Linda's Literary Home

Tag: mystic vision

  • Emily Dickinson’s “If she had been the Mistletoe”

    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 “If she had been the Mistletoe”

    The speaker in Emily Dickinson’s “If she had been the Mistletoe” dramatizes a delicate triangle of desire, rivalry, and ritualized offering. She imagines an alternative pairing that would have allowed her a more intimate fate, yet resigns herself to symbolic gestures. Through floral imagery and seasonal suggestion, she transforms emotional disappointment into a refined act of presentation and poetic control.

    Introduction and Text of “If she had been the Mistletoe”

    Emily Dickinson’s “If she had been the Mistletoe” commences as a brief lyric built upon conditional phrasing and symbolic contrast. Its minimalist structure relies simply on two quatrain-like movements, shifting from speculative longing to resigned action. The speaker balances imaginative possibility with social reality, revealing both her metaphysical—even mystical—wit and her strong emotional restraint.

    The lyric’s imagery draws on traditional associations: mistletoe with festive intimacy, the rose with romantic beauty, and druidic elements with puzzling ancient ritual. The speaker situates herself within this symbolic field, crafting a little dramatic performance, wherein desire is transformed into aesthetic gesture, resulting in a poetic performance that rivals all others in the English language.

    If she had been the Mistletoe

    If she had been the Mistletoe
    And I had been the Rose –
    How gay upon your table
    My velvet life to close –
    Since I am of the Druid,
    And she is of the dew –
    I’ll deck Tradition’s buttonhole –
    And send the Rose to you.

    Commentary on “If she had been the Mistletoe”

    The speaker transforms romantic rivalry into symbolic exchange, revealing how imagination reshapes loss into artful offering while preserving emotional integrity.

    Movement 1: A Speculation in Velvet

    If she had been the Mistletoe
    And I had been the Rose –
    How gay upon your table
    My velvet life to close –

    The speaker opens with a conditional vision that immediately establishes distance from fulfillment. By imagining a juxtaposition of “Mistletoe” and “Rose”—both of which she quaintly capitalizes—the speaker constructs a hypothetical rearrangement of roles that would favor her own romantic inclusion.

    The mistletoe implies a sanctioned intimacy, especially within social ritual. By assigning that rôle to the rival figure, the speaker acknowledges the other’s privileged position in the beloved’s attention.

    In contrast, the rose represents beauty offered for admiration rather than participation. The speaker’s identification with the rose reveals both her desirability and her limitation, as she can be appreciated but not embraced under the same ritual conditions.

    The image of gaiety upon “your table” wherein her life becomes a velvet awareness suggests a theatrical yet decorative finality. The speaker thus is imagining herself as an ornament placed before the beloved; her “velvet life” implies richness, softness, and sensuous appeal.

    Yet that life “to close” hints at a kind of sacrifice or diminishment. The speaker envisions her beauty culminating in a static display, emphasizing how her imagined role remains passive and ultimately finite.

    The table setting reinforces the idea of arrangement and control, where objects are placed deliberately for aesthetic effect. The speaker’s presence would be curated rather than spontaneously engaged, underscoring her lack of agency within the romantic dynamic.

    Despite the wistfulness of the scenario, the tone carries a subtle brightness through the word “gay.” This brightness, however, feels tinged with irony, as the imagined joy is contingent upon an impossible condition.

    The speaker’s speculation reveals both longing and self-awareness. She recognizes the structure of the situation while still indulging in a fleeting vision of how it might have been otherwise.

    Thus the first movement captures a moment of imaginative reordering. The speaker briefly escapes her reality, only to highlight more sharply the constraints that define her actual position.

    Movement 2: Because This Is So

    Since I am of the Druid,
    And she is of the dew –
    I’ll deck Tradition’s buttonhole –
    And send the Rose to you.

    The second movement shifts decisively from speculation to acceptance. The word “Since” signals the speaker’s acknowledgment of reality, replacing conditional fantasy with a statement of fact.

    By bizarrely and self-deprecatingly declaring her druidness, the speaker aligns herself with ancient ritual and intentional artistry. However, the druidic association also suggests knowledge, ceremony, and a certain authority over symbolic acts.

    In contrast, the rival figure “is of the dew,” an image that evokes freshness, naturalness, and ephemeral beauty. This distinction subtly elevates the speaker’s rôle as more deliberate and crafted, even as it acknowledges the other’s immediate appeal.

    The speaker’s identity becomes rooted in tradition and design rather than spontaneous attraction. She cannot compete within the same terms, so she redefines the framework through which value is expressed.

    The image of decking “Tradition’s buttonhole” introduces a gesture of adornment that is both formal and restrained. The buttonhole, a place for a small flower, symbolizes public display rather than private intimacy. 

    Through this act, the speaker asserts control over presentation. She becomes the arranger, the one who determines how beauty is offered and perceived.

    The final image sending of sending “the Rose to you” concludes the transformation of desire into gift. The speaker relinquishes the rose—herself, symbolically—offering it to the beloved despite her own exclusion.

    This gesture carries both generosity and silent resignation. By sending the rose, she participates in the exchange while acknowledging that the fulfillment it represents belongs elsewhere.

    The act of sending also creates distance, reinforcing the separation between the speaker and the beloved. Yet it allows her to remain present in a mediated, symbolic form.  The tone remains composed, avoiding overt bitterness. Instead, the speaker channels her emotional complexity into a refined, almost ceremonial action.

    In this way, the poem concludes with an assertion of poetic power. The speaker may not control the romantic outcome, but she controls its representation, shaping loss into an enduring and elegant expression.

    Dickinson’s Elegance

    The marvelous, mystical talent of Emily Dickinson has done it again. She has taken a potentially sad and demeaning situation and turned it into a gem of shining glory.  Her minimalism emphasizes her multi-faceted talent.

    Her garden of mystical verse, wherein another kind of sky reigns, thus acquires an additional flower of exquisite life and persistent beauty.  She will never back down from any challenge because her mind remains a tool-chest of useful instruments perfectly crafted for her metaphysical purposes.

  • Emily Dickinson’s “There is a morn by men unseen”

    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 “There is a morn by men unseen”

    The speaker in Emily Dickinson’s “There is a morn by men unseen” is looking at a scene behind the mystic curtain that divides the ordinary world from the extraordinary world, where spirits dwell and have their being.

    Introduction and  Excerpt from “There is a morn by men unseen”

    The speaker of Emily Dickinson’s “There is morn by men unseen” has likely been observing the beauty of a morning in May, when the greening of earth is becoming lush with new brightness.  

    This exceptional beauty motivates the speaker to intuit that even brighter mornings exist beyond the confines of this earth where the souls of departed loved ones are celebrating in their own way, just as she is celebrating the beauty of this earthly spring morning.

    There is a morn by men unseen

    There is a morn by men unseen –
    Whose maids upon remoter green
    Keep their Seraphic May –
    And all day long, with dance and game,
    And gambol I may never name –
    Employ their holiday.

    Here to light measure, move the feet
    Which walk no more the village street –
    Nor by the wood are found –
    Here are the birds that sought the sun
    When last year’s distaff idle hung
    And summer’s brows were bound.

    Ne’er saw I such a wondrous scene –
    Ne’er such a ring on such a green –
    Nor so serene array –
    As if the stars some summer night
    Should swing their cups of Chrysolite –
    And revel till the day –

    Like thee to dance – like thee to sing –
    People upon the mystic green –
    I ask, each new May Morn.
    I wait thy far, fantastic bells –
    Announcing me in other dells –
    Unto the different dawn!

    Commentary on “There is a morn by men unseen”

    The speaker of this Dickinson poem is observing and reporting on a scene that she intuits which exists behind the mystic curtain dividing the ordinary world from the extraordinary world, where souls dwell and have their being.

    First Stanza:  Not an Ordinary Scene

    There is a morn by men unseen –
    Whose maids upon remoter green
    Keep their Seraphic May –
    And all day long, with dance and game,
    And gambol I may never name –
    Employ their holiday.

    The speaker hints that she will be describing a locus out of this world because ordinary, day to day folks have not seen it.  In this fabulous place, the young women frolic upon a “green” that is far removed from that of the ordinary existence.  These beings observe  their “holiday” with “dance and game,” and their weather remains perfect, a “Seraphic May.” 

    The speaker avers that these beings also employ activities that she is not privy to “name.”  The reader will note that she does not say that she does not know what those activities are, but just that she cannot put a label on them.

    Second Stanza:  Beyond the Ordinary

    Here to light measure, move the feet
    Which walk no more the village street –
    Nor by the wood are found –
    Here are the birds that sought the sun
    When last year’s distaff idle hung
    And summer’s brows were bound.

    The speaker makes it quite clear that the scene and the people she is describing are no longer part of this world; thus she offers the strong suggestion they have departed this earth, that is, their souls have left their bodies through death.  

    The lines, “move the feet / Which walk no more the village street – / Nor by the wood are found,” report the fact that those about whom she speaks no longer inhabit this mud ball of planet earth.

    At the same time, the speaker is making it clear that she is not setting up a dichotomy between the city and country.  Those feet that no  longer “walk the village street” also no longer walk in the “wood.”  

    She then reports that the souls of birds who have departed the earth are also here.  While on earth they had “sought the sun” after summer had relinquished its short lease on time.

    Third Stanza:  Mysticism of the Stars

    Ne’er saw I such a wondrous scene –
    Ne’er such a ring on such a green –
    Nor so serene array –
    As if the stars some summer night
    Should swing their cups of Chrysolite –
    And revel till the day –

    The speaker then remarks about the uniqueness of this fantastic scene, for never before has she observed such a “wondrous scene” with mystic activities continuing on such a phosphorescent color of beings and movements.  The serenity of the scene also strikes the speaker with its stature of uniqueness.

    The speaker then attempts to compare the scene she has observed to what it might look like if upon any given “summer night” the stars were to be seen frolicking and “swing[ing] their cups of Chrysolite,” or offering up toasts as noisy, happy, party revelers are wont to do. 

    The employment of the heavenly bodies offers the strong hint that the speaker has engaged her considerable mystic vision in order to describe a scene that she has only intuited but not directly experienced.

    Fourth Stanza:  Awaiting Her Own Arrival

    Like thee to dance – like thee to sing –
    People upon the mystic green –
    I ask, each new May Morn.
    I wait thy far, fantastic bells –
    Announcing me in other dells –
    Unto the different dawn!

    The speaker then addresses the Divine Reality or God, declaring that these “People upon the mystic green” are singing and dancing as the Divine does.  She then becomes confident enough to remark that she too expects to dance and sing upon such a “mystic green.” 

    The speaker reveals that she prays “each new May Morn,” as she continues to wait with anticipation to hear the ringing of God’s “fantastic bells,” which seem “far,” as she remains upon the material level of earth.

    But the speaker expects to hear these bells calling her as they announce her arrival in those “other dells,” and at a different kind of dawn.  The speaker has likely been motivated to intuit the mystic scene by the natural beauty of a May morning, which has spirited her mind away to a holy place where the dearly departed now reside, play, and take their celebratory being.

  • Emily Dickinson’s “The feet of people walking home”

    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 “The feet of people walking home”

    In a uniquely dramatic way, Dickinson’s speaker reveals the simple truth that people are happier when they are on their way home.

    Introduction with Text of “The feet of people walking home”

    Emily Dickinson’s “The feet of people walking home” plays out its little drama in three octaves or eight-line stanzas.  Instead of the literal meaning of the word, “home,” this poem employs the figurative meaning as in the old hymn lyric “This World Is Not My Home.”  This Dickinson poem features highly symbolic imagery, while at times seeming to point to things of this physical world. 

    Every image works in service of supporting the claim that each human soul wears “gayer sandals” as it strides toward its permanent “home” in the abode of the Divine Creator.  Again, the Dickinsonian mysticism provides the poet’s speaker with an abundance of mystic meaning garnered from that “Bird” of hers that ventures out and returns with new melodies.

    The feet of people walking home

    The feet of people walking home
    With gayer sandals go  –
    The Crocus  – till she rises
    The Vassal of the snow  –
    The lips at Hallelujah
    Long years of practise bore
    Till bye and bye these Bargemen
    Walked singing on the shore.

    Pearls are the Diver’s farthings
    Extorted from the Sea  –
    Pinions  – the Seraph’s wagon
    Pedestrian once  – as we  –
    Night is the morning’s Canvas
    Larceny  – legacy  –
    Death, but our rapt attention
    To Immortality.

    My figures fail to tell me
    How far the Village lies  –
    Whose peasants are the angels  –
    Whose Cantons dot the skies  –
    My Classics vail their faces  –
    My faith that Dark adores  –
    Which from its solemn abbeys
    Such resurrection pours.

    Reading: 

    Commentary on “The feet of people walking home”

    In a uniquely dramatic way, Dickinson’s speaker reveals the simple truth that people are happier when they are on their way home–especially as they are making progress toward their Divine Abode.

    First Stanza:  Happier on the Way Home

    The feet of people walking home
    With gayer sandals go  –
    The Crocus  – till she rises
    The Vassal of the snow  –
    The lips at Hallelujah
    Long years of practise bore
    Till bye and bye these Bargemen
    Walked singing on the shore.

    A paraphrase of the first two lines of Dickinson’s “The feet of people walking home” might be:  People are happier when they are on their way back to the abode of the Divine Creator.  The physical earthly place called “home” serves as a metaphor for Heaven or the Divine Place where the belovèd Lord resides.  

    That “Divine Place” is ineffable, and therefore has no earthly counterpart, but for most human beings and especially for Emily Dickinson, home is the nearest thing on earth, that is, in this world to the spiritual level of being known as “Heaven.”    So according to this speaker even the shoes of people who are on their way “home” are “gayer,” happier, more peaceful, filled with delight.  

    The speaker then begins to offer support for her claim: the flower exemplified by the “Crocus” is restrained by the “snow” until it pushes up through the ground and displays it marvelous colors.   Similarly, the human soul remains restrained by maya delusion until it pushes up through the dirt of this world to reveal its true colors in God.  

    Those who have practiced meditating on the name of the Divine for many years ultimately find themselves walking and “singing on the shore” like “Bargemen,” who have come ashore after a long haul of work.

    Second Stanza:  The Value of Commodities

    Pearls are the Diver’s farthings
    Extorted from the Sea  –
    Pinions  – the Seraph’s wagon
    Pedestrian once  – as we  –
    Night is the morning’s Canvas
    Larceny  – legacy  –
    Death, but our rapt attention
    To Immortality.

    Further examples of those who are going “home” are divers for pearls who are able to “extort” those valuable commodities “from the sea.”  Again, highly symbolic is the act of diving for pearls.  The meditating devotee is diving for the pearls of love and wisdom that only the Blessed Creator provides his striving children.  

    This image is comparable to the line in the chant by Paramahansa Yogananda “Today My Mind Has Dived”:  “Today my mind has dived deep in Thee / for Thy pearls of love from my depthless sea.”  

    The metaphoric diving for pearls enlivens and strengthens the message regarding the spiritual seeker’s search for God’s wisdom and love.  In both discourses, the “sea” serves as a metaphor for the Divine.   

    The “Seraph” before getting his wings once was confined to walking, not riding in a wagon.  His wings or pinions now serve him as a useful vehicle to alleviate his need to take the shoe-leather express.  “Night” serves the “morning” as a “canvas” on which can be painted taking and giving.  

    If in dreams, the poet can see herself as a channel for providing mystic truths, she will be leaving a “legacy,” but if she has envisioned only selfish wish fulfillment, she will be committing “larceny.”   

    Therefore, as night serves morning, morning serves the soul as it allows expression to blossom.   “Death” is not the end of life, not the life of the soul, because the soul is immortal; therefore, the only purpose for death is to focus the human being’s mind on the ultimate fact of “Immortality.”  Without the duality of death vs immortality, the latter could not be grasped in the physical world on the material plane.

    Third Stanza:  Ultimate Home in Heaven

    My figures fail to tell me
    How far the Village lies  –
    Whose peasants are the angels  –
    Whose Cantons dot the skies  –
    My Classics vail their faces  –
    My faith that Dark adores  –
    Which from its solemn abbeys
    Such resurrection pours.

    The speaker now admits that she has no idea how far away the “Village” is, that is, how far or how long it will take to reach her Ultimate Home in Heaven.   But she then makes sure that her audience knows that she is indeed referring to Heaven when she asserts that Heaven’s “peasants are the angels.”  

    The souls that have already entered that Kingdom of Ineffable Reality have joined the angels.  The speaker then refers to the stars calling them “Cantons” that “dot the skies.”   The speaker is implying that the “Village” she speaks of is full of light, and the only earthly comparison is the stars in the sky.  The speaker reports that her old, established expressions have hidden themselves, as her faith remains cloistered and “solemn.”

    But from those “abbeys” of her faith, she senses that the “resurrection” of her soul is certain, as the pouring out of sunshine from a dark cloud that divides to reveal those marvelous, warm rays.

    Dickinson’s Grammar/Spelling Errors

    Some of Dickinson’s poems contain grammatical and/or spelling errors; for example, in “The feet of people walking home” in line 6,”Long years of practise bore,” she employs the British spelling—a verb form—instead of the noun form “practice,” which is actually required in this phrase.  

    Interestingly, while American English currently uses “practice” for both noun and verb, the British forms use “practice” to function as a noun and “practise” as a verb. It remains unclear why editor Thomas H. Johnson did not quietly correct that error, because he reports in the introduction to his The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, 

    I have silently corrected obvious misspelling (witheld, visiter, etc), and misplaced apostrophes (does’nt).

    However, those errors do tend to give her work a human flavor that perfection would not have rendered.

    The Metaphor of Divinity

    The impossibility of expressing the ineffable has scooped up poets of all ages.   The poet who intuits that only the Divine exists and that all Creation is simply a plethora of manifestations emanating from that Ultimate Reality has always been motivated to express that intuition.  

    But putting into words that which is beyond words remains a daunting task.   Because Dickinson was blessed with a mystic’s vision, she was able to express metaphorically her intuition that the soul of the human being is immortal, even though her sometimes awkward expressions seem to lurch forward in fits and starts.   But many of her best efforts feature the divine drama, which she often plays out in her poems.