785.1863.It dropped so low — in my Regard —
ED copied this poem into Fascicle in ink in 1863, then waited 17 years later (about 1880) to add the alternatives in pencil. ED’s alternates are in parentheses:
It dropped so low — in my Regard —
I heard it hit the Ground —
And go to pieces on the Stones
At bottom of my Mind — (in the ditch)
Yet blamed the Fate that fractured (flung it) — less
Than I reviled (denounced) Myself,
For entertaining Plated Wares
Upon My Silver Shelf —
- Line 4: I prefer her original phrase, “At bottom of my Mind”, because it maintains the meter of the stanza and because ED is talking about her “Mind”, not a “ditch”.
- Line 5: I prefer her alternative, “flung it”, because “”Fate” didn’t “fracture” “It”, the “Stones” did.
- Line 6: I prefer ED’s original “reviled” because it vividly describes her self-disgust.
For the first time, ED did not include alternative words and phrases at the same time she copied her poem into Fascicle 37. Instead, she waited 17 years (“about 1880”) and then penciled her alternatives onto her ink manuscript.
As was her wont, ED began this poem with an orphaned pronoun, “It”. I think ED’s romantic infatuation with Rev. Charles Wadsworth was both the seed of this poem and the unstated cedent of “It”. I also think ED was mad at herself for wasting so much time obsessing over “Plated Wares”.
In retrospect, I think Wadsworth was the muse for some of her finest poems.
PS. . . Both Johnson (1955, ‘Complete Poems’) and Franklin (1998, ‘Poems of Emily Dickinson’) published Line 4 without using ED’s 1880 alternate phrase, “in the ditch”, which was their standard protocol. However, they did publish her 1880 alternates in Lines 5 and 6, which was definitely not their usual protocol. Did they think they were “improving” ED’s poem?