873.1864.It is a lonesome Glee—

It is a lonesome Glee—
Yet sanctifies the Mind—
With fair association—
Afar upon the Wind

A Bird to overhear
Delight without a Cause—
Arrestless as invisible—
A matter of the Skies.
………………………………………………..

My biographical interpretation of F873, ‘It is a lonesome Glee’, with ED’s alternate word [Line 4] in {curly brackets}:

Stanza 1.

It is a lonesome Glee—
Yet sanctifies the Mind—
With fair association—
Afar {Remote; Astray} upon the Wind

S1.

Composing poems is a lonesome joy, but it sanctifies the mind with lovely word associations that are remote from everyday conversation.

Stanza 2.

A Bird to overhear
Delight without a Cause—
Arrestless as invisible—
A matter of the Skies.

S2.

A robin’s song, like a poem, is a delight without a cause, unstoppable and invisible, a gift of song to the world.
……………………………………………………….

To me, this poem, F873, ‘It is a lonesome Glee’, is a restatement or continuation of the previous poem, F872, ‘Deprived of other Banquet’. They share allusions: “Robin” in F872 and “bird” in F873. In her letters and other poems, ED has likened herself to a bird, sometimes a wren, sometimes a robin, sometimes another species.

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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.