763.1863.I had no time to Hate

I had no time to Hate—
Because The Grave would hinder Me—
And life was not so
Ample I
Could finish—Enmity

Nor had I time to Love—
But since
Some Industry must be—
The little Toil of Love—
I thought
Be large enough for Me—

‘I had no time to Hate’ seems a strange poem. ED was 32, past her prime, prone to illness, and slim prospects of reaching three score and ten. The two human loves of her life had failed: intimacy with Sue was just a memory, and Wadsworth had moved to San Francisco.

Stanza 1 leaves us hopeful because she knew life was too short for hate or enmity, so how can she make the remainder of her life meaningful?

In Stanza 2, ED realizes there is a way to make her life fulfilling. If she couldn’t find meaning in human love, she could at least give herself a “little Toil of Love”: creating poetry.

More than 100 poems earlier, ED had said much the same in Fr602 (Stanza 2):

“When Choice of Life — is past —
There yet remains a Love
Its little Fate to stipulate”

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After commenting on Poems 1-763 (Franklin) on The Prowling Bee’, I am convinced that (virtually) all of Emily Dickinson’s (ED’s) poems have a factual historical level in addition to their various poetic levels of meaning. The reason for her instant and continuing public adulation (1890 - present) was and is, by far, poetic. She is one of the "Greats" that she always dreamed to be, despite her lifelong refusal to publish. That refusal freed her from criticism and allowed her to explore the outer boundaries of poetic power.

More than a century of scholarly research has resulted in somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 books and published academic papers about ED. A large majority of these publications focus only on the “poetic levels” of one or more of ED’s poems. Publications that consider both the “historic level” and “poetic levels” comprise a small minority. Publications that focus only on the factual history of her life probably number less than 100. (All numbers in this paragraph are my estimates.)

Unfortunately for ED’s universe of readers, these two basic levels (historical and poetic) cannot be separated into two ivory towers. Every history-level publication that I know of includes at least some discussion of the poetic level(s).

The reverse is not true. In fact, authors of the “poetry-level” school seem to avoid commenting on the historical level, sometimes admonishing that a poem must stand on its own, without concern for its historical roots. To my knowledge, there are (virtually) no published “history-level” books or articles that totally ignore ED’s poems and their poetic levels.

Of course, ED’s refusal to publish her poems was only possible because of lifelong financial and daily social/housekeeping support by her family, especially her father and sister, respectively. In addition, throughout her life, the Dickinsons hired servants, first Negro and later Irish, some of whom became much more than housekeepers for ED.

My point is that our appreciation of ED's poems can be enhanced by understanding both poetic and historical levels of her sound and sense. We impoverish ourselves if we ignore their historical base.