Strong Draughts of Their Refreshing Minds
To drink – enables Mine
Through Desert or the Wilderness
As bore it sealed Wine
To go elastic – Or as One
The Camel’s trait – attained –
How powerful the stimulus
Of an Hermetic Mind –
The “it” in Line 4 refers to “Mine” (my mind) in Line2. Line 4 translates as “As if my mind bore sealed Wine”. The “Hermetic Mind” in Line 8 refers to and slant rhymes with “sealed Wine” in Line 4.
“Hermetic” in Line 4 implies a mind sealed in both directions, in and out. ED probably did not mean a closed mind, but that’s what her words imply. Possibly she meant a mind resistant to the latest fashions in public discourse, poetic styles, or religious dogma. David Preest lists Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot as likely leaders on Emily’s List of “Hermetic Minds”.
ED has convinced me that virtually all of her poems have two or more levels of meaning: poetic and historical. These levels cannot be separated into two ivory towers, as most academics do.
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.
Her refusal to publish was only possible because of the lifelong financial and daily social/housekeeping support of her family, especially her father and sister, respectively. 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 and love of ED’s poems can be enriched by understanding both poetic and historical levels of her sound and sense. We impoverish ourselves if we ignore their historical base.