Linda's Literary Home

Tag: Mabel Loomis Todd

  • Emily Dickinson’s “‘Why do I love’ You, Sir?”

    Image: Emily Dickinson - Amherst College - Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 - likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet
    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “‘Why do I love’ You, Sir?”

    The speaker of Emily Dickinson’s oddly punctuated poem “‘Why do I love’ You, Sir?” uses logic to demonstrate the reasoning that leads the created soul to experience love for its Creator.

    Introduction with Text of “‘Why do I love’ You, Sir?”

    This unusual Emily Dickinson poem begins with the following oddly punctuated first line: “Why do I love” You, Sir?

    Emily Dickinson’s Editors

    When analyzing the poems of Emily Dickinson’s, it is useful to remember that she did not work with an editor for the purpose of publishing.   Her poems were first edited after her death by Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd.

    But, unfortunately, their reworking often smoothed out Dickinson’s quirky use of language to the point of crushing the innovation and nuances that made her the unique poet that she was.  Therefore, Thomas H. Johnson restored her poems to the originals as found in the bundles (fascicles) of poems written in her own handwriting. 

    Thus the reader must be aware that Dickinson might have been persuaded to alter some of her quirks for publication, if she had been assured that her meaning would not be changed but instead made clearer by the changes.

    The odd punctuation of this poem, especially the first line, is an example of a Dickinsonian quirk which, no doubt, would have been altered by an editor after close consultation with the poet.  Indeed, it would be fascinating to hear Dickinson’s explanation for placing “Why do I love” in quotation marks, making it appear as a unit of thought that seems to address the second person “You.”

    No one can ever know for certain what significance that odd punctuation might have had for the poet, and it is likely that modern readers may simply dismiss the quotation marks as they begin the poem.

    The poem features four stanzas; the first two are innovative cinquains, the third is an innovative sestet, and the fourth is a Dickinsonian quatrain.  The poem dramatizes the theme of God’s love as mystery.  

    But it also makes it clear that the speaker is simplifying that emotion:  it is merely a natural sequence of events that the created soul will love its Creator.  The complication comes in giving thought to that sequence.  The speaker seems to desire to uncomplicate the issue once and for all.

    “Why do I love” You, Sir?

    “Why do I love” You, Sir?
    Because –
    The Wind does not require the Grass
    To answer – Wherefore when He pass
    She cannot keep Her place.

    Because He knows — and
    Do not You –
    And We know not –
    Enough for Us
    The Wisdom it be so –

    The Lightning – never asked an Eye
    Wherefore it shut — when He was by –
    Because He knows it cannot speak –
    And reasons not contained –
    – Of Talk –
    There be – preferred by Daintier Folk –

    The Sunrise – Sire – compelleth Me –
    Because He’s Sunrise – and I see –
    Therefore – Then –
    I love Thee –

    Commentary on “‘Why do I love’ You, Sir?”

    The speaker of Dickinson’s oddly punctuated poem uses logic to demonstrate the reasoning that leads the created soul to love for its Creator.

    First Stanza:   Unavoidable Love

    “Why do I love” You, Sir?
    Because –
    The Wind does not require the Grass
    To answer – Wherefore when He pass
    She cannot keep Her place.

    The speaker seems to be talking to the Divine Reality (God), calling Him “Sir,” and questioning Him as to why she loves Him. Then the speaker replies with her own answer, “Because — / The Wind does not require the Grass / To answer.”  However, in order to completely respond to this amazing mystery, the speaker finds it necessary to compare her feelings with phenomena of nature. 

    She thus decides to compare her love to the act of love the grass possesses.  The grass simply cannot prevent itself from undergoing its waving motion after the wind has blown through it. 

    The speaker’s love for her Heavenly Father Creator God is just simply natural.  There can be no questioning it.   Of course, she will continue to question and answer.  That’s just the way she rolls!

    Second Stanza:  The Wisdom of Love

    Because He knows — and
    Do not You –
    And We know not –
    Enough for Us
    The Wisdom it be so –

    In the second stanza, the speaker suggests that God as Father along with all she knows about anything, holds the “Wisdom” motivating the love in the soul of the created children for their Creator.   Nothing more is necessary, because everything is enfolded in that love and wisdom.

    Third Stanza:  “Why” Remains Irrelevant

    The Lightning – never asked an Eye
    Wherefore it shut — when He was by –
    Because He knows it cannot speak –
    And reasons not contained –
    – Of Talk –
    There be – preferred by Daintier Folk –

    In the third stanza, the speaker returns to describing phenomena of nature to explicate the “why”:  she reveals that that love eruption is akin to lightning striking the eye.  The eye will never stop to ask “why” it is acting as it does as it closes from the onslaught of  the light’s sudden brilliance.  Intimately coalescing occurrences do not motivate one to ask why.  They just are.  Or it is so obvious that no one has ever in history bothered to question it.   

    The speaker is nevertheless still aware that human minds crave reasons for things and events.   The human mind wants to discuss and declaim about the ineffable, even though the ineffable will never be “contained — / — Of Talk.”   The mind may be likened to “Daintier Folk,” who wish everything to be clarified in words, despite the fact that words often cannot perform that feat.

    By qualifying the mind and others who are not privy to such erudition as simply “daintier,” the speaker manages to suggest that there are those who are merely  incapable of seeing what is right before their eyes.  The employment of such a euphemism renders the speaker both kind and sympathetic and yet at the same time demonstrates her unique talent and deep mental perception.

    Fourth Stanza:  The Logic of Loving One’s Creator

    The Sunrise – Sire – compelleth Me –
    Because He’s Sunrise – and I see –
    Therefore – Then –
    I love Thee –

    The love for God, for this speaker, remains quite uncomplicated:  as the sun rises, her eyes perceive light.  As the Creator creates, the created loves.  To her mind, only the completely daft can question the logic of loving one’s Creator.

    But even without uttering any negativity regarding those who lack such natural understanding, the speaker has demonstrated her stance which remains replete with obvious implications.

  • Emily Dickinson’s “When I count the seeds”

    In "When I count the seeds," Emily Dickinson’s speaker is contemplating her spiritual garden, wherein she plants and grows the metaphorical seeds for her poems.  She introduced this garden in the poem, "There is another sky."
    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “When I count the seeds”

    In “When I count the seeds,” Emily Dickinson’s speaker is contemplating her spiritual garden, wherein she plants and grows the metaphorical seeds for her poems.  She introduced this garden in the poem, “There is another sky.”

    Introduction and Text of “When I count the seeds”

    In her poem, “There is another sky,” Emily Dickinson creates a speaker who introduces her own spiritual, mystical garden, the second poem featured in Editor Thomas Johnson’s The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, the volume in which Johnson presents Dickinson’s original forms, rescuing them from the versions that had been manipulated and altered by editors such as Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Higginson.

    In “When I count the seeds,” the speaker is musing on the nature of her spiritual garden of verse and ultimately concludes its importance for her.  After such mental forays into the blessed garden, her beloved, favorite season, “summer,” she can leave without trepidation.

    The form of the poem is structured on three “when” clauses, after which the speaker makes the claim that something happens following the activities in the clauses.  Because of the vague nature of the adverbial conjunction, “when,” one should think of its meaning as “after.” It is after each of the events in the “when” clauses that the last line’s activity becomes possible.

    When I count the seeds

    When I count the seeds
    That are sown beneath,
    To bloom so, bye and bye –

    When I con the people
    Lain so low,
    To be received as high –

    When I believe the garden
    Mortal shall not see –
    Pick by faith its blossom
    And avoid its Bee,
    I can spare this summer, unreluctantly.

    Commentary on “When I count the seeds”

    Each “when” clause features an event, after the sum of which the speaker becomes relieved of the human trepidation of regret at losing some desired situation.  In this case, it is simply the passing of summer.  

    The speaker feels a certain melancholy at the end of the summer season.  That emotion presents a problem that she must solve, lest she remain in blue funk.  Her wide brain is up to the task, as she storms her garden of verse for the answer to the difficulty.

    First Stanza:  Taking Stock

    When I count the seeds
    That are sown beneath,
    To bloom so, bye and bye –


    From time to time, the speaker takes stock of her little garden.  In this musing, she begins by implying that something will occur after she has “count[ed] the seeds.”  She reports that the seeds once planted beneath the soil in the spiritual garden, they do, as any seed will, bloom, as time goes by.

    An interesting tension results because “the seeds” are the ideas, thoughts, and/or prompts for each poem in her spiritually effected garden. After each idea or thought or prompt has been sown, it will blossom forth into a perfect flower-poem.  In time, she has found that she possesses many seeds as well as flowers to be reckoned with.

    The term “count” is employed metaphorically to stand as “reckon,” “contemplate,” or more likely even, “muse,” rather than the literal, mathematical rendering of the term’s definition. She is not counting to find out how many seeds she has; she is musing on the lot for the glory of outcome they possess.

    Second Stanza:  Continuing to Contemplate

    When I con the people
    Lain so low,
    To be received as high –

    The second “when” clause addresses the time-frame wherein the speaker has contemplated folks who have been demoted from high station to low but likely still remain held in high regard to many others.  Some folks have died, and yet their reputations have been elevated.

    The speaker’s reason for musing on this situation likely ascends out of a need to place evaluations on the stages of life.  To be placed “so low” metaphorically responds to being placed in the lowest position the human body may find itself, that is, in the bottom of a grave.  

    Yet, the generality of the phrase “so low” remains easily understood as position in life from a lowly profession to a high one, for example, a dog catcher to a president or CEO.  After such cogitation on the seeds of her spiritual garden and then on the various degrees of humanity, the speaker is almost ready to assert her report about what happens next.

    Third Stanza:   Achievement of Purpose

    When I believe the garden
    Mortal shall not see –
    Pick by faith its blossom
    And avoid its Bee,
    I can spare this summer, unreluctantly.

    In the final “when” clause, the speaker is asserting that after she has had the opportunity to survey the marvelous, mystical garden, which may not be perceived through “mortal” vision, her faith allows her to pluck any of the garden’s magic blossoms.

    And then she can re-experience any of the poems which have thus far been cultivated therein without attracting the painful attention of the worrisome sting of “its Bee,” a natural creature that would bedevil any literal garden.

    So after she has contemplated the seeds (thoughts, feelings), which have led to sprouting those flowers (poems), and after she has mused on the nature of human status, and finally after she has plucked (read) one of those “blossom[s]” (poems), she can recover from feeling any sorrow and regret that her beloved, favorite season of summer is now coming to a close.

    The little drama featured in this poem remains so simple, yet through the instrumentality of the complex talent possessed by the poet, the resulting discourse features a colorful, strikingly refreshing account that reveals the nature of profound, intuitive thinking.  

    The poet possessed virtually magical powers of seeing deep into the nature of each created object, into each empirical development, and into each observable array of kinetic energy that infused those things and events.