Tag: Biblical reference

Immortal copy

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BELSHAZZAR had a letter,—
He never had but one;
Belshazzar’s correspondent
Concluded and begun

In that immortal copy 5
The conscience of us all
Can read without its glasses
On revelation’s wall.

~Emily Dickinson

I don’t know how much I’m going to be able to say about this one. Ironically–or fittingly?–the internet keeps cutting out here. My words are liable to be sparse and cryptic.

Belshazzar’s “letter,” in the Bible, is the source of the phrase, “the writing on the wall.” Mysterious writing appears on a wall during the king’s feast, and the prophet Daniel interprets it as a sign of doom should the king not do as his predecessor did and turn to God. Belshazzar rewards Daniel but apparently does nothing else, and that night dies, losing control of his kingdom to outside forces.

I’ve avoided this poem for a long time because I didn’t know quite what to make of it, but I think maybe I’ve been overthinking it. Belshazzar received word that he needed to change. We all get these messages, loud and clear, whether from invisible divine hands or other more prosaic sources. They’re glaringly obvious, to our consciences, at least. What we do with them is up to us.

Belshazzar’s Feast, Rembrandt, via Wikipedia.

To meme or not to meme?

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We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies.


The heroism we recite
Would be a daily thing,
Did not ourselves the cubits warp
For fear to be a king.

~Emily Dickinson

A cursory internet search suggests that this may be one of the most often-memed Emily Dickinson poems. This bemuses me because I’m not sure the poem is really so meme-able–it strikes me on first reading as one that sounds like an easy aphorism but holds much more than it appears to, like the enchanted tent the Weasleys use at the Quidditch World Cup.

The first stanza is the straightforward one. We never know what heights we can achieve until we are asked or forced to attain them–we can’t know our true potential until we achieve it, and in that moment, if all goes well, we are nearly limitless. We can achieve great things. So far, extremely meme-able.

But the second stanza complicates things. The general sense of it seems to be that we get in our own ways, that it’s our fear of success that prevents us from succeeding. But what is “the heroism we recite”? Is she talking about the heroic deeds of others that we recount, thinking we will never achieve such greatness? Is she saying that we talk big but don’t deliver? I’m not sure how to read this line.

And what are the cubits about? She’s reverting to old Biblical measurements–but why? For the meter alone? Or as a sly allusion to the heroes of the past, who will always seem higher than ourselves? We “warp” the cubits because we are afraid “to be a king.” Are we afraid of greatness itself? Of power? Of the responsibility success brings?

There’s so much packed into this tiny poem–so many interpretive possibilities. It may look like an easy meme about success on the surface–Don’t get in your own way! Do the thing! You are awesome!–but there’s a lot more going on beneath the surface.

Can we meme poetry? What does this do to it, to our experience of it? To transmogrify a poem into a meme is to encapsulate it, to package it for quick consumption, to suggest that what it contains is easily digestible in one quick gulp. But that feels to me like the exact opposite of what poetry is, what it is meant to do. What do you think?

Prompt: Loyalty

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SPLIT the lark and you’ll find the music,
Bulb after bulb, in silver rolled,
Scantily dealt to the summer morning,
Saved for your ears when lutes be old.

Loose the flood, you shall find it patent,
Gush after gush, reserved for you;
Scarlet experiment! sceptic Thomas,
Now, do you doubt that your bird was true?

Emily Dickinson

Continuing in the fashion of is-this-a-love-poem poems: is this a love poem? It seems more like an I-told-you-so poem. The speaker is telling an unnamed person that music can be found inside a lark, if you split it open. The music is described beautifully–“bulb after bulb, in silver rolled”–and it persists in memory even after the lark is gone. Consider, too, what happens if we unleash a flood: it does what floods do! It floods!

The speaker then closes with an address, referring to the unnamed as a “sceptic Thomas”–slightly off from the usual “doubting Thomas” that I’m used to hearing, but the meaning is the same. Thomas, who refused to believe that the risen Jesus was, in fact, the risen Jesus, until he could feel the wounds from the cross, inspires the narrator’s own doubter: where does the lark’s music really come from? What happens if I open this dam and let the water out?

The speaker in this poem is, I believe, the lark, but that’s a discussion for another day. What I find far more interesting is the idea of questioning how a thing works, and then destroying it to find its source: and, of course, losing the thing in the process.

For today’s prompt, consider some natural phenomenon that seems magical, and which you might be able to slice through to suss out its mysteries. What happens then? What do you learn, or keep, or not?