Year: 2025

I meant to have but modest needs —
Such as Content — and Heaven —
Within my income — these could lie
And Life and I — keep even —

 

But since the last — included both —
It would suffice my Prayer
But just for One — to stipulate —
And Grace would grant the Pair —

 

And so — upon this wise — I prayed —
Great Spirit — Give to me
A Heaven not so large as Yours,
But large enough — for me —

 

A Smile suffused Jehovah’s face —
The Cherubim — withdrew —
Grave Saints stole out to look at me —
And showed their dimples — too —

 

I left the Place, with all my might —
I threw my Prayer away —
The Quiet Ages picked it up —
And Judgment — twinkled — too —
That one so honest — be extant —
It take the Tale for true —
That “Whatsoever Ye shall ask —
Itself be given You” —

 

But I, grown shrewder — scan the Skies
With a suspicious Air —
As Children — swindled for the first
All Swindlers — be — infer —

 

An interpretation

Stanza 1

The poet imagines a perfect plan for the remainder of her life: contentment “within her income” and “Heaven”, which for her would be continued correspondence with Charles Wadsworth living in Philadelphia, close enough for him to occasionally visit, as he did in 1860 and possibly 1861.

Stanza 2

On second thought, she deletes “Content” from her “Prayer”, because if she had “Heaven” as described, she would be content. And she could have that Heaven if just one person, Wadsworth, would so “stipulate”, “And Grace would grant the Pair –”, both contentment and Heaven.

Stanza 3

She asks little in her “Prayer”, and she asks in an endearing way:

“Great Spirit -Give to me
A Heaven not so large as Yours,
But large enough -for me –”

Stanza 4 [brackets mine]

“A [paternalistic] Smile suffused Jehovah’s face –
The Cherubim [young angels attending God]-withdrew –
Grave Saints [Severe old men] stole out to look at me –
And showed their dimples – too –” [also smiled in amusement]

Stanza 5 [brackets mine]

Disgusted by Heaven’s pseudo-smile paternalism, ED stormed out of “the Place – with all my might –” and “threw my Prayer away -”. For ages Christian readers “picked it up” and read her prayer approvingly. Even St Peter at the pearly gates “twinkled” with approval because there had been one living person so honest [gullible] that she took “the Tale for true -”

Stanza 6

“The Tale”, told twice, in Matthew 21: 21-22 & John 14: 12-14, was:

“Whatsoever Ye shall ask –
Itself be given You” –

As a child ED believed that promise lock, stock, and barrel, but when her prayers went unanswered, she grew skeptical of Resurrection, Heaven, and the Judeo-Christian God, and, like a swindled child, now infers all such promisers are swindlers, including God and Wadsworth.

Matthew 21:21-22:

21: Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.
22: And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.

John 14: 12-14:

12. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.
13. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

Biographic History of Emily Dickinson and Reverend Charles Wadsworth

While visiting a friend in Philadelphia in March1855, ED, age 24, heard Rev. Wadsworth deliver a sermon at his church, Arch Street Presbyterian. Apparently, Wadsworth’s sermon, and his deep voice, lit an emotional and intellectual fire in ED that resulted in a two-way correspondence and an 1860 visit by Wadsworth to her home in Amherst. That sermon, their correspondence, and his visit may help explain ED’s manic burst of productivity during the next five years, 1861-1865: a total of 937 poems, more than half her oeuvre of 1789 poems in 37 years of composition, 1850-1886.

Before ED’s death in 1886, she asked her sister, Vinnie, to burn all her correspondence. Vinnie complied except for one undated letter from Wadsworth to ED and three drafts of letters from ED to “Master”. His letter to her probably predates his first visit to Amherst because he misspells her name in its salutation and his stationary bears a monogram he stopped using in 1862:

“My Dear Miss Dickenson [sic] —

I am distressed beyond measure at your note, received this moment, — I can only imagine the affliction which has befallen, or is now befalling you.

Believe me, be what it may, you have all my sympathy, and my constant, earnest prayers.

I am very, very anxious to learn more definitely of your trial — and though I have no right to intrude upon your sorrow yet I beg you to write me, though it be but a word.

In great haste
Sincerely and most
Affectionately Yours —”

Wadsworth underlined the word, “Yours”, but did not sign the letter.

The tone of his letter is sincere ministerial concern for her, but given ED ‘s attraction to him, how did she interpret that underlined “Yours”? Why Wadsworth suddenly resigned his Philadelphia position in early 1862 and moved to San Francisco and how that personally affected ED’s life begs explanation.

Wadsworth’s charismatic sermons had filled Arch Street Presbyterian pews since his arrival in 1850, but his belief that the Bible condoned slavery did not sit well with his mostly anti-slavery congregation. When the Civil War began in April 1861, Wadsworth stood firmly for preserving the United States as one nation and thus sided with the Union in his sermons, but that didn’t satisfy his anti-slavery congregation. Friction followed, and he resigned his position at Arch Street Presbyterian in early 1862.

Simultaneously, in San Francisco, the struggling congregation of the 10-year-old Calvary Presbyterian Church grew increasingly dissatisfied with their Reverend William Scott, who supported both slavery and secession of slave states in his sermons. Threats followed. Scott resigned in July 1871 and sailed to Birmingham, England where he pastored John Street Presbyterian Church for two years.

Scott had known Wadsworth in seminary, and “After resigning in July 1861, Scott may have asked his friend to consider a call from Calvary Church as his successor; their friendship probably contributed to Wadsworth’s being chosen to replace Scott at a meeting of the congregation on 9 December 1861.” (Lease 1990). Wadsworth accepted, resigned from Arch Street Presbyterian, and moved to San Francisco in May 1862.

Apparently, in September 1861 ED learned of Wadsworth’s impending decision to move and felt terror of abandonment, which may explain her cryptic comment to Higginson in a letter dated April 28, 1862: “I had a terror – since September – I could tell to none – and so I sing, as the Boy does by the Burying Ground, because I am afraid”. At that time, ED apparently knew nothing about the real reason why Wadsworth decided to leave the east coast. (Johnson letter J-L261, Miller and Mitchell letter M&M-L338)

In her last “Calvary” poem (F1485, 1879), ED affirmed her enduring concern and now platonic love for Wadsworth in a quatrain, ‘Spurn the temerity’:

Spurn the temerity –
Rashness of Calvary –
Gay were Gethsemane
Knew we of thee –

ED Lexicon defines “Gethsemane” metaphorically as “Scene of agony; circumstance of unimaginable pain; situation of extreme anguish”, which pretty well describes ED’s mental state during 1861-1863 and perhaps longer.

If “Calvary” codes for Wadsworth and “Gethsemane” for ED, F1479 translates line by line:

“Ignore my brash boldness,
My rashness when you accepted pastorship of Calvary Presbyterian in San Francisco.
I would be gay now
If I knew how you are doing.”

It would not surprise me if she mailed this poem, F1485, to Wadsworth in 1879, though we have no hard evidence that happened. At any rate, the next year, during summer 1880, he showed up unannounced at her front door.

Wadsworth died two years later, on April 1, 1882. In August 1882 ED wrote his best friend, James Clark, asking for memories of him (L994). By pure chance, ED’s father had introduced her to James in 1859. He and his brother, Charles, lived during summers at the Clark family home in Northampton, MA, 12 miles southwest of Amherst.

Her letter speaks for itself:

“August 1882

Dear friend,

Please excuse the trespass of gratitude. My Sister [Vinnie] thinks you will accept a few words in recognition of your great kindness.

In a [sic] intimacy of many years with the beloved Clergyman, I have never before spoken with one who knew him, and his Life was so shy and his tastes so unknown, that grief for him seems almost unshared.

He was my Shepherd from “Little Girl”hood and I cannot conjecture a world without him, so noble was he always – so fathomless – so gentle. [Actually, ED was 24 when she attended his sermon, March 1855]

I saw him two years since [summer 1880] for the last time, though how unsuspected!

He rang one summer evening to my glad surprise – “Why did you not tell me you were coming, so I could have it to hope for,” I said – “Because I did not know it myself. I stepped from my Pulpit to the Train,” was his quiet reply. . . . . . He [had] spoken on a previous visit [1860] of calling upon you [James Clark], or perhaps remaining a brief time at your Home in Northampton. . . . . . . .

E Dickinson.”

James Clark died in 1883. Two years later in mid-April 1886, four weeks before her own death, ED wrote Clark’s brother, Charles, describing Wadsworth’s 1880 visit with her in Amherst (Johnson letter L1040, Miller and Mitchell letter, L1298):

“Thank you [for a previous letter], Dear friend, I am better. The velocity of the ill, however, is like that of the snail. . . . . .

I could hardly have thought it possible that the scholarly Stranger [James Clark] to whom my Father introduced me [in 1859] could have mentioned my Friend [Charles Wadsworth] . . . . .

With the exception of my Sister [Vinnie] who never saw Mr Wadsworth, your Name alone [now] remains.

Going Home” [dying], was he not an Aborigine of the sky? The last time he came in Life [summer 1880], I was with my Lilies and Heliotropes, said my sister to me, “[T]he Gentleman with the deep voice wants to see you, Emily,” hearing him ask of the servant. “Where did you come from,” I said, for he spoke like an Apparition.

“I stepped from my Pulpit to the Train” was [his] simple reply, and when I asked “how long,” “Twenty Years” [1860-1880] said he with inscrutable roguery – but [his] loved Voice has ceased, and to someone who [heard] him “Going Home,” it was sweet to speak. . . . . . Excuse me for the [my] Voice, this moment immortal. . . . .”

E Dickinson.”

1. Johnson, T.H. 1958. The Letters of Emily Dickinson
2. Lease, Benjamin, 1990, Emily Dickinson’s Readings of Men and Books
3. Miller, Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell, 2024, The Letters of Emily Dickinson

 

During her lifetime ED composed 12 “Calvary” poems:

“Calvary” Poems

Year      Fr#         “Calvary” lines
1861     194        Empress of Calvary
1862     283        The Palm -without the Calvary –
1862     325        Justified-through Calvaries of Love-
1862     347        The Queen of Calvary-
1862     398        Key of Calvary-
1862     431        In Calvary-
1863     550        In passing Calvary-
1863     652        But Calvary
1863     670        One Calvary-exhibited to Stranger
1863     686        For passing Calvary-
1863     749        Cashmere-or Calvary-the same
1879    1485       Rashness of Calvary-

Summary of Calvary poem occurrences:

Years               Time (yrs)      Poems        F#s
1850-1860             11               0              F1-F193
1861-1863              3              11             F194-F7491
1864-1978            15               0              F750-F1485
1879                        1               1              F779
1880-1886              7               0              F1486-F1789

To this World she returned.
But with a tinge of that—
A Compound manner,
As a Sod
Espoused a Violet,
That chiefer to the Skies
Than to himself, allied,
Dwelt hesitating, half of Dust,
And half of Day, the Bride.

“There are two copies, about 1864 and 1865. The earlier one, addressed “Mrs Gertrude,” was sent to Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt about September 1864. Wounded on 20 March 1864 by her maid’s rejected suitor, she had not been expected to survive. In September, when Susan Dickinson was able to write of Vanderbilt’s recovery, ED responded: “I am glad Mrs – Gertrude lived – I believed she would – Those that are worthy of Life are of Miracle, for Life is Miracle, and Death, as harmless as a Bee, except to those who run -” (Franklin 1998 Work Metadata)

“That” is one weird get-well poem.

I wonder whether Mrs. Vanderbilt had any inkling of ED’s intent, any vague idea this poem had anything to do with her being shot by an irate rejected suitor of her maid or her recovery from said shot.

Weird. Only Emily.

Soto! Explore thyself!
Therein thyself shalt find
The “Undiscovered Continent”—
No Settler, had the Mind.

We have three variants of this poem in ED’s handwriting.

About 1864, ED sent Variant A to Austin as a letter with a comma after “Mind” and her signature immediately following the comma. I think the comma at the end of this variant is simply the traditional way to close a letter, with a comma followed by a signature, e.g., “Cheers, Emily”.

Apparently, ED sent or intended to send Variant B to someone else because it also has a comma immediately after “Mind” and is signed.

Variant C is obviously for retention because it is on a page with another poem, has a period immediately after “Mind”, and is not signed.

Emily and Austin were close siblings, apparently even in matters sexual. On the evening of March 23, 1853, Susan Gilbert, Austin’s future wife, returning from a visit with a relative in Manchester, NH, spent the night with Austin at the Revere Hotel in Boston. Susan returned to Amherst on March 24 and soon told ED about her night with Austin. On March 27, ED wrote Austin a letter full of banter and hints, including the sentence, “Hope you have enjoyed the Sabbath, and sanctuary privileges – it isn’t all young men that have the preached word –“

Unfortunately, Austin’s marriage was not a bed of roses, and I suspect ‘Soto! Explore thyself!’ (F814) was ED’s answer to Austin’s marital complaints. Apparently, Austin endured his marriage until 1881 when he met Mabel Todd, wife of a new astronomer/professor at Amherst C0llege. David Todd was a womanizer who obliged his wife equal privileges.

In 1883, Austin and Mabel began a sexual relationship that lasted until his death in 1895. Both Austin and Mabel crassly kept count of their consummations in their diaries with a code, XXXX. Much to ED and Vinnie‘s chagrin, they frequently trysted at Homestead, which ED’s grandfather, Samuel Fowler Dickinson, built in 1813 and Austin, the male family heir, owned. Susan, living 100 yards away across a meadow, was aware of everything and not happy about it.

 

How well I knew Her not
Whom not to know has been
A Bounty in prospective, now
Next Door to mine the Pain.

Miller (2024) tells us ED sent this poem to Maria Whitney, about February 11, 1864. Austin visited Whitney in Northampton on February 11 before she sailed for California on the 13^th to look after the six children of her sister, Elizabeth Whitney Putnam, who died June 1863 in San Francisco.

I think the personal level of Fr813 runs deep, especially enjambed Lines 3 & 4: “now / Next Door to mine the Pain”. In her own way, ED empathizes with Maria’s loss of a sister because she has also lost a sister. In fact, ED’s “dead sister” lives “Next Door”, which daily “mine[s] the Pain”.

In March 1853 Susan and Austin became engaged after a tryst at the Revere Hotel in Boston. For obvious reasons, Sue had to cool her relationship with Emily, and on April 1, 1854, ED responded sharply to Sue (L172): “You can go or stay”.

In late 1858, perhaps as a birthday greeting on Sue’s birthday, 19 December, ED tried to mend bridges with ‘One Sister have I’ (Fr5, 1858), but the rift never healed.

“One Sister have I in our house,
And one, a hedge away.
There’s only one recorded,
But both belong to me.

One came the road that I came —
And wore my last year’s gown —
The other, as a bird her nest,
Builded our hearts among.

She did not sing as we did —
It was a different tune —
Herself to her a music
As Bumble bee of June.

Today is far from Childhood —
But up and down the hills
I held her hand the tighter —
Which shortened all the miles —

And still her hum
The years among,
Deceives the Butterfly;
Still in her Eye
The Violets lie
Mouldered this many May.

I spilt the dew —
But took the morn —
I chose this single star
From out the wide night’s numbers —
Sue – forevermore!

Those last two stanzas are among the most poignant ED ever wrote. She “spilt the dew” and has been ruing it for 10 years (1854-1864).

Miller, C and Mitchell, D. 2024. The Letters of Emily Dickinson. Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

 

Love reckons by itself—alone
“As large as I”—relate the Sun
To One who never felt it blaze—
Itself is all the like it has—

I feel the aloneness of the speaker. The poem is I-oriented, not we-oriented. Knowing ED’s preference for isolation in her bedroom and her inclination for self-absorption, Lines 3 and 4 seem pseudo-wise words based on limited personal experience.

This poem tracks with a few other poems in Fascicle 35 in which Dickinson wonders why an unnamed friend is withholding their smile.” Both her premier biographer, Sewall (1974), and an insightful Ph.D. student, Murray (1988), commented on ED feeling rejected:

Sewall (1974), ED’s premier biographer, put it bluntly:

“[ED’s] failures, certainly, were with people. Throughout her life, she never achieved a single, wholly satisfying relationship with anybody she had to be near, or with, for any length of time. Vinnie was the closest, perhaps; but even she spoke of her family as living together like “friendly and absolute monarchs” (Higginson, we recall, likened them to federated states in a commonwealth, where “each member runs his or her own selves”). . . . .

“All her life she demanded too much of people. Her early girl friends could hardly keep up with her tumultuous letters or, like Sue, could not or would not take her into their lives as she wanted to be taken. They had other concerns. The young men, save for a few who had amusing or edifying intellectual exchanges with her, apparently shied away. Eliza Coleman’s fear that her friends in Amherst  “wholly misinterpret” her, was a polite way of saying, perhaps, that they would not respond with the intensity she apparently demanded of everyone. She seemed unable to take friendship casually, nor could she be realistic about love. The result was excessive tension at every meeting, so that meetings themselves became ordeals. One such meeting was enough for Higginson (“I am glad not to live near her”); in her own economy, she found that she had to ration them very carefully. And when she fell in love, all this was further intensified. The one meeting recorded in this letter, when she asked her Master for Redemption, spelled at once her joy and her tragedy. It exalted her-she bloomed like the rose, she soared like the bird-but it plunged her into “Chillon,” the captive of her own soaring fantasy about love.”

Similarly, Murray (1988) observes, “Dickinson established a traceable pattern of behavior in her girlhood friendships that she continued into the relationships of her adult life. When she discovered a person who potentially shared her feelings about a certain subject, she responded with surprise, enthusiasm, and selfishness. . . . In Dickinson’s pattern, after initial discovery, the friendship would blossom and grow, fueled by a great profusion of letters sharing confidences, feelings, and ideas. In these letters, she engaged her fertile imagination, savoring the kinship that she perceived between her and the kindred spirit she believed she had found.

“The friend, at some point following the relationship’s blossoming, realized that he or she could not reciprocate with the same ardor, frequency, or depth of feeling as Emily, to meet the poet’s intense emotional, spiritual, or intellectual needs. The friend then usually withdrew, withholding contact from her. Dickinson, then perceiving the slackening on the friend’s part, sought in letters to renew the friendship through chiding and wheedling. When these attempts failed to secure the desired results, she decided that the slowing of the friendship had occurred because of the friend’s disloyalty and betrayal, and she cooled in her once-passionate feelings for the friend. In most cases, correspondence stopped. And she opened once again the lid to what she called her “box of Phantoms” and put away another friend.” (Murray 1988).

ED coined her phrase, “Box of Phantoms”, in two letters, ML181 (JL177) and ML189 (JL186)

1. Sewall, Richard B. 1974. ‘The Life of Emily Dickinson’. 2 vols. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. [Also, ‘The Life of Emily Dickinson’, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, Kindle edition, pp 517-518]
2. Murray, Barbara M. 1988. The scarlet experiment: Emily Dickinson’s abortion experience. Ph.D. dissertation. University of Tennessee. 391 pages.  (https://www.proquest.com/openview/0eecb3a583e119ca3a94cde080a874d1/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y)
3. Miller, C and Mitchell, D. 2024. The Letters of Emily Dickinson. Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

 

 

811.1864.There is a June when Corn is cut

There is a June when Corn is cut
And Roses in the Seed—
A Summer briefer than the first
But tenderer indeed

As should a Face supposed the Grave’s
Emerge a single Noon
In the Vermilion that it wore
Affect us, and return—

Two Seasons, it is said, exist—
The Summer of the Just,
And this of Ours, diversified
With Prospect, and with Frost—

May not our Second with its First
So infinite compare
That We but recollect the one
The other to prefer?

My interpretation of four-stanza ‘There is a June when Corn is cut’, in four prose sentences:

1. There is a time when corn is cut and roses go to seed, a summer briefer than the first, but lovely all the same.

2. As if a face, long buried in the grave, emerge a single noon in rosy cheeks it former wore, then vanish into air.

3. Two seasons, it is said, exist, the summer of the saved, and this of ours, diversified with promise and with pain.

4. May not our second season so infinite compare, that we but spy the first face, our second to prefer.

Stanza 1

In western Massachusetts, corn (maize) was harvested in late summer/early autumn, not June, which is the clue that this poem is about Indian Summer, a period of warm, sunny, and dry weather that occurs in the autumn, usually after the first frost. Though brief, Indian Summer resurrects fleeting feelings of summertime, which ED described as “tenderer indeed”.

Stanza 2

A memory of a ruddy-cheeked face that ED thought she’d never see again appeared for a single “Noon”, woke memories of a “summer’s day”, perhaps in 1860 (Fr325?) , then vanished into time. For ED, that face was Wadsworth’s.

Stanza 3

ED’s “First” summer was her “Summer of the Just” (Line 10), where “Just” means “perfected ones; those made whole” [EDLex, Definition 2 of “Just”].

ED realized that Indian Summer, her second summer, is diversified with Prospect and with Pain, but she felt that pain on Earth would be worth enduring when she finally arrives at her Heavenly second” summer with Wadsworth:

“. . . we shall rise—
Deposed—at length—the Grave—
To that new Marriage—
Justified—through Calvaries of Love!”
(Fr325)

Stanza 4

May not our second summer so infinite compare, that we but spy the first, our second to prefer.

……………………………………………………………….

Fr811, ‘There is a June when Corn is cut’, got me wondering how many “Indian Summer” poems ED composed. The answer is at least nine:

1. F122 ‘These are the days when Birds come back’
2. F265 ‘It cant be “Summer”!’
3. F363 ‘I know a place where Summer strives’
4. F408 ‘Like some Old fashioned Miracle’
5. F520 ‘God made a little Gentian’
6. F811 ‘There is a June when Corn is cut’
7. F1412 ‘How know it from a Summer’s Day?’
8. F1419 ‘A – Field of Stubble, lying sere’
9. F1457 ‘Summer has two Beginnings‘

My  source for eight of these poem titles was David Preest. Tom C added the ninth with his comment of October 1, 2025, on The Prowling Bee.