Love—is that later Thing than Death—

Love—is that later Thing than Death—
More previous—than Life—
Confirms it at its entrance—And
Usurps it—of itself—

Tastes Death—the first—to hand the sting
The Second—to its friend—
Disarms the little interval—
Deposits Him with God—

Then hovers—an inferior Guard—
Lest this Beloved Charge
Need—once in an Eternity—
A smaller than the Large—


      -Fr840, J924, sheet 3, 1864


In poems like this one Dickinson can be a hard nut to crack. But we can try. In the attempt we get much closer to the nut.

It starts off easy enough:

Love—is that later Thing than Death—
More previous—than Life—

Love was here before we were born and will be here after we leave. At a very basic level this is true. I loved my wife and out of that love came children. When I die these same children will still feel love for me.

The next line is easy enough too, and quite beautiful.

Confirms it at its entrance

We feel a natural love for the newborn child. This feeling confirms for us love’s primacy. That is indisputable. The powerful feeling we have automatically for a newborn is an inherent sign of our love. It is confirmed for us at our very entrance onto the planet.

The primacy of this love is not to be underestimated. (Conversely, the absence of Love is anathema to life. Lady Macbeth informs us she knows what it is like to give suck, to feed a newborn, yet still, to feed her ambition she claims that she would dash her baby’s brains against the wall. Ambition is thus revealed by Shakespeare as antithetical to Love.)

The next line though is a bit more difficult to suss:

                             ...And
Usurps it—of itself—

Love usurps Life. In other words, it is more important than Life. This is another quite beautiful thought. Love is there at the entrance, but not only that, it also takes over Life. This is what sacrifice of the soldier, or the mother, means. Life is offered up for Love. Love, which was there from before we began, is something we are willing to die for.

If the poem ended here, I’d already feel a whole world wiser. But it doesn’t. It gets harder:

Tastes Death—the first—to hand the sting
The Second—to its friend—
Disarms the little interval—
Deposits Him with God—

That syntax is hard to parse, but once you do, you begin to see that the difficulty stems from Dickinson's condensed matter. She is doing a lot in a very brief space.

Love, (here, meaning the love of the poet,) offers to be the first to taste death. Love is willing to take the bullet. Love worries. This willingness to die for a beloved lessons the sting, the pain, of their death. It is what hands the sting of the second death, the beloved's, over to the "friend.” The term "friend" here, lower case, is pointing to the friendship between the lover and the beloved. Love relieves the sting of death through friendship, through the willingness of one to take on the burden of another.

In so doing Love disarms the interval. In other words, Death is made easier for the one dying. In a poem preceding this one, Fr 838, Dickinson speaks of easing a loved one's death by holding a glowing candle up for the beloved’s failing eyes. (See post for relevant biographical details.) This is an important theme for Dickinson. This death-watch stands in the poems as a symbol of the kind of Love that is there until the end.

By being there, the loved one deposits the living one with God. Love was there before the beginning, reigned in life, and now is easing the sting of death and gently dropping us off with Providence.

I love how the syntax of the stanza allows that "Second" to be a second of time too. The second we love another before ourselves, the second a dying one can see this in our eyes, the second of that "little interval" just before death," all of this becomes the moment that is handed to a “friend."

“Disarms” is a great word here. For myriad reasons the moment of death may feel like being caught up in warfare. Love will take those self-lacerating weapons away from us.

Then hovers—an inferior Guard—
Lest this Beloved Charge
Need—once in an Eternity—
A smaller than the Large—

Love, since it is personal, and therefore only a fraction of the larger source of love, is inferior. We are guardian angels for each other, but are "inferior." "Inferior" implies that there is something even larger, something Superior, looking out for us, something of which we are only a small part. But this poem promises that the poet will, nevertheless, hover over the body of the beloved she is in charge of, in all her inferiority, just in case. Just in case of what?

Ah, this is where I think the poem becomes most meaningful. Just in case once in Eternity, which is to say now, which is to say this second, the beloved, you, might need such a love. The smaller love fits our smaller self. The smaller love is the representative of the love of this person and this moment. I’m here for you, now, the "small" poet says to her beloved.

Dickinson has “lesser” in the original MS as an alternative for "smaller." It seems at first to be a better fit, at least alliteratively. Lesser goes beautifully with “lest," "beloved" and "Large.” But I think she chose “smaller” because smaller is not necessarily lesser. It's just smaller. And also, it just sounds…sweeter.

Once again I am awed by Emily Dickinson's capacity to love.

     -/)dam Wade /)eGraff

The Angel of Death/ Horace Vernet/ 1851

P.S. The sting of death relieved by love is surely a reference to Corinthians 15:55, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"

P.P.S. I'm grateful to Susan and The Prowling Bee for giving me the opportunity to go so deep into these poems. If I wasn't "charged" with writing about this poem, then I don't think I could have begun to truly understand it. 

Unfulfilled to Observation—

Unfulfilled to Observation—
Incomplete—to Eye—
But to Faith—a Revolution
In Locality—

Unto Us—the Suns extinguish—
To our Opposite—
New Horizons—they embellish—
Fronting Us—with Night.


    -Fr839, J972, Fascicle 40, 1864


Here we have arrived at the final poem of the final fascicle of the 40 left us by the poet Emily Dickinson. (The last fascicle, that is, according to Christanne Miller in "Poems As She Preserved Them.")  Sometimes Dickinson's fascicle arrangements feel composed, and they probably were considering how artfully everything was arranged by Dickinson, from her poems to her herbarium to her cakes and wine-jellies. But this poem, lovely and meaningful as it is, does not feel like a conclusion to a fascicle, let alone 40 of them. 

I sometimes find myself trying to reverse-engineer an Emily Dickinson poem. I’ve noticed that Dickinson often starts with an idea and then, to use an apt word from this poem, "embellishes" it. This one starts with the idea of the relative interdependence of dark and light. If we are standing on the dark side, then we can be assured of a relative light side. It all depends on where you are standing. It’s an intriguing idea, and, ultimately, an uplifting one. It’s true realization takes us beyond dualism and into a sense of a dynamic whole. This is an understanding worth preserving in poetry, just like Lao Tzu’s similar yin and yang wisdom was preserved for us in the Tao De Ching 2500 years ago. Likewise Dickinson is taking her philosophical gold and spinning it into poetry.* 

Okay, back to the reverse-engineering. So Dickinson had a strong and salutary idea and looked for a form for which it might fit. This particular thought necessitated two stanzas. The first stanza lays out the argument and the second stanza illustrates the argument with a metaphor.

Next Dickinson chose a meter for these stanzas. She sticks to her usual 4/3 common-hymn stanzas, but she gives it a little change-up by making the rhythm trochaic instead of the more usual iambic. I believe she chose this meter because it makes the poem punchier. It starts on the down beat, like funk music. (I imagine the poem starting out with James Brown’s emphatic “UHHNN!!!”) It’s more sing-songy this way, and therefore more memorable.

Unfulfilled to Observation—
Incomplete—to Eye—

First she states the issue. “Look, you can’t see your own complete fulfillment.” We are being told by an objective poetic narrator that they can see what we cannot. This is every great seer’s claim, from Homer’s Teiresias on down. You can’t see it with your two eyes, but if you listen to the blind poets, they will sing it to you.

Dickinson’s first two lines start off with open-vowelled cretics. A cretic, sometimes called an amphimacer, is a word that is stressed/unstressed/stressed. Both words, "Unfulfilled" and "Incomplete" are oxymoronic as well. They both speak of negations of positives. You can hear this emotionally in the very sounds of the words. The open-vowel sound serves as an orally visceral undoing of the positive words that follow, un/fulfill and in/complete.

The open-vowelled cretics also serve to give the poem a nice ring.

We thus have a strong doubly-emphasized point: there is a fulfillment, but one which you can’t observe from your blind side, a completeness that you can’t see in the dark.

This sets us up for the big “but.”

But to Faith—a Revolution
In Locality—

In other words, we have faith that the world has merely revolved and we are now on the dark side. The light is being blocked by something, namely, the revolving sphere of the earth. If you are in the western hemisphere, it is dark, but you have Faith, since you have seen it happen before, that the earth is ever-revolving and the sun is now shining on the other side.

The word Faith here takes us from the idea of a physical sunrise toward a hidden metaphysics. The word “Revolution” does the same thing. This poem is, on one level, talking about the way your local earthly location has revolved from day to night. But it also hints toward an inner revolution in seeing.

Dickinson wrote several poems about “locality." (See the notes below this post for a few examples.) It's an important theme for her. As Prowling Bee reader and commentator Tom Clyde has written, "Her poems have given me so much comfort in these difficult times. Truly Emily Dickinson’s sense of locality is a solace to me.”

Okay, we’ve had the argument, and now, in stanza two, we can embellish with some metaphors to help us better understand:

Unto Us—the Suns extinguish—
To our Opposite—
New Horizons—they embellish—
Fronting Us—with Night.

In returning our focus on the construction of the poem, we see that Dickinson chose to start this stanza with an open vowel again to echo the first stanza. The first line is tied to the second through an open-vowel trochee, and likewise the first stanza is tied to the second. She stitched the poem together this way.

That word “Unto” is one of my favorite Dickinson words. She always wields it beautifully.

Unto Us—the Suns extinguish—

This line, before the next line completes the syntax, has its own stand-alone power. 

The suns extinguish “unto” us. Reading and digesting this line in isolation, which for a moment we do, it’s as if the suns were extinguishing into us, which is an evocative image. I picture suns disappearing straight into our chests. “Unto” is originally a mash-up word of "until" and "toward." So the suns are extinguishing "until toward" us. 

Unto Us—the Suns extinguish— 

To our Opposite—

The way that “unto” works here, then, goes in two opposite directions at once. The Suns extinguish/ to our opposite, but that light moving over there is all coming unto you as darkness, as an extinguishing. The energy of the line goes away and towards the self at the same time, and the light is, through word magic, made synonymous with the darkness.

The word “Opposite” here is telling. “Our Opposite.” What does it mean when an opposite is “ours?”

Add to this the gorgeous music in this line in the sounds of "un", "us" and "sun."

You might also be able to hear an echo of “Son” here too. Christ, the Son of God, extinguishes “unto us,” dies for us, for our opposite and darkened selves. This is another idea that Dickinson thought a lot about, so it wouldn’t surprise me if she was hinting toward this idea here, which helps account for the word “Faith” set up in the first stanza.

Finally we have our second illustration:

New Horizons—they embellish
Fronting Us—with Night.

The sun, extinguishing here, is now, therefore, over there and embellishing “New Horizons.” While we are confronted with night, the side we can't see is filling with light.

New Horizons can mean a lot of different things, depending on how you hear it. It can literally mean the sun’s horizon is brightening up a new day on the other side of the world as we sleep. But poetically it can mean that as our eyes are darkening for our personal long winter's night sleep of death, the light is rising in heaven (or “Immortality” as Dickinson preferred to call it). Or it could mean that even as you die, a New Horizon, a new generation is being born into the world. It could simply mean to remember that when you are having a bad day things revolve and better days come. It could mean that when you take on someone’s load, their darkness, it lightens the burden of another. We know, from looking at big-picture nature, says the poem, that any darkness, which is to say any difficulty, promises an unseen blessing.

So don’t despair, for the other side is surely there. The darkness and despair is our sign of surety that the other side exists. And there is a further implication too: our darkness enables the light. In another poem Dickinson calls it the “white sustenance/ despair.”

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Sunrise by the Ocean/ Vladamir Kush

* For whom did Dickinson write this? Whom did she ultimately have in mind when writing her poetry? I doubt she was writing it just for herself, though maybe. If you were prone to depression, then a poem like this, channeled from your higher self, would be an awfully good reminder.

I can see a poem like this written for a friend or a cousin too, but it does feel a little bit “impersonal." It feels general, and therefore I mostly see it as something written for an ideal future reader. Poems are often written for that reason. The poems that Emily Dickinson loved to read, like those of Robert and Emily Browning, came to her via impersonal means as well, through books sold in bookstores. Poems like the one at hand convince me that Dickinson was thinking of future readers, of me and you, in the abstract, when she wrote them.

This might seem like an obvious reason for any poet to write poems, except for with Emily Dickinson it begs a question. If these were meant to be read by a general audience, why didn’t she try to have them published? There are several possible answers to that question, and people have long conjectured about it,  but suffice to say that Dickinson did make the gesture, at least, to sew 839 of them up into 40 little booklets. (Mabel Loomis Todd is the one who labeled them “fascicles). She left these booklets to the surprise of everybody, even the sisters who outlived her. And she left them for fate to do with as it would. I believe though that Dickinson trusted that the inherent worth of the poems would make sure they were delivered to their destinations. She also probably had some trust that she would get some post-mortem help from Lavinia and Sue, as well as Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Helent Hunt Jackson and other well-published friends. I doubt Austin would’ve done much with them, if he were the sole responsible executor, but his wife Sue and daughter Martha and mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd, all went a long way to help get the poems out there. Austin needed the women to do the important work. One thinks here of Vincent Van Gogh's brother Theo's wife being the prime mover in preserving and publicizing Vincent's worth after his death.

To be fair though, Higginson and Samuel Bowles, both men with a feminist agenda and a large broadband, went a long way to help Dickinson too. She covered herself well, in retrospect, like any great secret will that is meant eventually to spill. You might say that through these indirect means Dickinson pro-engineered the poems so that they might, with help from providence, be in front of us now 175 years later.

Notes: 

1. It's interesting to compare this poem with the one preceding it in Fascicle 40, Fr837. They both use the metaphor of the sun, but quite differently. 

2. Other uses of "locality" in Dickinson poems:

“A nearness to Tremendousness…” 

In this poem, Dickinson uses the word "Location" and the coined term "Illocality"—a play on "locality," suggesting a paradoxical state of being both place-bound and unplaceable. “In Acres—Its Location / Is Illocality—” This juxtaposes the domestic ("Acres") with an abstract, boundless sense of place ("Illocality"), highlighting her tendency to destabilize fixed locales. 

“The Drop, that wrestles in the Sea—…” includes the line: “…Forgets her own locality—” Suggesting something dissolving or transcending its sense of rooted place. 

“Unfulfilled to Observation…” Contains: “…In Locality—” and conveys a sense of existential or perceptual transformation tied to a sense of place.

Robbed by Death—but that was easy— (take 2)

Robbed by Death—but that was easy—
To the failing Eye
I could hold the latest Glowing—
Robbed by Liberty

For Her Jugular Defences—
This, too, I endured—
Hint of Glory—it afforded—
For the Brave Beloved—

Fraud of Distance—Fraud of Danger,
Fraud of Death—to bear—
It is Bounty—to Suspense's
Vague Calamity—

Staking our entire Possession
On a Hair's result—
Then—seesawing—coolly—on it—
Trying if it split—

    Fr838, J971, Fascicle 40, 1864

This is my second attempt at writing a post on this poem. My interpretation changed, in part due to reading the biography of Emily Dickinson by Alfred Habegger, and in part because of David Preest's reading of the poem. Here goes take two:

Robbed by Death—but that was easy—

When you read this line in isolation, it appears to be saying that being robbed by the death of someone was easy. But that can't be right, can it? That's a cold thing to say. It seems selfish. It's like, no big deal, you died. But that isn't like Emily Dickinson at all. She was someone who was extremely affected by the death of a loved one. 

So we read on to see how the poet will qualify this statement. 

To the failing Eye

This qualification of "easy" reads like: It may seem easy to be robbed by death to the eye that fails to see. In other words, it's not easy at all. Your eyes are failing you if you think this is easy. 

But then I quickly realized that failing here must refer back to death. We need the next line now to further qualify these two lines. 

Here we have an excellent example of the slipperiness of Dickinson’s use of dashes. When I took just the first two lines together, I read it as a sentence. But then after I read the third line I could see, after having already processed the first two lines together, the dash at the end of line one better functions as a full stop, like this:

Robbed by Death—but that was easy—(.)

To the failing Eye

I could hold the latest Glowing—

Now she appears to be saying, "I was robbed of a loved one by death, but that was made easier, because at least I could hold up the latest glowing to their failing eyes."

So, it wasn't easy, after all, but it was the easier of the two, because the poet could help the beloved die.

I had to work a bit for that reading, but it's such a beautiful idea that it was worth working for, and it is, somehow, worth more because of having to work for it. It sticks deeper.

There's so much in the idea of holding the "latest Glowing.” It's such a beautiful phrase. I want to burn it onto a stump of tree in the backyard of my mother's house.

Literally the phrase would mean that you are holding a candle to help the failing eye to see. A held "Glowing" could be glowing eyes too, as they hold the gaze of the dying, the warm flame of a present soul, or even, a poem. 

This poem is, for the reader, the latest Glowing. 

I connect this passage with one I recently read in Alfred Habegger's biography of Emily Dickinson, "My Wars Are Laid Away In Books." 

When Emily was 14 she had a friend/cousin named Sophia Holland. Emily described her in a letter as a "friend near my age & with whom my thoughts & her own were the same." 

When this friend died Emily was allowed to watch "over her bed." 

"It seemed that to me I should die too," Emily recalled, "if I could not be permitted to watch over her or even to look at her face."

This is from Habegger:

"Emily prevailed on the doctor to allow one last look. She took  off her shoes and quietly stepped to the sickroom, stopping in the doorway. There Sophia

lay mild & beautiful as in health & her pale features lit up with an unearthly - smile. I looked as long as friends would permit & when they told me I must look no longer I let them lead me away." Then, " I shed no tears, for my heart was too full to weep, but after she was laid in her coffin & I felt I could not call her back again I gave way to a fixed melancholy. I told no one the cause of my grief."

It stops your heart doesn't it? It gives a living dimension to the opening lines of this poem.

Now we are fully invested in this poem and want to read on, to see the full light of the candle, its glowing apotheosis. So we read on.

Robbed by Liberty

For Her Jugular Defences—
This, too, I endured—
Hint of Glory—it afforded—

When you pair the words "Liberty" and "Defences" and even "Jugular" (meaning deadly) you think of fighting, and war, and then, remembering the period, The Civil War.  

Indeed we know that a few years before this poem was written Dickinson lost her family childhood friend Frazar Stearns in the Civil War. And as she wrote this poem the war still raged. 

But Freedom, and its loss, is meta-mythically personal for the poet.  The idea of liberty, and the fight for it, was something that was central to her life. 

Robbed by liberty. How does liberty rob? How does freedom limit? Think about it from the point of view of a woman trying to maintain her vocation of a poet? That would be harder to do in the domestic expectations of a married life, or to one trying to survive in the world without a husband/father's earning power in 1864. 

The struggle for Liberty can even kill you. It goes for the jugular! 

For Dickinson liberty had its own special meaning. She was able to live at home, with her father's support, and remain unmarried. 

In Matty Dickinson’s charming memoir of Dickinson, Face to Face, she tells of how her Aunt Emily once mimed turning the lock on her bedroom door and said to her: “It’s just a turn— and freedom, Matty!”

Dickinson's sacrifices for liberty, and the pain she endured for it, did afford her "Hint of Glory."  She "endured" freedom for it. The Glory, the direct result of Dickinson’s pursuit of liberty, are these poems, which have indeed held, and are still Glowing, for our own failing eyes.

For the Brave Beloved—

(Brave Beloved = Sophia Holland or Frazar Stearns or Sue or/and, ultimately, the reader)

Fraud of Distance—Fraud of Danger,
Fraud of Death—to bear—

The poet is being brave in this poem, facing danger, prison and death, and she is doing it for the sake of a brave beloved.  

I originally read the last section of this poem one way and then when I read David Preest's take on the poem I did a double take. I think Preest (in his priestly way) may have gotten a better fix on this poem. I'm still not sure. I will return to discuss his take, but first my initial take, which was that the end of this poem's about an uncommitted lover leaving the poet in suspense. Dickinson has written on this theme before. 

The turn-around in this poem comes in these lines:

"It is Bounty—to Suspense's
Vague Calamity—

All of that difficulty of danger and death is “Bounty” compared to being in suspense.  Difficulty in love is Bounty because at least you will grow from your efforts and sacrifices. I presume Dickinson is speaking of the suspense of whether or not the beloved will return her love, or even can return it.

To know is to respond decisively. But if the initial act is a maybe, is "Vague," then that’s true Calamity because then the love is in limbo. We are in stasis. There is no growth, no Life.

Staking our entire Possession
On a Hair's result—

If we are in love, then we are ready to give all of ourselves, our “entire Possession” to our beloved. But what if the beloved is indecisive, and could go either way? Just a hair's breadth, the smallest detail, could change the whole deal. It’s unfair that for one party the stakes should be complete surrender, while for the other the result is neither here nor there, fifty-fifty, iffy.

But then Dickinson makes an imaginative leap and now the hair's difference between yes or no is one the beloved is swinging on, as if glibly testing it. 

Then—seesawing—coolly—on it—
Trying if it split—

The thought of the beloved seesawing “coolly” on her decision, back and forth, is coolly devastating. We can guess just what is so painful about this suspense for the author. The poet is a “soul at white heat,” but the beloved is cool, indifferent. And not only that, by swinging so carelessly on the decision almost seems to be want the hair to split. If the hair breaks, it is the poet, not the beloved, who drops into oblivion.

Dickinson has written about the agony of suspense before, most notably in Fr755, which makes a similar claim, "Suspense is-hostiler-than-death." Here, she makes the word suspense come to life by imagining the beloved suspended in the air, holding onto a hair between her decision of yes or no.

Hair is such a personal physical connection to the beloved.  

The last word of the poem, the violent "split," is confusing at first. We think of the phrase splitting hairs here, in the sense of a vertical splitting of a hair, as in making small and unnecessary decisions, and maybe Dickinson is playing with that idea as well, how we argue our points until we are lost, but here she is talking about the hair splitting horizontally, as if the future is in the balance, just holding on by a thread.

In the first part of this poem we are privy to Dickinson’s brave love, as one who would take on any threat to her life, happily, for the beloved, and then, in the last section of the poem, there is a turn-around, and Dickinson shows us what it means when all of that devotion and bravery is undermined by an indecisive partner.

I would be willing to die for you, the poet says, and you can’t even bother to let me know if that’s good enough for you?

Well, ours may not be the voice Dickinson was hoping to hear from when she wrote this poem, but still, as its belated recipients we can answer that her love was not just good enough, it's still the latest Glowing.

I still think that reading works, but Preest's take is compelling too. He writes, "Indeed to be deprived of a friend by the specific danger of distant battle or by death is sheer ‘Bounty’ compared to the calamity of the vagueness of the suspense over life after death (lines 9-12). For the chances of immortality or annihilation are so evenly balanced that only a hair separates them, and we seesaw in suspense between them, trying to split the hair so as to come firmly down on one side or the other (lines 13-16)."

Preest's take is that Dickinson is talking about the suspense of whether there is an afterlife or not. I would add to this, piggybacking off of Preest, the idea that the suspense is of qualifying for the afterlife. The swinging back and forth suddenly takes on immense precariousness. In your hands you hold your own redemption, and you are glibly swinging around and risking the possibility of heaven? 

As of this writing all three readings seem possible. What do you think?

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

 Danny Phillips. Sept. 2025.

P.S. All the reproductions of this poem I could find online have the word “stalking” instead of “staking.” I assume one bad transcription of the poem has led to all of those others. I was sure “stalking” must be wrong and so I looked it up in Christanne Miller’s “Poems as She Preserved Them,” and sure enough, the correct word is “staking." Hopefully this blog will serve as a corrective. 

I make His Crescent fill or lack—

I make His Crescent fill or lack—
His Nature is at Full
Or Quarter—as I signify—
His Tides—do I control—

He holds superior in the Sky
Or gropes, at my Command
Behind inferior Clouds—or round
A Mist's slow Colonnade—

But since We hold a Mutual Disc—
And front a Mutual Day—
Which is the Despot, neither knows—
Nor Whose—the Tyranny—


      -Fr837, J909, Fascicle 40, 1864


There is a power dynamic here between the sun and the moon. The sky, under Dickinson's watch, becomes a playground of power and sly reversals. The poet kicks off with a flourish of authority. “I make His Crescent fill or lack— / His Nature is at Full / Or Quarter—as I signify— / His Tides—do I control—.” She’s the Sun, master of moon and tides. You can practically hear her delight in the audacity.

The sun/self signifies and therefore controls, which is why it is presented to us in the first person. 

If you are looking from the position of the Self, which we all are, after all, then you may realize that you have the ability to make another “superior in the Sky,” or you may make them crawl and “grope.”

But a turn-around begins to happen in the second stanza. The other, the one being controlled, may be obscured by “inferior clouds,” but He will still shine through, and He will still “round/ A Mist’s slow Colonnade.” 

That last phrase is gorgeous. You imagine the atmosphere, in league with the sun, doing what it can to obscure the moon, by slowly erecting a colonnade. A colonnade is a row of columns, which is something we think of as quite solid. And note the ominous word "slow." But here the colonnade is shown to be merely a mist that the moon rounds. The moon not only shines through the inferior clouds but also gives depth, gives roundness, to the mist.  The word “Colonnade” is also perfect here because of the way it echoes the sounds of “control,” “Command” and “Clouds” which precede it. 

In the third stanza we get a new idea hinging on the word “since.”

But since We hold a Mutual Disc—
And front a Mutual Day—
Which is the Despot, neither knows—
Nor Whose—the Tyranny—

 So if you are reading this from the Sun/self’s point of view, the poem presents to you the idea that your power is ultimately illusory. But if you are the "other," the one under control, this poem becomes about resilience.

The moon, quietly, survives. Hidden behind clouds or quartered in phase, it holds its disc, keeps its rhythm. The moon’s sovereignty is cheeky. It refuses to be fully dominated. It exhibits endurance and autonomy, all under the radar of a would-be master. The moon may be perceived as quartered, but to itself it is always full, and there is always a new chance to shine, always a new day to “front.”

Dickinson is showing us that power is never as tidy as we think. Authority is provisional and sovereignty comes in hidden strength. Even when domination seems total, resilience quietly asserts itself.

We are reminded to remember our innate roundness and keep our rhythm. 

        -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh. 

P.S. This poem seems to be an elaboration of sorts of the poem that precedes it in the fascicle, Fr836. There, death is the great equalizer. In the grave, distinctions vanish. Here, life itself levels the playing field. The sun may shine, the speaker may boast, but the moon persists.

P.P.S. I can't help but think of Taming of the Shrew here. Petruchio gets Kate to say the Moon is the Sun. Her willingness to do so undermines him, and in the end we are left wondering who exactly has won "the field." 

Katherina: Forward, I pray, since we have come so far,

And be it moon, or sun, or what you please;

And if you please to call it a rush-candle,2280

Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.

Petruchio: I say it is the moon.

Katherina: I know it is the moon.

Petruchio: Nay, then you lie; it is the blessed sun.

Katherina: Then, God be bless'd, it is the blessed sun;2285

But sun it is not, when you say it is not;

And the moon changes even as your mind.

What you will have it nam'd, even that it is,

And so it shall be so for Katherine.

Hortensio: Petruchio, go thy ways, the field is won.

Color — Caste — Denomination —

Color — Caste — Denomination —
These — are Time's Affair —
Death's diviner Classifying
Does not know they are —

As in sleep — All Hue forgotten —
Tenets — put behind —
Death's large—Democratic fingers
Rub away the Brand —

If Circassian — He is careless —
If He put away
Chrysalis of Blonde—or Umber —
Equal Butterfly —

They emerge from His Obscuring —
What Death — knows so well —
Our minuter intuitions —
Deem unplausible —


     -Fr836, J970, Fascicle 40, 1864

Dickinson often starts with an idea, which, in this case, would be that death doesn’t discriminate, and then explores and expands upon that idea until something deeper about it is revealed. Part of the joy, for me, is watching the way she starts by weaving her idea around the sounds it evokes. It is clear in this poem that the poet takes the C and D sounds of that opening line and then consciously repeats them throughout the rest. But more is going on than just the C and D alliteration. The R sound of “Color,” for instance, leads to the end rhymes of “Affair” and “are.” And there are sound clusters too, like how the CLR sound in “Color” comes back strongly in the third stanza with Circassian, careless and Chrysalis. The result is a subtle music that is beautiful beyond compare. Few poets can do this as well as Dickinson, and none better.

Another remarkable thing is to watch how further ideas spin out of the original. If you are looking for it, every new line may carry some new revelation. In the first stanza we find out, for instance, that Death doesn’t discriminate based on color of skin, religion (denomination) or class (caste). These are all big issues, and each would have been even more divisive in Dickinson’s day than it is now. Dickinson was white, upper class and raised in a protestant society, but here she is dismissing all of that, or at least acknowledging that Death does.

But then she says something curious, that Death has a “diviner Classifying.” What is she getting at here? In a poem before this one in the fascicle, Fr834, there is the idea of being patient and constant, so that in death you will be worthy of Grace. This seems to me to be the sense here too. We see in a later stanza that something graceful, like a butterfly, “emerges” after death. 

There is a bit of a paradox in this poem though. There is a hint of the idea of a diviner classifying being one where there is no classification, and by extension, there is the suggestion that those who classify aren’t fit for death. We see this paradox play out in other Dickinson poems, like this one, Fr797, in which she tells us that the definition of beauty is that there is no definition. 

As in sleep — All Hue forgotten —
Tenets — put behind —
Death's large—Democratic fingers
Rub away the Brand —

In this stanza Dickinson hints toward other ideas. American “democracy” is lampooned a little in the phrase “Death's large—Democratic fingers.” America purports to be democratic, but has it ever truly been? Only death’s fingers are truly democratic. And what do they do? They rub away the brand. With brand you get a metonym of capitalism. I’m not sure if “brand” meant the same thing in 1864 that it does now, so Dickinson may just be referring to a cow’s brand here. But even that definition brings to mind the idea of commerce, of chattel, of ownership. A true democracy would get rid of any hot iron branding altogether. Everything would be shared by all alike. In Dickinson’s dark irony, though, it is only Death that can truly do this.

If Circassian — He is careless —

Careless here means that Death couldn't care less whether you are Circassian or not. You might be tempted to think, as I did at first, that Dickinson chose the ethnic group Circassian based on the way the sound of the word echoes the soundscape of the poem, but, alas, it would seem that nothing is careless in Dickinson’s poetry. The Circassians were very much in the news in 1864 when this poem was written for being an exiled people. 

From Wikipedia:

“The native Circassian population was largely decimated or expelled to the Ottoman Empire. Only those who accepted Russification and made agreements with Russian troops, were spared. Starvation was used as a tool of war against Circassian villages, many of which were subsequently burned down. Russian writer Leo Tolstoy reported that Russian soldiers attacked village houses at night. British diplomat Gifford Palgrave, stated that "their only crime was not being Russian." Seeking military intervention against Russia, Circassian officials sent "A Petition from Circassian leaders to Her Majesty Queen Victoria" in 1864, but were unsuccessful in their attempt to solicit aid from the British Empire.That same year, the Imperial Russian Army launched a campaign of mass deportation of Circassia's surviving population. Many died from epidemics or starvation. Some were reportedly eaten by dogs after their death.”

Circassian Zalumma Agra, by Mathew Brady, ca. 1865.

Zalumma was presented as a freak in P.T. Barnum's circus.

Same problems, different day.

If He put away
Chrysalis of Blonde—or Umber —
Equal Butterfly —

Dickinson’s choices for Chrysalis colors here reflect the hair color of the Russians and the Circassians, blonde and umber. In death it doesn’t matter which you are, an “equal” butterfly emerges.

The idea of emerging as a butterfly reflects a belief in an after-life, of some kind at least. The idea of our life here on earth being our chrysalis is an instructive one. Did Emily believe in an afterlife? I’m starting to think that maybe she did. 

But belief in an afterlife is not necessary for this poem. Getting beyond the trappings of identity doesn’t necessitate an actual death. It could also be achieved through renunciation in life. In other words, it would be a symbolic death, the death of an ego. You might say that this is the only kind of death we can ever really understand, since actual death is beyond our ken.

Either way, our democratic equality, our freedom, is not to be found in life as we know it. It is the removal of the ties of identity, such as color, caste and creed, that frees us. 

They emerge from His Obscuring —
What Death — knows so well —
Our minuter intuitions —
Deem unplausible —

Something akin to butterflies emerge from death’s obscuring of the self. Our “minuter intuitions” tell us that the emergence of something after death is "unplausable," but Death well knows that the butterfly will soar once the veil of the chrysalis has been torn.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

He who in Himself believes—

He who in Himself believes—
Fraud cannot presume—
Faith is Constancy's Result—
And assumes—from Home—

Cannot perish, though it fail
Every second time—
But defaced Vicariously—
For Some Other Shame—


    -Fr835, J969, Fascicle 40, 1864


This one starts off in a variation of the advice Polonius gives to Laertes in Shakepeare’s Hamlet:

“This above all- to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Dickinson's version:

He who in Himself believes—
Fraud cannot presume—

There's a difference though, it seems to me, between being true to yourself and believing in yourself. The first means looking at yourself honestly, doing your best not to fool yourself. But to believe in yourself takes fortitude and will-power. You have to know what it is you are believing in. You have to know who you are and what you are about. Once you do, and will, fraud cannot “presume” anything different.

We get a sense of the difference in the turn-around presented to us in the following line,

Faith is Constancy's Result—

Normally we would say that constancy is faith’s result. You have faith and therefore you are constant. But here we start with constancy. Faith is something earned through action. That’s a great twist. It’s not really faith though if it is the result of action, is it? It’s more like “knowing.”

In the sense of “knowing,” we are led to a very powerful word in Dickinson’s lexicon: Home.

Faith is Constancy's Result—
And assumes—from Home—

Dickinson has written elsewhere of the “infinite power of Home.” And though by Home Dickinson means something fundamental, we can’t help but remember that Dickinson died in the home she was born in. She was, indeed, very constant to her family, as well as to her friends.

The idea of assuming “from Home” is powerful too. Assume is an odd word, a contranym almost. It can mean to believe something without having all the facts (similar to faith,) but it can also mean to support, as in “assume a debt” and, even, to become, as in assuming a body.

I think of the beginning of Whitman’s Song of Myself. “What I assume you shall assume/ for every atom belonging to me as well belongs to you.” Whitman is talking about belief, but also about the idea of assuming a form. The two opposing meanings are mystically tied together. We end up becoming (assuming) what we believe (assume).

So, our faith is assumed from a constancy to our Home, and all that Home entails.

Cannot perish, though it fail
Every second time—

If you believe in yourself, and your home, you will eventually succeed, though you fail often. “Every second time” is funny. I like the odds though. Half the time you will fail. But half the time you will succeed too.

But defaced Vicariously—
For Some Other Shame—

“Defaced vicariously” is a pointed phrase. Vicarious, according to the Dickinson lexicon means, “Proxy; representative; substituting; acting on behalf of another; carried out in another's stead.” So, essentially, you are someone else, not your true self, when you are brought to “Shame.” You are “defaced.” Your face is taken away and replaced with someone else’s, someone who is not the true you “whom in himself believes.”

The poem ends in “Shame.” But the message seems to be to try, try again. It’s all about that constancy.

I don’t know what to make of it, but I find the slant-rhyme in this pleasing and curious. Presume/ Home/ Time/ Shame, with internal rhyme of Assume and Some. All of it seems to be honing into the sound of Home.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

That's Emily's Home. Her window is on the far right.

Fitter to see Him, I may be

Fitter to see Him, I may be
For the long Hindrance — Grace — to Me —
With Summers, and with Winters, grow,
Some passing Year — A trait bestow

To make Me fairest of the Earth —
The Waiting — then — will seem so worth
I shall impute with half a pain
The blame that I was chosen — then —

Time to anticipate His Gaze —
It's first — Delight — and then — Surprise —
The turning o'er and o'er my face
For Evidence it be the Grace —

He left behind One Day — So less
He seek Conviction, That — be This —

I only must not grow so new
That He'll mistake — and ask for me
Of me — when first unto the Door
I go — to Elsewhere go no more —

I only must not change so fair
He'll sigh — "The Other — She — is Where?"
The Love, tho', will array me right
I shall be perfect — in His sight —

If He perceive the other Truth —
Upon an Excellenter Youth —

How sweet I shall not lack in Vain —
But gain — thro' loss — Through Grief — obtain —
The Beauty that reward Him best —
The Beauty of Demand — at Rest —


     -Fr834, J968, Fascicle 40, 1864


In David Preest’s notes for this poem, we read: “George Whicher suggests that these difficult stanzas may be just the first draft of a poem never completed.” It’s not surprising to me that someone might think this, since men (and women) have questioned Dickinson’s style all along, but for Preest to perpetuate this offence is surprising. The poem is careful in its meter and rhyme, and not only that, but she copied the poem into a fascicle, a sure sign it was finished. If something at first seems amiss in a Dickinson poem, it is always best to give her the benefit of the doubt. You probably just missed her. In this case, I don't think George Whicher could be more mistaken.

Ironically, though, this poem is, in part, about being unfinished, or, at least, not quite finished. 

Fitter to see Him, I may be
For the long Hindrance — Grace — to Me —

Who is Him? This question is a fraught one in Dickinson’s oeuvre. It could be a beloved. It could be Christ. It could be both. I take it, ultimately, as the consummation of Love that meets us on the other side of the veil. Dickinson has many poems that seem to be leading up to this moment when she shall see her “King.” But because Dickinson so often conflates her love poems with her spiritual poems, it is hard to say. At any rate, in these first lines she is saying something like, “I’m more fit to see the Beloved because of the long hindrance. The hindrance was Grace because it allowed me to become ready." The idea of a hindrance being a Grace is worth deep meditation. It gets a the core of Dickinson’s poetics. 

Another question: what is the hindrance? Is it life itself? Or is the hindrance self-imposed? Something to ponder. Did Dickinson choose her difficult life, or did it choose her?

With Summers, and with Winters, grow,

In both the joys of summer and the pains of winter we grow fitter for our connection to the divine. It’s all “grist for the mill.” The process is necessary. And eventually, if you trust the process deeply enough,

Some passing Year — A trait bestow
To make Me fairest of the Earth —

Some year ( “passing”!) the self will become “fairest of the Earth.” Quite a goal, fairest of the earth. The waiting is hard, but it is the prerequisite for true beauty, which can only come with age and dedication.

Again, it is worth remembering that it is the “hindrance” which bestows the “trait” of “fairest.” A lot hinges on the meaning of “hindrance” here.

The Waiting — then — will seem so worth
I shall impute with half a pain
The blame that I was chosen — then —

I hear a deep sigh in these lines. The poet, after all, is mid-process. She has faith it will all be worth it, but for now she is cursing (blaming) that she’s been chosen to take on the burdens of life. (And there is the further idea here of being “chosen” for some specific purpose, like being a poet.) If she does get there, then she will admit “with half a pain” that it was worth it, in other words, still a bit begrudgingly.

That’s funny and sad all at once, and richly Emily.

And how about the funny surprise in the next stanza?

Time to anticipate His Gaze —
It's first — Delight — and then — Surprise —
The turning o'er and o'er my face
For Evidence it be the Grace —

You need the hindrance of time to anticipate the Gaze of the beloved. The anticipation itself is important; the desire, the longing, the felt absence. Then when the beloved finally Gazes at you, He will be delighted to see that your ability to be patient and diligent has made you worthy of Him. Note that “He” wasn’t expecting you to succeed. That’s why it is a surprise. It’s so funny to think of Emily anticipating God’s utter surprise that she’s worthy of Him, and Him turning her face back and forth, sizing her up to make sure that the Grace is really there.

(There is another possible way to read this stanza, which carries further surprise. If “my face”...”be the Grace.” Then it is as if the eyes of the poet have become synonymous with His. Grace is staring at Grace.)

For Evidence it be the Grace —

He left behind One Day — So less
He seek Conviction, That — be This —

That idea that the Beloved “left” the poet “behind One Day” is intriguing. I suppose one could have the feeling that God left us behind, abandoned us, when we were born. But it's wonky. It’s as if the poet was abandoned and then had to work on herself to get back in God’s good graces. But it was “Grace/ He left behind” in the first place and why would God leave Grace behind? Maybe it just means that when you are born you have Grace, and it is surprising if you can keep it. He is seeking "Conviction, That — be This —”, that the innocent self is born again.

(There is another possibility here though, that the “He” is the reverend Charles Wadsworth. There are those that theorize that Dickinson made a pact with with the married Wadsworth that she would re-unite with him in heaven. I come back to this idea -which is not one I’m particularly fond of, but is one I have to contend with- because in Matty Dickinson’s recollections of her Aunt Emily she makes it clear that Dickinson was in love with Wadsworth, whom she met when traveling. Matty says that she heard this from her mother and father, as well as Emily’s sister, so it is likely true. In this reading of the poem being "left behind" has a different sense. The idea of being left and then spending a life making the self fit for the one who left has a tragic quality to it and is the opposite, to me, of the unconditional love of God. Or maybe it isn't tragic. Maybe it is a key ingredient of the kind of grit Dickinson needed to become a great poet?)

I only must not grow so new
That He'll mistake — and ask for me
Of me — when first unto the Door
I go — to Elsewhere go no more —

The idea of growing “new” turns on its head the idea of growing old. It carries that sense of becoming new like an innocent child. But here it is odd that you could become so new that God would no longer recognize you. It's as if God (or Wadsworth!) loves you not just for your innocence, but also because of your “experience.” If you become too new, do you lose your self?

“And ask for me/ Of me” Imagine God asking you when you get to heaven, “Where are you? Have you seen you anywhere?”

to Elsewhere go no more —

Death, or the afterlife, is the last stop. But also, there is the idea that there is nowhere else the poet wants to .
be.

I only must not change so fair
He'll sigh — "The Other — She — is Where?"
The Love, tho', will array me right
I shall be perfect — in His sight —

The poet wants to become worthy, but not so perfect she is unrecognizable. But, in the end, she trusts that "The Love, tho', will array me right." She doesn’t have to be perfectly innocent. She trusts that God will see her intentions and she will be perfect in His sight. We come back to a sense of forgiveness, an unconditional love. "The Love."

If He perceive the other Truth —
Upon an Excellenter Youth —

What “other Truth” is Dickinson speaking of here? The Truth of "Excellenter Youth," of who we essentially are, who we were as pure being before becoming tainted by the world. “Excellenter youth” is, again, a turn-around, like “grow new.” We don't become excellent, we become less excellent. It is a child-like state we want to return to. Dickinson did seem to achieve this. In Matty Dickinson’s book, “Face to Face,” which I couldn’t recommend highly enough, we see how much children loved Emily, and how much she colluded with them in pranks and secrets. 

How sweet I shall not lack in Vain —
But gain — thro' loss — Through Grief — obtain —
The Beauty that reward Him best —
The Beauty of Demand — at Rest —

There was some (purposeful) turbulence along the way, but Dickinson really lands this poem. This last stanza would work even without the rest of the poem. There is Beauty in loss, and in grief, the kind of Beauty that carries the truth of the divine. Death is sweet because for those, like Dickinson, who have demanded so much of themselves, there are not only the rewards of sacrifice, but also of rest.


       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff


P.S. This poem has a unique structure. First, it is in rhyming couplets, with mostly exact rhyme, which is fairly rare for Dickinson. It’s as if she is working to “rhyme,” both figuratively and literally here. The poem also has the odd quality of being in quatrains except for two couplets that are on their own, that have lost each other, as if, again, the form isn’t completely cohering yet, but almost! Almost finished.

The first page of Matty's memoir, Face to Face. 

Pain — expands the Time —

Pain — expands the Time —
Ages coil within
The minute Circumference
Of a single Brain —

Pain contracts — the Time —
Occupied with Shot
Gamuts of Eternities
Are as they were not —


   -Fr833, J967, Fascicle 40, 1864


The core of this poem is the seeming paradox that it presents.

On one hand, pain makes the moment seem to last forever. We’ve all experienced this. I’ll never forget sitting in a hospital waiting room with a kidney stone. Every minute waiting seemed to last hours.

On the other hand, the contraction of time is about how pain puts you so absolutely in the moment that the rest of time, the “Gamuts of Eternities,” becomes irrelevant. When I was feeling that kidney stone, there was nothing else but the moment.

It's a double whammy. The pain is so intense that it's all consuming and, moreover, feels as if it will never end. 

Dickinson was a philosophical poet and pain was often her subject. It makes sense that pain would be a starting point for thinking about existence, seeing as to how it is undeniably felt, and can take over the self. There are several Dickinson poems which are about pain. (See the notes below for a small sample). It was an important subject for Emily Dickinson, as it is, I suspect, for all of us.

Though this poem is about pain, it is still a pleasure to read. The image and sounds are fantastic. “Ages coil within/ The minute Circumference/ Of a single Brain.” One gets the rather fantastic image of pain causing masses of time to coil themselves up inside a tiny round brain. A brain has the appearance of being coiled, too, which adds to the weirdness of the image, as if the brain were made up of coils of endless pain.

Dickinson wrote to T.W. Higginson, “My business is circumference.” She also wrote, “The brain is wider than the sky.” You can see both of these ideas echoed here. The minuscule brain’s circumference has expanded, through pain, to encompass the ages.

There is a pun on “minute” here too, perhaps. The ages are felt in “minute,” meaning both spatially and temporally small.

In the second stanza we see something subtle happen in the placement of the dash.

Pain — expands the Time —
...
Pain contracts — the Time —

The phrase "expands the Time" appears to contract into just “the Time.”

In the first stanza the reigning letter is "n," which has an expansive quality that carries the sound of moaning in pain: nnnnnnn. But in the second stanza we are presented with a scattershot of “t”s, which enacts a feeling of curtness, a tautening.

Pain contracts — the Time —
Occupied with Shot
Gamuts of Eternities
Are as they were not —

Gamuts of Eternities is very Dickinson. There can only be one eternity, right? But here there are Gamuts. Likewise, in a different poem, Dickinson uses the word “infiniter,” as if you could get more infinite than infinite. In another she writes “finallest,” as if you could get more final than final. Here we have not just a whole gamut of eternities, but gamuts. It’s an excess of infinite excesses.

Gamut, as Dickinson would have likely known, was originally a musical term for all the notes on a scale. So here we are presented with the idea of scales upon scales, as if eternities were notes in the music of the spheres.

The word “Shot” is a surprising one. “Occupied with Shot.” “Shot” is a compressed way of saying “the shot that killed me.” “Shot” is a single explosive word that contains multiple meanings. It brings to mind the suddenness and violence of gunfire. It suggests pain can strike in an instant, reducing vast swaths of time to a split-second trauma. There is the sense here of a shot piercing the body, cutting deeply into consciousness.

If we return to the musical idea of the gamut, a shot might be a single note in the broader symphony of time, a percussive sound that disrupts the flow.

A “shot” can also be a dose, a concentrated delivery, like a shot of whiskey or medicine. Pain, in this way, is like a compressed eternity injected into one moment, a “shot” of infinite feeling in finite time. The word cracks open the poem.

This poem predicts our post-modern sense of relativity. (Another writer who did this brilliantly is Ambrose Bierce in the amazing short story from 1890, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.”) It undermines our trust in “objective” time. Dickinson shows that our inner lives defy the idea of regular measurable time. Pain bends time to its own will, distorting the normal order of things.

So what is Dickinson trying to get across to the reader with this paradox then? It positions pain not as meaningless agony, but as an existential force, something sublime. Pain is a window into the moment, and simultaneously into the infinite. It’s not seen as a weakness, but as a profound capacity of the human soul.

By recognizing how enormous and pointed our private suffering can be, Dickinson is asking us to pay attention to the unseen pains of others, and to their own, too.


     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Bullet piercing an apple. Harold Edgerton. 1964

Notes:

Here are some more thoughts on pain from Emily Dickinson:

After great pain, a formal feeling comes--
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs--
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

***

There is a pain—so utter—
It swallows substance up—
Then covers the Abyss with Trance—
So Memory can step
Around—across—upon it—
As one within a Swoon—
Goes safely—where an open eye—
Would drop Him—Bone by Bone.

***

Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.

***

To learn the Transport by the Pain
As Blind Men learn the sun!

***

The hallowing of Pain
Like hallowing of Heaven,
Obtains at a corporeal cost—
The Summit is not given

To Him who strives severe
At middle of the Hill—
But He who has achieved the Top—
All—is the price of All—

'Tis Sunrise — Little Maid — Hast Thou

'Tis Sunrise — Little Maid — Hast Thou
No Station in the Day?
'Twas not thy wont, to hinder so —
Retrieve thine industry —

'Tis Noon — My little Maid —
Alas — and art thou sleeping yet?
The Lily — waiting to be Wed —
The Bee — Hast thou forgot?

My little Maid — 'Tis Night — Alas
That Night should be to thee
Instead of Morning — Had'st thou broached
Thy little Plan to Die —
Dissuade thee, if I could not, Sweet,
I might have aided — thee —


     -Fr832, J908, fascicle 40, 1864


This poem begins in morning, with the speaker wondering why the “Little Maid” hasn’t risen. She was never one to sleep in. She had a “station in the day,” something to do. But now she’s still. 

By noon, the poet is more worried. “Alas — and art thou sleeping yet?” We get the feeling this “sleep” is deeper than just a nap. The world continues without her. The lily is waiting “to be Wed,” and the bee is looking for her. These are metaphors for the promise of love. The world is going on without the “Little Maid,” but she hasn’t taken her place in it. 

Then we reach the last stanza, and it’s night. “Alas / That Night should be to thee / Instead of Morning.” This isn’t sleep. The “Little Maid” is gone, maybe dead, and worse, by her own hand. The poet wonders, if she had spoken of her “little Plan to Die,” maybe she could have been talked out of it? Or, if not, at least she wouldn’t have been alone. (I wonder what else Dickinson might have meant by “aiding” the “little maid” with her “little plan” to die?)

The repetition of the word “little” in this poem, used four times, stands out. Calling her "Little" signifies that the maid is young and vulnerable. Repeating the adjective in the last stanza, “Thy little Plan to Die,” gives us a sense of tragic irony. Death is not little. But to the Maid, perhaps it seemed like it, just a small escape. Dickinson’s use of "little" carries a sense of a stunned sadness.

The word also gives the poem the tone of a nursery rhyme, which makes it even more haunting. It sounds at first like something you'd say to a child reluctant to get up, but then becomes something more terrible when we realize the girl is dead, and even more so when we find out it was planned. 

By repeating "little," the poem keeps circling back to her lack of agency. The girl is little against the big world. 

The form of the poem is worth a close look. It is is divided into three stanzas, each corresponding to a different time of day; sunrise’s hopeful beginning, noon's missed opportunity, night's irreversible ending. This mirrors the arc of a life, from childhood, to a delay, then to death. The structure is the story.

Also notice how the stanzas begin to fracture as the poem progresses. By the third stanza the lines are choppier and the punctuation grows heavy with commas and dashes, mimicking the stumbling cadence of sorrow. There is a sense of observation giving way to collapse.

The repeated address “My little Maid” at the start of each stanza is repetitive, like a chant, but each time the tone behind the words shifts. First there is a mild correction, then concern and, finally, grief.

The poem says to the despondent reader, don't don't be afraid to talk to someone, especially if you have Emily Dickinson around. And don't forget the promise of the Lily and the Bee. 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes:

1. The poem reminds me of Blake’s “Little Lamb, who made Thee,” with its repetition, and its use of “Thou.”  There is also an echo of "maid" there in the word "made." I’m convinced, by now, that Dickinson read and subsumed Blake. And like many of Blake's poems, this one is about innocence lost. 

2. There is another echo here, the nursery rhyme,

Little maid, little maid,
Whither goest thou?
Down in the meadow
To milk my cow.

It's as if Dickinson took the maid's imperative to "milk my cow," and all of its innuendo, and rebelled against it. That was no life for her. That helps makes sense of "I might have aided — thee —"

3. I've noticed that Dickinson has used the endearment "Sweet" a few times in the poems written in 1864. In at least one of these, the word "Sue" was replaced with "Sweet. This makes me wonder if this poem was possibly for Sue too, though I'm not sure what to make of that. 

 

Till Death—is narrow Loving—

Till Death—is narrow Loving—
The scantest Heart extant
Will hold you till your privilege
Of Finiteness—be spent—

But He whose loss procures you
Such Destitution that
Your Life too abject for itself
Thenceforward imitate—

Until—Resemblance perfect—
Yourself, for His pursuit
Delight of Nature—abdicate—
Exhibit Love—somewhat—


     -Fr831, J907, Fascicle 40, 1864


I showed this poem to the poet Jennifer Moxley and her response was “Ouch! Dickinson is gnarly.” Yes! Gnarly is a good word for her.

Let’s take this poem stanza by stanza.

Till Death—is narrow Loving—
The scantest Heart extant
Will hold you till your privilege
Of Finiteness—be spent—

Loving someone only until death (“Till death do us part”) is shallow. Even the smallest heart can manage that and will hold you (keep you going) until your time as a finite being runs out.

But He whose loss procures you
Such Destitution that
Your Life too abject for itself
Thenceforward imitate—

But He (possibly Christ) whose loss leaves you so completely desolate that your life becomes too empty to sustain itself, you start to imitate,

Until—Resemblance perfect—
Yourself, for His pursuit
Delight of Nature—abdicate—
Exhibit Love—somewhat—

Until you resemble Him perfectly and give up your own self, abandon the joys of life and the natural world, and in doing so, finally show what love truly is.

The “But” of the second stanza marks a sharp contrast between ordinary and extraordinary love. Loving until death is common, but there’s another kind of love that begins after death, and it’s so powerful that it unmakes you. That “But” is the turning hinge of the poem. It shifts from finiteness to something that begins where death ends.

Another aspect worth exploring is the idea that “He” is Christ. A couple points about this. “Destitution” caused by loss of Him mirrors what St. John of the Cross called "the dark night of the soul." The poet's life becomes “too abject for itself,” like the soul without divine purpose, or maybe like one who has become overwhelmed because of the horrors of the world. The words “perfect” and “imitation” are clues too. “Thenceforward imitate—/ Until—Resemblance perfect—” "Imitatio Christi" is the basic idea of becoming more like Christ, imitating His life and even death. “Delight of Nature—abdicate—” Giving up the pleasures of nature sounds a lot like Christian asceticism. Finally, ending with “Exhibit Love—somewhat—” points to the realization that after all the self-erasure and abandoned joy, the poet only somewhat exhibits love. That humility mirrors Christian teachings. No love can fully match Christ’s love.

But all that said, it’s still difficult to get underneath this poem. First of all, it’s ambiguous whether or not the He in this poem is a lover (not necessarily a man) or Christ. But even if it is about Christ, and I suspect it is, one wonders at how devastating the cost of “perfect love” can be. To abdicate the "Delights of Nature" is a tall order for a nature lover like Emily Dickinson.

Let’s turn our focus to that term in the first stanza, “privilege of finiteness.” At first I took this phrase as earnest, as in, it’s a privilege to be alive, to experience the finite. But upon further reflection, I’m not so sure. I think she is being ironic here. The privilege here seems to be your mortality, the fact that you only have to endure until death. You’re spared the burden of forever. So it’s a dark kind of privilege, a relief by limitation.

But true love begins where that privilege ends, when the beloved is gone and you aren’t allowed to stop. That’s what the second stanza leads to, love that transforms in grief, without the escape hatch of death. This irony draws a sharp contrast between an ordinary and easy finite love and a radical love which is all consuming, and therefore not a privilege, but a burden or a calling.

Finally, let’s take a closer look at that “somewhat” at the end of the poem. After all that self-erasure and imitation, what does the poet say she’s done?

Exhibit Love—somewhat—

That “somewhat” undercuts everything that came before. After describing an act of self-abandonment in love, the poet minimizes it. It’s as if she's saying, even after all this, I only barely approach real love. After the poet gives everything, herself, her joy, her identity, she hesitates. It feels like a sigh. Maybe I’ve shown love. A little.

It also leaves the poem open-ended. The “somewhat” leaves the reader in tension. Is Dickinson being humble, or expressing futility?

Mourning can completely overtake a person, not just emotionally, but existentially. The real exhibition of love isn’t found in loyalty during life, but in the transformation of the self after loss.

This poem offers no easy comfort, but it does offer witness. It tells us that our grief isn’t just pain, it’s transformation. It points to the way that grief consumes you until your whole self becomes a sort of love-offering in return. 

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff 

A gnarly pine reveals the heat of thousands of seasons

The Admirations—and Contempts—of time—

The Admirations—and Contempts—of time—
Show justest—through an Open Tomb—
The Dying—as it were a Height
Reorganizes Estimate
And what We saw not
We distinguish clear—
And mostly—see not
What We saw before—

'Tis Compound Vision—
Light—enabling Light—
The Finite—furnished
With the Infinite—
Convex—and Concave Witness—
Back—toward Time
And forward—
Toward the God of Him—

      -Fr830, J906, fascicle 40, 1864

The reality of death puts things into perspective. There is a raw truth in this poem that most of us can understand. A confrontation with death can change your priorities. This is one reason why a thinker like Emily Dickinson spends time meditating on death. It helps one to see the “Light.”

What are the "Contempts" of time? Well, today I read that there are plans to build a new $200 million gold ballroom in the White house. Perhaps when you hold that idea up to people struggling and starving, this may, upon reflection through the "Open Tomb," be considered one of the “Contempts” of time? (Of course it is pretty easy to point the fingers elsewhere, but much harder to go inward, to go "concave." I have plenty of my own "Contempts" to worry about.)

I like that phrase “Open Tomb” in the second line. The adjective “Open” can be read both literally and figuratively here. If you are looking into an open tomb, you see the body for the last time, life-like but lifeless. It’s an unforgettable sight. But “Open” also has the connotation of truth being “Open.”

We are also reminded of the stone rolled away from Christ’s tomb, leaving it open and... empty. Evoking Christ points us back toward the “Admirations” in the first line, the sense of sacrifice for others, but it also helps us make sense of that odd phrase at the end, “the God of Him,” since “Him” may well be referring to Christ, He of the empty open tomb. 

The Dying—as it were a Height

Dying as the apex of life is something I have seen in Dickinson before, though I can’t recall the specific poem. Can anybody help me here? There is this one, in which it is the wounded deer that leaps highest, which carries a similar idea, but its not the one I'm thinking of. At any rate, death is seen as a height toward which you climb, and from which you can clearly see the life below you. This vantage point “reorganizes estimates” of what we focused on in life.

Reorganizes Estimate
And what We saw not
We distinguish clear—
And mostly—see not
What We saw before—

What we “saw not,” which might be, for example,  the incomparable worth of love and generosity, becomes more clear to us with death at hand. And, likewise, we no longer look at the objects of our own desires, with which we were so obsessed, in the same way, if at all.

'Tis Compound Vision—
Light—enabling Light—

This is a kind of double vision, more than ordinary sight, one kind of illumination (divine?) helps make sense of another, such as the light of eternity casting meaning onto the light of life.

The Finite—furnished
With the Infinite—

Our limited mortal experience is “furnished” with the eternal. The moment of death brings the two together. The idea of the Infinite being a "furnishing" is an interesting way to imagine it. It reminds me of Dickinson’s poem from earlier in this fascicle, in which she is getting bulletins from immortality all day.

Convex—and Concave Witness—
Back—toward Time—
And forward—
Toward the God of Him—

Convex and Concave Witness. What an interesting way to put it. This is another angle on Dickinson’s famous statement, “Circumference is my business.” Reviewing your life may be seen as a concave looking (inwardly round), with your furthest memories forming the furthest edge of the arc. Meanwhile, looking ahead, convexly, bubbles outward toward the “God of Him.” It’s a lens looking both ways at once.

The “Him,” at the end of this poem, could refer to anyone who has died and brought our attention to what really matters, but it could also refer to Christ. The two possibilities are suggestively conflated.

I’ve been to a few open-casket funerals and the experience does wake one up to life. Once, though, I encountered a dead homeless man in a park in San Francisco. The experience helped me realize that I didn't want to end up dying alone, without family or friends. Up until that time in my life I had notions of becoming an independent loner, with Whitman as a kind of model, but after witnessing this lonely death, my ideas changed. 

In a similar manner, by reminding us of the "Open tomb," this poem attempts to help us reorganize our estimations of the worth of things.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes: This poem has a strange meter and rhyme scheme. The iambic meter goes 5/4/4/4/3/3/3/3 in the first stanza, with an AABBCDCD rhyme scheme, and then the second stanza is essentially a broken-up iambic pentameter, with regular rhyme at the end of each pentameter. I don’t know what to make of this, but its fascinating to watch what Dickinson does compositionally from poem to poem. 

Also, there is something about the short taut lines of the broken pentameter that enacts compound vision, seeing both sides; human and divine, temporal and eternal, Admiration and contempt, “saw not” and “distinguish clear”, convex and concave, back and forward, like a see-saw. 

Between My Country — and the Others —

Between My Country — and the Others —
There is a Sea —
But Flowers — negotiate between us —
As Ministry.


      -Fr829, J905, fascicle 40, 1864


This poem was most likely written to be presented to a friend and accompanied with a flower. Emily Dickinson often wrote occasional poetry of this kind. I've said it before but it bears repeating: there should be a book of these poems sold in flower shops which present a bouquet of two dozen of Dickinson's flower poems. This poem would be a good one to include in the bunch. 

Look how much this small flower of a poem does in such a little space.

For starters, it opens up vistas by conflating people with countries. This is a poem sent to a single person, or maybe persons. Therefore "my Country," in this poem, means, first, myself. It is understood that this flower is being used to negotiate through ministry to "Others," which is to say to other people. People are compared to Countries, and upon reflection, we can see how large and complex each of us are, like walking Countries. (See Fr687 for one of Dickinson's many poems with this theme)

And, conversely, Countries are like people. This idea opens up this poem to readings along political, racial and religious divides, and suggests a way to negotiate between them through ministry. It is recommended that this ministry be through the gift of flowers.

Flowers in this poem represent beauty. Flowers look and smell undeniably beautiful and the implication here is that beauty unites us. We all share a love for beauty. It brings smiles to our faces. Flowers, though often overlooked in our day to day lives, are revered in every culture, and you could say the same of poetry. The link between flowers and poetry is beauty. If flowers could speak, it would sound like poetry. I mean this in the grounded sense of poetry having pleasing patterns of sound, just as flowers have pleasing patterns of petals. This poem, for instance, pleasingly rhymes "There is a Sea" with "Ministry." 

Granted, you want the thing you give to be beautiful, and the consideration of beauty is essential, but the paramount thing is the gift itself. It is the act of giving that counts. 

If you give someone flowers, you are giving the literal flower of the earth itself. A flower is called a flower because it is beauty flowing from the earth. (That's probably not true, but it sounds good.) What better gift could a diplomat give? What Country could refuse?

But Flowers — negotiate between us —

The word “negotiate” in this poem strikes me as ironic. Countries “negotiate” with each other and so do people, but the idea of flowers negotiating is oxymoronic. Flowers are a gift from the earth, always. They don't negotiate, they just are. So when we give them as a gift it is a reminder of natural bounty.

But Flowers — negotiate between us —
As Ministry.

The word “ministry” is rich with resonance. The word can refer to a government department, like the "Ministry of Education" and therefore fits the "Country" diplomacy motif. It also has a religious connotation. A "ministry" can refer to the work or service, or the body of clergy in a church. Finally, there is a healing connotation, like the idea of a nurse “ministering” to one’s wounds.

The word "minister" itself comes from the Latin "minus," meaning "less," reflecting the idea of service or being subordinate. 

All of this, a flower, which is to say, beauty, will do.

I don't think that Truth and Beauty are the same (like Keats’ Urn tells us) but they do seem to be nearly synonymous. Truth and Beauty summon one another. They cry out for one another.

Truth is in the gift, in the human connection, and Beauty is in the flower. Dickinson gives them both to us in her poetry. This is her "ministry" across the great divide.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

lilies of the valley make good ministers

P.S. I found a good online essay about this poem by Brianne Jacquette that made some terrific connections. Check it out.

Had I not This, or This, I said,

Had I not This, or This, I said,
Appealing to Myself,
In moment of prosperity—
Inadequate—were Life—

“Thou hast not Me, nor Me”—it said,
In Moment of Reverse—
“And yet Thou art industrious—
No need—hadst Thou—of us”?

My need—was all I had—I said—
The need did not reduce—
Because the food—exterminate—
The hunger—does not cease—

But diligence—is sharper—
Proportioned to the Chance—
To feed upon the Retrograde—
Enfeebles—the Advance—

     -Fr828, J904, Fascicle 40, 1864


The logic of this poem, as best as I can make it out, goes like this.

Stanza 1: I’m appealing to myself (talking myself into the idea) that since I am prosperous right now and have this stuff, then life is adequate.

Stanza 2: But the stuff says to me: if your situation was to reverse itself, and you lost everything, it would be okay, because you are industrious.

Stanza 3: The poet answers this by saying “Well, yes, it’s true, I’m industrious because all I’ve got is my need. The hunger doesn’t go away when the stuff is gone.”

Stanza 4: Therefore, the poet concludes, I won't focus on what I've already attained, because to focus on the past weakens the chance for future possibility. I will be diligent, and therefore sharper, focused on that chance. 

This gets down to our basic humanity. "My need was all I had." We are needy. One would hope the things we have would satisfy our needs, but, no, Life is still inadequate. (What's missing?) And even if it did make life adequate, we might lose the stuff, and then life will be even less than inadequate. So all you can do is be industrious to try to fill your need. But whatever you fill your need with better be, like food, of substance to your soul. Forget about the last meal, though, if you can, and focus on the chance to advance to the next one.

Let's look at that "This, or This," for a moment. It's meaningless stuff, empty pronouns, insert any substitute. What the "This, or This" is really a substitute for? It's a substitute for the "Me, or Me," the "us." Dickinson makes that sly move between stanza one and two. 

Have you seen the movie The Jerk? There’s a scene in which the character played by Bernadette Peters leaves the character played by Steve Martin because wealth has changed him and therefore he is no longer the man she married. He walks away and says, “Well I'm gonna to go then! And I don't need any of this. I don't need this stuff, and I don't need *you*. I don't need anything. Except this. [picks up an ashtray] And that's the only thing I need is *this*. I don't need this or this. Just this ashtray. And this paddle game. - The ashtray and the paddle game and that's all I need... And this remote control. - The ashtray, the paddle game, and the remote control, and that's all I need... And these matches. - The ashtray, and these matches, and the remote control, and the paddle ball... And this lamp. - The ashtray, this paddle game, and the remote control, and the lamp, and that's all *I* need. And that's *all* I need too. I don't need one other thing, not one... I need this. - The paddle game and the chair, and the remote control, and the matches for sure. Well what are you looking at? What do you think I'm some kind of a jerk or something! - And this. That's all I need. [walking outside] The ashtray, the remote control, the paddle game, and this magazine, and the chair. [outside now] And I don't need one other thing, except my dog. [dog growls at him] I don't need my dog.”

That’s a deep comedic take into what I think Dickinson is getting at with "This, or This" becoming "Me, or Me." 

In the poem, as well as the scene from the Jerk, there is a thin line between stuff and what you really need, Love. The Dickinson poem is tricky because the “This, or This,” or “it” in the next stanza, is impersonal, and seemingly immaterial. But the idea of “Me, or Me” and “us” makes it seem personal. So which is it? Dickinson is blurring the line between material and spiritual prosperity in this poem, as it so often is in real life.

There is that “Life” in the first stanza to consider. The poet seems to be saying that the Life (of stuff, without Love) is inadequate. She's trying to appeal to herself that this stuff makes up for it. The stuff says no. Dickinson says all I have is need though. The need here seems to be referring to the "stuff," but its really pointing toward the “chance” to make a Life, to ascertain what the poet really needs.

“If I no longer had Life,” the poem is saying, “I could try to appeal to myself that the things I own would make up for the loss of You, my Life.” Life, at the time this poem was written, meant Sue for Emily, just as it means Bernadette Peters for Steve Martin in The Jerk (and for awhile, in real life.) None of that “stuff” will mean anything when the Life of the home is gone.

This kind of "appeal" is the root of the great American Dream tragedy. Think of The Great Gatsby, or Death of a Salesman, or, The Jerk. : (
      

             -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

The "This, or This" scene from The Jerk