762.1863.Promise This – When You be Dying –
Franklin’s (1999) Reading Version.
ED’s alternate words (in parentheses).
Promise This – When You be Dying –
Some shall (Some one) summon Me –
Mine belong Your latest Sighing –
Mine – to Belt Your Eye –
Not with Coins – though they be Minted
From An Emperor’s Hand –
Be my lips – the only Buckle
Your low (meek -) Eyes – demand-
Mine to stay – when all have wandered –
To devise once more
If the Life be too surrendered –
Life of Mine – restore –
Poured like this – My Whole (best) Libation –
Just that You should see
Bliss of Death – Life’s Bliss extol thro’
Imitating You –
Mine – to guard Your Narrow Precinct –
To seduce (entice – • persuade) the Sun
Longest (Latest) on Your South, to linger,
Largest (newest – • freshest) Dews of Morn
To demand, in Your low favor –
Lest the Jealous Grass
Greener lean – Or fonder cluster (later linger)
Round some other face –
Mine to supplicate Madonna –
If Madonna be
Could behold (regard) so far (small – dim) a Creature –
Christ – omitted -Me –
EDLex defines Madonna as Mary, a “holy woman who serves as an intermediary between humanity and Jesus Christ.” The speaker isn’t sure if Madonna exists, but if she does,
“Could [she intercede for] so (small) a Creature –
[Because] Christ – omitted – Me [from Heaven] -”
Johnson (1955) had this to say about ED’s manuscript:
“Unless the suggested changes be entirely ignored the poem remains so unfinished that ED’s final intent is beyond editorial construction. All suggested changes are written at the end of the poem and occupy two-thirds of a page. They are not in sequence and it may be questioned whether the choices here editorially sorted out have been given their correct association in every instance.”
Preest (2014) offers this explication. [Brackets] mine:
“In poem [J]622 [F688] Emily had eagerly asked for details of some unnamed person’s deathbed. In this poem she asks her beloved to promise that he will have herself summoned to his deathbed as the chief mourner.
“She wants to be the one who hears his last sigh and closes his eyes, though with her lips and not with the coins put on the eyes of the dead.
“She wants to stay when all else have gone, to see if she can restore him to life.
“She would pour herself out in weeping for him, so that he would see her praising him by pouring out her life’s bliss for him, just as he had poured out his lifeblood in death’s bliss.”
ED’s presumptuous imperative, “Promise this – when you be dying [in San Francisco] / You’ll send someone – to summon me”, without hint of grief, sounds me-centered. Ignoring Wadsworth’s wife and family, ED wants to be there when death happens because Wadsworth’s “latest sighing” [death rattle?], belongs to “Me”, “Mine”, as does the right to close his eyes, not with coins, but with my kiss.
- Franklin, R.W. 1999. The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.
- Preest, David. 2014. ‘Emily Dickinson: Notes on All Her Poems’. 672 pp. [For Preest’s entire PDF of 1775 commentaries (Johnson 1955) free of charge, go to:
https://studylib.net/download/8773657
Click “Not a Robot”, and download PDF. - Dickinson, Emily. Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them . Harvard University Press.
- Johnson, T.H., ed., 1955 The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Little, Brown and Co.
Adam,
If ED had used one alternative word or phrase at each of her indicated locations, how would you change your explication? (Parentheses above; where choice, you choose)
LarryB
Great question. In almost every case I think the alternative is not as good, and could give a reason why I think so. It’s almost like the alternatives were the first thought, and the chosen word is the more rich possibility. Like “Low” instead of “meek.” Low has much more range of meaning to me than meek. Or “seduce” instead of “entice,” which spins the poem more toward the sensual. To entice the sun is still good, but to seduce the sun is great.
The one alternative I would keep is “later linger,” which strikes me as better than “fonder cluster,” just because of the feeling that it evokes attachment, and that “l” alliteration would give it some lilt.
I assume she changed it because she used “linger” in the previous stanza?
Thanks for noting the additions. It is always so fascinating to me to watch her process.
In retrospect, I concur with all your choices. Ya gotta love the “lilt” in
“Greener lean – Or later linger”.
But then, just for fun, how could ED have reworded Stanza 6 to avoid repetition of “linger” in Stanza 7?
The sound and sense of “loiter” fit perfectly; she wants the “Jealous Grass” and “Sun” to “Greener lean – Or later loiter” over her lover’s face, not “some other”. Loiter usually includes a negative connotation of aimlessness, but that’s fine with ED:
“Mine – to guard Your Narrow Precinct –
To seduce the Sun
Longest on Your South, to loiter,
Largest Dews of Morn
To demand, in Your low favor –
Lest the Jealous Grass
Greener lean – Or later linger
Round some other face –”
Something tells me ED thought of “loiter” and rejected it for a good reason, but, like Scarlet in ‘Gone with the Wind’, “I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow”.
loiter is a good call. and a nice slant rhyme with later.