Of Being is a Bird

Of Being is a Bird
The likest to the Down
An Easy Breeze do put afloat
The General Heavens — upon —

It soars — and shifts — and whirls —
And measures with the Clouds
In easy — even — dazzling pace —
No different the Birds —

Except a Wake of Music
Accompany their feet —
As did the Down emit a Tune —
For Ecstasy — of it

                                          F462 (1862)  J653

What is the difference between a bird and a piece of fluffy down? Song and the sheer joy of being. Dickinson builds to this difference by first seemingly praising the down. Once it has been put afloat by an “Easy Breeze,” it soars and whirls in the heavens in from an “easy” to a  “dazzling pace.” In this the Down is “No different [from] the Birds.”

photo: Mary Smiley: Courting Great Egrets

       I picture birds, here, soaring up among the clouds, shifting and whirling with the wind – or even like the egrets in the picture, dancing for their mates. But unlike the quiet Down, birds are accompanied by a “Wake of Music.” It’s a lovely phrase and, like a wake itself, trails meaning as it passes. According to the essential Emily Dickinson Lexicon, meanings for the noun “wake” include “Serenade, divertimento, festival, funeral party, wave, air current, or track left by the passing of a vessel.
       I like thinking of birds leaving music in their wake. In an interesting transposition, Dickinson has music accompanying the birds’ feet rather than, say, their wings. There’s a kind of logic to it: we get about with our feet while the birds use their wings. In that sense their wings are their feet.
       Why do birds sing? Dickinson doesn’t know except to say that it is as if a bit of fluffy down emitted a tune just for the “Ecstasy” of it. I know some birders who would agree. Sometimes the birds really do just sing for joy.

We Cover Thee — Sweet Face —

We Cover Thee — Sweet Face —
Not that We tire of Thee —
But that Thyself fatigue of Us —
Remember — as Thou go —
We follow Thee until
Thou notice Us — no more —
And then — reluctant — turn away
To Con Thee o'er and o'er —

And blame the scanty love
We were Content to show —
Augmented — Sweet — a Hundred fold —
If Thou would'st take it — now —

                                                                                 F461 (1862)  J482

In the old days, Dickinson’s days, when people died at home in their beds, a loving hand would lay a cloth or pull a sheet over their face. This poem addresses the departed at the moment when her face is covered: we do not cover your face because we are tired of it. In fact, it is you are more tired of us and life itself. You are ready for the next great adventure that awaits after Life. But please remember that we will stay searching for some sign from you, something to tell us that you are well on your way. That’s all we ask. Then we’ll reluctantly leave and dwell on our memories of you over and over.

            And we’ll also blame ourselves for the “scanty love” we showed. We could have done better. If we could we’d do it a hundred times better.

Isn’t that the way of it still, at so many deaths? The platitudes haven’t changed.

The Himmaleh was known to stoop

The Himmaleh was known to stoop
Unto the Daisy low —
Transported with Compassion
That such a Doll should grow
Where Tent by Tent — Her Universe
Hung out its Flags of Snow —
                                                                           F460 (1862)  J481
This little poem has the same teasing tone as the previous one – and was written on the same piece of paper. Perhaps some particular loved one said or did something that sparked a little flash. Just to get biographical, I’d venture that the poems were directed towards Samuel Bowles, a man many scholars believe Dickinson loved and who may have been the “Master” to whom she wrote several passionate letters (though they were probably not delivered). Bowles was an editor of the influential and prestigious Springfield Republican newspaper. Dickinson sent him numerous poems but he was not encouraging. Although that paper published seven of Dickinson’s poems, none of them are among the ones she sent Bowles directly. Consequently, we don’t know if he had a hand in publishing them or not.
         Dickinson writes this poem as if telling a fable: Once upon a time there was a great mountain. Yet despite its size and grandeur it took an interest in a small daisy growing at its feet. The mountain was filled with love and concern for this little flower that lived amid the snowfields hanging out its own “Flags of Snow.”
   

      Of interest here are Dickinson’s diction and what the poet is getting at with “Flags of Snow.” I find the phrase wonderfully rich and ambiguous. The daisy’s “Universe” far below the mountaintop is growing “Tent by Tent” as if it were a travelling show setting up. Indeed, daisies would need to ‘travel’ in the Himalayas, coming out only in the brief spring and summer season before disappearing. The flags of snow would, in this context, be the flags that fly from the top of the tents – and the spreading patches of white flowers.
         But Dickinson clearly has other meanings in mind. We’ve seen in “Doubt Me! My Dim Companion!” Dickinson’s use of “snow” to suggest purity and virginity (F332):

Sift her, from Brow to Barefoot!
Strain till your last Surmise—
Drop, like a Tapestry, away,
Before the Fire's Eyes—
Winnow her finest fondness—
But hallow just the snow
Intact, in Everlasting flake—
Oh, Caviler, for you!

In the same vein, Dickinson included the following lines to an 1861 letter to Samuel Bowles (along with a poem, “Through the Straight Pass of Suffering” F187):

Dear friend
If you doubted my Snow _ for a moment _ you never will _ again _ I know _ Because I could not say it _ I fixed it in the Verse _ for you to read _ when your thought wavers, for such a foot as mine _

“Snow” in both snippets suggests purity. She had taken a moral stance against becoming a public, published poet just as a woman of her day might take a moral stance towards virginity. Dickinson also used “snow” to represent pages of poetry. And so “Flags of Snow” represents, in addition to the visual representation of daisy fields spreading in the spring, Dickinson’s growing “Universe” of poetry, growing poem by poem. No wonder the mighty mountain is fascinated.

As to the diction: two words burn an edge of bitterness into this otherwise playful poem: “stoop” and “Doll.” Dickinson having the mountain stoop rather than peer or bend suggests pride or even arrogance. While “Daisy” is a nickname Dickinson commonly uses for herself, “Doll” is not. The suggestion that Daisy is a Doll in the mountain’s eyes is not false modesty on the part of the poet but a cutting observation of how she believes Bowles (or whomever) regards her. She is an interesting little figure that must be tended to – like a beloved plaything writing poetry.
         Notice, though, that the Daisy has a “Universe” that is growing, that we read in the daisy a lot of fortitude as well as purity. It raises the question of which is the more impressive after all: the mountain or the daisy. This is the question Dickinson raised in an earlier poem:

In lands I never saw—they say
Immortal Alps look down—
Whose Bonnets touch the firmament—
Whose Sandals touch the town—

Meek at whose everlasting feet
A Myriad Daisy play—
Which, Sir, are you and which am I
Upon an August day?

There is a lot of nuance in this short poem – as well as a lot of room for interpretation.

"Why do I love" You, Sir?

"Why do I love" You, Sir?
Because —
The Wind does not require the Grass
To answer — Wherefore when He pass
She cannot keep Her place.

Because He knows — and
Do not You —
And We know not —
Enough for Us
The Wisdom it be so —

The Lightning — never asked an Eye
Wherefore it shut — when He was by —
Because He knows it cannot speak —
And reasons not contained —
— Of Talk —
There be — preferred by Daintier Folk —

The Sunrise — Sire — compelleth Me —
Because He's Sunrise — and I see —
Therefore — Then —
I love Thee —

                                                            F459 (1862)  J479

Is Dickinson paying an homage to Elizabeth Barrett Browning here? Browning's sonnet “How do I love thee?” might very well have caught Emily’s eye. Dickinson would also have been familiar with King Lear’s daughters and their answers to Lear’s question about how much they love him. But here Dickinson addresses a more interesting question: Why do I love you? Her answer is … because he is such a force of nature, like wind and lightning and sunrise, that there is no question of not loving.

        

Cordelia (Diana Rigg) in a frustrating
exchange with King Lear (Paul Scofield)

    The poem is written as if in answer to a specific question from the beloved man in question. Why do you love me, he seems to have asked. Dickinson takes a droll tone and adds a bit of an edge to it. It has none of the stately hyperbole of Browning’s poem, and none of the saccharine flattery of Lear’s daughters Goneril and Regan. If anything, Dickinson channels a bit of Cordelia who replies with some frustration that she loves her father as is “fit” but that she “cannot heave [her] heart into [her] mouth.”

         Similarly Dickinson begins her answer by saying that although the wind blows the grass the wind doesn’t require the grass to explain why it is swaying. The wind is quite aware of why the grass moves. Likewise, the man surely knows why the poet loves him. It is beyond the wisdom of woman and grass, to understand. It is enough for them to have the “Wisdom” to recognize the power of the force that moves them.

            In the same vein, the Lightning has no need to ask an eye why it shut while lightning flashed. It knows full well that eyes can’t talk; neither can folks “Daintier” than the lightning put their reasons into words: they cannot heave their hearts into their mouths.

            In the last stanza, Dickinson adopts the first-person voice and makes the poem personal. The Sunrise compels me, sir, she says, because … well, “He’s Sunrise” and I have eyes in my head to see it. That’s the reason I love thee. You are my sunrise. Please don’t ask me any more questions! 

She dealt her pretty words like Blades —

She dealt her pretty words like Blades —
How glittering they shone —
And every One unbared a Nerve
Or wantoned with a Bone —

She never deemed — she hurt —
That — is not Steel's Affair —
A vulgar grimace in the Flesh —
How ill the Creatures bear —

To Ache is human — not polite —
The Film upon the eye
Mortality's old Custom —
Just locking up — to Die.
                                                                              F458 (1862)  J479   

The stoical narrator of this poem suffers verbal assaults from a woman without showing how deeply she is hurt. Instead, like a janitor making the rounds at the end of the day, she just begins “locking up” her damaged life in readiness for a figurative (I presume) death.
          The powerful first stanza uses two images to show how deadly cruel the subject’s “pretty words” were. The first is of a person wielding a “glittering” knife as she sets upon the narrator. Her words are polished and fine on the surface, but they cut deeply. This woman is no innocent: she deals the words purposely “like Blades.” I picture a decorative knife such as a letter opener: a seemingly harmless bauble but capable of great harm.
         Dickinson doesn’t just portray the cutting or stabbing pain of a blade, however. Her overlain image is one of rape. The blade unbares a nerve the way a rapist might strip off his victim’s clothes. It then “wantoned with a Bone” sensuously enjoying fileting the victim. I feel the force of the cruelty every time I read this stanza.
         The victim excuses the woman: she didn’t know how sharp her words were; didn’t mean for them to “hurt.” But such niceties don’t matter to the blade. It doesn’t care if the wielder believes it capable of murder or not. The knife’s “Affair” is to cut – quickly and smoothly. I don’t find the poet convincing in her feeble defense of the attacker, nor do I think she meant to be. Someone who “dealt” their words like blades would know something of their power.
       

  For whatever reason, the victim never lets on. It would be “vulgar” to wince from the pain. It would be in poor taste, a sign of weakness, if “the Creatures” bear the pain “ill.” Further, it isn’t “polite” to have tears of pain welling up. Much better to just follow the old (feminine) way of keeping silent – and dying inside.

Biographer Richard Sewall, as well as other scholars, believes Dickinson was writing about her friend and sister-in-law Sue Dickinson. This would have been about the time the two’s friendship hit a low point and Emily avoided going to Sue’s house (one hundred yards away) for nearly fifteen years. People who knew Sue mentioned her sharp tongue, and Emily’s sister Vinnie was firmly convinced that Sue’s behaviour to Emily had shortened the poet’s life considerably.
         Be that as it may, the poem succeeds with or without a biographical reading. Was it Rumpole who said of his wife, “She has a sharp wit and wields it like an axe”?

Nature — sometimes sears a Sapling —

Nature — sometimes sears a Sapling —
Sometimes — scalps a Tree —
Her Green People recollect it
When they do not die —

Fainter Leaves — to Further Seasons —
Dumbly testify —
We — who have the Souls —
Die oftener — Not so vitally —

                                                                    F457 (1862)  J314

Wildfires, lightning can damage trees severely. If these “Green People” don’t die, they show the scars and marks. Their leaves are fainter, testifying for years to come that they had once endured a serious blow. Anyone who has walked in the woods has noticed the dead snags, remnants of trees that fell to fire, trees shorn of their uppermost branches from some wind storm, and young trees bearing the scars of fire around their lower trunks. Often the structural damage will make it difficult for the trees to thrive; thus, the “fainter Leaves.”

       

Unlike trees, people have souls. What does Dickinson mean that we therefore “Die oftener” and “Not so vitally”? I suspect she means that we suffer more “killing” blows than do the trees and saplings. It’s not just Nature that can deal us blows, but other people – intentionally or unintentionally. But these blows do not touch our soul. That might explain the saints’ strength in the face of great torment and suffering. We know that Dickinson read Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and based some of her poems on its harrowing accounts. Small wonder then, that while she sees the marks of tragedy on both human and tree, she believes that the human soul survives intact (and perhaps is strengthened by) what wounds the flesh.

It was given to me by the Gods —

It was given to me by the Gods —
When I was a little Girl —
They give us Presents most — you know —
When we are new — and small.
I kept it in my Hand —
I never put it down —
I did not dare to eat — or sleep —
For fear it would be gone —
I heard such words as "Rich" —
When hurrying to school —
From lips at Corners of the Streets —
And wrestled with a smile.
Rich! 'Twas Myself — was rich —
To take the name of Gold —
And Gold to own — in solid Bars —
The Difference — made me bold —
                                                                                    F455 (1862)  J454

Those who feel pity or sad bafflement about Emily Dickinson’s famous reclusiveness are missing not only the extremes of joy and anguish that punctuated her ‘quiet’ life, but her self-aware pride. That pride is on full display here.
       “The Gods” give us their gifts when “we are new – and small,” and Dickinson’s gift was poetry. Unlike many of us who are given gifts, only to ignore, squander, or reject them, Dickinson, even as a young girl, clutched hers like a precious gem. She “never put it down,” spending her life writing poem after poem until there were (at last count) 1789 of them! Her magnificent letters, too, give evidence of the poetry that radiated from her.
       In one letter she describes herself as “small, like the wren,” although her hair is “bold, like the chestnut bur.” Yet there is no sense of smallness here as she recalls smiling to herself as townspeople talk about wealth, knowing that she possessed bars of golden talent while they were just speculating and using a label. What made her bold was knowing the difference between what she had –consuming, compelling poetry – and the more dubious and transitory glory of material riches.
       One image I like in this poem is that of the “lips at Corners of the Streets” who talk about getting rich, or who’s rich and who isn’t. I think there are lips like those at all the corners. 

I rose — because He sank —

I rose — because He sank —
I thought it would be opposite —
But when his power dropped —
My Soul grew straight.

I cheered my fainting Prince —
I sang firm — even — Chants —
I helped his Film — with Hymn —

And when the Dews drew off
That held his Forehead stiff —
I met him —
Balm to Balm —

I told him Best — must pass
Through this low Arch of Flesh —
No Casque so brave
It spurn the Grave —

I told him Worlds I knew
Where Emperors grew —
Who recollected us
If we were true —

And so with Thews of Hymn —
And Sinew from within —
And ways I knew not that I knew — till then —
I lifted Him —
                                                                                               F454 (1862)  616

The poem has a triumphal yet ambiguous note. The narrator details her efforts on behalf of her “fainting Prince,” taking a surprised pride at how she “rose” to the occasion, helped him, cheered him, and finally “lifted Him” through her own spiritual “Sinew.”
        First, though, she needed – rather, her Soul needed – to grow “straight” – as if it had been wandering from the straight and narrow path into twisty ways and byways. This was all occasioned “because He Sank.” Otherwise, she may have lingered on the winding paths.
        What is the problem with the beloved? The narrator doesn’t specify. But he was “fainting,” his forehead was sweaty, and he lost strength. Perhaps he was dying. Indeed, he may well have died and the service the narrator tendered was to urge and lift him towards heaven.
        First, though, she cheers him, and I take this to mean she re-awakened his will. She chants, firmly and evenly. The film of sweat on his brow was “helped” with “Hymn,” and when the sweat (“the Dews”) is gone, she meets him “Balm to Balm” as if the ointments with which she lovingly soothes him are answered with love, the sweetest balm. “I met him  / Balm to Balm” has a sensual quality. It is not just spirit that is being rallied, not just flesh that is being soothed, but the whole person who is being loved.
        She tells him everyone, even the best of us, must endure the hardships of the flesh. No knight in helmet (“Casque”), no matter how brave, can avoid the grave. She weaves tales for him. A poet, she knows “Worlds” – we saw her careening from one to another in “I felt a Funeral in my Brain.” She tells her beloved of how emperors grow in some worlds – an organic, polytheistic image. Good monarchs, these emperors will remember those who are “true."
        Notice that Dickinson here is not calling on the Christian heaven. There is the rewarding of the faithful, which is certainly a Christian image (though not exclusively), but the narrator is drawing upon her imagination, her storied worlds where her mind wanders (perhaps those twisty byways). 
    

Dickinson’s narrator presents herself as a woman bucking up her man. She sings to him, wipes his forehead, paints a picture of a better, perhaps eternal, life.
        In the last stanza Dickinson gives us the lovely image of “Thews of Hymn”: the musculature that holds her together, and the word “Thews” conjures up Homeric heroes, is made of church hymns. She is rising to the occasion on spiritual muscles and sinews  and on “ways I knew not that I knew.” Maddening poet. What are these secret ways? Again, there is a teasing sense of love’s ways (foreshadowed by the “Arch of Flesh” as well as the balms). Taken together with the spiritual strength and the physical ministrations, the narrator has “lifted” her beloved.

Dickinson has written before of ministering to the dying. In “I bring an unaccustomed wine”  (F126) she “always bear[s] the cup” that can slake the thirst of dying “pilgrims.” In “Delayed till she had ceased to know”  (F67), Dickinson bemoans having been too late to inspire a dying woman with visions of “Victory” in a palatial heaven. 
        But I’m tempted to read this poem as a one describing a mystical union with the dying and doubting Christ. Dickinson wrote one poem (F300) in “moaning fancy” imagining herself with young martyrs as they died – or as a saint herself. And she has written other poems previous to this that also might be read as mystical unions with Jesus. “Title divine, is mine” (F194) might be read this way. Likewise, in “Again – his voice is at the door” (F274) the gentleman caller who “never saw me – in this life” may well be Jesus (as well as doubling as an earthly love interest).
        I think Dickinson well capable of layering meanings, using ambiguities to allow imagination the freest play within her poetic vision. And so I have no problems reading this poem as one where a loving woman helps a loved one in a time of need, ministers to a dying beloved man, or joins with the crucified Jesus to help him surmount the bitterness and pain of crucifixion.

Dickinson does some wonderful things with word sounds and juxtapositions throughout the poem. “Rose” and “sank” are opposites, and Dickinson uses the word “opposite” in the following line to add the image of a seesaw or pulley. “Dropped” adds a nice internal alliteration in which the “p” sounds imply a soft dropping.
        “Film” with “Hymn” is a nice pairing, as are “Thews of Hymn” – which can be read as a pun on “his thews.” The homophones “Hymn” and “Him” strengthen this connection. Another slant rhyme I enjoy: “Prince” with “Chants.” The entire poem benefits from a careful attention to word choice. The more I read it, the more I find in every line to ponder.

Our journey had advanced —

Our journey had advanced —
Our feet were almost come
To that odd Fork in Being's Road —
Eternity — by Term —

Our pace took sudden awe —
Our feet — reluctant — led —
Before — were Cities — but Between —
The Forest of the Dead —

Retreat — was out of Hope —
Behind — a Sealed Route —
Eternity's White Flag — Before —
And God — at every Gate —
                                                             F453 (1862)  J615


The poem begins in good Victorian narrative style: we have a dramatic opening that promises a tale. The meter is based on traditional ballad style (quatrains that alternate iambic tetrameter with iambic trimeter)

"Abandon All Hope ye who enter here"
Gustave Dore's illustration for Dante's Inferno

, but Dickinson here uses tetrameter only in the third line of the stanzas. This adds tension, for rather than flowing with a natural speech rhythm, the trimeter pace seems chopped as if starting and stopping.
        Of course, this is exactly what is being described. The narrator, along with unspecified companions, is leaving the land of the living. They advance and then they stop and then they continue very slowly.
        The reader must picture the lay of the land: they had journeyed through life until at death they faced “that odd Fork in Being’s Road” – eternity – looming ahead. But the fork is not one where Life continues one way and Death/Eternity goes the other. No, there is no “Retreat” back to life. That way was “Sealed.” They must move forward. The fork instead, as I read it, leads to the different “Cities” with their gates. One thinks of the great and dread Judgment Day where God points the dead to either the gates of Heaven or Hell.
        So the pilgrims are standing in terror and dread at that fork. Their feet are then “led” reluctantly forward. They can see the fabled cities in the distance, but first they must pass through the “Forest of the Dead.” I don’t think Dickinson is imagining a wailing thicket of ghosts, spectres, or vampires here, but rather a cemetery. In earlier Dickinson poems we’ve seen the dead waiting in their granite tombs. Sometimes they seem to wait forever (in other of her poems, however, a dead person prances about in no time with a crown, on grassy meadows, or with grand and solemn angels).
        The last two lines should signal the sort of joy a lost sailor would feel upon seeing a lighthouse showing the way to harbour. But instead they seem fearful. “Eternity’s White Flag” suggests surrender, as if eternity is a place of surrendered will. Sure enough, God is at “every Gate.” The mise-en-scène turns grim. One fork surely leads to the torments of hell, the other to the bliss of heaven. But God stands everywhere before them with nary a word or glance of welcome. He is, rather, a conquerer figure before whom the eternal cities have surrendered – as must the pilgrims. 



**NOTE:  Please read comments for another, and I think probably better, interpretation of this poem.

Love — thou art high —

Love — thou art high —
I cannot climb thee —
But, were it Two —
Who knows but we —
Taking turns — at the Chimborazo —
Ducal — at last — stand up by thee —

Love — thou are deep —
I cannot cross thee —
But, were there Two
Instead of One —
Rower, and Yacht — some sovereign Summer —
Who knows — but we'd reach the Sun?

Love — thou are Veiled —
A few — behold thee —
Smile — and alter — and prattle — and die —
Bliss — were an Oddity — without thee —
Nicknamed by God —
Eternity —

                                                            F452  (1862)  J453

Love is an adventure best undertaken by two. The poet depicts love as high, that by herself she might never scale it but with her lover they might take turns and arrive, proud as dukes, at its summit. Further, it is deep. Alone the poet couldn’t cross it, but if there were two together, one a rower and the other a boat, they might be able to cross the depths of the sky to reach the summer sun itself.

            Finally, love is “Veiled” and very few people ever truly see it. Most smile, prattle, and die as they change through life. But to the poet, heavenly “Bliss” would be an “Oddity,” really not bliss at all, if the beloved were not there at all. It would be more like “Eternity” – which is God’s nickname, and one not nearly so tempting as “bliss.”

            I don’t know what to make of the poem. I can’t say I like it or find much to say about it, so I’ll just include Frederick Edwin Church’s study of Mount Chimborazo, dated 1857. Dickinson may have heard of it, and certainly she was aware of such exotic travel locations. If anyone out there has something to add about this poem, please do so!

The Malay—took the Pearl—

The Malay—took the Pearl—
Not—I—the Earl—
I—feared the Sea—too much
Unsanctified—to touch—

Praying that I might be
Worthy—the Destiny—
The Swarthy fellow swam—
And bore my Jewel—Home—

Home to the Hut! What lot
Had I—the Jewel—got—
Borne on a Dusky Breast—
I had not deemed a Vest
Of Amber—fit—

The Negro never knew
I—wooed it—too—
To gain, or be undone—
Alike to Him—One—
                                                                 F451 (1862)  452

This poem is typically read as based on the love triangle of Emily Dickinson, her brother Austin, and the woman Emily loved and encouraged her brother to marry – Susan (Sue) Huntington Gilbert. Once Sue and Austin were married it became apparent to Emily that her relationship with Sue was much diminished; further, that Austin’s love for Sue was probably not as great as Emily’s. This is an over-simplification of course, but there books galore for interested readers (Judith Farr’s The Passion of Emily Dickinson, for one).

Austin Dickinson

         The poem centers on the differences between the opportunistic but indiscriminate “Dusky” Malay (Austin) and the Hamlet-ish and now embittered Earl (Dickinson herself). Dickinson’s role here is not that of an arrogant earl, however, but a highly sensitive one. His reluctance to venture into the sea wasn’t because he didn’t want to get wet or because he didn’t long for the pearl, but because he was “unsanctified” to touch it. Instead he waited, praying that he “might be worthy” of the sea’s great prize.
        There is an ambiguity here about which is unsanctified, the sea or the earl. But in either case the sea is not polluted or unclean: either the earl does not consider himself good enough, or else the sea is forbidden him on canonical grounds. If we think about the sea as sexual engulfment – a rather conventional association and one that Dickinson herself used – and the pearl as the product of that sea, then what the narrator is avoiding is the sea of female sexuality. Such a Sapphic sea in 1862 was unsanctioned for another woman while a man could dive in and take the pearl. We sense the conflicted Earl watching, deeply stricken.
        As much as Dickinson loved her brother, his depiction here as a “Malay” is surprisingly negative – and racist. He is Swarthy, Dusky, Negro. The Vest that bears the pearl is “Amber” and not “fit” for a pearl. (The amber vest is a restatement of “Dusky Breast.”) This contrasts, of course, to the white Pearl (and the assumedly white earl) and plays to the imagery and stereotypes of the day where white was good and pure, while dark and black were sinister, crude, and impure. (Although Melville turns this on its head in Moby Dick [1851] in his apostrophe chapter, “The Whiteness of the Whale.”)
        Dickinson even takes a dig at The Evergreens, the beautiful mansion her father built for Austin and Sue, calling it “the Hut!” As an aside, however, she mutters to herself, “What lot / Had I.” What could Emily Dickinson, a dependent of her father, offer Sue? The bitterest lines, however, are the last two. The Malay, now “The Negro,” did not even value the pearl. Whether or not he gained the prize or not was all the same to him. It would have been everything to the narrator, though.

The Evergreens,
where Sue and Austin lived

        There is a bit of context for the Malay imagery. Judith Farr suggests that the Malay figure springs from Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater, a book Dickinson herself obtained for the family library. A Malay appears in dreams to subject the author to harrowing experiences as punishment for some terrible deed. He was buried alive, drowned, and given “cancerous kisses, by crocodiles” among the reeds and mud of the Nile. If the Malay does indeed represent Dickinson’s beloved brother Austin, what does that say about her estimation of the wedding night?
       Also, Dickinson used the imagery of pearl diving in earlier poems. In F417, “Removed from Accident of Loss”, the narrator muses that she had been as “unconscious” of her riches “As is the Brown Malay / Of Pearls in Eastern Waters”. It isn’t, then, that the brother is a cad as much as, being a man – and a wealthy, highly respected one at that – he might have had any number of pearls. The sea was his to explore. He represented the “Destiny” of the pearl, unlike the narrator for whom such treasure was unsanctified.
       In another poem, F121, “Her breast is fit for pearls,” Dickinson writes that “I was not a ‘Diver” and consequently she must build her “perennial nest” inside her beloved’s heart, like a humble little sparrow. It is ironic to think that Dickinson, who plumbed the depths in sometimes almost feverish intensity, considered herself not a diver.

I find this poem compelling, with or without the biographical interpretation. The sea is dangerous, particularly to the fearful and to those who think too much. The pearl is the essence of the sea but gives itself up to even the most blasé diver. Those who would love must be prepared to risk the sea or be resigned to disappointment. Yes, universal themes that are enriched by Jungian, mythical, and literary analyses.
        Dickinson’s rhyme scheme is AABB – a variant for her as she typically used the ABCB of common ballad or hymn style. The pattern allows the second line of each stanza to emphasize the first because of the rhyme. For example, the opening line is quite strong: “The Malay – took the Pearl.” It is the opening to a story with character and action. We await a motive and a consequence. The second line, “Not – I – the Earl,” adds an opposing character who thereby is revealed as the poem’s narrator. The rhyme of Pearl with Earl adds irony, if not bitterness. We expect pearls and earls to go together as easily as they rhyme. That the Malay took the pearl, and “took” is a very active verb, becomes a bit shocking. The concluding couplets have the shadow of Shakespearean tragedy.

The Outer — from the Inner

The Outer — from the Inner
Derives its magnitude —
'Tis Duke, or Dwarf, according
As is the central mood —

The fine — unvarying Axis
That regulates the Wheel —
Though Spokes — spin — more conspicuous
And fling a dust — the while.

The Inner — paints the Outer —
The Brush without the Hand —
Its Picture publishes — precise —
As is the inner Brand —

On fine — Arterial Canvas —
A Cheek — perchance a Brow —
The Star's whole Secret — in the Lake —
Eyes were not meant to know.
                                                                                   F450 (1862)  J451

What our eyes see is only the visible manifestation of deeper, more fundamental truths. In terms of humans, our inner truth is a living spirit, a “Brush without the Hand.” Our outer selves, our looks and personas, are the canvas on which the spirit expresses itself.
         Dickinson begins with moods, however. Dukes and dwarves exemplify them. On a Dwarf day one feels much less powerful and confident than when one is feeling Duke-ish. As an order of “magnitude” the Duke is much more expansive and pre-eminent. It isn’t the persona who drives this, however, but some inner “mood,” as if moods have their own singular identity.
        

The next stanza uses the wheel as a metaphor for inner strength and integrity. It is the axis that holds the wheel together on its revolutions. Those “conspicuous” spokes spin about flinging dust all the while. They might look flashy but without the “unvarying” and regulating axis, they would fly apart and go nowhere.
         The final stanzas develop the metaphor of artist and canvas. The unseen artist lives within, painting the outer self on “fine – Arterial Canvas.” As life goes on the outer work of art mirrors precisely the inner self. Dickinson calls it the “inner Brand.” “Brand” here would have multiple meanings: a burned mark of ownership, spiritual essence, identity, and a property label. Over time, Dickinson is saying, our physical selves reflect the work of that unseen inner artist. She may also be suggesting that we are internally branded: a heavenly hurt that leaves no scar, or perhaps the deity’s not-so-gentle mark of ownership.
         Either way, the cheek that we see, the brow that indicates character and personality, become indicative of the true individual just as the star’s reflection in a lake reveals the star itself. The lake represents the eyes (located as they are between cheek and brow). The burning brand of the inner self might be discovered there – except that “Eyes [other eyes] were not meant to know.” 
        While eyes have been called the window to the soul, it is a rare person who can look into another’s eyes and see that soul. As in a wind-ruffled lake, we see distortion – the Duke or the Dwarf, perhaps, or spokes, or the various smokescreens we all hide behind – but not the secret of the star that burns its brand deep within. It is a true poet who can read that lake.

Dreams — are well — but Waking's better

Dreams — are well — but Waking's better,
If One wake at morn —
If One wake at Midnight — better —
Dreaming — of the Dawn —

Sweeter — the Surmising Robins —
Never gladdened Tree —
Than a Solid Dawn — confronting —
Leading to no Day —
                                                                           F449 (1862)  J450

This rather maddening poem contrasts dark and dawn, waking and dreaming, life and death, and heaven and hell. I find the poem“maddening” because Dickinson’s grammar is so sketchy. Words are left out with abandon and it sometimes isn’t clear to me which clause goes with which other clause.
         The first line begins clearly enough and then the poem slowly slides into the ambiguities and mysteries of the second stanza. It’s tempting to feel that if missing words could be supplied, if grammar could be regularized, then the poem would make complete sense. But I’m pretty sure Dickinson wanted this poem to be suggestive rather than descriptive.
         First stanza: It’s good to dream but waking up is better – as long as you wake up in the morning. If you wake up at midnight, on the other hand, you’d be better dreaming of dawn. After this, I am conjecturing: such dreams would be much sweeter than being confronted by a “Solid Dawn” that doesn’t lead to any day. The dream sweetness would better than even the dreaming, “Surmising Robins” who wake up and gladden the trees with song.
        What is the “Solid Dawn” that leads to “no Day”? While “dawn” suggests a new and heavenly or eternal life, its opposite, “Midnight,” suggests the blackness of torment, the grave, or hell. Dreaming of dawn would be sweeter indeed in comparison. With that in mind, Midnight itself is the “Solid Dawn”: the dark, black of the grave. Waking at the blackness of midnight (remembering that Dickinson would never have experienced the light pollution we currently ‘enjoy’) presages waking into that eternal night. There’s a resulting terror in the last line of the poem, warning that no day will ever follow that black dawn.

Dickinson uses a few word sound groups to emphasize her images. The poem is sprinkled with the “d” sounds that remind us of “death,” but here go with “Dreams, Dreaming, Dawn, Dawn, and Day – all of which take on a darker meaning as the poem progresses. The breathy “W” sounds of “Waking,” and the repeated “One wake” provide a hushed and mysterious mood. The one bit of lightness comes from the “S” sounds of “Sweeter – the Surmising Robins.”
   

I died for beauty — but was scarce

I died for beauty — but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining Room — 

He questioned softly “Why I failed?”
"For Beauty," I replied —
"And I — for Truth — Themselves are One —
We Brethren, are," He said —

And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night —
We talked between the Rooms —
Until the Moss had reached our lips —
And covered up — Our names —
                                                                                   F448 (1862)  J449

The setting: a mausoleum with separate rooms. The narrator lies in one room, recently dead, but long enough so to have “Adjusted” herself when another body is laid in the next room. The recent arrival strikes up what is to be a very long conversation by provocatively asking his neighbor why she “failed.”
         Helen Vendler claims “failed” is used in the sense of “weaken and die,” as if the pursuits of beauty and truth compelled the seekers to efforts beyond their strength. One thinks of the poet or philosopher burning the midnight oil, scarcely eating, taking no heed for their personal wellbeing until their health failed. But now they have seemingly endless time to contemplate and discuss their two pursuits.
         The dialog between Truth and Beauty is meant to recall two poems from two of Dickinson’s favorite poets: John Keats and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. From the ending of Keats’ “On a Grecian Urn”:

 Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Keats, according to Helen Vendler, in thinking about beauty would be considering “aesthetic creation and its product.” Truth would be “both philosophical and representational.” The Truth seeker, like Keats, comments that Truth and Beauty are “One.”
Browning takes a slightly different angle in “A Vision of Poets” where a poet is led by a Muse through trial and terror to a vision of great poets of the past whose foreheads were “royal with the truth”:

These were poets true,
Who died for Beauty, as martyrs do
For Truth — the ends being scarcely two.

A moss-covered family mausoleum

So while Keats says that truth and beauty are the same, Browning says it is the people, that the lives and deaths of poets and martyrs for truth are very similar. Both give up their lives. One remembers that Dickinson herself gave up her life, her potentially ‘normal’ life, that is, for poetry.

Dickinson’s Truth seeker takes both Keats and Browning’s positions: Truth and beauty are the same; consequently, the two of them, the two souls in the mausoleum, are “Brethren.” Beauty, note, makes no comment except that “as Kinsmen” they spoke together until the moss covered their names. Their “lips” would be, as in F210, the granite grave markers. Their conversation would have lasted at least a hundred years – probably much more!
        The two have an idealized and Platonic relationship, satisfying and comfortable unlike the frustrating relationships Dickinson experienced with many of the people she loved in her lifetime. Nonetheless, a wall separates the two. There will be no physical union or consummation here. Can Truth, one is led to ask, never completely be joined with Beauty?
        Perhaps, but Dickinson sets her scene in a mausoleum, typically a structure to contain the graves of family members. Although she may have simply meant that there were two graves side by side, I think it more likely that she is reinforcing the close kinship between the two. They share the same DNA.

The quiet end is terrible in a way despite its gentle peacefulness. As the moss spreads over bones and stones, it obliterates the separate identities through which the two souls communicated. It is a second death. Nothing fearful about it. The consciousness of the Beauty narrator continues to exist but it is in a diffused state. There is some sort of deep irony about the poem being a communication from that distant state. Perhaps it is a Truth about Beauty.

Another stanza from Browning’s poem also depicts the death of Poet/Beauty as peaceful:

Since sweet the death-clothes and the knell
Of him who having lived, dies well;
And wholly sweet the asphodel

In falling Timbers buried —

In falling Timbers buried —
There breathed a Man —
Outside — the spades — were plying —
The Lungs — within —

Could He — know — they sought Him —
Could They — know — He breathed —
Horrid Sand Partition —
Neither — could be heard —

Never slacked the Diggers —
But when Spades had done —
Oh, Reward of Anguish,
It was dying — Then —

Many Things — are fruitless —
'Tis a Baffling Earth —
But there is no Gratitude
Like the Grace — of Death —
                                                                     F447 (1862)  J614

I was going to dismiss this poem about how the diggers fight their way through rubble only to find the man just a moment too late. I was going to say the last line was a bit morbid: the would-be rescuers would find no gratitude from a dead man –  or his kin. Their one comfort would be the thought that the trapped man was now dead and out of the reach of suffering.
        But then I thought of Bangladesh, the collapsed factory trapping and killing many women and girls. The death toll has passed 1100 as I write. The diggers there are now, with the amazing exception of a 19-year-old who survived 17 days beneath the rubble, pulling out only dead and decomposing bodies.
      

Thinking on these rescuers, then, Dickinson’s poem takes on a new relevance. No, the diggers in Bangladesh will find little gratitude although no doubt many people appreciate their efforts. But what they must be confronting over and over, are the dead. How else could they cope with this horrific event if they could not reassure themselves that “there is no Gratitude / Like the Grace — of Death”?
       The last stanza bears some unpacking. “Things,” Dickinson rather vaguely points out, are often “fruitless” and this word carries the twin meanings of “barren” and “pointless.” The unspoken question of “why” points to the poets shrugging dismissal: “’Tis a Baffling Earth.” Our sense of justice and happy endings will be constantly thwarted. The rescuers won’t be in time. But (and that transition is key: note that Dickinson does not use “therefore” or “consequently”) death will come. Lovely easeful death – “the Grace – of Death.”
         “Grace” is one of those rich words, blessed with many meanings. Here it suggests the grace of God – his free and unearned favour; eternal life; privilege; mercifulness; graciousness and beauty; and, finally, a prayer of thanks. Grace doesn’t just apply to the awful death of those trapped in rubble and fallen timber. It applies to all of us and it is with that hope that both the buried and the diggers can bear this baffling life.

This was a Poet –

This was a Poet –
It is That
Distills amazing sense
From Ordinary Meanings –
And Attar so immense 

From the familiar species
That perished by the Door –
We wonder it was not Ourselves
Arrested it — before — 

Of Pictures, the Discloser –
The Poet — it is He –
Entitles Us — by Contrast –
To ceaseless Poverty — 

Of portion — so unconscious –
The Robbing — could not harm –
Himself — to Him — a Fortune –
Exterior — to Time –
                                                                    F446 (1862)  J448

In this paean to poets – amid whom Dickinson was in the process of assigning herself a place – Dickinson begins with a rhetorical device: “This was a Poet” – an address directly to the reader as if she were an orator with the body laid out before him on a slab of marble. And then she describes the poet. The “He” is probably a universal “he” and would include any women poet as well (such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning whom Dickinson admired – as she did Robert Browning).
    The true poet can distill “amazing sense / From Ordinary meanings.” Yes, a very good depiction of the poet, at least in some critical circles. The essential oil of life, the “attar,” that the poet wrings from life is orders of magnitude better than anything the we might have expected common door-side roses to produce. The “immense” is a bit surprising, as one expects the poet’s attar might be “intense.” I suppose the oil is so fragrant it fills the air. The poet’s perceptive insights fill readers up, too, until we wonder how we’d never seen things quite that way before.

Painters, such as Matisse, can also make us see those
common doorway flowers in a new way

    The poet tells us what the pictures are, shows us their meanings. So gifted is he/she that the rest of us in contrast are in “ceaseless Poverty.” His good fortune is so great that we could rob him of a bit of it and it would not hurt him. The poet, caught up in his (her) art is “unconscious” of being copied or even plagiarized. Poets like Shakespeare are not bound by time. Indeed, he stands outside of the flux that shapes and propels the rest of us. Perhaps he even contributes to the flux.

Helen Vendler notes that Dickinson in this poem is speaking as a reader and not a poet. If so, Dickinson would be hearkening to Shakespeare, Browning, or Keats, for example, and musing about the power they hold.

Although I like the poem, I don’t think the imagery or ideas are among Dickinson’s most powerful or creative. 

   

They shut me up in Prose —

They shut me up in Prose —

As when a little Girl
They put me in the Closet —
Because they liked me "still" —

Still! Could themself have peeped —
And seen my Brain - go round -
They night as wise have lodged a Bird
For Treason - in the Pound -

Himself has but to will
And easy as a Star
Abolish his Captivity —
And laugh — No more have I —
                                                                         J613,   F445 (1862)


There is quite a bit of power in this poem as Dickinson likens being shut up in “Prose” to being stuck in a closet for not being quiet enough as a girl. It’s a critique on art, gender, and freedom in general.
        Two narratives emerge: the present and ongoing conflict where “They” inflict Prose on the poet, and the past where “They” restricted her freedom in her childhood. One narrative illuminates and informs the other as in both cases the poet’s irrepressible drive to express herself is under attack. In both cases the poet survives to scoff at the would-be prose/quiet enforcers.

The first line is ironic: clearly no one ever really shut Emily Dickinson up in prose. But what she may be saying is that she feels as if she were in a prose (dull, commonplace, uninspired) prison. Her letters reveal a shallow mother, a ponderously lawyerly father, and interminable sermons at Amherst’s First Church of Christ, (to say nothing of school lectures). Dickinson’s quick and startling wit, her fierce and original passions, and her nonconformity (even, perhaps, her self-mythologizing) would indeed have been under societal and family pressure. Except for her beloved sister-in-law Sue, with whom she had a very troubled relationship, and maybe the mysterious “Master,” Dickinson would have been pressured or cajoled on all sides, even by her chosen poetry Preceptor, Thomas Higginson, to rein herself in.

Part of this reining in involved gender expectations. A little girl should be quiet. A young lady should be proper and aiming to marry. A grown woman should be self sacrificing. Another reining-in involves art. Dickinson’s poetry was ahead of its time, difficult to understand, often shocking in implication. Other poets of her day (excepting Whitman) were extolling flowers, spring, and death in much more conventional terms and in much more conventional poetic and metrical form.
        But perhaps more fundamentally, the poem has to do with freedom. Dickinson identifies here with the bird, a familiar image for her, representing spirit, hope, and freedom. She, like the wayward bird, has been confined in the pound, an enclosure to confine stray creatures. But then the poet scoffs at the idea. What, you think that shutting me up can keep me still? My body, yes, certainly you can restrain that. But you can no more quiet my brain than you can impound a bird for treason. All it has to do is fly away, over the fences or through the bars, laughing at its erstwhile jailors. It would be as “easy as a Star” for it to escape – it only has to “will” it.
         Interestingly, her bird is impounded for “Treason” – a laughable thought, but I doubt that the poet tossed that charge in randomly. She, too, must have been made to feel that, like a traitor, she was in some way betraying her community and culture.


When I read this poem I envision a swan in a family of ducks. Perhaps I fixated too early on “The Ugly Duckling”.  But unlike that fable, in this poem Dickinson makes it quite clear that she knows she is the swan. She is not repentant, not subdued. As she famously said to her niece as she closed her bedroom door behind them and pantomimed turning a key, “It’s just a turn – and freedom, Matty!” Irony again. Confining herself to her room, to her father’s grounds, was to Dickinson her greatest freedom.

Modern readers might also think of Maya Angelou's powerful poem, although it comes from a place of greater oppression:

Caged Bird 

A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind 
and floats downstream 
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky. 

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and 
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing. 

The caged bird sings 
with a fearful trill 
of things unknown 
but longed for still 
and his tune is heard 
on the distant hill 
for the caged bird 
sings of freedom. 

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own. 

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams 
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream 
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied 
so he opens his throat to sing. 

The caged bird sings 
with a fearful trill 
of things unknown 
but longed for still 
and his tune is heard 
on the distant hill 
for the caged bird 
sings of freedom.