All Poems

All I may, if small,
Do it not display
Larger for the Totalness —
’Tis Economy

To bestow a World
And withhold a Star —
Utmost, is Munificence —
Less, tho’ larger, poor.

An edited interpretation, my inserts in [brackets]. I read Lines 4 and 5 as enjambed.

[I give] All I may [am], [even] if [it’s] small.
Do[es] it not display
Larger for the [its] Totalness [?]
’Tis Economy
To bestow a World
And withhold a Star[.]
[Giving] Less, tho’ larger, [is] poor [stingy].

A prose interpretation:

I give all I am, even if it’s small. Doesn’t that display larger because of its Totalness? Perhaps ‘tis Economy to bestow a World and withhold a Star, but that is less, tho’ the gift is larger, than the gift of myself.

When Wadsworth “abandoned” ED in 1862 by moving to San Francisco, I think she resolved to “give” the remainder of her life to poetry and to remain faithful to him. To symbolize her sacrifice of a “normal” life, if there were any chance of a “normal” life for someone like ED, she wore only white for the remainder of her life and asked to be buried in a white coffin. Her last letters prove that she loved him until the day she died.

I know, too much biography.

The Wind begun to knead the Grass –
As Women do a Dough –
He flung a Hand full at the Plain –
A Hand full at the Sky –
The Leaves unhooked
themselves from Trees –
And started all abroad –
The Dust did scoop itself like Hands –
And throw away the Road –
The Wagons quickened on the Street –
The Thunders gossiped low –
The Lightning showed a Yellow Head –
And then a livid Toe –
The Birds put up the Bars to Nests –
The Cattle flung to Barns –
Then came one drop of Giant Rain –
And then, as if the Hands
That held the Dams – had parted hold –
The Waters Wrecked the Sky –
But overlooked my Father’s House –
Just Quartering a Tree –

ED may be revisiting Hurricane Expedition, which crossed Massachusetts on November 3, 1861. Its western side, the most destructive, passed over Amherst. She immortalized that storm in an earlier poem, F224 (1861), which shares a tone of awe with this poem, Fr796 (1864).

An awful Tempest mashed the air –
The clouds were gaunt and few –
A Black – as of a spectre’s cloak
Hid Heaven and Earth from view.

The creatures chuckled on the Roofs –
And whistled in the air –
And shook their fists –
And gnashed their teeth –
And swung their frenzied hair –

The morning lit – the Birds arose –
The Monster’s faded eyes
Turned slowly to his native coast –
And peace – was Paradise!

ED must have liked ‘The Wind begun to knead the Grass’. Over a span of 19 years, 1864-1883, she composed five variants, each with alternate words and phrases. Recipients were Elizabeth Holland (Variant A, 1964), Sue Dickinson (Variant B, 1866), Retained for her record (Variant C, 1876), T.W. Higginson (Variant D, 1876), Thomas Niles (Variant E, 1883).

Franklin (1998) provides a 10-row, 6-column table of 60 combinations of variations in his 3-volume ‘Variorum’:

Year	1864	1866	1876	1876	1883
Line	Holland	Susan	Retained	Higginson	Niles
1	knead	knead	rock	rock	rock
2	As	As	With	With	With
2	Women	Women	threatening	threatening	threatening
2	do	do	Tunes	tunes	Tunes
2	a Dough	a Dough	and low	and low	and low
3	flung	flung	threw	flung	threw
3	Hand full	Hand full	Menace	Menace	Menace
3	Plain	Plain	Eanh	Earth	Earth
4	A Hand full	A Hand full	A Menace	A Menace	Another
9	Street	Streets	Streets	Streets	streets
10	Thunders	Thunder	Thunder	Thunder	Thunder
10	gossiped low	gossiped	hurried	hurried	hurried slow
10	low	low	slow	slow	slow
11	Head	Head	Beak	Beak	Beak
12	Toe	Toe	Claw	Claw	Claw
14	flung	flung	fled	fled	clung
15	Then	Then	There	Then	Then

 

Stanza structure varies along with words: Variant A (1864), Variant B (1865), and Variant E (1883), one stanza; Variants C and D (1873) five quatrain stanzas.

My guess is that ED’s last variant, Variant E, gets closest to her original intentions:

The Wind begun to rock the Grass
With threatening Tunes and low
He threw a Menace at the Earth –
Another, at the Sky –
The Leaves unhooked themselves from Trees
And started all abroad
The Dust did scoop itself like Hands
And throw away the Road-
The Wagons quickened on the streets
The Thunder hurried slow –
The Lightning showed a yellow Beak
And then a livid Claw –
The Birds put up the Bars to Nests
The Cattle clung to Barns
Then came one Drop of Giant Rain
And then as if the Hands
That held the Dams, had parted hold,
The Waters wrecked the Sky,
But overlooked My Father’s House
Just quartering a Tree –

 

On first, second, and third read, ‘The Wind begun to rock the Grass’ seems to describe a sudden serious thunderstorm, possibly the opening onslaught of the 1861 “Expedition Hurricane” (so named because it interfered with a Union naval expedition to capture Port Royale, North Carolina.). In any case, assuming an ED poem has only a surface-level usually proves perilous.

On the other hand, as Adam DeGraff warned in his April 29, 2024 comment on ‘Me from Myself – to banish’ (F709) in The Prowling Bee, “It’s one thing to make the poems personal, but it’s another thing to bend them out of shape to do it.” Balancing Adam’s caveat against ED’s sage advice, “Much Madness is divinest Sense” (F620, 1863), I venture out the proverbial (and divinest?) limb, beginning with my reasons:

Why would ED compose two surface-level descriptions of a memorable storm? Her first, ‘An awful Tempest mashed the air’, printed above, succeeded admirably. And if the current poem, F796, were simply a description of a storm, why did she compose five variants of it over 19 years and send them to her surrogate mother, Elizabeth Holland (1864); her trusted reader/commentor, Susan Dickinson (1865); her faithful if clueless mentor and editor of The Atlantic Monthly, T. W. Higginson (1876); and a prominent Boston publisher who solicited ED’s poems for a book, Thomas Niles (1883)? She sent Niles at least six poems, including this one, but eventually turned him down.

My hypothesis is that ‘The Wind begun to rock the Grass’ is a unified metaphor for ED’s lifechanging personal experience that began in 1847 with her public refusal to accept Christ as her savior, despite the demands of the head-mistress at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary:

“The Wind begun to rock the Grass
With threatening Tunes and low
He threw a Menace at the Earth –
Another, at the Sky -”

In 1855, after eight years of personal doubt that included urges from her friends and family to accept Jesus, ED heard a charismatic minister in Philadelphia deliver a sermon that captured her head and her heart. She felt as if

“The Leaves unhooked themselves from Trees
And started all abroad
The Dust did scoop itself like Hands
And throw away the Road-
The Wagons quickened on the streets
The Thunder hurried slow –
The Lightning showed a yellow Beak
And then a livid Claw -”

After she returned to Amherst from Philadelphia, ED tried to resist:

“The Birds put up the Bars to Nests
The Cattle clung to Barns”

Then she allowed herself one note to Reverend Charles Wadsworth, perhaps complimenting his sermon and seeking his advice about helping her mother, who was rapidly becoming an invalid. His pastoral response struck a chord. She sent a second note,

“Then came one Drop of Giant Rain
And then as if the Hands
That held the Dams, had parted hold,
The Waters wrecked the Sky”

His pastorally appropriate replies and her responses continued, becoming more EDishly quirky. Finally, he sent her the one surviving letter we have from their correspondence:

“My Dear Miss Dickenson [sic]

I am distressed beyond measure at your note, received this moment, – I can only imagine the affliction which has befallen, or is now befalling you.

Believe me, be what it may, you have all my sympathy, and my constant, earnest prayers.

I am very, very anxious to learn more definitely of your trial – and though I have no right to intrude upon your sorrow yet I beg you to write me, though it be but a word.

In great haste
Sincerely and most
Affectionately Yours –”

That final “Yours” was underlined. How did ED interpret the underline? And why didn’t Wadsworth sign the letter with his name?

ED’s correspondence with friends confirms that sometime before 1860, ED invited Wadsworth to take the twelve-mile train trip from Northampton, MA, to her home the next time he visited his best friend, James D, Clark, who lived there. During summer 1860, he did visit, but ED had to minimize her family’s knowledge of her burgeoning relationship with Wadsworth:

“But overlooked my Father’s House –
Just Quartering a Tree –”

That capitalized “Quartered Tree” was ED.

During the following five years, 1861-1865, ED composed 937 poems, a maniacal rate of one poem every two days for five straight years and more than half her lifetime total of 1789 poems.

I rest my case.

The Definition of Beauty is
That Definition is none—
Of Heaven, easing Analysis,
Since Heaven and He are one.

I read Line 2 as a repetition of Line 1 after a brief pause and Lines 2-3 as enjambed, one continuous sentence with no or, at most, a miniscule pause between “none” and “Of”:

“The Definition of Beauty is . . . ., That Definition is none Of Heaven, easing Analysis, since Heaven and He are one.”

ED tells us the gender of Beauty is male; that and the capitalized “He” immediately identify Beauty as Wadsworth. No need to guess about philosophical interpretations, ED eased our Analysis.

 

The Veins of other Flowers
The Scarlet Flowers are
Till Nature leisure has for Terms
As “Branch,” and “Jugular.”

We pass, and she abides.
We conjugate Her Skill
While She creates and federates
Without a syllable.

Do you know your birds? Do you know the muscles, bones, and organs of the cat we dissected in Biology lab? What is that wildflower called? When we learn these names, we say we “know” something about nature. ED asserts in these eight lines, we know nothing about nature, about physical reality. If we spoke a different language, those English names would be meaningless, but birds, bones, and wildflowers would be the same, as they were long before humans invented languages.

Our faux knowledge of nature is a symptom of a mindset disease we call anthropocentrism. It’s a disease that explains why we all pump too many fossil CO2 molecules that will gradually reduce quality of life of our grandchildren and much more so their descendants for a thousand generations. With whatever plant and animal species we leave extant when our dark curtains fall, Nature will “create and federate / Without a syllable”.

ED was a prescient poet.

795.1864.Truth — is as old as God —

Two variants: Variant A (1864) is a single eight-line stanza and Variant B (1865) is two quatrains, with an alternate word, “Himself”, in Line 6.

I prefer eight-line Variant A and her original phrase in Line 6, “That he”, because of its clarity of meaning:

Truth — is as old as God —
His Twin identity
And will endure as long as He
A Co-Eternity —
And perish on the Day
That he (Himself) is borne away
From Mansion of the Universe
A lifeless Deity.

EDLex defines “Truth” as:

1. Reality; facts; actual state of things.
2. Being; exact accordance with that which is, or has been, or shall be.
3. Wisdom; verity; orthodoxy; real doctrine; sound philosophy; veracious principles; true religious belief.
4. Veracity; purity from falsehood.
5. Fact; principle; essence, as distinguished from an imitation.
6. Sincerity; practice of speaking truth; habitual disposition to speak correct principles.
7. Constancy.
8. Correct opinion.

OED Definitions of “Truth” stretch 38 pages and 8800 words.

“Truth” is an early Old English word and most of the OED definitions are now obsolete. Here are two OED definitions that are not obsolete:

1. Def II.5.c. Understanding of nature or reality; the totality of what is known to be true; knowledge.
2. Def II.6.a. Religious sense: spiritual reality as the subject of revelation or object of faith

Objective “truth” changes with new discoveries in science. In the religious sense, we like to think “truth” doesn’t change, but it does. For example, the Old Testament focuses on God as vengeful; the New Testament on God as loving and forgiving. They can’t both be true.

Clearly, there is no such thing as immutable “Truth”, either in the objective or religious sense. Our problem is deciding whether ED meant “Truth” in a mutable or immutable sense.

My take on this poem is that ED intended the latter, immutable sense, which seems wishful thinking.

An interpretation in one prose paragraph:

God is Truth and Truth is God; their identities are twins. Truth will endure as long as God endures, a co-eternity, and perish on the day that Death carries Wadsworth [lowercase “h” in “he” in Variant A and uppercase “H” in “Himself” in Variant B] away, a lifeless deity, from mansions of the universe [Earth?]

ED’s alternate words in parentheses:

I could suffice for Him, I knew—
He—could suffice for Me—
Yet Hesitating Fractions—Both
Surveyed (Delayed; Deferred) Infinity

“Would I be Whole” He sudden broached—
My syllable rebelled—
‘Twas face to face with Nature—forced—
‘Twas face to face with God—

Withdrew the Sun—to Other Wests—
Withdrew the furthest Star
Before Decision—stooped to speech—
And then—be audibler

The Answer of the Sea unto
The Motion of the Moon—
Herself adjust Her Tides—unto—
Could I—do else—with Mine?

A bar friend once asked what I’d been up to. My answer: Dealing with a difficult girlfriend. Just dump her, he shot back. I can’t, I said, she died 150 years ago. He gave a weird look and turned on his stool to a different conversation.

“It would be instructive to get a vote from you which way you believe this poem leans, toward a yes to the beloved, or a yes to withdrawal. Or would you agree that this poem is caught in limbo, leaning both ways at once?”

My vote is not genius or generous or “yes”. When I read this poem I heard anger of a jilted lover. ED’s God, Charles Wadsworth, had just abandoned her in Amherst and moved to San Francisco, a universe away in 1863. Her answer was “NO!”

An interpretation: [Brackets mine; CW ≡ Charles Wadsworth]

Stanza 1

The poet “knew” she “could suffice for” her lover in a long-term relationship and “He – could suffice for me”. Both had “Hesitations” and “delayed” [ED’s alternative word for “Surveyed”] full commitment to each other. What a weird way to begin a love poem, especially when “He”, CW, was married, with two children, and 16 years older, 48 vs 32.

Stanza 2

“Sudden[ly]” CW, superstar minister, “broached” a question, “Would I be Whole”? ED’s curt answer to CW’s question was a rebellious NO!, “My Syllable rebelled –”, leading to a Mexican standoff:

“[CW] ‘Twas face to face with Nature – forced [ED]”
“[ED] ‘Twas face to face with God – [CW]”

Stanza 3

Predictably,

“Withdrew the Sun [CW] – to other Wests [San Francisco]–
Withdrew the furthest Star [ED]
Before Decision – stooped to speech –
And then – be audibler”

CW [the Sun] and ED [the furthest Star] withdrew without further discussion, emotionally distanced themselves, and CW moved to San Francisco. Their conversation never had a chance to be “audibler”.

Stanza 4

Just as “the Sea” “answers” to the “Motion of the Moon – / Herself adjust Her Tides – unto -”, ED asks, “Could I – do else – with Mine?”

The poet asked the “Could I – do else – with Mine” question rhetorically to rationalize the rebellious one-syllable answer to a reasonable lover’s question, “Would I be Whole”? A credible inference is that that rebellious one-syllable answer was a curt “No!”, which killed the conversation. Such a defensive appeal as “Could I – do else – with Mine”? shifts blame onto the lover both autocratically and aristocratically. Life with this poet, male or female, would be impossible for almost anyone.

Notes:

Line 5 – The poet’s verb choice, “Broached”, is a loaded word, derived from Late Latin, “brocca”, spike, pointed instrument. Definitions of Broach: (ED Lex) “to open for discussion; make public for the first time”; (Cambridge English Dictionary) “to begin a discussion of something difficult”.

Line 16 – “Could I – do else – with Mine?”, was the 10th time in Franklin’s chronological order, F1-F712, that the poet used “Could I” as a rhetorical question:

F188, Could I – then – shut the door?-
F268, Could – I – forbid?
F346, Could I further “No”?
F382, How could I-of Him?
F433, How could I break My Word?
F443, Could — I do more — for Thee?
F483, Could I such a plea withstand?
F585, Could I infer his Residence?
F706, Could I stand by?
F712, Could I – do else – with Mine?

Answering a question with another question may be a tool to win a debate, but it sure sidetracks a conversation.

I meant to have but modest needs —
Such as Content — and Heaven —
Within my income — these could lie
And Life and I — keep even —

 

But since the last — included both —
It would suffice my Prayer
But just for One — to stipulate —
And Grace would grant the Pair —

 

And so — upon this wise — I prayed —
Great Spirit — Give to me
A Heaven not so large as Yours,
But large enough — for me —

 

A Smile suffused Jehovah’s face —
The Cherubim — withdrew —
Grave Saints stole out to look at me —
And showed their dimples — too —

 

I left the Place, with all my might —
I threw my Prayer away —
The Quiet Ages picked it up —
And Judgment — twinkled — too —
That one so honest — be extant —
It take the Tale for true —
That “Whatsoever Ye shall ask —
Itself be given You” —

 

But I, grown shrewder — scan the Skies
With a suspicious Air —
As Children — swindled for the first
All Swindlers — be — infer —

 

An interpretation

Stanza 1

The poet imagines a perfect plan for the remainder of her life: contentment “within her income” and “Heaven”, which for her would be continued correspondence with Charles Wadsworth living in Philadelphia, close enough for him to occasionally visit, as he did in 1860 and possibly 1861.

Stanza 2

On second thought, she deletes “Content” from her “Prayer”, because if she had “Heaven” as described, she would be content. And she could have that Heaven if just one person, Wadsworth, would so “stipulate”, “And Grace would grant the Pair –”, both contentment and Heaven.

Stanza 3

She asks little in her “Prayer”, and she asks in an endearing way:

“Great Spirit -Give to me
A Heaven not so large as Yours,
But large enough -for me –”

Stanza 4 [brackets mine]

“A [paternalistic] Smile suffused Jehovah’s face –
The Cherubim [young angels attending God]-withdrew –
Grave Saints [Severe old men] stole out to look at me –
And showed their dimples – too –” [also smiled in amusement]

Stanza 5 [brackets mine]

Disgusted by Heaven’s pseudo-smile paternalism, ED stormed out of “the Place – with all my might –” and “threw my Prayer away -”. For ages Christian readers “picked it up” and read her prayer approvingly. Even St Peter at the pearly gates “twinkled” with approval because there had been one living person so honest [gullible] that she took “the Tale for true -”

Stanza 6

“The Tale”, told twice, in Matthew 21: 21-22 & John 14: 12-14, was:

“Whatsoever Ye shall ask –
Itself be given You” –

As a child ED believed that promise lock, stock, and barrel, but when her prayers went unanswered, she grew skeptical of Resurrection, Heaven, and the Judeo-Christian God, and, like a swindled child, now infers all such promisers are swindlers, including God and Wadsworth.

Matthew 21:21-22:

21: Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.
22: And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.

John 14: 12-14:

12. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.
13. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.