646.1863.’Tis One by One — the Father counts —

646.1863.’Tis One by One — the Father counts —
ED offered no alternative words in this poem.

‘Tis One by One — the Father counts —
And then a Tract between
Set Cypherless — to teach the Eye
The Value of its Ten —

Until the peevish Student
Acquire the Quick of Skill —
Then Numerals are dowered back —
Adorning all the Rule —

‘Tis mostly Slate and Pencil —
And Darkness on the School
Distracts the Children’s fingers —
Still the Eternal Rule

Regards least Cypherer alike
With Leader of the Band —
And every separate Urchin’s Sum —
Is fashioned for (fitted to) his hand —

I love ED’s effortless enjambment of Lines 8-9, “Still the Eternal Rule // Regards least Cypherer alike”

The OED definition of “cyphering” is “To use the Arabic numerals in the processes of arithmetic; to work the elementary rules of arithmetic; now chiefly a term of elementary education.”

Perhaps, at a literal level, the poem is about young students learning the rules of arithmetic, but ED always has metaphorical meanings in mind. She copied F646 into Fascicle 31 “about the second half of 1863” as a brutal war darkened the land. Could ED’s message be:

“Still the Eternal Rule [Democracy] regards least Cypherer [person] alike with Leader of the Band [Leading Citizen]. ‘Tis One [vote] by One [vote] the Father [President Lincoln].”

Or, given ED’s obsession with death and resurrection, her meaning might be:

“Still the Eternal Rule [Golden Rule] regards least Cypherer [Believer] alike with Leader of the Band [Pastor]. ‘Tis One [Soul] by One [Soul] the Father [God] counts.”

Feeble metaphors, I know, but it’s hard to imagine ED wrote a poem only about “least urchin” learning to “cypher” Maybe she was trying to impress Sue, a former mathematics teacher.

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After commenting on Poems 1-763 (Franklin) on The Prowling Bee’, I am convinced that (virtually) all of Emily Dickinson’s (ED’s) poems have a factual historical level in addition to their various poetic levels of meaning. 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.

More than a century of scholarly research has resulted in somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 books and published academic papers about ED. A large majority of these publications focus only on the “poetic levels” of one or more of ED’s poems. Publications that consider both the “historic level” and “poetic levels” comprise a small minority. Publications that focus only on the factual history of her life probably number less than 100. (All numbers in this paragraph are my estimates.)

Unfortunately for ED’s universe of readers, these two basic levels (historical and poetic) cannot be separated into two ivory towers. Every history-level publication that I know of includes at least some discussion of the poetic level(s).

The reverse is not true. In fact, authors of the “poetry-level” school seem to avoid commenting on the historical level, sometimes admonishing that a poem must stand on its own, without concern for its historical roots. To my knowledge, there are (virtually) no published “history-level” books or articles that totally ignore ED’s poems and their poetic levels.

Of course, ED’s refusal to publish her poems was only possible because of lifelong financial and daily social/housekeeping support by her family, especially her father and sister, respectively. In addition, 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 of ED's poems can be enhanced by understanding both poetic and historical levels of her sound and sense. We impoverish ourselves if we ignore their historical base.