What I can do – I will –
Though it be little as a Daffodil –
That I cannot – must be
Unknown to possibility –
ED copied this short poem (F641) into Fascicle 31 “about late 1863”. Little, Brown, and Company, Boston, first published ‘What I can do – I will –’ on January 1, 1929 in ‘Further Poems of Emily Dickinson’. If ‘What I can do – I will –’ sounds familiar, here’s the original version (later in 1929) of the ‘Serenity Prayer’, currently attributed to American theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr:
“The victorious man in the day of crisis is the man who has the serenity to accept what he cannot help and the courage to change what must be altered.”
Rearranged, it matches ED’s poem in ideas, though not in rhyme or meter:
The victorious man
In the day of crisis
Is the man who has the courage to change what must be altered
And the serenity to accept what he cannot help.
Pure coincidence, or had Niebuhr been reading ED’s newly published poems? Winnifred C. Wygal was the first to notice the similarity of Niebuhr’s prayer and ED’s poem (Diary entry Oct. 31, 1932) . Wygal “did postgraduate work at Union Theological Seminary, NYC, studying there with Niebuhr and Paul Tillich.”
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Further circumstantial evidence that Niebuhr had read ED’s newly published poem:
Later in 1929, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote “ ‘religion is poetry’, . . . religion [becomes] more compelling when ‘vivified by adequate poetic symbols’ than by ‘the poor prose’ of ‘the average preacher’.”
I had no idea Niebuhr was so into poetry:
“The ultimate nature of reality cannot be grasped by science alone; poetic imagination is as necessary as scientific precision.”
“How can an age which is so devoid of poetic imagination as ours be truly religious?”
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This poem, ‘What I can do – I will –’ (Fr461, “late 1863”, Franklin), suggests that after more than two years of healing, ED was emerging from her well documented episode of depression and “terror”:
“I had a terror – since September [1861]– I could tell to none – and so I sing, as the Boy does by the Burying Ground, because I am afraid.” (L338 to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, April 28, 1862).
My hypothesis is that ED’s “terror” began when Rev. Charles Wadsworth told her he was considering a “removal” (move) to San Francisco to pastor the failing, 10-year-old Calvary Presbyterian Church. He sailed from New York Harbor with his family on May 1, 1862. He more than exceeded Calvary’s wildest hopes; even anti-Christian Mark Twain attended and praised his sermons.
Dickinson, Emily. The Letters of Emily Dickinson (2024). Eds. Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell. Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.
Reinhold Niebuhr. 1929. ‘Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic’. Chicago. Willett, Clark, and Colby.
David R. Bains. 2004. ‘Conduits of Faith: Reinhold Niebuhr’s Liturgical Thought’. Church History, Mar., 2004, 73(1): 168-194.