“Late 1863” (Franklin 1998). ED’s alternative words, phrases, and lines are in (parentheses). I have used all of them and omitted Franklin’s choices.
The Birds reported from the South –
A News express to Me –
A spicy Charge, My little (Friends)-
But (you must go away)
The Flowers – appealed – a timid Throng –
I (only sealed) the Door –
Go blossom to the Bees – I said –
And (harass) Me – no More –
The Summer Grace, for notice strove –
Remote – Her best Array
The Heart – to stimulate the Eye
Refused too utterly –
At length, a Mourner, like Myself,
She drew away austere –
Her frosts to ponder – then it was
I (rose to comfort ) Her
She suffered Me, for I had mourned –
I offered Her no word –
My Witness – was the Crape I bore –
Her – Witness – was Her Dead –
Thenceforward – We – together (walked)-
(I – never questioned Her – )
(Nor She – Myself – )
Our (Compact)
A (silent) Sympathy
………………………………..
‘The birds reported from the South’ may be read as a single unified sketch of ED’s bumpy relationship with her sister-in-law, Sue. ED’s teenage and early 20s romantic friendship with Susan Gilbert before Sue married ED’s brother, Austin (July 1, 1856), is well documented. Early on, Sue’s marriage was a failure, but she and Austin had three children and stayed legally married until Austin’s death in 1896. To ED’s regret, Sue distanced herself from ED in the months before and many years after her marriage, though the two did correspond by notes and letters across the 100 yards of meadow between their houses. It’s my hunch this poem is about their relationship.
Stanzas 1-2
ED’s early joy in Nature reverberates throughout her poems and letters, but separation stress as Sue pulled away distracted her from her love of nature. This poem begins by describing ED’s distraction (ED’s alternate words and phrases in parentheses). [My interjected words in brackets]:
“The Birds reported from the South –
A News express to Me –
A spicy Charge, My little (Friends)-
But (you must go away)
The Flowers – appealed – a timid Throng –
I (only sealed) the Door –
Go blossom to the Bees – I said –
And (harass) Me – no More –”
Superficially, Stanza 3 seems to continue describing ED’s distraction from Nature: “The Summer Grace, for notice strove -“, but Nature failed: “Her best Array” felt too “Remote” to charm my “Heart” or “stimulate the [my] Eye”:
“The Summer Grace, for notice strove –
Remote – Her best Array
The Heart – to stimulate the Eye
Refused too utterly –”
At a deeper level of ED’s wish-fulfilling imagination, “Summer Grace” may metaphorically mean ‘Sue’: My “Heart [and] Eye / Refused too utterly” to be “stimulate[d]” by Sue’s overtures of reconciliation.
Stanzas 4-6
Unsurprisingly,
“At length, [Sue,] a Mourner, like Myself,
She [characteristically] drew away austere –
Her [characteristic] frosts to ponder -”
Finally, in ED’s imagined future:
“. . . then it was
I (rose to comfort ) Her
“She suffered Me, for I had mourned –
I offered Her no word –
My Witness – was the [white] Crape I bore –
Her – Witness – was Her Dead [marriage] –
“Thenceforward – We – together (walked)-
(I – never questioned Her – )
(Nor She – Myself – )
Our (Compact)
A (silent) Sympathy”
And they lived happily ever after “late 1863”, in ED’s dreams.
ED was likely aware that lesbian life together had worked successfully for Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake a half century earlier in northwestern Vermont (Cleves 2014). In 1850, ED’s neighbor and fellow poet, William Cullen Bryant, (Cummington, VT, 20 miles NW of Amherst) had described the successful, accepted relationship of his aunt, Charity, and her lesbian partner, Sylvia (Bryant, W.C. 1850. Letters of a Traveler…, Page 129). On October 9, 1851, when both she and Sue were 20, ED had written Susan that she hoped “you and I would try to make a little destiny to have for our own” (L5). [See my Comment on F451, TPB, September 23, 2023]
Cleves, Rachel H. 2014. Charity and Sylvia: A Same-sex Marriage in Early America. Oxford University Press. New York. 267 pp.
Franklin, R.W.1998.The Poems of Emily Dickinson. 3 vols. Cambridge, MA, Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1680 pp.