All these my banners be.

All these my banners be.
I sow my  pageantry
In May—
It rises train by train—
Then sleeps in state again—
My chancel—all the plain
Today.

To lose – if one can find again –
To miss—if one shall meet—
The Burglar cannot rob – then –
The Broker cannot cheat.
So build the hillocks gaily
Thou little spade of mine
Leaving nooks for Daisy
And for Columbine –
You and I the secret
Of the Crocus know–
Let us chant it softly –
"There is no more snow!"

To him who keeps an Orchis' heart –
The swamps are pink with June.

                                                        J22, Fr29 (1858)

• Johnson notes that the "three stanzas or sections are printed and indexed as three poems ...  A note accompanying them says that ED may have thought of them 'as parts of one poem, since she wrote them all on one page without her usual marks of separation."       Franklin follows the three-poem scheme. The second and third he presents as separate poems, Fr30 and Fr31, discussed separately. I discuss only the first stanza here.  


Ah, gardens. Banners of the seasons and the cycles. What's interesting here is the gravity with which Dickinson addresses her garden. What she sows is pageantry, and it rises in trains such as those billowing behind the bride or queen. And in keeping with royal pageantry, during the winter it "sleeps in state". There is no season of loss or death. Winter is but another banner, coequal with spring and summer. 
     In keeping with some of her other poems, Dickinson maintains that the stately and annual progression of her garden is her church. The added dimension is that unlike the traditional Christian arc of birth, death, resurrection, Dickinson is drawing on the cycles of annual rebirth here on earth. 
     As a lovely contrast with the cycles, she emphasizes the eternal Now by rhyming two dimeter lines: "In May–" with the ending line, "Today." The gravity of the poem is reinforced by the spondees that begin the poem: "All these," and "I sow–pageantry."
     Count me in as a member of the Dickinson church!

We lose – because we win –

We lose – because we win –
Gamblers – recollecting which –
Toss their dice again!
                                                              - F 28 (1858)

A bit o' luck with the cards or dice encourage gamblers to keep betting and thus losing. But because Dickinson begins with a generic case, the "we", "Gamblers" becomes more than slouches hunched over a green-felt table, but ourselves remembering some past success--be it love or a business venture, or a particular lane during rush hour. And we keep revisiting and trying to replay what it was that resulted in the payoff. But the odds are pretty heavy that we can't. The odds start anew with each throw.
     Actually, it's a bit of a 'glass-half-empty' view. We ultimately lose rather than win. Just as in casinos, the odds are stacked against us.

Flees so the phantom meadow

Flees so the phantom meadow
Before the breathless Bee—
So bubble brooks in deserts
On Ears that dying lie—
Burn so the Evening Spires
To Eyes that Closing go—
Hangs so distant Heaven—
To a hand below.
                                                    Fr 27 (1858)

• Johnson includes this poem with the previous, Fr26, in J20

The use of spondee adds a lot to this poem. Used in alternating lines, their strong accents emphasize the strong frustration with meadows, water, sunset, and Heaven that are all just tantalizingly outside our grasp. It's written to be painful. The Bee is breathless, the thirsty traveler is dying. The hand is stretching longingly. 
The many "B" sounds also lend the poem power. The effect I find the most arresting is the very slow and almost bell-tolling "Hangs so distant Heaven– ." The three accented syllables of "Hangs so dis..." are so pendant that we can almost feel Heaven hanging ripe above our heads. 
     Dickinson may be going counter to her peers and culture in depicting a heaven that is unattainable. Perhaps she means that we must wait until we die for paradise and therefore we must be longing for the day when we cross over from life into that hanging heaven. Not an appealing thought. But another interpretation might be that God is not attainable. Prayers do not compel His attention. He is even likened to a "phantom meadow." Much of Dickinson's community, including her family, had taken a pledge for Jesus not too many years before this poem. Emily did not take the pledge although she read the Bible religiously and often wrote of God and Paradise. But in some of her poems she grapples with God and is hardly circumspect. (Of course in yet others, He is kindly and life-giving.
     The more I read this poem the better I like it. I love the "breathless Bee" trying to light upon the ghostly meadow. I love the sound of "So bubble brooks "--it even sounds like bubbles bursting. And the last three alliterations of "Hangs," "Heaven" and "hand" in the last two lines has a chillingly breathy sound.

Distrustful of the Gentian—

Distrustful of the Gentian—
And just to turn away,
The fluttering of her fringes
Chid my perfidy—
Weary for my_______
I will singing go—
I shall not feel the sleet—then—
I shall not fear the snow.

Flees so the phantom meadow
Before the breathless Bee –
So bubble brooks in deserts
On Ears that dying lie – 
Burn so the Evening Spires
To Eyes that Closing go – 
Hangs so distant Heaven – 
To a hand below.
                                                                    J20,  Fr 26 (1858)

• Franklin divides this poem into two at the stanza break, the second listed and discussed separately here as Fr27.

The blank spot in line five takes the place of a name, probably her dear friend and sister-in-law Sue Dickinson whom Emily Dickinson called Suzie. "Suzie" makes a nice starting point for the alliterations in the following three lines: singing, sleet, and snow. I've read here and there that Emily was an exhausting friend, and that Sue sometimes needed space. 
     If we take all of the above into account, we read the poem as an account of friendship on one level and then of acceptance on a larger scale or deeper level. Thinking of the Gentian as her friend Sue, we are introduced immediately to the idea that Dickinson doesn't completely trust her and has turned away. The fluttering fringes evoke the teasing batting of eyelashes – Sue isn't angry, she chides Emily with a mild look for her seeming change of heart. But then Emily wearies of staying apart from her friend and decides to go back with a song in her heart. She'll need the song because she takes it for a given that there will be sleet and there will be snow. That doesn't sound like complete trust to me, but a learned reverend once told me that faith is acting as if you believe something is true even if you don't. So Emily wants to resume the friendship and knows she needs to present a song rather than distrust.
     Read another way, the poem is a siren song with the last fall flowers, the Gentian, beckoning to the forest wanderer to stay and linger in the autumnal woods. The fluttering fringed gentian seems to chide the wanderer's abandonment. Winter is close by and the cold weather will harm not only the delicate flower but the human who remains by its side. Then comes the numbing cold. We see this numbing cold, famously, in her poem "After great pain a formal feeling comes," which ends: 
        As freezing persons recollect the snow--
        First chill, then stupor, then the letting go. 
It is truly an act of faith to stay with the beckoning flower, or perhaps Dickinson is not unwilling to contemplate 'the letting go'. Extrapolating further, we read into the poem that at some point, one must be willing to commit to a small hope or object of desire, no matter the snow.  

A sepal - petal, and a thorn

A sepal, petal, and a thorn,
Upon a common summer's morn—
A flask of Dew—A Bee or two—
A Breeze—a'caper in the trees—
And I'm a Rose! 
                                                        J19,  Fr 25 (1858)

Roses were the most prized flowers in Victorian gardens and literature. Dickinson prizes them as well and she uses them when she wants to express the utmost in beauty, completeness and vulnerability. Here she lists the elements that epitomize the Rose: sepal, petal, and thorn plus dew, bees, and breezes. 
     One of the key words is 'common': she is out on a walk, perhaps, on an ordinary day when she comes across this assemblage of ordinary elements and the whole comes alive into a glorious flower. Note that her list includes categories: the physical aspects of the flower, the time of year, the water, the pollinator, and the breeze that animates the whole. 
    The poem can also be read as transfiguration. She herself becomes the Rose. In her is the sepal protecting the precious flower within, in her the luscious petal of the flower itself —as well as the painful thorn that protects from depredations. Give her Dew, bees and a breeze ("dew-bee dew-bee dew...") and she is rose-like herself--and who wouldn't be?
     The poem is written in iambic tetrameter with a rhyme scheme of A A B (with internal rhyme) C C (with Rose a slant rhyme with trees). The final line, the punchline, is in dimeter, lending emphasis to the exclamatory word 'Rose!'
     

Frequently the woods are pink —

Frequently the woods are pink —
Frequently are brown.
Frequently the hills undress
Behind my native town.
Oft a head is crested
I was wont to see —
And as oft a cranny
Where it used to be —
And the Earth — they tell me
On it's Axis turned!
Wonderful Rotation —
By but twelve performed!
                                                              J6,  Fr 24 (1858)

Dickinson catalogs the seasons here: the pink woods of spring, the brown of winter, the gradual undressing of leaves and flowers of fall, and the fully crested trees of summer (contrasted with the more bare branches--a cranny--of winter). She playfully anthropomorphises them, with the hills shyly undressing behind town and with trees boasting a full crest of hair.
    In the last line she pointedly italicizes "twelve," drawing our attention to it. Literally, she is saying, Look how economical and marvelous it is to have such changes all transpire within a twelve-month rotation of the earth. But she and her peers would have recognized twelve as the number of Christ's disciples who, after the crucifixion went about performing miracles. They healed the sick, typically. The implied contrast is decidedly in favor of Nature.
     All but one line are written in trochees which gives the poem a lovely positive emphasis. The three repetitions of "Frequently" that begin the poem give an almost perky sound with their long 'free' sounds, and this contributes to the playful tone. 

In the name of the Bee –

In the name of the Bee –
And of the Butterfly –
And of the Breeze – Amen!
                                                                       - Fr 23 (1858)

* Included as part of J18 (Fr21)

Most people who have attended Christian services are familiar with this Trinitarian formula first recorded as uttered by Jesus (Matthew 28:16): "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit". From this springs the notion of the Holy Trinity--a triple godhead but with three distinct manifestations. The formulation is not only used in baptism but in prayers, liturgies, and perhaps most familiarly uttered when making the sign of the cross.

Holy Pollination
from Fiskars.com

     Dickinson is utterly pagan here, establishing her church of nature not just with the 'aged Bee' who addressed the mourners in Fr 22, but re-imagining the Trinity in what was around her every day. It's a playful bit but clearly thought out: the Bee would represent the Father--the one who pollinates and gives life and knows every flower. The Butterfly, like the Son, is transfigured from the caterpillar and cocoon to rise into the air a beautiful and transcendent thing. And the Breeze, like the Holy Spirit, is ethereal, invisibly moving all that it touches.
     The alliteration and slant rhyme of Bee and Breeze unify the poem and the four anapests--two in the first line and one each in the subsequent ones move it along briskly. The spondee of the 'Amen!' at the end punctuates the poem with conviction. All in all, a delight!

A brief, but patient illness—

A brief, but patient illness—
An hour to prepare,
And one below this morning
Is where the angels are—
It was a short procession,
The Bobolink was there—
An aged Bee addressed us—
And then we knelt in prayer—
We trust that she was willing—
We ask that we may be.
Summer—Sister—Seraph!
Let us go with thee!
                                                             - Fr 22 (1858)

* Included as part of J18 (Fr21)

This poem plus the three line doxology of Franklin's number 23 are often considered as one poem. A brief spate of searching did not turn up any answers as to why Franklin presents them as three separate poems. I'm going to have to get the three-volume Variorum edition where all is explained....

     Anyway, I like examining this section on its own without having to work the gentian of Poem 21 in.
   I read this as a brief, light-hearted elegy to summer. She had a brief illness--presumably early fall or late summer when the leaves first start to turn, but then a sudden frost put an end to it. The gardener has only a brief time to go protect the delicate plants. 
     It's unclear to me what 'one below this morning' refers to: temperature? below heaven? below the earth (i.e., in a grave)? At any rate, that's where the angels are hanging. And then we have the very pretty sight of a brief funeral procession. The chattery Bobolink was there, an aged Bee (no longer flitting around, but circumspect and sober as a judge) gave the sermon, and then everyone prayed. 
     Three 'S' words are listed as going where the supplicant wants to go: Summer, sister, and seraph. The summer may be all of those, particularly in a world where aged bees give sermons. In a later poem Dickinson mentions going wherever summer goes, and it does sound inviting to go there with it. 
     The poem is woven more tightly than its casual demeanor might suggest at first. There are several slant rhymes off the word 'prepare' in line two: are, there, prayer; there are numerous internal rhymes--exact and complete--that go off the 'Bee' of line 7: we / we/ she / we / we / be / thee. The effect is similar to the effect of the trebling of Summer as sister and seraph: there are key sounds that begin to resonate. And they don't intrude. The lines have so much content interest that all these rhymes almost go unnoticed.
     


NOTE: Please read comments below to find an error I made and how that makes me re-think the entire poem. Thank you to  Teri-Sue Thompson

The Gentian weaves her fringes—

The Gentian weaves her fringes—
The Maple's loom is red—
My departing blossoms
          Obviate parade.

A brief, but patient illness –
An hour to prepare,
And one below, this morning
Is where the angels are  –
It was a short procession,
The Bobolink was there –
An aged Bee addressed us –
And then we knelt in prayer –
We trust that she was willing –
We ask that we may be.
Summer – Sister – Seraph!
Let us go with thee!

In the name of the Bee –
And of the Butterfly –
And of the Breeze – Amen!
                                                                J18, Fr 21 (1858)


* Note: Franklin includes only the first stanza in Fr21.  He places the remainder of the poem in Fr22 and Fr23, breaking those two after "Let us go with thee!" I include these two versions and discussions of them separately.

Autumn colors blaze: the purple blue of the fringed gentian--which blooms its farewell to summer in September or even early November, the red and orange hues of the maple trees... It's a natural eye-pleasing parade before the leaves and blooms drop from the oncoming cold.
     But the poet's garden, and here we assume Dickinson is speaking of her own garden, is fading. The flowers are fading, plants turning brown. These 'obviate' parade--in other words, make a parade unnecessary.
     Apparently Dickinson had William Cullen Bryant's poem "To the Fringed Gentian" marked in a book of poetry. This is the penultimate stanza:


   Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
    Look through its fringes to the sky,
    Blue—blue—as if that sky let fall
    A flower from its cerulean wall.


I prefer Dickinson's gentians that weave into the Maple's red loom to Bryant's whose dainty little plants look through their lashes at the blue sky that matches their own cerulean tint.
     I also like how  Dickinson sketches a very visual picture contrasting the woods outside her gate to her own garden enclosed within.

If those I loved were lost

If those I loved were lost
The Crier's voice would tell me—
If those I loved were found
The bells of Ghent would ring—

Did those I loved repose
The Daisy would impel me.
Philip—when bewildered
Bore his riddle in! 
                                                       - F 20 (1858)


David Preest in his invaluable commentary on Dickinson poems provides the following explanation of who Philip is and what his riddle was:

Statue of van Artevelde in Ghent

Thomas Johnson, in his 1955 edition of [Dickinson's] poems, explains that Philip is Philip van Artevelde who led the men of Ghent in a successful rebellion against their overlord, the count of Flanders. But in a later battle the rebels were defeated and Philip ingloriously crushed to death in a ditch outside Ghent. In a play on this subject, a copy of which was in the Dickinson household, Philip’s last words, as he is borne towards the town, are, ‘What have I done? Why such a death? Why thus?’

The reference to Philip is set up earlier when the bells of Ghent ring when a lost loved one is found. The famous Ghent bells were rung for important events as well as to warn of war. 

    Dickinson provides three examples of a living person being made aware of the fate of loved ones: the town crier calls out for a missing person; celebratory bells ring for one found; and the daisy draws a mourner to a grave and suggests rebirth. It is difficult to see how this relates to a dying man crying out his confusion and dismay at the manner of his death. The contrast is between knowing and unknowing. The poet knows when someone is lost or found; has evidence of their repose and rebirth. Philip, however, representing those who die in situations not of their choosing, has no certainty. He carries his riddle with him, not only into the city but into death. He feels betrayed by the unfairness of the manner of his death--of the injustice of it. This makes a mockery of the poet's smug certainty that things are being handled well and that death is a 'repose' marked by the daisy.

     The difficulty of the train of thought is mirrored in the difficult 'rhymes'--indeed it is hard to recognize even a slant rhyme with me / ring and me / in. Instead, the poem hangs together by repeated passages: "If those I loved" and "Did those I loved". 

So has a Daisy vanished

So has a Daisy vanished
From the fields today—
So tiptoed many a slipper
To Paradise away—

Oozed so in crimson bubbles
Day's departing tide—
Blooming—tripping—flowing
Are ye then with God?
                                                            - F 19 (1858)


A little daisy is gone without a fuss. And so, Dickinson muses, do many souls depart this world tiptoeing away in slippers to Paradise. Surely this is the image of the meek or the poor in spirit who are to inherit the earth and the kingdom of heaven respectively, according to Jesus. 
   After likening such a quiet parting to the disappearance of a daisy, Dickinson then likens it to a sunset. But to me the imagery becomes a bit ghastly. The sunset oozes in crimson bubbles like a gurgling wound. The life flows out like a tide. The three gerunds in line seven chart the course of life for daisy or gentle soul: the live, active time; the tripping and tiptoeing into death; and flowing into Paradise. "Flowing" indicates a transformation--it is no longer a flesh-and-blood person or even a flowering plant. A transformation has occurred from the physical to the spiritual. 
     "Flowing" sounds a lot more spiritual than 'oozing'--the word used just two lines earlier. But Dickinson chose that word for a reason. Life may not always flow right away; at first it may have to be squeezed out of its frame.
     And is the soul with God? The question is unanswered, although seemingly implied by the confidence earlier that the slippers have tiptoed off to Paradise. 
   The poem reminds me slightly of Whitman's references to effusion. Here the body effuses itself at death, oozing and flowing to be with God. 

Morns like these—we parted—

Morns like these—we parted—
Noons like these—she rose—
Fluttering first—then firmer
To her fair repose.

Never did she lisp it—
It was not for me—
She—was mute from transport—
I—from agony—

Till—the evening nearing
One the curtains drew—
Quick! A Sharper rustling!
And this linnet flew!
                                                     - F18 (1858)


Dickinson was sometimes called upon to sit at bedsides, often of women who were dying and then at their deathbed. It would not be considered appropriate for a person to die or lie in death unattended, so often friends and family would take turns. Emily wrote in a later poem that she liked 'a look of Agony, / Because I know it's true," From this and other poems and sources we know she was a close observer of death.
     Here she recounts the death of a woman that took place in late morning--an ordinary morning "like these". By noon the woman was on her way to "repose"--whether Dickinson means the rest of the tomb or the rest in Paradise she doesn't say. But the woman never seems to have lost composure, never had to "lisp" or stutter out her pain or fear. Instead, she was silent--in a state of "transport," a word with the doubled meaning of both intense emotion and conveyance. The poet was silent, too, but because of the agony of watching the woman die.
     Later in the day, however, the soul departs, rustling through the newly-drawn curtains. When Dickinson says "And this linnet flew!" it is a cry of joy on behalf of the soul. Linnets were caged song birds popular in Dickinson's day and referenced in the poems of Tennyson and Wordsworth. So the final image is that of a caged bird flying to freedom.
    As in many of Dickinson's poems, the point of this is transformation, particularly of the soul. The choice of a bird is conventional as birds have long symbolized the spirit. 

It's all I have to bring today—

It's all I have to bring today—
This, and my heart beside—
This, and my heart, and all the fields—
And all the meadows wide—
Be sure you count—should I forget
Some one the sum could tell—
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell. 
                                                                       - F 17 (1858)


I find this simple poem quite lovely. Structurally it's simple: hymn / ballad style of alternating tetrameter and trimeter and A B C B rhyme. Within that Dickinson does a couple of neat things. The end rhymes 'tell' and 'dwell' are enhanced by four repetitions of 'all.' This unifies the poem even beyond the three key repetitions of 'This, and my heart.'  'This, and'  is a trochee, versus the strictly iambic meter of the rest of the poem. The spoken emphasis on 'This' underscores it, and the following iamb emphasises 'heart.'  The 'this' and the heart are the most important offerings the poet brings.
     I'd like to think of the 'This' as this poem. It might also be a flower or some other small token. And perhaps it might mean her body in addition to her heart: 'All I have to bring you today is my body and my heart.' 

New England landscape
blogs.middlebury.edu/trailrunner/2009/07/

     But if we think of the gift as a poem, we have Dickinson's awareness of poetic reality: a poem embeds and encompasses a heart, fields and meadows, and even busy bees. Think of Marianne Moore's poem insisting true poems have 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them.' I think that is what Dickinson is getting at here. Platonic – ideal – bees and meadows are called into being by the poem and thereby delivered to the recipient. 
     Dickinson emphasizes her heart as well. 'I give you this poem and my heart. With them you also get fields, meadows, and bees in the clover.' As usual, Dickinson looks to nature for what is of deep value. She will not elevate a concert or building or human achievement by including them in the list of she gives to a loved one.
     The poem has a feather-light touch, however. It begins with an ironic statement: 'all' she brings is her heart and an important chunk of the natural world. 'Be sure you count,' she teases. It's a light-hearted way of saying 'look how much I love you.' 

The feet of people walking home

The feet of people walking home
With gayer sandals go—
The Crocus— til she rises
The Vassal of the snow—

The lips at Hallelujah
Long years of practise bore
Til bye and bye these Bargemen
Walked singing on the shore.

Pearls are the Diver's farthings
Extorted from the Sea—
Pinions— the Seraph's wagon
Pedestrian once— as we—

Night is the morning's Canvas
Larceny— legacy—
Death, but our rapt attention
To Immortality.

My figures fail to tell me
How far the Village lies—
Whose peasants are the Angels—
Whose Cantons dot the skies—
My Classics veil their faces—
My faith that Dark adores—
Which from its solemn abbeys
Such resurrection pours.
                                                           J7, Fr 16 (1858

Dickinson parades epigrams here -- two in the first stanza, two in the third, three in the fourth. Each reveals a transforming emergence or energy: gayer sandals on the way home, the crocus emerging from the vassalage of snow into its early spring flowering, pearls from the ocean become wealth, pedestrian seraphs now carried by their wings, night becomes a dawn painting, wealth from larceny becomes inheritance, death a portal to immortality.
     The "Larceny--legacy" epigram is particularly concise and clever. And I like the image of night as 'morning's Canvas.' The turning point comes with Death introduced as 'our rapt attention / to Immortality.'  I'm not sure that particular epigram holds up to close scrutiny, but it closes the list and turns our attention to the afterlife -- Paradise -- that is the transformation Dickinson argues comes from faith. 
     She doesn't know where Paradise is, "How far the Village lies," and classic texts aren't any help, either. Instead, her faith is concentrated in "that Dark" unknown. In fact, her faith 'adores' the mystery, the unknowableness--the Dark. And the final transformation is presented in the very last lines: from the unfathomed Dark that lies beyond our intellectual ability to know, comes a new and transformed life. That is the essence of faith--to trust in that paradisical Village despite the Dark. The closest analogy is with night: in its darkness lie the clouds and sky and mountains that are transformed into living colors once dawn has come.  
     The parallels of night / death and dawn / resurrection are common enough. What I think makes this poem interesting is the light and clever tone that pivots into a declaration of faith phrased as adoration of  the potentiality of Dark.