I reckon — When I count at all —

I reckon — When I count at all —
First — Poets — Then the Sun —
Then Summer — Then the Heaven of God —
And then — the List is done —

But, looking back — the First so seems
To Comprehend the Whole —
The Others look a needless Show —
So I write — Poets — All —

Their Summer — lasts a solid Year —
They can afford a Sun
The East — would deem extravagant —
And if the Further Heaven —

Be Beautiful as they prepare
For Those who worship Them —
It is too difficult a Grace —
To justify the Dream —
                                    F533 (1863)  J569

Dickinson reckons – counts or calculates – that what truly matters are Poets, the Sun, Summer, and Heaven. It's a short list, all of which, however, is encompassed in Poets, for in their vision and art is a type of deep Platonic truth, one springing from the imaginative world. The actual items (Sun, Summer, Heaven) are but a "needless Show", their glories subject to weather or the difficult demands and vagaries of a supposed deity. It is a powerful and confident paean to poetry and to the visionary poets whose truths endure – and one must conclude that Dickinson includes herself in that company. 
        Her own poetry distills the essence of Sun and Summer in numerous poems, and as she points out, a poet's summer can last "a solid Year". (Helen Vendler in Selected Poems and Commentaries claims that Dickinson is making droll reference to a couple of Shakespeare's sonnets in this stanza – e.g., "thy eternal summer…"). In many of her poems the other seasons represent some kind of pain, so it is no surprise that Dickinson singles out summer as an apex experience. For example, along with rebirth, Spring brings the aching realization of loss ("I dreaded that first Robin, so" [F347]). Autumn is a bittersweet season of beauty and sadness whose red leaves conjure up dresses and scarves – but also blood ("the name – of it – is 'Autumn'" [F465]). Winter, if not death, is a numb despair ("There's a certain Slant of light" [F320]). In contrast, Summer is fullness and creation: There is "A something in a summer's noon … / Transcending ecstasy" [F104]. The Sun precedes Summer in the list, as well it should, for Summer is the Sun's daughter.
        "The Heaven of God" trails along and is dismissed as something not worth the effort needed. The last stanza is a bit difficult and scholars don't agree on some key points (such as who the "they" and the "Them" refer to). I like Vendler's reading, so I loosely summarize her discussion of it here: Many poets have written of Heaven, creating something beautiful. This contributes to – if not creates – the dream of Heaven, but Dickinson warns that the "Grace" needed to get there is so difficult that the dream isn't justified. In previous poems, Dickinson finds Heaven so frustrating or ephemeral that it is no wonder she finds it fails to  "justify the Dream". 

William Blake, Jacob's Ladder

"I've known a Heaven, like a Tent" (F257)"

"'Heaven'—is what I cannot reach!" (F310)

"The nearest Dream recedes—unrealized—" (F304)

        If Vendler's reading is correct, and the last stanza has people worshipping poets, it is almost droll. We can see the sun, we can enjoy a summer's day, but Heaven? We take that on faith – and that springs from the poets. When we worship "the Heaven of God" aren't we really worshipping an image described by poets such as Dante and Blake, and thereby worshipping them? No wonder Poets come first!  
        If Heaven is a poetic concept and not an actual place, the Grace needed to attain and maintain "the Dream" of it is still going to be too "difficult". You think you've glimpsed it, but then it disappears, leaving "But just the miles of Stare – / That signalize a Show's Retreat –"  (F257). As Vendler claims, the last stanza is exceedingly heretical!

The Winters are so short —

The Winters are so short —
I'm hardly justified
In sending all the Birds away —
And moving into Pod —

Myself — for scarcely settled —
The Phoebes have begun —
And then — it's time to strike my Tent —
And open House — again —

It's mostly, interruptions —
My Summer — is despoiled —
Because there was a Winter — once —
And all the Cattle — starved —

And so there was a Deluge —
And swept the World away —
But Ararat's a Legend — now —
And no one credits Noah —
                                           F532 (1863)  J403

Cynthia Griffin Wolff proposes Nature as the speaker of this lighthearted poem (Emily Dickinson, 284-5). After all, it is Nature who causes the birds to migrate and puts the developing seed into pods; Nature who hibernates in her tent until time to have summer "open House – again". 
        One could easily read the poem's speaker as Dickinson herself. Most of the first three stanzas can be plausibly read as from her point of view. This wouldn't be the first time she has placed herself at the hub of the seasons, perhaps most notably in "I dreaded that first Robin, so" (F347) where the creatures and blossoms of spring arrive punctually "in gentle deference" to her and then salute her as they depart. But why would she ramble on here about cattle and floods?
        I'm drawn to Wolff's idea, but would refine the voice as stream of consciousness from an exasperated and rather flighty Mother Earth. Mother gets frustrated with all the "interruptions", with how fast time flies ("What's the sense of sending off birds and tucking myself in for the winter? I just get comfortable and then the Phoebes are back! Now I have to get everything ready again.")  
        She has other complaints, too. Her precious Summer has been "despoiled" because a harsh winter ("Oh, I don't remember when … Once …) killed the cattle. That means no gamboling little calves and no fresh milk. And also, she continues, dredging up old grudges against whatever idiot is in charge of weather, there was that big deluge that drowned the world, that flood where Noah packed all the animals into an ark. "But no one believes that story anymore." I hear the housewife complaining about the husband making her job harder and the lamentable views of the modern world.
        No matter who the speaker is, the liveliness and pertness of the voice add a lot of charm. 

The poem is written in short-meter ballad form: abcb rhyme-scheme quatrains in iambic trimeter – except for the third tetrameter line of each stanza. This is a popular variant of the traditional ballad structure with the reverse trimeter/tetrameter structure: 4-4-3-4 syllables.) The second and fourth lines rhyme. Dickinson often uses slant rhymes and does so here. I particularly like her pairing of "Noah" with "away", which really zings the "w" sound, adding to others in the stanza: was, swept, world, now, one. "Despoiled" and "starved" have little but an "s" and an "ed" in common, but they are probably the strongest words in the poem, both in sense and sound; their uniqueness is not diminished by a closely-rhymed sound.   

We learned the Whole of Love —

We learned the Whole of Love —
The Alphabet — the Words —
A Chapter — then the mighty Book —
Then — Revelation closed —

But in Each Other's eyes
An Ignorance beheld —
Diviner than the Childhood's —
And each to each, a Child —

Attempted to expound
What neither — understood —
Alas, that Wisdom is so large —
And Truth — so manifold!
                                                                F531 (1863)  J568

Dickinson begins this graceful and difficult poem as if telling a story. Two young people fell in love, indeed, learn "the Whole of Love", exploring each other and revealing themselves in stages as children learn to read. She separates each stage by dashes, slowing the poem's pace so that we linger over the words: Alphabet, Words, Chapter, Book. We imagine looks, gestures, confidences, touches, tears, and laughter. The last line of the first stanza is wistfully final. The book finished, "Revelation closed". 

Engraving by Pierre A. Cot

        As if expelled from an easy Eden, they are now on difficult terrain. No longer entwined, they see "Ignorance" in each other's eyes– but it is a "Diviner" ignorance than that of their youth, one not based in innocence and inexperience but perhaps in the awareness of otherness, of unbridgeable holy difference. 
        They try to make sense of it, talking as children do, or talking to the other as if she were a child (the poem is ambiguous here), but thought and speech no longer suffice. Neither understands.

Among other things, Dickinson reveals the pitfalls of language. Philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva refers to the "enclosure of language" and its impediment to meaning making. The semiotic realm, to which pre-articulate children, poets, and artists have access, offers by contrast a "heterogeneity of meaning"* – a "manifold" quality of truth. Dickinson writes elsewhere of interiority "Where the Meanings, are" (F320). Even after experiencing the "Whole of Love", the lovers cannot explain themselves either to themselves or to each other. 
        In a plaintive closing aphorism, Dickinson alludes to the limit of knowledge as well as language: "Wisdom is so large – / And Truth – so manifold".  How can we hope to explore all of wisdom's vast domain? And if truth is multiple and diverse, how can we ever hope to congeal it into words? 

* Kristeva, "The Subject in Process", 1998.

He gave away his Life —

He gave away his Life —
To Us — Gigantic Sum —
A trifle — in his own esteem —
But magnified — by Fame —

Until it burst the Hearts
That fancied they could hold —
When swift it slipped its limit —
And on the Heavens — unrolled —

'Tis Ours — to wince — and weep —
And wonder — and decay
By Blossoms gradual process —
He chose — Maturity —

And quickening — as we sowed —
Just obviated Bud —
And when We turned to note the Growth —
Broke — perfect — from the Pod —
                                                     F530 (1863)  J567


The poem laments the death of a young and beloved man. Scholars believe this would be Frazer Stearns, the son of Amherst College's president and particular friend of Dickinson's older brother, Austin. Emily Dickinson was fond of him as well. Frazer was killed in battle and Dickinson writes movingly of his death and well-attended funeral in a letter to her young cousins ( L255). 
        The poem begins with a monetary analogy similar to that in "It feels a shame to be Alive" ( F524) where she wonders if we survivors are worth the "Sublimely paid" cost of soldier lives that are piled "like Dollars". Here, the soldier, valuing his life as but "A trifle", gave it away. But this trifle, to his survivors a "Gigantic Sum", becomes so "magnified" in the "Fame" of his brave death that it "burst the Hearts" of those who cared for him. 
        In the lovely and elegiac second stanza Dickinson pivots to the bird-like freedom of the soul that has "slipped its limit" and journeys to "the Heavens. "Unrolled" is reminiscent of her poem a year earlier, "A Bird came down the Walk" ( (F359), where the bird "unrolled his feathers / And rowed him softer Home". The rhyme pairing of "hold" and "unrolled" is a gentle one. The soul doesn't struggle from the grip of life. It isn't frantic or frightened. Instead, it slips, swiftly, and unrolls. The stanza is full of "s" sounds that further reinforce the soul's soundless liberty. 
        (The stanza reminds me of John Gillespie Magee's famous poem  "High Flight" where the pilot has "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to reach "The high untrespassed sanctity of space, / Put out my hand and touched the face of God". )
        In the final two stanzas Dickinson contrasts the arc of normal lives to that of the soldier. She winds us up a bit with the repeated "w"s – wince, weep, and wonder – and then in something of a knockout punch delivers "decay" to end the series. That is life. We have painful moments when we wince, the bitter disappointments when we weep, and the glorious times – perhaps just strolling in the garden – when we wonder. Yet all the while we decay. The image is disturbing with its suggestion of moldering rot, but then she softens it by reminding us that this is "Blossoms gradual process". Yes, like a flower we bud and bloom before we decay.
        The introduction of a botanical image is carried through to the end of the poem. Unlike the arc of a typical human life, the soldier "chose – Maturity". Not for him the budding and blossoming lover or poet, firebrand or farmer. He chose the soldier path during the bloodiest war the United States has ever experienced. He "obviated Bud", bypassing it completely. While his peers were simply sowing (I read this as a wry and youthful "sowing their wild oats" reference in addition to the continuation of the botanical analogy), he was "quickening". That's an interesting word containing as it does both a sense of growing life and growing into maturity. A child quickens in the womb; a boy quickens into the maturity of manhood and issues of life and death and courage.
     

Milkweed pod; photo, Harry Alverson

  There is a lovely sense of completion and birth in the initial reference to "sowing" seed followed by the soldier who "Broke – perfect – from the Pod", a seed himself loosed from the pod of his body. It is also a Christ metaphor, for Christ was perfected in in his early death, also choosing "Maturity". The alliterating "perfect" and "Pod" work much better than the earlier instances. The slant rhyme of "Pod" with "Bud" evokes the young man's sudden passing from youth to eternity without having budded. His soul, a seed, will bloom, one hopes, in some better afterlife.

A Dying Tiger — moaned for Drink —

A Dying Tiger — moaned for Drink —
I hunted all the Sand —
I caught the Dripping of a Rock
And bore it in my Hand —

His Mighty Balls — in death were thick —
But searching — I could see
A Vision on the Retina
Of Water — and of me —

'Twas not my blame — who sped too slow —
'Twas not his blame — who died
While I was reaching him —
But 'twas — the fact that He was dead —
                                                                          F529 (1863)  J566

I've been looking at this poem for over a week. I've been trying to find something interesting to say – and think – about it. I have been unable to even decide if it is humorous or not. That last stanza just seems a bit arch: "'Twas not his blame – who died". It is clearly ironic. "Sped too slow" is clever and witty. "Sped" also has the advantage of rhyming with "dead" – surely a lightweight counterbalance. The three "'Twas"s have a light singsongy quality, and the last line seems very close to a punch line. 
And yet the first two stanzas are full of pathos. The iconic great cat moans for water; the would-be rescuer has only her hands to carry what little drippings come from a rock drenched with dew or some seeping spring. The second stanza intensifies the pathos as the speaker searches the "Mighty" eyeballs of the tiger, probably to see if there is any life left. What she sees, however, is that the tiger has died. There is no life in the eyes, only the reflection of herself and the water she carries. Too little too late.


Dickinson has presented this theme in earlier poems. In my commentary on F195, "Victory comes late –" where Victory "is held low to freezing lips – / Too rapt with frost / To take it –", I write:

Karolina Jakubowska, watercolor pencils

Dickinson wrote numerous poems exploring the theme of “too little too late,” and on haves vs. have-nots.  There are beggars who would revel at a feast if only they could go (As Watchers hang upon the East),  someone dying of thirst despite lovely meadow brooks (To learn the Transport by the Pain), and a dying and defeated soldier hearing the victor’s trumpet calls (Success is counted sweetest), among others. In those poems she seemed to be holding up the paradox for examination: why those and not those others? What tragic irony that one could die with water close at hand or starve while food abounds.

I can't shake the feeling that the tone of this poem is … parodic? Saucy? Arch? Wry? Readers, what do you think?