner dictation and so copied down only the essential bits. Yet scholarship has shown that this poem was carefully revised. Dickinson knew her art: Those “Bolts of Melody” don’t hit her readers by accident.

Another way that Dickinson achieves power and concision is through paradox. In the first stanza she writes that painters can evoke “so sweet a Torment— / Such sumptuous—Despair” through their art. These paradoxical juxtapositions remind me of all the other poems where she has used this technique to great effect, as in “Kill your Balm—and its Odors bless you” (F309).

The poem is written primarily in iambic trimeter—which is associated with dialog in Greek drama as well as in other poetry where speech is implied. Here, the poet is talking in a very direct way to the reader. The use of rhyme helps give us that “Melody” so prized in Dickinson’s lifetime. I particularly like the rhyme of “Myself endued Balloon / … / The pier to my Pontoon.” Some other effective rhymes—slant and perfect—are stir / despair, Poet / content, and Ear / revere.

I dreaded that first Robin, so,

I dreaded that first Robin, so,

But He is mastered, now,

I'm accustomed to Him grown,

He hurts a little, though—

I thought If I could only live

Till that first Shout got by—

Not all Pianos in the Woods

Had power to mangle me—

I dared not meet the Daffodils—

For fear their Yellow Gown

Would pierce me with a fashion

So foreign to my own—

I wished the Grass would hurry—

So when 'twas time to see—

He'd be too tall, the tallest one

Could stretch to look at me—

I could not bear the Bees should come,

I wished they'd stay away

In those dim countries where they go,

What word had they, for me?

They're here, though; not a creature failed—

No Blossom stayed away

In gentle deference to me—

The Queen of Calvary—

Each one salutes me, as he goes,

And I, my childish Plumes,

Lift, in bereaved acknowledgment

Of their unthinking Drums –

                                                            F347 (1862)  348

Dickinson used robins as a synonym for spring in various poems in previous years. She sometimes calls them her troubadors. Here she says, ironically, that she dreads the first robin. She doesn’t want to see the yellow daffodils or hear the bees. She doesn’t want to see spring blossoms, either. She wishes, instead, that the grass would hurry up and grow tall enough to hide the flowers. Talk about depression! Her emotional state seems beyond depression, however. Birdsong in the woods might “mangle” her. The cheery yellow gowns of the daffodils would “pierce” her. She is in real physical danger from what would normally delight her.

She also refers to herself as “Queen of Calvary”—the queen of suffering and sacrifice. She has taken such a title before: In “Title divine, is mine” she is the “Empress of Calvary” who suffers because her love and passion will not be consummated during her earthly life.

            In this poem, though, the speaker’s suffering seems to stem from a more existential angst. Spring is no longer a joyful rebirth, a symbol of Resurrection or life after death. Instead it is a reminder of death. The first robin comes, but he may not be last season’s robin. For all the joy of spring there is the cold death of winter. And so as spring parades past her—robins, daffodils, bees, and blossoms—the poet waves her “childish Plumes” at them “in bereaved acknowledgment” of the cycle of life and death. It’s a march here, rather than a dance. Spring “salutes” her as they keep in time to the “unthinking” drums of time.

            Dickinson’s plumes would be a bunch of ostrich feathers. These were sometimes worn as ornaments and symbol of wealth or rank, but they were also carried as a sign of grief in funerals. The parade of spring becomes a funeral procession.

            For all its depression, however, I sense a tender love. The spring garden and its creatures hurts because the poet, no longer a child, realizes that the new life is ephemeral. It is a very personal relationship. The creatures present themselves to her much as in Eden the first animals presented themselves to Adam to be named. Adam didn’t have the knowledge of death. That came only with the Fall. Dickinson is living in a Fallen world and so sees death behind the bright new façade of spring life.

            The poem is written in ballad or hymn form: quatrains with alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. Dickinson is quite regular in her meter in this poem, in keeping with the sense of a march or procession. The slant rhyme pair in the last quatrain of “Plumes” and “Drums” is particularly poignant. We are left with the sense of the Circle of Death rather than the Circle of Life.