Emily Dickinson’s “All these my banners be”
The speaker celebrates the beauty of wildflowers, which metaphorically represent their mystical counterpart in the spiritual garden, created by the speaker’s powerful and fertile imagination.
Introduction with Text of “All these my banners be”
Like a garden or landscape imbued with numerous colorful wildflowers, the poetic garden that Emily Dickinson’s speaker is creating holds all of the poet’s numerous, colorful poems. She celebrates those natural wildflowers as she showcases the permanence of her own creations.
This speaker, like the Shakespearean speaker, has planted her flag in the ever-existing land of creativity. In that special spiritual garden, she can plant any flower she chooses and in places where she knows they will continue to shed their perfume to noses and their beauty to eyes, as well as their music to ears.
All these my banners be
All these my banners be.
I sow my pageantry
In May –
It rises train by train –
Then sleeps in state again –
My chancel – all the plain
Today.
To lose – if one can find again –
To miss – if one shall meet –
The Burglar cannot rob – then –
The Broker cannot cheat.
So build the hillocks gaily
Thou little spade of mine
Leaving nooks for Daisy
And for Columbine –
You and I the secret
Of the Crocus know –
Let us chant it softly –
“There is no more snow!”
To him who keeps an Orchis’ heart –
The swamps are pink with June.
Reading of “All these my banners be”
Commentary on “All these my banners be”
The speaker is celebrating her spiritual garden of verse, wherein like the beauty of literal wildflowers, the beauty of her poems retain the delicious ability to remain ever existing.
First Stanza: Planting Flags of Sacred Beauty
All these my banners be.
I sow my pageantry
In May –
It rises train by train –
Then sleeps in state again –
My chancel – all the plain
Today.
On the literal level, the speaker is celebrating wildflowers, claiming them as her nation or state, and implying that she is planting them as one would plant a flag to possess a territory or mark the discovery of some formerly distant land.
One may be put in mind of the moon-landing at which time the American astronauts planted the flag of the USA on the moon. Thus, she begins by asserting that all of these flowers are her “banners” or flags.
Interestingly, there is a type of Daylily that sports the nickname “Grand Old Flag,” or as my mother referred to them as “Flags.” These wildflowers grow abundantly along rivers, old country roads, and even along busy highways. They are quite hardy, so hardy, in fact, that some folks actually disdain their presence and seek to halt their spreading abundance.
This speaker adores her expanse of wildflowers. After claiming them as her “banners,” she claims that she is sowing these, her “pageantry,” in the late spring month of May. She colorfully reports that they come shooting up through the earth like trains with a long string of cars that continue to move until they “sleep in state again” or halt from their journey.
The speaker then remarks that this bannered, colorful, and divine expanse of land—”all the land”—is her “chancel” today. Her love and devotion rise to the spiritual level as she calls that “land” metaphorically a “chancel.”
Second Stanza: Creating a Mystical Garden
To lose – if one can find again –
To miss – if one shall meet –
The Burglar cannot rob – then –
The Broker cannot cheat.
So build the hillocks gaily
Thou little spade of mine
Leaving nooks for Daisy
And for Columbine –
You and I the secret
Of the Crocus know –
Let us chant it softly –
“There is no more snow!”
As she eases into the metaphoric level, the speaker first waxes philosophical about losing and missing things—a state of consciousness that refers to the changing of the seasons.
Seasons with their abundant lush growth on the landscape are routinely followed by seasons in which no growth occurs, and the observer then finds she has lost something that she misses.
It remains the duty of this highly creative and talented speaker to eliminate all those pesky periods of losing, and she can do that metaphorically by creating her own sacred, spiritual garden filled with the flowers that are her poems.
In her mystically created garden, no “Burglar” can “rob,” and no “Broker” can “cheat.” Thus, the various flowers named in the stanza stand both for themselves as well as serving as a metaphoric flower representing her poems.
The speaker then commands her poetic ability, represented metonymically by the “little spade” which becomes a symbol for her writing, to “build the hillock gaily” or get on with creating these marvelous little dramas that keep her enthralled.
That “little spade” carves out “nooks for Daisy” and “for Columbine”—a colorful, fascinating way of asserting that her writing ability produces poems that stand as strong, colorful, and divinely beautiful as those flowers that she names—”Daisy” and “Columbine.”
The speaker intimates to her “little spade” that they two are privy to the same secret known by “the Crocus,” and she insists that they “chant it softly” in that delicious atmosphere in which “There is no more snow!”
The speaker would desire “no more snow” for the simple reason that literal flowers do not spring up in winter. Thus, she is robbed of their beauty, and she misses them. And thus the “no more snow” season for her writing has the power to encompass all the seasons, wherein those objects of beauty can continue to grow and flourish and provide beauty.
Third Stanza: Perpetual June
To him who keeps an Orchis’ heart –
The swamps are pink with June.
The speaker then again waxes philosophical about her spiritual garden of flowers. It is an attitude that prevails to cause one to be able to accept the mystical level of being as more alluring and even more beautiful than the physical level that points to it.
As the physical level of being, which is created out of atoms and molecules, contains beauty but that beauty fades and is never permanent, the mystical level, which is created out of inextinguishable light, can remain eternally.
For the earth-bound human being, the concept of and desire for things to exist eternally remain instilled in the heart, mind, and soul. For the mystically inclined individual, the “swamps” remain eternally “pink” as though it were always “June.”
In other words, the individual steeped in spiritual, mystic ardor and filled with creative juices needs only to create a spiritual garden—mystical world—in which permanence does reign eternally.
Video: Orange Daylily
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