895.1865.Further in Summer than the Birds –
Further in Summer than the Birds –
Pathetic from the Grass –
A Minor Nation celebrates
It’s unobtrusive Mass –
No Ordinance be seen –
So gradual the Grace
A pensive [gentle} Custom it becomes
Enlarging Loneliness –
‘Tis Antiquer {Antiquest}, at Dusk –
When Day’s attempt is done –
And Nature nothing waits to do
But terminate in Tune –
Nor difference it knows
Of Cadence, or of Pause –
Yet {But} simultaneous as Same –
The Service emphacize –
Nor know I when it cease –
At Candles, it is here –
When Sunrise is – that it is not –
Than this, I know no more –
The Earth has many keys –
Where Melody is not
Is the Unknown Peninsula –
Beauty – is Nature’s Fact –
But Witness for Her Land –
And Witness for Her Sea –
The Cricket is Her utmost
Of Elegy, to Me –
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My interpretation of ‘895.1865.Further in Summer than the Birds –‘:
Stanza 1.
Further in Summer than the Birds –
Pathetic from the Grass –
A Minor Nation celebrates
It’s unobtrusive Mass –
S1
In summer after the birds have stopped singing, a new chorus begins from the grass. A less visible but abundant nation of crickets sings its late-summer chants.
Stanza 2.
No Ordinance be seen –
So gradual the Grace
A pensive Custom it becomes
Enlarging Loneliness –
S2.
There is no religious ritual seen, but the chorus gradually begins its annual ceremony, which makes me feel lonely.
Stanza 3.
‘Tis Audiblest, at Dusk –
When Day’s attempt is done –
And Nature nothing waits to do
But terminate in Tune –
S3.
The singing is loudest at dusk, when day is done and nature has nothing to do but terminate in tune.
Stanza 4
Nor difference it knows
Of Cadence, or of Pause –
But simultaneous as Same –
The Service emphacize –
S4.
The chorus is a monotone without rhythm or pause. The performance seems to include all crickets, as if emphasizing their solidarity.
Stanza 5,
Nor know I when it cease –
At Candles, it is here –
When Sunrise is – that it is not –
Than this, I know no more –
S5.
I don’t know when the chorus stops. It’s here when I go to bed but not in the morning when I wake.
Stanza 6
The Earth has many keys –
Where Melody is not
Is the Unknown Peninsula –
Beauty – is Nature’s Fact –
S6
The Earth has many keys, like a piano, but some keys make no sound when struck. Instead, they play the silent songs of the soul, inaudible but real, and they are beautiful.
Stanza 7.
But Witness for Her Land –
And Witness for Her Sea –
The Cricket is Her utmost
Of Elegy, to Me –
S7
I witness the beauty of both land and sea, but a full-throated cricket chorus is elegy enough for me.
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Same interpretation in three paragraphs:
In summer after the birds have stopped singing, a new chorus begins from the grass. A less visible but abundant nation of crickets sings its late-summer chants. There is no religious ritual seen, but the chorus gradually begins its annual ceremony, which makes me feel lonely.
The singing is loudest at dusk, when day is done and nature has nothing to do but terminate in tune. The chorus is a monotone without rhythm or pause. The performance seems to include all crickets, as if emphasizing their solidarity. I don’t know when the chorus stops. It’s here when I go to bed but not in the morning when I wake.
The Earth has many keys, like a piano, but some keys make no sound when struck. Instead, they play the silent songs of the soul, inaudible but real, and they are beautiful. I witness the beauty of both land and sea, but a full-throated cricket chorus is elegy enough for me.
…………………………………………………………………….
ED’s first variant of ‘Further in Summer than the Birds’, Variant A in Franklin’s 1998 ‘Variorum’, has seven stanzas and is often referred to as ‘The Vanderbilt Variant’. There are five other variants and three alternate words: in Line 7 (pensive → gentle), Line 9 (antiquer → antiquest), L:ine 15 (yet → but). I prefer all her alternate words, as did ED, who used them in her final four-stanza Variant F (1883).
In 1865, ED sent the poem to Gertrude Vanderbilt, a college friend of Susan Dickinson, and a copy to her cousins in Boston. In 1986, exactly 100 years after ED’s death, the Vanderbilt Variant was found in the Special Collections Room of Scripps College Library, Claremont, California.
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