My country need not change her gown,
Her triple suit as sweet
As when ’t was cut at Lexington,
And first pronounced “a fit.”Great Britain disapproves “the stars”; Disparagement discreet,—
~Emily Dickinson
There ’s something in their attitude
That taunts her bayonet.
Happy Independence Day!
She laid her docile crescent down,
And this mechanic stone
Still states, to dates that have forgot,
The news that she is gone.So constant to its stolid trust,
~Emily Dickinson
The shaft that never knew,
It shames the constancy that fled
Before its emblem flew.
During my family’s vacation, we visited the Wright Brothers Memorial in North Carolina. It’s a well-designed monument–it sweeps upward from the crest of a hill, evoking the idea of flight–but I’m still struck by our human need to memorialize that which is fleeting in nearly immortal stone. There is a strange contrast between the seeming weightlessness of flight and the tons of rock we use to commemorate it, the weightlessness of the human soul and the stones we erect when it has fled. Heaviness in an attempt to pin down something that won’t be pinned down, that will not stay. Permanence to mark the passing of something that could never last forever. We find ways to ensure the remembrance of our own mortality.
The monument I visited is a different thing from the tombstone Dickinson evokes, but they have this in common–their underscoring of the ways in which we humans try to immortalize the mortal, to make permanent that which cannot last.
The Daisy follows soft the Sun
And when his golden walk is done
Sits shyly at his feet
He—waking—finds the flower there
Wherefore—Marauder—art thou here?
Because, Sir, love is sweet!We are the Flower—Thou the Sun!
Emily Dickinson
Forgive us, if as days decline
We nearer steal to Thee!
Enamored of the parting West
The peace—the flight—the Amethyst
Night’s possibility!
Brenna:
It’s a charming poem. I love the imagery–the shy daisy (who’s nevertheless bold enough to address the sun/God). The “parting west” bit at the end calls to mind Frodo and Sam and the Grey Havens.
The part that mystifies me is the sun’s response to the daisy. “Marauder”? How is the daisy a marauder? Isn’t that what the sun/God wants–for the daisy to turn toward it? It’s a strange choice of words, especially for a humble little daisy described as “shy.” So that’s the part I don’t know what to do with. Is the sun teasing the daisy, or is it serious?
There also seems to be a message in here about the tendency of human nature to turn toward faith at the end of life and/or in times of difficulty rather than from the get-go, rather than consistently being faithful all along.
Another weird thing–why is the sun waking “when his golden walk is done”? Is it just me, or does that make zero sense??
Pam: The marauder bit is odd, isn’t it? This is something you’d say to somebody who’s stealing from you–somebody with malicious intent. This is a daisy, Mr. Sun! I suppose there is a transaction in their relationship, with the flower making use of sunlight, but it’s not like the daisy is some dastardly character who intends to defraud the sun.
I’m wondering if this poem is, at least partly, a play on movement. Maybe the daisy following the sun is growing taller; when it falls to lie at the sun’s feet, it could be drooping, the way some flowers do when the sun goes down? Or maybe the poor daisy just needs a drink.
I love the idea that the daisy wants to get closer to the sun to get at Night, that follows after–as you’ve mentioned in the idea of humans clinging to faith later in life. It’s a neat little conundrum we’re given: to get closer to night, you have to get closer to day.
This poem has left us with more questions than answers, hasn’t it?
Sweet is the swamp with its secrets,
~Emily Dickinson
Until we meet a snake;
’T is then we sigh for houses,
And our departure take
At that enthralling gallop
That only childhood knows.
A snake is summer’s treason,
And guile is where it goes.
Nothing in this world is perfect, not even the most idyllic summer’s day. For the speaker in Dickinson’s poem, a snake can spoil that perfection instantly, souring the sweetness of the mysterious swamp for the intrepid child probing its depths.
What, for you, is summer’s treason? Is it the ubiquitous picnic-ants? The mosquitoes? The heat? Write a short poem in which you describe the subject of your summer loathing.
Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea,—
Past the houses, past the headlands,
Into deep eternity!Bred as we, among the mountains,
~Emily Dickinson
Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication
Of the first league out from land?
First things first–mad props to Pam, who has been blogging solo this past week so that I could go to the beach without lugging my laptop along.
The beach, for me is really about the ocean, and this is probably my very favorite of Dickinson’s poems because it so purely and perfectly captures the essence of the wonder we landlubbers feel at the sight, sound, smell of the sea. Of course, we don’t all feel it. One of my grad school friends, born and bred in Kansas, said she hated the ocean. I have other friends who detest sand with such an incandescent loathing that they can’t enjoy the beach. But for us landlocked mermaids, the first glimpse of the sea is truly a divine intoxication.
During our vacation, my husband read a book about Highway 12, which links the Outer Banks. The author writes that
The Banks themselves, which stand as a barricade to the Atlantic, are composed of tiny bits of stone chiseled by time and weather from the faraway Blue Ridge Mountains. Carried to the location by rivers through the ages, these granules of quartz and feldspar are mixed there with the shattered remnants of shells of countless departed sea creatures whose only proof of existence lies in the blended residue called sand.
~Dawson Carr, NC 12: Gateway to the Outer Banks
Maybe this explains why I have always been drawn to this place, why it feels as much like home as the place of my birth. Bred among the Blue Ridge Mountains, maybe something deep within me recognizes that these barrier islands are relocated pieces of home.
Summer for thee grant I may be
When summer days are flown!
Thy music still when whippoorwill
And oriole are done!For thee to bloom, I ’ll skip the tomb
~Emily Dickinson
And sow my blossoms o’er!
Pray gather me, Anemone,
Thy flower forevermore!
Peak Emily. A lovely little love song for summer, in which the poet cannot resist inserting the inevitability of death. Happy reading!
NATURE, the gentlest mother,
Impatient of no child,
The feeblest or the waywardest,–
Her admonition mildIn forest and the hill
By traveller is heard,
Restraining rampant squirrel
Or too impetuous bird.How fair her conversation,
A summer afternoon,–
Her household, her assembly;
And when the sun goes downHer voice among the aisles
Incites the timid prayer
Of the minutest cricket,
The most unworthy flower.When all the children sleep
She turns as long away
As will suffice to light her lamps;
Then, bending from the sky,With infinite affection
And infiniter care,
Her golden finger on her lip,
Wills silence everywhere.
An unworthy flower thanks the gentlest mother. Today, find something beautiful, and thank whoever needs thanking.
The one that could repeat the summer day
~Emily Dickinson
Were greater than itself, though he Minutest of mankind might be.
And who could reproduce the sun,
At period of going down—
The lingering and the stain, I mean—
When Orient has been outgrown,
And Occident becomes unknown,
His name remain.
What a feat it would be–to repeat a summer day. To do so would be to command time, to seize it, slow it, make it stop and circle back. These warm indolent days of summer can seem at once eternal and all too fleeting. Dickinson imagines the power of the person who could achieve this feat–capturing the fleeting beauty at its peak.
Your prompt–following Dickinson’s example, write a short poem in which you imagine an impossible power and its use.
Who never wanted,—maddest joy
Remains to him unknown;
The banquet of abstemiousness
Surpasses that of wine.Within its hope, though yet ungrasped Desire’s perfect goal,
~Emily Dickinson
No nearer, lest reality
Should disenthrall thy soul.
I am firmly in the Emily Dickinson camp on this issue–anticipation is better than actuality. The maddest joy comes not in the moment of realizing a happiness, but in the hope for it. What do you think?
Who has not found the heaven below
~Emily Dickinson
Will fail of it above.
God’s residence is next to mine,
His furniture is love.
Dickinson often seems to be dancing on or just over the edge of blasphemy. Heaven on earth? God’s residence here, among us? Yet there’s a lot of food for thought here, and in some ways the thrust of this poem is theologically extremely sound. We must make the world we wish for, and if heaven is our aspiration, well, that means we have our work cut out for us. If we don’t find heaven now, will we ever? And if we don’t recognize the divine in the midst of the profane, how will we ever recognize it at all?
The Emily Project 