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 Soul selects her own Society”
Emily Dickinson’s “The Soul selects her own Society” portrays the nature of individual self-sufficiency, spiritual power, and the deliberate choice of isolation over social engagement. The result is a positive statement that the strength of the soul remains ascendent, despite a world of chaos.
Introduction and Text of “The Soul selects her own Society”
In only three innovative quatrains, Emily Dickinson’s poem, “The Soul selects her own Society,” reveals the power of the soul’s skill in selecting its companions and rejecting external influences.
This profound theme is one of many that similarly focus on issues of individuality in Dickinson’s 1775 span of poems. The poet grappled with questions of personal autonomy and the inner life by creating speakers who address those inquiries in unique, strong voices.
Emily Dickinson’s themes, poetic techniques, as well as the cultural and philosophical contexts that inform her poems all lend heft to the notion that the poet remained steadfast in her determination to live deliberately and independently.
The claims that Dickinson’s speaker makes about the soul’s choices illuminate this poem’s celebration of individuality, and those claims offer a subtle critique of societal pressures. This important theme can be found in a number of Dickinson’s poems. The poet continued to create speakers who share her love of privacy.
The Soul selects her own Society –
The Soul selects her own Society – Then – shuts the Door – To her divine Majority – Present no more –
Unmoved – she notes the Chariots – pausing – At her low Gate – Unmoved – an Emperor be kneeling Upon her Mat –
I’ve known her – from an ample nation – Choose One – Then – close the Valves of her attention – Like Stone –
Commentary on “The Soul selects her own Society”
Emily Dickinson’s “The Soul selects her own Society” stands as the emblematic poem for not only the poet’s entire oeuvre but also for her life choice of isolation as well. She continued to create speakers, whose voices remain strong and unique. Her elliptical, minimalist expressions demonstrate an economy of language use seldom experienced to such a high degree.
First Stanza: The Soul’s Decision
The Soul selects her own Society – Then – shuts the Door – To her divine Majority – Present no more –
The first stanza establishes the soul’s autonomy and power as the target of the poem. Dickinson’s speaker is personifying the soul as a feminine being, a choice that comports with her frequent portrayal of the self as an introspective consciousness.
The verb “selects” remains essential in distinguishing a deliberate act of choice. Unlike passive acceptance or arbitrary selection, the soul’s decision to choose its “Society” reflects a profound exercise of individual agency and strength.
The capitalization of “Soul” and “Society” ennobles these terms, attesting to spiritual and metaphysical power. “Society” indicates a selected group of companions that the soul deems worthy of its attention.
The second line, “Then – shuts the Door,” introduces an intense metaphor of exclusion. The act of shutting the door symbolizes the rejection of all that lies outside the soul’s chosen circle.
This exclusionary image invokes both physical and psychological barriers, making clear that the soul’s decision is not merely a preference but instead remains a absolute act of isolation.
The door, a boundary between the inner and outer worlds, becomes an instrument of both inclusion and exclusion, emphasizing the soul’s desire for control over its environment.
The phrase “divine Majority” in the third line refers to a spiritual unity, such as a divine assembly representing the will of a Higher Power, and the soul accepts that “Majority” and its divinity as evidence of its own affirmative judgment.
The “divine Majority” also includes tangentially certain members of the broader societal collective–family and friends–on the earth plane, implying that the soul dismisses the opinions or expectations of the masses but accepts willingly and graciously all those who understand and respect the choices of the speaker.
The adjective “divine” imbues this majority with a sacred quality that it must possess, if the speaker is to sanction it. The final line, “Present no more,” reinforces the irrevocability of this decision. The soul’s chosen society is now its sole focus, and all others are rendered absent, both physically and metaphysically.
Interestingly, the word “present” can be interpreted as either an adjective or a verb, but either interpretation results in the same meaning of the phrase in this context. As a verb, it is a command, “Offer no more suggestions for my perusal.” As an adjective, the speaker is making the simple statement that other than her chosen “divine Majority,” no further admittance is allowed; her group remains complete.
Dickinson’s use of her liberal spray of dashes throughout the stanza creates a spacing rhythm, mirroring the deliberate and measured nature of the soul’s actions. These pauses invite readers or listeners to linger on each phrase, reflecting the weight of the soul’s choices.
The stanza’s brevity and syntactic compression further enhance its impact, distilling complex ideas into a few carefully chosen words. By framing the soul’s selection as both an act of inclusion and exclusion, the speaker has set the stage for the poem’s expression of individualism and its consequences.
Second Stanza: Resisting External Influence
Unmoved – she notes the Chariots – pausing – At her low Gate – Unmoved – an Emperor be kneeling Upon her Mat –
The second stanza shifts its focus from it affirmative declaration to the soul’s unwavering stance in the face of external temptations, reinforcing the theme of absolute individual sovereignty.
The repetition of “Unmoved” at the beginning of the first and third lines serves as a rhetorical anchor, emphasizing the soul’s emotional detachment and unchanging resolve.
This word choice suggests not only indifference but also a deliberate refusal to be swayed by external grandeur or authority. The soul’s ability to remain “unmoved” underscores its inner strength, positioning it as a self-sustaining entity invulnerable to worldly, earthly allure.
The imagery of “Chariots – pausing – / At her low Gate” heralds a scene of pomp and power, seeking entry. Chariots, often associated with military might or royal processions, symbolize societal prestige and influence.
This chariots pausing at the soul’s “low Gate” creates a striking contrast between the grandeur of the material world-at-large and the humility of the soul’s inner mystical domain.
The adjective “low” suggests simplicity and humility—qualities that perfectly align with Dickinson’s speakers’ recurring portrayal of the self as unpretentious yet profoundly self-aware. The gate, like the door in the first stanza, functions as a boundary, reinforcing the soul’s control over who may enter its realm.
The second image of “an Emperor be kneeling / Upon her Mat” magnifies this contrast. The emperor, a figure of supreme authority, is portrayed in a position of supplication—”kneeling” on the soul’s humble mat.
This inversion of power dynamics is astonishing: the soul—humble, modest, and tranquil—commands the respect of even the most powerful figures. The mat, a simple household item, further emphasizes the soul’s unassuming nature, yet its presence in this context elevates it to a symbol of the soul’s complete sovereignty.
The emperor’s kneeling suggests not only deference but also a recognition of the soul’s authority, which transcends all worldly hierarchies. Dickinson’s traditional, abundant splash of dashes in this stanza furthers the pauses, mirroring the soul’s contemplative resistance. Each dash invites the reader to pause and consider the significance of the soul’s indifference to such potent symbols of power.
The stanza’s structure, with its parallel clauses beginning with “Unmoved,” reinforces the soul’s consistency and resolve. By juxtaposing the soul’s simplicity with the grandeur of chariots and emperors, the speaker celebrates the power of inner conviction over external splendor, a theme that resonates with the Dickinsonian broader critique of societal conformity.
Third Stanza: The Final Choice
I’ve known her – from an ample nation – Choose One – Then – close the Valves of her attention – Like Stone –
The third stanza shifts to a personal perspective, as the speaker reveals intimate knowledge of the soul’s behavior with the phrase “I’ve known her.” This shift to the first person opens up her deep familiarity, confirming the speaker’s own experience as one who often chooses solitude over societal engagement.
The phrase “from an ample nation” implies a vast array of potential companions, whether individuals, ideas, or influences. The word “ample” denotes abundance, yet the soul’s choice is singular and exclusive, as it selects only “One.” This act of choosing remains both deliberate as well as reductive, narrowing the soul’s focus to a single entity or ideal.
The metaphor of closing “the Valves of her attention” is particularly salient. The term “Valves” introduces a mechanical image, indicating a controlled and deliberate mechanism for regulating attention. Unlike the organic imagery of doors or gates, valves imply precision and finality, as if the soul is sealing off its consciousness with mechanical efficacy.
The simile, “Like Stone,” further emphasizes this irrevocability, vouchsafing an unyielding, determined state. Stone is nearly immutable and enduring, indicating that the soul’s decision is permanent and secure against change. This image also carries a sense of weight and stillness, contrasting with the dynamic imagery of chariots and emperors in the previous stanza.
The stanza’s brevity enhances its impact, as each line dramatically builds toward the final, evocative image of stone. The dashes keep their rhythm punctuating the lines, creating the important pauses that reflect the gravity of the soul’s withdrawal.
By framing the soul’s choice as selective—inclusive as well as exclusive—the speaker emphasizes the result of such individual autonomy: the soul expresses its sovereignty, and the less important connection with the broader world is exposed and laid to rest.
A Resolute Act of Agency
Emily Dickinson’s “The Soul selects her own Society” is a masterful exploration of individuality, autonomy, and the consequences of deliberate isolation. Through its three quatrains, the poem traces the soul’s journey from selection to rejection to final withdrawal, each stage completed by a resolute act of agency.
The first stanza establishes the soul’s sovereignty through its careful selection of companions, while the second illustrates its resistance to external temptations, and the third underscores the finality of its withdrawal.
Dickinson’s use of vivid imagery–doors, gates, chariots, emperors, valves, and stone–creates a rich tapestry of meaning, inviting readers to contemplate the power and cost of personal choice. The poem’s formal elements, including its concise structure, halting rhythm, and strategic use of dashes, enhance its thematic depth.
The dashes, in particular, serve as a stylistic hallmark, creating pauses that mirror the soul’s contemplative resolve and invite readers to engage with the text on a deeper level.
The capitalization of key terms, such as “Soul,” “Society,” and “Majority,” imbues them with metaphysical significance, elevating the poem’s exploration of individuality to a universal plane.
Contextually, the poem reflects Dickinson’s own life as a poet who chose solitude over societal engagement. Living in Amherst, Massachusetts, Dickinson maintained a reclusive lifestyle, corresponding with a select few while withdrawing from public life. This personal context informs the poem’s celebration of inner conviction, as well as its acknowledgment of the isolation that such conviction entails.
Philosophically, the poem aligns with transcendentalist ideas of self-reliance, as espoused by contemporaries like Ralph Waldo Emerson, though Dickinson’s perspective is more introspective and less optimistic about the individual’s connection to the broader world.
Ultimately, “The Soul selects her own Society” is a testament to Dickinson’s ability to distill complex ideas into concise, evocative verse. The poem invites readers to reflect on the nature of choice, the value of autonomy, and the delicate balance between connection and solitude.
By portraying the soul as a sovereign entity capable of shaping its own destiny, Dickinson’s speaker has affirmed the power of individuality while acknowledging the profound solitude that accompanies such freedom.
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 “Summer for thee, grant I may be”
Addressing the Divine Belovèd, Emily Dickinson’s speaker prays to remain a special musical and visual spark in the creation of everlasting, eternal, immortal Bliss.
Introduction with Text of “Summer for thee, grant I may be”
Many of Emily Dickinson’s poems prominently feature humble prayers to the Blessèd Creator. As she adored nature’s many sounds and varieties of colors, she sought to feel her connection through the spiritual level of being to all that makes up the created world. Her favorite season of summer often served as the resplendent muse that allowed her entry into the mystical nature of sound and sight.
Although, on their physical level, those sense-tinged images are beautiful and inspiring, Dickinson created characters to demonstrate the profound awareness that a deeper, even more beautiful and inspiring level of existence could be intuited. As her speakers approach the ineffable, the language grows more intensely mystical, requiring that special reading that all poetry requires but on an ever deeper level.
Summer for thee, grant I may be
Summer for thee, grant I may be When Summer days are flown! Thy music still, when Whipporwill And Oriole – are done!
For thee to bloom, I’ll skip the tomb And row my blossoms o’er! Pray gather me – Anemone – Thy flower – forevermore!
Reading
Commentary on “Summer for thee, grant I may be”
Emily Dickinson’s speaker is addressing her Creator, her Heavenly Father (God), praying to retain her special knowledge of musical and visual imagery that have been especially brought into existence for understanding creation through the art of poetry.
First Stanza: Mystical Metaphors
Summer for thee, grant I may be When Summer days are flown! Thy music still, when Whippoorwill And Oriole – are done!
The speaker begins by addressing the Divine Belovèd, imploring the Heavenly Father to allow her continued mystical existence even after the beautiful summer season’s glowing days “are flown!”
The inspiration in which she has reveled is exemplified in the music of the “Whippoorwill” and the “Oriole.” Both the music of the bird songs and the warmth and beauty of a summer day are contained in the mere reference in the half line “Thy music still . . . .”
The use of the familiar second person pronouns, thee and thy, hint that the speaker is addressing God. Only God, the Heavenly Reality, the Over-Soul, is close enough to the individual soul to require such a personally familiar pronoun in the Dickinsonian era of common parlance, as well as in that of present day English.
Dickinson’s innate ability to intuit from nature the creative power of the Creator urged the poet in her to build entirely new worlds in which she mentally resided, as her soul overflowed with ever new bliss of knowledge. Such knowledge did not arrive in pairs of opposites as earthly knowledge does, but rather that state of knowing afforded her direct perception of truth and reality.
Thus, she employed metaphor as readily as a child employs new and special ways of putting into language concepts he/she has never before encountered. A useful example of this child-metaphor engagement can be observed when hearing little toddler girl call a hangnail a string.
The toddler who had experienced a hangnail but had no name for it still manages to communicate the reality of the hangnail because she does know the nature of both the finger condition and what a string looks like. Although Dickinson is communicating well beyond earthly reality, she can produce a metaphor for the ineffable as easily as a child can name a hangnail a string.
Second Stanza: Rowing in Bliss
For thee to bloom, I’ll skip the tomb And row my blossoms o’er! Pray gather me – Anemone – Thy flower – forevermore!
The speaker then offers a very cheeky remark in claiming she will “skip the tomb.” But she can do so because she has already just revealed the reason for such an ability. The Divine Reality has been blossoming in her.
She can tout her connection and continued existence through Immortality because she knows her soul is everliving, everlasting, and remains a spark of ever-new power. The speaker then rows her immortal sea craft–the soul–which blooms eternally like the most beautiful flowers that earth has to offer.
But even with such knowledge of such power, she remains humble, praying that the Divine Belovèd continues to “gather [her]” as bouquets of other earthly flowers are gathered. She then names the beautiful flower which metaphorically represents her blossoming soul, “Anemone.”
The flower’s musical name as well as variety of colors play in the minds and hearts of readers, as perfect metaphorical representations of the ineffable entity–the ever blissful soul. The minimalism of the Dickinson canon speaks volumes–more than any voluminous text could do.
Such an accomplishment belongs to the wisdom of the ages and to the musing, meditative mind that enters the hallways of reality on the astral and causal levels of existence where artists find their most profound inspiration.
Those who can turn those inspirations into words will always find an audience down through the centuries as long as this plane of earthly existence continues its twirl through space.
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’s been a Death, in the Opposite House”
Emily Dickinson’s “There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House” features a glimpse at the skill of this poet as she speaks through a created character—an adult male looking back at the daunting experience of becoming aware that a neighbor had died.
Introduction with Text of “There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House”
The following version of Emily Dickinson’s “There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House” in Thomas Johnson’s The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson displays the poem as the poet wrote it.
Some editors have tinkered with Dickinson’s texts over the years to make her poems look more “normal,” i.e., without so many dashes, capitalizations, and seemingly odd spacing, and in this poem, they convert the fifth stanza into a perfect quatrain.
Dickinson’s poems, however, actually depend on her odd form to express her exact meaning. Editors who tinker with her oddities fritter away the poet’s actual achievement.
There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House
There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House, As lately as Today – I know it, by the numb look Such Houses have – alway –
The Neighbors rustle in and out – The Doctor – drives away – A Window opens like a Pod – Abrupt – mechanically –
Somebody flings a Mattress out – The Children hurry by – They wonder if it died – on that – I used to – when a Boy –
The Minister – goes stiffly in – As if the House were His – And He owned all the Mourners – now – And little Boys – besides –
And then the Milliner – and the Man Of the Appalling Trade – To take the measure of the House –
There’ll be that Dark Parade –
Of Tassels – and of Coaches – soon – It’s easy as a Sign – The Intuition of the News – In just a Country Town –
Reading
Commentary on “There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House”
This poem offers much food for thought: Dickinson’s use of a male character and the perfidy of editors who regularize her text, as well as the events depicted in the narrative.
Stanza 1: The House Speaks of Death
There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House, As lately as Today – I know it, by the numb look Such Houses have – alway –
The speaker announces that he can tell that a death has occurred in the house just across the street from where he lives. He then explains that he can tell by the “numb look” the house has, and he intuits that the death has taken place quite recently.
Note that I have designated that the speaker is male as I call him “he.” In stanza 3, it will be revealed that the speaker is indeed an adult male, who mentions what he wondered about “when a Boy.” Thus it becomes apparent that Dickinson is speaking through a character she has created specifically for this little drama.
Stanza 2: The Comings and Goings
The Neighbors rustle in and out – The Doctor – drives away – A Window opens like a Pod – Abrupt – mechanically –
The speaker then continues to describe the scene he has observed which offers further evidence that a death has recently occurred in that opposite house. He sees neighbors coming and going. He sees a physician leave the house, and then suddenly someone opens a window, and the speaker claims that the person abruptly “mechanically” opens the window.
Stanza 3: The Death Bed
Somebody flings a Mattress out – The Children hurry by – They wonder if it died – on that – I used to – when a Boy –
The speaker then sees why the window was opened: someone then throws out a mattress. Then gruesomely he adds that it is likely that the person died on that mattress, and the children who are scurrying past the house likely wonder if that is why the mattress was tossed out. The speaker then reveals that he used to wonder that same thing when he was a boy.
Stanza 4: The Mourners Are Owned by Clergy
The Minister – goes stiffly in – As if the House were His – And He owned all the Mourners – now – And little Boys – besides –
Continuing to describe the macabre events occurring across the street, the speaker then reports seeing “the Minister” enter the house. It seems to the speaker that the minister behaves as if he must take possession of everything even “the Mourners”—and the speaker adds that the minister also owns the “little Boys” as well.
Stanza 5: That Eerie Funeral Procession
And then the Milliner – and the Man Of the Appalling Trade – To take the measure of the House –
There’ll be that Dark Parade –
The speaker then reports that the milliner, who will dress the body, has arrived. Then finally the mortician, who will measure both the corpse and the house for the coffin. The speaker finds the mortician’s “Trade” to be “Appalling.”
The line “There’ll be that Dark Parade –” is separated from the first three lines of the stanza. This placement adds a nuance of meaning as it imitates what will happen: the funeral procession, “Dark Parade,” will separate from the house. And the line departing from the rest of the stanza demonstrates that action quite concretely and literally. (More on this below in “Regularizing Emily Dickinson’s Text”)
Stanza 6:Intuition Spells News
Of Tassels – and of Coaches – soon – It’s easy as a Sign – The Intuition of the News – In just a Country Town –
The speaker then finishes his description of the “Dark Parade” with its “Tassels” and “Coaches” and finally concludes by remarking how easy it is to spot a house whose residents have become mourners. All those people and events elaborated by the speaker add up to “Intuition of the News” in the simple “Country Town.”
The Created Character
The poet has offered a genuine depiction of what is occurring in present time as well as what occurred in the past. And she is doing so using the character of an adult male who is looking back to his memories of seeing such a sight as a child.
The authenticity of a woman speaking though a male voice demonstrates the mystic as well as poetic skill of this poet to put herself in the persona of the opposite sex in order to create a dramatic event. Poets, however, need not be mystically inclined to achieve this level of authenticity, but certainly not all poets can pull off such a feat.
For example, Langston Hughes created a mixed race character in his poem “Cross” and spoke in first person, but his depiction remains questionable as he assigned feelings to a person not of his own ethnicity based solely on stereotypes.
Dickinson’s character is offering insights into an event that are not limited to the observations of one sex; a little girl could make those same observations. Dickinson’s reason for creating a male character to report this event remains unknown, but it is likely she simply felt a more compelling drama could be achieved if her character were a little boy.
Regularizing Emily Dickinson’s Text
One of the many arguments over the reclusive 19th century American poet, Emily Dickinson, includes the one directed at editors who regularize Dickinson’s idiosyncratic style—her many dashes, her seemingly haphazard capitalization, and her sometimes irregular use of spacing.
One can sympathize with those editors who wish to make Emily Dickinson’s poems more palatable for readers, but now and then one can find instances in which the editor’s regularization has limited the poet’s meaning. That limitation occurs in this poem, “There has been a Death, in the Opposite House.”
Poetry textbook editors Louis Simpson (Introduction to Poetry) and Robert N. Linscott (Selected Poems and Letters of Emily Dickinson) alter the text of this Dickinson’s poem in a way that weakens the total impact of the poem.
The widely noted textbook editor Laurence Perrine employed that altered form until the ninth edition of his Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry, when he changed it to reflect Dickinson’s meaning more accurately, after reading my explication of the poem in The Explicator.
(Thomas Arp, Perrine’s coeditor, related to me that that change was Perrine’s last editorial decision before turning over the editorship to Arp.)
Limiting Meaning
That slight alteration is the omission of the empty line separating the last line of the fifth stanza from the preceding three. That omission regularizes the stanza, resulting in a poem of six four-line stanzas. Closing up stanza five gives the poem a uniform appearance but limits Dickinson’s meaning.
Considering the meaning of the line that Dickinson separated from the rest of the stanza, I suggest that she had a specific reason for the separation. The line “There’ll be that Dark Parade” indicates that a funeral procession will soon be seen.
The lines preceding this one state that various persons who serve the dead will be appearing, including the “Man / Of the Appalling Trade – / To take the measure of the House.”
The funeral procession “that Dark Parade” will occur after the measurement of the house and will literally separate itself from the house; and Dickinson, to show this progression concretely, separated the line from the rest of the stanza, whose last word is “House.” By regularizing Dickinson’s stanza, the editors make her poem look neater, but they eliminate the special nuance of meaning that Dickinson achieved in her original.
In Thomas H. Johnson’s The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, the line is not attached to the previous three, as shown above in the text of the poem. Johnson restored Dickinson’s poems to their original forms, without intrusions that would change meaning.
He did make quiet changes in spelling such as “visiter” to “visitor” and repositioned misplaced apostrophes such as “does’nt” to “doesn’t.” Dickinson’s own handwritten version of the poem can be seen in R. W. Franklin’s The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson or on theEmily Dickinson Archive site that clearly shows the poet’s intension that the line be separated from the rest of the stanza.
Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – This daguerrotype circa 1847 at age 17 is likely the only authentic, extant image of the poet.
Emily Dickinson’s “There is another sky”
Emily Dickinson’s “There is another sky” reveals the speaker’s confidence in her creation of a world of beauty that will exist in perpetuity. She is envisioning a world beyond the physical level of existence, where permanence prevails in things of beauty.
Introduction with Text of “There is another sky”
Emily Dickinson’s “There is another sky” is an American-Innovative sonnet. Each line is short, featuring only 3 to 5 metric feet, and with Dickinson’s characteristic slant or near rime; the rime scheme plays out roughly, ABCBCDECFCGHIH.
This American-Innovative sonnet thematically sections itself into two quatrains and a sestet, making it a gentle melding of the English (Shakespeare) and Italian (Petrarchan) sonnets. The speaker of the poem is previewing her intention to establish a world where the pairs of opposites do not obstruct the lives of the inhabitants.
Such beloved features and qualities of life, such as beauty, peace, harmony, balance, and love will hold sway uninterrupted by pesky things like change and disfigurement in her newly created “garden.” On a second note, she is also inviting her brother to enter her new garden that exists under a different sky so that he too may enjoy the divinely fragranced atmosphere of her new creation.
On the literal level, the poet is creating a speaker who is announcing her audacious plan to create a brand new world with her poetry. It will be such a special place so other-worldly that nothing unpleasant that exists in earthly reality will exist there.
Because everything she creates will be based on her imagination and intuition, she can fashion her “garden” to grow anything she finds feasible. That she anticipates no arrival of “frost,’ she can guarantee that flowers will not “fade.” Also leaves will be able to remain “ever green.”
Posing as a invitation, Dickinson’s little drama serves as a clever ruse to persuade her brother to come and experience her poetry. By promising him a whole new, different world, she no doubt hopes he will be more likely to take her up on her offer.
There is another sky
There is another sky, Ever serene and fair, And there is another sunshine, Though it be darkness there; Never mind faded forests, Austin, Never mind silent fields – Here is a little forest, Whose leaf is ever green; Here is a brighter garden, Where not a frost has been; In its unfading flowers I hear the bright bee hum: Prithee, my brother, Into my garden come!
Reading of “There is another sky”
Commentary on “There is another sky”
Emily Dickinson’s “There is another sky” reveals an attitude dramatized in the Shakespeare sonnets: the poet’s confidence in her creation of a world of beauty that will last forever.
The poem is a literal invitation from the poet to her brother Austin to read her poetry, where she is erecting a new place to exist, a beautiful garden free of the decay that literal gardens must undergo.
First Quatrain: Physical Sky vs Metaphysical Sky
There is another sky, Ever serene and fair, And there is another sunshine, Though it be darkness there;
In the first quatrain, the speaker begins by alerting readers that in addition to the “sky” and “sunshine” that already experience on the earthly level, there exist a different sky and a different sunshine.
The other sky about which the speaker is declaiming is always “serene and fair. Thus, no thunder storms or dark clouds intrude into this new sky’s space. The beauty and calmness of a clear blue sky offer an inviting and intriguing possibility.
The speaker then announces the existence of “another sunshine.” But this sunshine seems to have the magic and delicious power to shining even through the darkness. This claim is the first flag that the speaker will be referring to a mystical or metaphysical place that only the soul can perceive.
Behind the darkness of closed eyes, the only “sunshine” or light that can be seen is that of the spiritual eye. Although the speaker cannot guarantee that her entire audience will be able to see such “sunshine,” she is sure that on a mental level they can imagine such a heavenly place.
Second Quatrain: No Fading in the Metaphysical Universe
Never mind faded forests, Austin, Never mind silent fields – Here is a little forest, Whose leaf is ever green;
The speaker then directly addresses someone, admonishing him to pay no attention to “faded forests.” She then the addresses the individual by name, “Austin. ” Austin is the name of Dickinson’s brother. She then admonishes Austin to ignore the “silent fields.”
The reason that Austin should ignore those faded forests and silent fields is that in this place to which she is inviting him, the “little forest” presents leaves that remain perpetually green. And the fields will remain perpetually filled with fruitful crops, never having to lie fallow.
While dropping hints throughout, he speaker remains illusive regarding the whereabouts of this place where the sky, the sun, forests and fields, and leaves all behave differently from that of the physical universe that humanity must experience on the earthly plane.
Sestet: Invitation to the Metaphysical Garden
Here is a brighter garden, Where not a frost has been; In its unfading flowers I hear the bright bee hum: Prithee, my brother, Into my garden come!
The speaker now offers some further description of this new place with a new sky and new sun; she then states that that place is “a brighter garden.” As earthly gardens are bright, mystical or metaphysical gardens remain even brighter.
In the metaphysical garden, there is never a fear of “frost” that kills earthly plants with its sting. Flowers will not fade because of frost or from simply aging. The magic of her garden will guarantee that the beauty of the flowers will bloom forth in perpetuity.
Because of the ability of the flowers to remain “unfading,” bees will always be able to partake of their nectar any time they choose. Thus, the speaker avers that she can “hear the bright bee hum.”
The bright bee is, no doubt, brighter than the ordinary, earthly, literal bee. And because of the permanence of her newly created metaphysical garden, she can listen to the pleasant hum any time she wishes.
In the final couplet, the speaker sets forth the clear invitation to her brother, virtually begging him to come into her garden. She employs the archaic expression “[p]rithee” (conflation of “pray thee”) to emphasize her desire that he take her up on her offer to visit her “garden.”
On the literal level, the poet has created a speaker who extends an invitation to the poet’s brother to read her poems. She has offered an alluring set of reasons to try to capture the brother’s imagination and interest.
And to her other readers, the poet has created a speaker to extend that same invitation, as she hopes the notion of a new, permanent, created world will capture their imaginations also.
Dickinson Riddles
Emily Dickinson’s American-Innovative sonnet “There is another sky” is one of the poet’s many riddles. Her speaker never states directly that the garden is her poetry, but still, she is inviting her brother in to read her poems.
The speaker continues to imply throughout the sonnet that she has constructed a whole new world, where things can live unmolested by the irritants that exist on the physical plane of life. The sky can remain “serene and fair”—no storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, heavy rainstorms that frighten and damage.
And the sunshine can present itself even through the darkness. Forests never fade and die out, and the fields remain always bursting with life; they never lie fallow or turn to dust as on the real, earthy plane—that literal world.
The trees can enjoy wearing green leaves and never have to drop them after they turn all brown or rusty. The speaker is privy to all these utopian-sounding acts because she has created it.
And like the master writer of the Shakespeare sonnets, Dickinson’s speaker knows that she has fashioned out of crude, earthly nature an art that will provide pleasure in perpetuity to the minds and hearts of those who have the ability to imagine and intuit along with her.
This speaker further demonstrates a certain level of cheek and courage by inviting her own brother into her creation. While she no doubt quietly wonders if he will be as impressed as she is, she shows a certain level of confidence by offering such an invitation.
Full Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – This daguerrotype circa 1847 at age 17 is likely the only authentic, extant image of the poet.
Emily Dickinson’s “After great pain, a formal feeling comes”
Emily Dickinson’s “After great pain, a formal feeling comes” is the poem equivalent of a sculpture carved to represent grief; the poet has metaphorically carved from the rock of suffering a remarkable statue of the human mind that has experienced severe agony.
Introduction and Text of “After great pain, a formal feeling comes”
The speaker in Emily Dickinson’s “After great pain, a formal feeling comes” (number 341 in Thomas H. Johnson’s Complete Poems) is creating an intense drama that sets in center stage the bitter agony involved in experiencing utter torment.
The speaker does not name the origin of the certain type of “pain,” because she takes as her purpose only the illumination of the effect she is exploring. If the individual is grieving because of losing a loved one to death or possibly to the breaking up of a friendship, pain will affect that individual in a similar manner to one surfing from an fatal illness. The result of pain regardless of the cause is the issue, not the cause itself.
The tragedy of cause may be held in abeyance and explored separately. When pain itself is explored, it is not also necessary to make clear the original cause for the onset of the pain. The issue of pain itself and how the human heart and mind respond to that stimulus offer a sufficient quantity of material on which to focus.
The poem plays out in three stanzas; the first and third stand in quatrains, while the middle stanza is displayed in a cinquain. The poem features a masterful dramatization, resembling a sculpture set in stone. This poem testifies to the greatness of Emily Dickinson, not only as a poet but also as a lay psychologist.
That the poet was able to sculpt her poem from the stone of grief demonstrates her versatility and the ability to envision and craft into images the language of the heart and mind.
After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
After great pain, a formal feeling comes – The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs – The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore, And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round – Of Ground, or Air, or Ought – A Wooden Way Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone –
This is the Hour of Lead – Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –
Reading of “After great pain, a formal feeling comes”
Commentary on “After great pain, a formal feeling comes”
The images that represent hardness, stillness, and cold combine to create the substance out of which this intense drama grows into existence. The images, while mostly concentrated in the visual, however, bleed over into the other senses. One can virtually hear the hardness and stiffness that afflict the heart and mind as the individual suffers the great agony described so colorfully and precisely.
First Stanza: Stunned by the Onset of Grief
After great pain, a formal feeling comes – The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs – The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore, And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
The speaker begins the scene with a rather dramatic claim that after the experience of some great event causing suffering, a state of solemnity visits the heart and mind of the sufferer. This simple claim puts a label on the stunned feeling which has accompanied the sudden arrival of grief.
That grief results from having experienced some great tragic terror or torment, and that intense feeling can be described as “formal,” as the next step of trying to accept and overcome that pain must be taken. The opposite emotion would then necessarily be “informal,” wherein the individual would remain content or perhaps even in the neutrality of emotion that would cause not feeling at all.
The usual non-suffering consciousness retains no special form, as it spreads out over the heart and mind, formless, shapeless, and unrecognized until nudged into existence by its opposite—or near opposite. The neutrally existing emotion remains neutral or unfeeling until it is forced by circumstances to feel in order to act.
After the suffering begins, the consciousness becomes aware of itself as it begins to feel the sensations of cold, hard, and/or stiff, as in the colorful image, the “Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs.” Time then lets loose its strict hold on consciousness, prompted by the intensity of feeling.
The suffering victim can fanaticize that she has been feeling this new way for an eternity. The personified heart begins to pose questions to the mind, trying to distinguish just how long the pain has been afflicting it: did it happen yesterday or was it ages ago? Such a “stiff Heart” can no longer sense time—minutes, day, years all seem irrelevant to the individual suffering from fierce agony because in such distress, it seems that such a state will never end.
Second Stanza: The Expansion of Formal Stiffness throughout Body and Mind
The Feet, mechanical, go round – Of Ground, or Air, or Ought – A Wooden Way Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone –
The sufferer may seem to pass through her hours and days as would an automaton. The stiffness seems to expand throughout the body from the heart to the feet that are no longer driven by organic impulse but by some “mechanical” motor. They go but without purpose or desire.
The suffering individual seems to be just “going through the motions” of living, or rather existing, for she has become incapable of sensitive living. Her life has become “Wooden”; she pays no attention to important details. She might as well be “a stone”—her ability to enjoy “contentment” is simply like a piece of “Quartz”—inanimate, hard, and cold. She has become a cliché, attempting to carve out her existence on this newly found pice of rock that she has experienced as inordinate pain.
Third Stanza: Uncertainty of Outliving the Trauma
This is the Hour of Lead – Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –
This horrendous suffering has effected this hard, cold, stiff formality, and it has morphed into a dreadful “Hour of Lead, ” causing time to transform into an ocean of lead. The navigator on such a sea finds it virtually impossible to move forward.
Such pain must be overcome, if the individual is to continue living her life. Thus, the speaker must reach some satisfactory conclusion. So she arrives at the possibility that if the suffering soul can just manage to live through the painful event, she will still remember the experience.
The question then becomes how will looking back and recalling such pain affect the person’s life in future time. The speaker decides that recalling such an event will resemble remembering almost dying from freezing to death in the snow.
First, she will recall the freezing chill. Then she will remember nearly losing consciousness and remaining in a stupefied state of awareness. And finally she will realize that she can hold on no longer, and then she will allow herself simply to relax let go of all thoughts involving the trauma. As she remained in the throes of torment, the sufferer could not be assured that she could live through the event.
However, if she does outlive the tragedy, according to her conclusion, she should be able to look back and recall the pain as a cold, hard, stiff substance that stiffened her until she finally managed to control and lose the consciousness that felt that unendurable misery.
Taking his place among luminaries such as Dickinson and Whitman, Frost has remained one of the most widely anthologized American poets of all time. His poems are more complex than simple nature pieces; many are “tricky—very tricky,” as he once quipped about “The Road Not Taken.”
Robert Frost has earned his reputation as one of America’s most beloved poets. The poet holds the honor of being the first American poet to deliver his poems to the assembled celebrants at the 1961 inauguration of the 35th president of the United States of America, John F. Kennedy.
Early Life
Robert Frost’s father, William Prescott Frost, Jr., was a journalist, residing in San Fransisco, California, when Robert Lee Frost was born on March 26, 1874. Robert’s mother, Isabelle, was an immigrant from Scotland.
The young Frost spent the first eleven years of his childhood in San Fransisco. After his father died of tuberculosis, Robert’s mother relocated the family, including his sister, Jeanie, to Lawrence, Massachusetts, where they lived with Robert’s paternal grandparents.
In 1892, Robert graduated from Lawrence High School, where he and Elinor White, his future wife, served as co-valedictorians.
Robert then made his first attempt to attend college at Dartmouth College, but after only a few months, he left school and returned to Lawrence, where he began working a series of part-time jobs [1].
Marriage and Children
Elinor White, who had been Robert’s high school sweetheart, was attending St. Lawrence University when Robert proposed to her. She turned him down because she wanted to complete her college education before she married.
Robert then moved to Virginia, and then after he returned to Lawrence, again he proposed to Elinor, who had now completed her college education. The couple married on December 19, 1895. They produced six children.
Their son, Eliot, was born in 1896 but died in 1900 of cholera; their daughter, Lesley, lived from 1899 to 1983. Their son, Carol, born in in 1902 but committed suicide in 1940.
Their daughter, Irma, 1903 to 1967, battled schizophrenia for which she was confined in a mental hospital. Daughter, Marjorie, born 1905 died of puerperal fever after giving birth. Their sixth child, Elinor Bettina, who was born in 1907, died one day after her birth.
Only Lesley and Irma survived their father. Mrs. Frost suffered heart issues for most of her life. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1937 but the following year died of heart failure [2].
Farming and Writing
Robert then again attempted to attend college. In 1897, he enrolled in Harvard University, but because of health problems, he was forced to leave school again. He rejoined his wife in Lawrence. Their second child Lesley was born in 1899.
The family then relocated to a New Hampshire farm that Robert’s grandparents had procured for him. Robert’s farming phase thus began as he strove to farm the land while continuing his writing. The Frost’s farming endeavors continued to result in unsuccessful fits and starts. Frost became well adjusted to rustic life, despite his lack of success as a farmer.
On November 8, 1894, in The Independent, a New York newspaper, Frost’s first poem “My Butterfly” appeared in print. The next dozen years proved to be a difficult period in the poet’s personal life yet a fertile one for his writing. The poet’s writing life was launched in a impressive fashion, and the rural, rustic influence on his poems would set a tone and style for all of his works.
Nevertheless, despite the popularity of his individually published poems, such “The Tuft of Flowers” and “The Trial by Existence,” he could not secure a publisher for his collections of works [3].
Moving to England
In 1912, Frost sold the New Hampshire farm and relocated his family to England. Because of his failure to find a publisher in the US for his collections of poems, he decided to try his luck across the pond.
That moved turned out to be life-line for the young poet and his career. At age 38 in England, Frost found a publisher for his collection A Boy’s Will and soon after for his collection North of Boston.
In addition to securing publishers for his two books, the American poet became acquainted with Ezra Pound and Edward Thomas, two important contemporary poets. Pound and Thomas reviewed favorably Frost’s two book, and thus Frost’s career as a poet was launched.
Frost’s friendship with Edward Thomas became especially important, and Frost has revealed that the long walks taken by the two poet/friends had influenced his writing in a wonderfully constructive manner.
Frost has given credit to Thomas for one of his most famous poems, “The Road Not Taken,” which was influenced by Thomas’ attitude toward the fact of not being able to take two different paths on their long walks.
Returning to America
After World War 1 began in Europe, the Frosts moved back to the United States. Their brief stay in England had sparked useful results for the poet’s reputation, for even in his native country, he was becoming well known and loved.
American Publisher Henry Holt republished Frost’s earlier collections, and then published the poet’s third collection, Mountain Interval, which had been written while Frost was still living in England.
Frost began to experience the pleasing situation of having the same journals, such as The Atlantic, solicit his work, even though they had rejected those same works only a few years earlier.
In 1915, the Frosts purchased a farm, located in Franconia, New Hampshire. Their traveling days had come to and end, and Frost continued his writing career. Frost also taught intermittently at a number of colleges, including Dartmouth, University of Michigan, and especially Amherst College, where he served regularly from 1916 until 1938.
Amherst’s primary library is now the Robert Frost Library, in honor of the long-time educator and poet. Frost also spent most of his summers teaching English at Middlebury College in Vermont.
Frost never completed a university degree, but over his lifetime, he accumulated more than forty honorary degrees. Frost won the Pulitzer Prize four times for his books, New Hampshire, Collected Poems, A Further Range, and A Witness Tree.
Frost labeled himself a “lone wolf” in the world of poetry because he did not follow any current literary movements. His only motivation was to express the human condition in a world of duality.
Frost did not pretend to explain that condition; he sought solely to create his little dramas to reveal the nature of the emotional life in the mind and heart of a human being [4].
First American Inaugural Poet
Robert Frost had intended to star his occasional piece “Dedication” as a preface to the poem that the President-Elect John F. Kennedy had requested for his 1961 inauguration.
But the sun rendered Frost’s reading impossible, so he dropped “Dedication” but continued on to recite “The Gift Outright” from memory.
Introduction with Text of “Dedication”
On January 20, 1961, Robert Frost became the first American poet to deliver a poem at a presidential inauguration. He recited his poem “The Gift Outright” at the swearing in of John F. Kennedy as the 35th president of the United States of America. Frost had also written a new poem to preface his recitation of “The Gift Outright,” but he did not have time to commit his new piece to memory.
At the inauguration, Frost began to read the new piece, but he was unable to see clearly his copy of the poem because of the bright sunlight bouncing off the snow; he managed to stumble through the first 23 lines of the new poem [5]. But then he switched to reciting “The Gift Outright,” which he had by memory.
While Frost’s “Dedication” offers some useful and important historical features, it does reveal some of the fawning exaggeration that occasional poems [6] are often wont to suffer.
Dedication
Summoning artists to participate In the august occasions of the state Seems something artists ought to celebrate. Today is for my cause a day of days. And his be poetry’s old-fashioned praise Who was the first to think of such a thing. This verse that in acknowledgement I bring Goes back to the beginning of the end Of what had been for centuries the trend; A turning point in modern history. Colonial had been the thing to be As long as the great issue was to see What country’d be the one to dominate By character, by tongue, by native trait, The new world Christopher Columbus found. The French, the Spanish, and the Dutch were downed And counted out. Heroic deeds were done. Elizabeth the First and England won. Now came on a new order of the ages That in the Latin of our founding sages (Is it not written on the dollar bill We carry in our purse and pocket still?) God nodded his approval of as good So much those heroes knew and understood, I mean the great four, Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, and Madison So much they saw as consecrated seers They must have seen ahead what not appears, They would bring empires down about our ears And by the example of our Declaration Make everybody want to be a nation. And this is no aristocratic joke At the expense of negligible folk. We see how seriously the races swarm In their attempts at sovereignty and form. They are our wards we think to some extent For the time being and with their consent, To teach them how Democracy is meant. “New order of the ages” did they say? If it looks none too orderly today, ‘Tis a confusion it was ours to start So in it have to take courageous part. No one of honest feeling would approve A ruler who pretended not to love A turbulence he had the better of. Everyone knows the glory of the twain Who gave America the aeroplane To ride the whirlwind and the hurricane. Some poor fool has been saying in his heart Glory is out of date in life and art. Our venture in revolution and outlawry Has justified itself in freedom’s story Right down to now in glory upon glory. Come fresh from an election like the last, The greatest vote a people ever cast, So close yet sure to be abided by, It is no miracle our mood is high. Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs Better than all the stalemate an’s and ifs. There was the book of profile tales declaring For the emboldened politicians daring To break with followers when in the wrong, A healthy independence of the throng, A democratic form of right divine To rule first answerable to high design. There is a call to life a little sterner, And braver for the earner, learner, yearner. Less criticism of the field and court And more preoccupation with the sport. It makes the prophet in us all presage The glory of a next Augustan age Of a power leading from its strength and pride, Of young ambition eager to be tried, Firm in our free beliefs without dismay, In any game the nations want to play. A golden age of poetry and power Of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.
Commentary on “Dedication”
Robert Frost’s poem “The Gift Outright” remains the poem remembered for the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, and it also happens to be a much stronger poem than “Dedication.”
Frost once remarked [7] about his poem “The Gift Outright” that is was “a history of the United States in a dozen lines of blank verse.”
First Movement: Invocation to Artists
Summoning artists to participate In the august occasions of the state Seems something artists ought to celebrate. Today is for my cause a day of days. And his be poetry’s old-fashioned praise Who was the first to think of such a thing. This verse that in acknowledgement I bring Goes back to the beginning of the end Of what had been for centuries the trend; A turning point in modern history.
The speaker seems to be postponing his task of making this inauguration a grand and glorious event by remarking the efficacy and appropriateness of artists contributing to such an occasion. He likens his current effort to past glories of “poetry’s old-fashioned praise” of remarking that certain occasions are bound to point to historical trends.
The speaker’s claims remain rather vague and noncommittal but still leave open the possibility that things will become clearer and more specific as he continues to offer his gems of wisdom.
He claims that what he is doing, bringing verse to event, is as old as the beginning. But that beginning is then sparked by the “beginning of the end”; thus, the speaker is covering himself in case he may be proven wrong.
Second Movement: The Forming of a Nation
Colonial had been the thing to be As long as the great issue was to see What country’d be the one to dominate By character, by tongue, by native trait, The new world Christopher Columbus found. The French, the Spanish, and the Dutch were downed And counted out. Heroic deeds were done. Elizabeth the First and England won.
The speaker then draws an interesting picture of “colonial” America. He contends that the many nations that have found their progeny on the new shores were battling for dominance, putting forth the question: would France, Spain, or Holland take the lead in heading the American nation?
But then he answers the question by declaring England the winner, as “Elizabeth the First and England won.” Thus, the speaker provides answers to this question of whose characteristics, language, and traits would prevail: America would not adopt French or Spanish or Dutch as its native language; it would be English whose tongue the New World would speak.
Also, one can imagine the “native traits” including English style clothing, manners, and food. The other nations, while welcome, would take their place as an accompanying position.
Third Movement: Tribute to the Founding
Now came on a new order of the ages That in the Latin of our founding sages (Is it not written on the dollar bill We carry in our purse and pocket still?) God nodded his approval of as good So much those heroes knew and understood, I mean the great four, Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, and Madison So much they saw as consecrated seers They must have seen ahead what not appears, They would bring empires down about our ears And by the example of our Declaration Make everybody want to be a nation.
While this movement contains a number of historically accurate statements, it remains rather awkward in its structural execution. The parenthetical—”(Is it not written on the dollar bill / We carry in our purse and pocket still?)”— followed by the line,”God nodded his approval of as good” render their substance less impactful.
That “Latin of our founding sages” refers to “E Pluribus Unum,” (Out of the many, One) and loses it heft when placed as a parenthetical. Robert Frost was a somewhat religious agnostic. That he would claim that God was nodding approval of anything seems a bit out of character sparking a question of sincerity.
Because of Frost’s wholly secular take on the historical founding of a nation— despite the fact that one of the founding principles for founding this nation was religious—the questionable sincerity issue continues to present itself.
This issue is especially evident since the poem is an occasional poems specifically written to celebrate a politician in his ascendency to political office. The tribute to “Washington, / John Adams, Jefferson, and Madison,” whom the speaker designates “as consecrated seers” remains a wholly accurate statement.
And the final two lines appropriately celebrate the document the “Declaration of Independence” which along with the U. S. Constitution remain two of the most important texts ever to exist. The existence of those documents remains important both to the American nation and the world, making “everybody want to be a nation.”
Fourth Movement: Pursuing Life, Liberty, and Happiness
And this is no aristocratic joke At the expense of negligible folk. We see how seriously the races swarm In their attempts at sovereignty and form. They are our wards we think to some extent For the time being and with their consent, To teach them how Democracy is meant. “New order of the ages” did they say? If it looks none too orderly today, ‘Tis a confusion it was ours to start So in it have to take courageous part. No one of honest feeling would approve A ruler who pretended not to love A turbulence he had the better of.
The speaker then engages the issue of immigration to this newly formed nation. It makes perfect sense that folks from all over the world would desire to emigrate from totalitarian, freedom-squelching dictators in their own nations. And it remains quite sensible that they would want to relocate to this new land.
This new land from the beginning embraces freedom and individual responsibility while promising such in those documents delineating the basic human rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
The speaker denigrates the notion that only the aristocrats were appreciated and allowed to flourish in this new land. New immigrants may become our “ward,” but that status is only temporary and “with their consent.” In other words, new immigrants can become citizens of our new land of freedom because that new land represents the “[n]ew order of the ages.”
Fifth Movement: A Courageous Nation
Everyone knows the glory of the twain Who gave America the aeroplane To ride the whirlwind and the hurricane. Some poor fool has been saying in his heart Glory is out of date in life and art. Our venture in revolution and outlawry Has justified itself in freedom’s story Right down to now in glory upon glory. Come fresh from an election like the last, The greatest vote a people ever cast, So close yet sure to be abided by, It is no miracle our mood is high. Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs Better than all the stalemate an’s and ifs.
The speaker then focuses on the very specific event of the Wright Brothers (“the twain”) and their new invention “the aeroplane.” He then asserts that such feats have put the lie to the “poor fool” who thinks that there is no longer any “glory” in “life and art.” He insists that the American adventure story in “revolution and outlawry” has been gloriously vindicated and “justified [ ] in freedom’s story.”
The speaker then offers his take of how this recent election, whose result he is now celebrating, played out. He deems it the “greatest vote a people ever cast”—an obvious exaggeration. Yet, while the election was “close,” it will be “abided by.” The citizenry’s mood is “high,” and that fact is “no miracle.” He then asserts that such a situation arises out of the courage of the nation.
Sixth Movement: The Curse of the Inaugural Poem
There was the book of profile tales declaring For the emboldened politicians daring To break with followers when in the wrong, A healthy independence of the throng, A democratic form of right divine To rule first answerable to high design. There is a call to life a little sterner, And braver for the earner, learner, yearner. Less criticism of the field and court And more preoccupation with the sport. It makes the prophet in us all presage The glory of a next Augustan age Of a power leading from its strength and pride, Of young ambition eager to be tried, Firm in our free beliefs without dismay, In any game the nations want to play. A golden age of poetry and power Of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.
In the opening line of this final movement, the speaker alludes to John F. Kennedy’s book, Profiles in Courage—”book of profile tales.” Of course, the inaugural poet in his inaugural poem had to focus on the subject of this occasion, the new president of the United States, whom he is celebrating with his poem.
But then he becomes overly solicitous in his following remarks claiming that this president was a politician who can “break with followers when in the wrong.” The speaker furthers his fawning remarks by suggesting that this administration would be a “democratic form of right divine / To rule first answerable to high design.” This statement boarders on toadying flattery.
Then the puffery in the movement continues with the prediction of a “next Augustan age,” until the final unfortunate lines, “A golden age of poetry and power / Of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.”
Of course, hindsight now confirms that no “golden age” ever resulted for politics or poetry. And this president was assassinated before the completion of his first term in office.
While Frost’s “Dedication” offers some useful commentary, it still fails as a genuine poem. Even as an occasional poem in it final movement, it engages overzealously in exaggerated flattery.
One is reminded that fortunately, this piece did not see the light of day, as Frost was unable to read it as he intended. The poet was spared the drubbing he no doubt would have received had the sunlight not conspired to keep that piece in the dark.
Robert Frost’s “The Gift Outright”
Robert Frost’s “The Gift Outright” became the first inaugural poem, after President-Elect John F. Kennedy asked the famous poet to read at his swearing in ceremony—the first time a poet had read a poem at a presidential inauguration.
Introduction with Text of “The Gift Outright”
On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated the 35th president of the United States of America. For the inauguration ceremony, Kennedy had invited America’s most famous poet, Robert Frost, to write and read a poem. Frost rejected the notion of writing an occasional poem, and so Kennedy asked him to read “The Gift Outright.” Frost then agreed.
Kennedy then had one more favor to ask of the aging poet. He asked Frost the change the final line of the poem from “Such as she was, such as she would become” to “Such as she was, such as she will become.”
Kennedy felt that the revision reflected more optimism than Frost’s original. Frost did not like the idea, but he relented for the young president’s sake. Frost did, nevertheless, write a poem especially for the occasion titled “Dedication,” which he intended to read as a preface to “The Gift Outright.”
At the inauguration, Frost attempted to read his occasional poem, but because of the bright sunlight bouncing off the snow, his aging eyes could not see the poem well enough to read it. He then continued to recite “The Gift Outright.”
Regarding the changing of the final line: instead of merely reading the line with the revision Kennedy had requested, Frost stated,
Such as she was, such as she would become, has become, and I – and for this occasion let me change that to –what she will become. (my emphasis added)
Thus, the poet remained faithful to his own vision, while satisfying the presidential request. Robert Frost’s poem, “The Gift Outright,” offers a brief history of the USA, which has just elected and was in the process of inaugurating its 35th president.
The speaker of Frost’s poem, without becoming chauvinistically patriotic, manages to offer a positive view of the country’s struggle for existence, a struggle that can be deemed a gift that the Founding Fathers gave to themselves and the world.
To the question—“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”—regarding the product created by the Constitutional conveners during their meetings from May 25 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Founder Benjamin Franklin responded, “A Republic, if you can keep it” [8].
The US Constitution became a gift that has kept on giving in the best possible way. It replaced the old, weak Articles of Confederation and kept the nation in tact even during a bloody Civil War, nearly a century later.
The speaker in Frost’s poem offers a brief overview of the American struggle for existence, and he describes that struggle resulting in a Constitution as a gift the Founders gave themselves and to all the generations to follow.
The Gift Outright
The land was ours before we were the land’s. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people. She was ours In Massachusetts, in Virginia, But we were England’s, still colonials, Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, Possessed by what we now no more possessed. Something we were withholding made us weak Until we found out that it was ourselves We were withholding from our land of living, And forthwith found salvation in surrender. Such as we were we gave ourselves outright (The deed of gift was many deeds of war) To the land vaguely realizing westward, But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, Such as she was, such as she would become.
Robert Frost Reading “The Gift Outright”
At Inauguration
Commentary on “The Gift Outright”
Robert Frost’s inaugural poem offers a glimpse into the history of the country that has just elected its 35th president.
First Movement: The Nature of Possession
The land was ours before we were the land’s. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people. She was ours In Massachusetts, in Virginia, But we were England’s, still colonials, Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
The first movement begins by offering a brief reference to the history of the country over which the new government official would now preside. The speaker asserts that the men and women who had settled on the land, which they later called the United States of America, had begun their experiment in freedom living on the land which would later become their nation, and they would then become its citizens.
Instead of merely residing as a loosely held-together band of individuals, they would become a united citizenry with a name and government shared in common. The official birthdate of the United States of America is July 4, 1776; with the Declaration of Independence, the new country took its place among the nations of the world.
And the speaker correctly states that the land belonged to the people “more than a hundred years” before Americans became citizens of the country. He then mentions two important early colonies, Massachusetts and Virginia, which would become states (commonwealths) after the new land was no longer a possession of England.
Second Movement: The Gift of Law and Order
Something we were withholding made us weak Until we found out that it was ourselves We were withholding from our land of living, And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
During the period from 1776 to 1887, the country struggled to found a government that would work to protect individual freedom and at the same time provide a legal order that would make living in a free land possible. An important first step was the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union [9], the first constitution written in 1777, which was not ratified until 1781.
The Articles failed to provide enough structure for the growing nation, and by 1787, it was deemed that a new, stronger document was needed to keep the country functioning and united. Thus, the Constitutional Convention of 1787 [10] was convened to rewrite the Articles.
Instead of merely writing them, however, the Founding Fathers scrapped the old document and composed a new U.S. Constitution, which has remained the founding set of laws guiding America since it was finally ratified June 21, 1788 [11].
The speaker describes America’s early struggle for self governance as “something we were withholding,” and that struggle “made us weak.” But finally, we found “salvation in surrender,” that is, the Founding Fathers surrendered to a document that provided legitimate order but at the same time offered the greatest possible scope for individual freedom.
Third Movement: The Gift of Freedom
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright (The deed of gift was many deeds of war) To the land vaguely realizing westward, But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, Such as she was, such as she would become.
The speaker describes the early turbulent history of his country as a time of “many deeds of war,” which would include the war [12] the early Americans had to fight against England—its mother country—to secure the independence that it had declared and demanded.
But the young nation wholeheartedly gave itself that “gift” of existence and freedom by continuing its struggle and continuing to grow by expanding “westward.” The people of this nation struggled on through many hardships “unstoried, artless, unenhanced” to become the great nation that now—at the time of the poet’s recitation—has elected its 35th president.
Sources
[1] Editors. “Robert Frost.” Poetry Foundation. Accessed March 26, 2023.
The speaker in William Butler Yeats’ “The Fisherman” is dramatically promoting a style of poetry that will become and remain meaningful to and beloved by the common folk.
Introduction with Text of “The Fisherman”
William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Fisherman” appears in the poet’s The Wild Swans at Coole, which was brought out in 1919. The poet’s collection features many of his most widely anthologized poems.
In “The Fisherman,” Yeats has created a speaker who is voicing a call for a genuine school of art for the common folk, an art that dramatizes the beauty and truth inherent in all great art.
The speaker is also decrying the cultural suicide being perpetrated by charlatans in art as well as their cohorts who are power-hungry politicians. He thus reveals contempt for fakes and frauds, while promoting an ideal that he strongly believes should be steering art and the cultural life of the nation.
Every nation throughout history has suffered from these same issues, as toppling governments and bloody wars testify. The poets have often spoken up, calling out names and insisting on reforms.
Despite the fact that poetry’s first function arises from personal experience, political controversy often intrudes into the realm of the personal and that is when poets are compelled to use their platform for activism.
Care must be taken, however, that the poet not become a brazen tool for propaganda. As an accomplished world poet and former Irish senator [1], Yeats possessed the acumen to broach issues of art, poetry, culture, and politics.
The former politician and literary Nobel Laureate [2] boasts numerous works that address culture and politics: “The Fisherman” remains one of the most colorful and culturally significant poems of the era.
The Fisherman
Although I can see him still, The freckled man who goes To a grey place on a hill In grey Connemara clothes At dawn to cast his flies, It’s long since I began To call up to the eyes This wise and simple man. All day I’d looked in the face What I had hoped ’twould be To write for my own race And the reality; The living men that I hate, The dead man that I loved, The craven man in his seat, The insolent unreproved, And no knave brought to book Who has won a drunken cheer, The witty man and his joke Aimed at the commonest ear, The clever man who cries The catch-cries of the clown, The beating down of the wise And great Art beaten down.
Maybe a twelvemonth since Suddenly I began, In scorn of this audience, Imagining a man And his sun-freckled face, And grey Connemara cloth, Climbing up to a place Where stone is dark under froth, And the down turn of his wrist When the flies drop in the stream: A man who does not exist, A man who is but a dream; And cried, “Before I am old I shall have written him one Poem maybe as cold And passionate as the dawn.”
Reading of “The Fisherman”
Commentary on “The Fisherman”
The speaker in William Butler Yeats’ poem is heralding a style of poetry that will be beloved by the common folk. He makes his contempt for charlatans known. He encourages the ideals that he believes must guide culture and art. Yeats was a promoter of the style of art that he thought was closest to the hearts and minds of the Irish.
First Movement: Recalling an Admired Man
Although I can see him still, The freckled man who goes To a grey place on a hill In grey Connemara clothes At dawn to cast his flies, It’s long since I began To call up to the eyes This wise and simple man.
The speaker appears to be remembering a special man whom he has respected: “[t]he freckled man” wearing “Connemara clothes.” This man has been in the habit of fishing at a “gray place on a hill.”
The speaker implies that in his mind’s eye, he can still perceive the man. And it may also be that the speaker literally meets the man occasionally in the village. However, the speaker has not as of late mused upon the man.
The speaker admires the man’s simple ways. He assumes that the man is “wise and simple.” The speaker then continues to cogitate upon those very same qualities as he continues his message.
The speaker entertains a deep desire to praise the virtues of simplicity and wisdom. He has observed those qualities in the folks who are doing ordinary, simple everyday tasks.
Second Movement: Researching History
All day I’d looked in the face What I had hoped ’twould be To write for my own race And the reality; The living men that I hate, The dead man that I loved, The craven man in his seat, The insolent unreproved,
The speaker has determined that he will make a plan to write for his own people, including the real experiences they all undergo. With the plan in mind, he has begun to research the history of his nation and its people. The speaker asserts that he hopes to reveal the reality of the lived experience of his fellow citizens.
Such a reality should well acquit itself and at the same time demonstrate and dramatize the exact truths that future generations will be likely to undergo.The speaker offers a catalogue of qualities that the men who make up the current political landscape have put on display.
Some of those men will be the recipients of his ire. He brazenly states that there are living men whom he hates. He then contrasts that negative emotion with its opposite by emphasizing that there is as well the “dead man that [he] loved.”
The speaker continues in his enflamed hatred by asserting that the “craven” exist while the “insolent” remain unrestricted in their perfidy. The speaker believes that by contrasting good and evil, he can demonstrate the efficacy of the arrival of a steady virtue upon which to build a better art and poetry that can represent Irish culture more faithfully and honestly.
Third Movement: The Guilty Avoiding Justice
And no knave brought to book Who has won a drunken cheer, The witty man and his joke Aimed at the commonest ear, The clever man who cries The catch-cries of the clown, The beating down of the wise And great Art beaten down.
The speaker continues referring to the rogues and knaves, who have thus far evaded justice though guilty. The speaker loathes those frauds who have “won a drunken cheer,” even as they have remained undeserving of celebrity and honor.
The speaker makes it clear that there is a sector of despicable characters who damage, cheapen, and pile shame on the culture. The speaker accuses such unscrupulous scoundrels of attempting to destroy the art of the nation.
They, in effect, denigrate “the wise” as they dismantle the “great Art” that they have inherited. The speaker grieves that these killers of culture have succeeded in their perfidy. Thus, he is calling attention to their misdeeds. He is proposing a change in focus in order to improve values. He is not suggesting censorship of the charlatans.
Fourth Movement: Cultural Assassins
Maybe a twelvemonth since Suddenly I began, In scorn of this audience, Imagining a man And his sun-freckled face, And grey Connemara cloth, Climbing up to a place Where stone is dark under froth,
The speaker then reports that for a while he has been incubating the idea of creating an uncomplicated, “sun-freckled face”—the man in “Connemara cloth.” For his effort, he has thus far received only “scorn” from the ilk of those culture killers and unscrupulous reprobates.
Nevertheless, the speaker has been pressing on, striving to envision a simple fisherman, who “climb[s] up to a place / Where stone is dark with froth,” a natural place that continues to be pristine and still remains alluring.
The speaker is crafting a symbolic being whom he can describe and on whom he can bestow the qualities that he deems must become and remain an important part of the natural art, belonging to the people of his environs.
Fifth Movement: The Importance of Simplicity
And the down turn of his wrist When the flies drop in the stream: A man who does not exist, A man who is but a dream; And cried, “Before I am old I shall have written him one Poem maybe as cold And passionate as the dawn.”
The speaker visualizes the fisherman’s wrist movement as the man casts his line into the water. He admits that this man does not yet exist, because he is still “but a dream.” The speaker’s keen sensibility is strong enough to bring to life such a simple, rustic character. He is urged then to take all pains to bring such a character to life.
Thus, while the poet is still young enough to use his God-given imagination, he vows to take on the task of writing this fisherman into existence and to compose for the man a poem “as cold / And passionate as the dawn.” The speaker continues to muse on simplicity. He passionately desires to create a new ideal that will produce meaningful, original, dramatic poetry.
He insists that that new poetry must be able to speak with genuine originality and that it thus should become a harbinger of the beginning of a new era in art of poetry. The speaker hopes to accomplish all of this despite the wrong-headedness and power-grabbing of too many of the political phonies—and despite the fraudulent deceivers whose selfishness is spreading the destruction of their own culture.
Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray”
This sonnet is counted as one of Father Hopkins’ six “terrible sonnets.”
Introduction and Text of “Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray”
The speaker in Father Hopkins’ “Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray” explores searchingly the nature of spiritual endurance. He is focusing on patience not as a soft virtue but as a challenging and difficult discipline, which oftentimes scars the pride, while exhausting the will.
But those actions still reflect and align with divine will and action. As he usually does, this speaker reveals the hard discipline of God remains always for the betterment of humankind. As human beings, we all search for—or at least wish for—our own betterment.
As a Jesuit priest, Father Hopkins made it his mission to seek divine guidance, and unlike us non-priestly poets, he focused primarily on religious and spiritual issues that affected him deeply.
Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray
Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray, But bid for, Patience is! Patience who asks Wants war, wants wounds; weary his times, his tasks; To do without, take tosses, and obey. Rare patience roots in these, and, these away, Nowhere. Natural heart’s ivy, Patience masks Our ruins of wrecked past purpose. There she basks Purple eyes and seas of liquid leaves all day.
We hear our hearts grate on themselves: it kills To bruise them dearer. Yet the rebellious wills Of us we do bid God bend to him even so. And where is he who more and more distils Delicious kindness? – He is patient. Patience fills His crisp combs, and that comes those ways we know.
Reading
Commentary on “Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray”
As human beings, we learn early that patience is an important personal quality, but the speaker in this sonnet is revealing his inner turmoil as an argument against which he confronts resistance even as he refuses to decry the virtue that seems to be resisting him. He treats the virtue of patience in a realistic manner—not with sentimentality. He asserts that patience is both vitally necessary as well as deeply painful.
The humanity of his cries shows us that as we strive and struggle, all of humanity has done so. Father Hopkins lived in the 19th century—two centuries earlier than our own, and yet his struggles are our struggles.
Octave: “Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray”
The speaker begins the octave with an effusive cry—no calm reflection here! He invokes “patience” immediately and pairs it with prayer; they are both difficult things to approach and accomplish. We often cry for what we seem to lack, even in the 21st century.
He knows that genuine prayer requires patience, and it is a kind of patience that the heart and mind naturally resist in a fallen world. The sharpness of his complaint is emphasized through repetition.
He then seems to create a stunning paradox in that patience is difficult, but it is also “bid for.” The speaker easily confesses that patience is not only endured, but it is sought and asked for, even though that asking heralds conflict.
Personified as a female figure who is doing the asking, Patience paradoxically “wants war, wants wounds,” and those qualities expose that there is a cost in acquiring her. She commands that one live a life without ease, which includes doing without things one might need for comfort, receiving blows that stun and hurt, all the while remaining obedient. Dame Patience then requires obedience under pressure with the willingness to accept pain, trials, and tribulations that seem arbitrary instead of well-deserved.
The speaker asserts that that kind of patience remains rare, even fragile. It takes hold only under these catastrophic conditions; for if they are removed them, there is not patience within existence. This insistence blows up the notion that patience can be a decorative virtue experienced in comfort; instead, patience makes it appearance only in deprivation, instability, and any other calamity.
Still through all this mayhem, the speaker refuses to qualify her as infertile. Through a striking shift in tone and assurance, patience then transforms into “Natural heart’s ivy” —a living being, covering “our ruins of wrecked past purpose.” We chafe under ruined purposes as we try to build a better world even in current times.
With that ivy image, the speaker is acknowledging that failure and collapse within the self, which include all past intentions are broken and defeated. Patience, however, does not convert them; she merely masks them by covering all that damage with new growth.
The final lines of the octave seems to complicate the struggle. Patience is basking in colorful accoutrements, yet luxuriant color and fluidity suggest abundance, as well as beauty, even though it is a beauty that grows over wreckage.
The speaker thus remains well aware that such patience beautifies what has been lost without denying the loss itself. The octave leaves the speaker’s fragility suspended between intense pain and strange fertility—between war and ivy.
Sestet: “We hear our hearts grate on themselves: it kills”
In the sestet, the speaker turns inward with even greater urgency. He hears that “our hearts grate on themselves”; this image is harsh and mechanical, suggesting inner resistance. And patience can be understood as not only difficult, but it is also possibly lethal, in that “it kills / To bruise them dearer.”
That claim is intimating that the heart continues to hang onto its own wounds because it would rather retain the familiar pain than to face the adversity made possible by surrender.
Especially within the confines of such thinking, the speaker has to surrender to an subtle prayer: “the rebellious wills / Of us we do bid God bend to him.” Even as the will resists God, it, at the same time, must supplicate to God to transcend its resistance. An exotic tension unfolds the divided mind/soul as it prays. It remains faithful but still defiant.
The main focus that has infused itself throughout the entire sonnet comes into sharp relief in the form of the question “where is the goodness that justifies all of this misery and suffering?” A question to haunts our current civilization as surely as it did two centuries ago!
The speaker responds not with an argumentative abstract notion, but with a person. “He is patient.” God’s kindness can come only slowly, similar to a liquid being “distilled,” drop by drop, rather than being poured out all at once. As science has shown us certain processes, poetry shows us the metaphorical value of understanding those processes.
Patience is not merely a virtue that human beings must learn; it is the basic method of God’s own divine action. The final image of “crisp combs” brings to mind honey made by bees that labor furiously as they produce such sweetness.
Patience “fills” them (all of creation’s creatures), and from that fullness comes kindness in “those ways we know,” as it ascends to human experience through evolutionary time rather than temporal spectacle.
In the sestet, the speaker comes close to showing how to defend one’s heart and mind in the struggle that humanity is engaged in. He does not provide direct relief from pain or a way to guard against rebellion.
But instead, the speaker suggests that the answer can only be understood in terms of what is human and what is divine; thus, human patience can be seen to resemble divine patience. The pain and suffering experiences by human beings can be converted into the divine stuff that produces sweetness, i.e., kindness.
The process, of course, is meditation and prayer, along with deep thought and service to humankind and the world at large, in whatever form that service must take—even writing poems, thus, can serve a divine purpose.
We struggle today as humanity has struggled in the past. From poets such as Father Hopkins, we can glean the depth of our sorrow but also we can be comforted that there is a light at the end of the tunnel of sad darkness, and we can determine that we will progress toward that light.
Gerard Manley Hopkins – National Portrait Gallery, London
Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life”
The speaker in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ sonnet “To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life” explores the sense of spiritual, national, and personal estrangement during years in Ireland. Written with the same intensity that characterizes Hopkins’ work, the poem dramatizes exile as both an external condition and an inward trial.
In the octave, the speaker is focusing on separation from family and his country England, and in the sestet, he turns inward to the silence imposed by his vocation, leaving him isolated yet faithful.
Introduction and Text of “To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life”
Father Gerard Manley Hopkins, who was a Jesuit priest as well as a poet, wrote many of his most profound poems during periods of emotional strain and vocational doubt. He wrote “To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life” in 1889 during his final years in Ireland; he created a speaker in the poem who is reflecting an acute sense of displacement—geographical, familial, and spiritual.
Although Father Hopkins remained consistently obedient to his religious calling, he often felt alienated from England, misunderstood by authority, and silenced as a poet. This sonnet, however, reveals not rebellion but suffering endured with disciplined faith, unveiling exile as a severe trial for spiritual testing.
As the first of the six “terrible sonnets,” “To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life” remains distinctive because its sense of despair is aimed less at abstract spiritual terror and more at everyday human loss—failed relationships, missed vocations, and social estrangement.
However, like the others, it offers little comfort and speaks in a raw, urgent voice. It is unusual in how little it turns to nature or directly to Christ. Instead, it keeps its focus on the speaker’s painful isolation from family, community, and any sense of being useful as a priest.
To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life
To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life Among strangers. Father and mother dear, Brothers and sisters are in Christ not near And he my peace my parting, sword and strife. England, whose honour O all my heart woos, wife To my creating thought, would neither hear Me, were I pleading, plead nor do I: I wear- y of idle a being but by where wars are rife.
I am in Ireland now; now I am at a thírd Remove. Not but in all removes I can Kind love both give and get. Only what word Wisest my heart breeds dark heaven’s baffling ban Bars or hell’s spell thwarts. This to hoard unheard, Heard unheeded, leaves me a lonely began.
Reading
Commentary on “To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life”
Father Hopkins’ sonnet is a meditation on exile and silence. The octave emphasizes outward separation—from family, country, and recognition—while the sestet deepens the conflict by revealing an inward blockage: the poet’s inability to speak or be heard.
Octave: “To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life”
To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life Among strangers. Father and mother dear, Brothers and sisters are in Christ not near And he my peace my parting, sword and strife. England, whose honour O all my heart woos, wife To my creating thought, would neither hear Me, were I pleading, plead nor do I: I wear- y of idle a being but by where wars are rife.
The speaker open the octave with a stark declaration: “To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life.” The phrasing is deliberate and emphatic, with “lot” and “life” placed side by side to suggest that estrangement is not incidental but foundational. The speaker does not merely feel like a stranger; seeming a stranger has become the defining pattern of his existence. The verb “lies” suggests fate or destiny, implying that this condition is imposed rather than chosen.
The repetition of “stranger” in the second line—“Among strangers”—reinforces the sense of isolation. The speaker is not simply alone; he is surrounded by others from whom he feels fundamentally divided. This alienation is then specified in personal terms: separation from “Father and mother dear” and from “Brothers and sisters.”
These lines resonate deeply, as Hopkins had consciously embraced a religious vocation at the cost of ordinary familial intimacy. Yet the phrase “are in Christ not near” reveals a crucial nuance. The separation is not merely geographical or emotional but mediated through faith. His family exists “in Christ,” but spiritual unity does not erase physical absence.
Line four intensifies the tension through paradox: “And he my peace my parting, sword and strife.” The “he” here refers unmistakably to Christ, echoing Christ’s own words in the Gospel that he came not to bring peace but a sword.
Christ is simultaneously the speaker’s source of peace and the cause of painful division. This line crystallizes the poem’s central conflict: obedience to God has fractured his earthly attachments.
England emerges next as a figure of longing and betrayal. The speaker personifies the nation as a beloved woman: “England, whose honour O all my heart woos, wife / To my creating thought.” England is not merely homeland; it is the imaginative and cultural source of his poetry.
The speaker’s “creating thought” is bound to England’s landscape, language, and traditions. Yet this beloved “wife” refuses to listen. England “would neither hear / Me, were I pleading.” The rejection is imagined even before the plea is made.
Significantly, the speaker then states, “plead nor do I.” Either Pride, humility, or exhaustion restrains him from petitioning for recognition or return. The enjambment underscores weariness: “I wear- / y of idle a being but by where wars are rife.” The broken word “weary” visually enacts fatigue.
The speaker feels useless, idle, unless he is placed where conflict exists. The “wars” here may be literal—cultural and political unrest in Ireland—or spiritual, referring to inner trials. Either way, the octave closes with a man who sees struggle as the only justification for his continued existence.
Throughout the octave, the speaker’s syntax becomes knotted and his clauses have become compressed. This density mirrors his emotional burden. There is no lyric ease, no pastoral consolation. Instead, the octave establishes exile as a lived reality—accepted but not softened.
Sestet: “I am in Ireland now; now I am at a thírd”
I am in Ireland now; now I am at a thírd Remove. Not but in all removes I can Kind love both give and get. Only what word Wisest my heart breeds dark heaven’s baffling ban Bars or hell’s spell thwarts. This to hoard unheard, Heard unheeded, leaves me a lonely began.
The sestet shifts from the general condition of estrangement to a precise location: “I am in Ireland now.” The repetition of “now” emphasizes immediacy and finality. Ireland is not a temporary assignment but a present, enduring state.
The speaker then deepens the sense of displacement by calling this “a thírd / Remove.” The word “remove” suggests not travel but distance layered upon distance—England removed from family, and Ireland removed yet again from England.
(Note the acute accent mark over the “i” in third: Hopkins often placed accent marks to indicate a stress that might be passed over in a quick reading. He wanted to assure that his sprung rhythm received its full impact.)
The speaker then immediately qualifies this isolation: “Not but in all removes I can / Kind love both give and get.” Despite exile, he affirms the possibility of charity. This assertion is a theologically critical.
Love is not extinguished by displacement; grace operates even in separation. The line resists self-pity and aligns the speaker’s world view with Jesuit discipline, which demands adaptability and service wherever one is sent.
However, the speaker’s deepest anguish follows: “Only what word / Wisest my heart breeds dark heaven’s baffling ban / Bars or hell’s spell thwarts.” Here the speaker turns inward, focusing not on where he is but on what he cannot do. His “wisest” words—his poetry—are blocked.
Heaven itself seems to be imposing a “ban,” a prohibition that frustrates expression. The phrase “dark heaven” is especially striking. Heaven, normally associated with clarity and illumination, becomes obscure and baffling. The alternative force is equally terrifying: “hell’s spell.” Whether divine silence or demonic interference, the result is the same—his words are thwarted.
This line reveals one of the most painful aspects of the poet’s late life: the sense that his poetic gift, given by God, is simultaneously withheld by God. Silence becomes both command and punishment.
The final couplet intensifies the tragedy: “This to hoard unheard, / Heard unheeded, leaves me a lonely began.” The speaker is forced to “hoard” his words, storing them without release. Even when heard, they are “unheeded.”
The repetition emphasizes futility. The phrase “a lonely began” is deliberately and strangely ungrammatical. “Began” suggests something unfinished, a life or vocation that never reached fulfillment. The speaker is not calling himself a failure, but he is implying that he feel incomplete.
Yet even here, the speaker sees despair as part of his discipline. He is not accusing God; he is only lamenting his lot. The speaker conclude his revelation with witness not rebellion. The speaker is recording his condition faithfully; he trusts that meaning may lie well beyond his own understanding. Although the loneliness is real, he can bear it through obedience.
In the sestet, then, exile becomes interiorized. The outer fact of Ireland gives way to the inner trial of silence. The speaker’s greatest suffering is not being far from England but being cut off from utterance.
For this speaker, this wound is the deepest. Yet the very existence of the poem contradicts the ban it describes. In writing this sonnet, the poet speaks from within silence, transforming isolation into testimony.
Taken together, the octave and sestet reveal a soul suspended between fidelity and desolation. “To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life” is not a cry for rescue but a record of endurance.
The speaker/poet accepts exile as part of his vocation, even when it costs him voice, recognition, and comfort. The sonnet stands as one of his most austere achievements—a poem that does not resolve suffering but sanctifies it through truthful speech.
Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali #48: “The morning sea of silence… “
Rabindranath Tagore’s poem elucidating a metaphorical and metaphysical journey is number 48 in his most noted collection titled Gitanjali. The poet received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, specifically for that collection.
Introduction with Text from Gitanjali #48: “The Morning Sea of Silence”
Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Laureate for Literature in 1013, translated his collection of poems, Gitanjali, from his original Bengali into English. He numbered each poem and rendered them as prose-poems, and they remain poetry of the highest order.
Readers may encounter Gitanjali #48 wide-spread across the internet titled “The Journey” playing out in eight traditional poetry stanzas. Tagore’s #48 displays in only six verse paragraphs (versagraphs), but those who converted the piece have separated the fourth versagraph into three separate units.
Tagore’s Gitanjali #48 metaphorically elucidates the spiritual journey of the speaker, even as at the outset, he and his fellow trekkers seem to be setting out on an ordinary hike through the landscape of beauty with flowers and birdsong. What happens to the speaker becomes truly astounding and inspiring, as he comes to understand the true nature of the idea of a spiritual journey.
In this poem, the term journey serves as an extended metaphor for meditation. The speaker takes his meditation seat and begins his practice in order to experience union with the Divine Belovèd (God). The speaker employs use of the extended metaphor to reveal dramatically his series of emotions as he continues his metaphorical journey.
Even though the source for the drama could credibly have remained a literal hike through the countryside on the lovely morning, the speaker of the poem remains focused on his inner spiritual journey to unite his soul with his Creator.
Gitanjali #48: “The Morning Sea of Silence”
The morning sea of silence broke into ripples of bird songs; and the flowers were all merry by the roadside; and the wealth of gold was scattered through the rift of the clouds while we busily went on our way and paid no heed.
We sang no glad songs nor played; we went not to the village for barter; we spoke not a word nor smiled; we lingered not on the way. We quickened our pace more and more as the time sped by.
The sun rose to the mid sky and doves cooed in the shade. Withered leaves danced and whirled in the hot air of noon. The shepherd boy drowsed and dreamed in the shadow of the banyan tree, and I laid myself down by the water and stretched my tired limbs on the grass.
My companions laughed at me in scorn; they held their heads high and hurried on; they never looked back nor rested; they vanished in the distant blue haze. They crossed many meadows and hills, and passed through strange, far-away countries. All honour to you, heroic host of the interminable path! Mockery and reproach pricked me to rise, but found no response in me. I gave myself up for lost in the depth of a glad humiliation in the shadow of a dim delight.
The repose of the sun-embroidered green gloom slowly spread over my heart. I forgot for what I had travelled, and I surrendered my mind without struggle to the maze of shadows and songs.
At last, when I woke from my slumber and opened my eyes, I saw thee standing by me, flooding my sleep with thy smile. How I had feared that the path was long and wearisome, and the struggle to reach thee was hard!
Reading of Gitanjali #48: “The Morning Sea of Silence”
Commentary on Gitanjali #48: “The Morning Sea of Silence”
The speaker engages a truly astounding spiritual event, placing his experience in a metaphysical setting, and metaphorically elucidating that experience as a simple hike across the landscape.
First Versagraph: The Welcoming Morning Landscape
The morning sea of silence broke into ripples of bird songs; and the flowers were all merry by the roadside; and the wealth of gold was scattered through the rift of the clouds while we busily went on our way and paid no heed.
In the first versagraph, the speaker begins by describing the beauty of the morning landscape that surrounds him and his fellow hikers as they set out on their walking excursion.
The first line offers an masterfully crafted metaphor: the early morning “silence” is likened to the waves of an ocean that break into “ripples of bird songs.” While the birds are singing, the flowers by the wayside appear to be “all merry.” The sky is spread out into a golden glow which is “scattered through the rift of the clouds.”
The speaker then states that he and his hiking buddies are in a hurry to get on with their trek, and they therefore take no notice of, and therefore do not cherish, the beauty that has already been bestowed upon them.
Second Versagraph:: Deadly Solemnity
We sang no glad songs nor played; we went not to the village for barter; we spoke not a word nor smiled; we lingered not on the way. We quickened our pace more and more as the time sped by.
The speaker then asserts that he and his fellow trekkers remain quite serious in their coming travel extravaganza; thus, they do not stop to play or sing happy songs. They did not even engage in cheerful banter with one another, nor do they stop in the village to make any purchases.
They remain so deadly solemn that not only do they not even bother to speak, but they also do not deign to smile. They refuse to linger anywhere. They remain in such a great hurry that they continue to speed by faster and faster as time wore on.
Third Versagraph: Taking Needed Rest
The sun rose to the mid sky and doves cooed in the shade. Withered leaves danced and whirled in the hot air of noon. The shepherd boy drowsed and dreamed in the shadow of the banyan tree, and I laid myself down by the water and stretched my tired limbs on the grass.
By noon, the speaker has become distracted by the position of the sun, noting that doves are making their cooing sounds in the shade of the trees. He then takes notice that a shepherd boy is resting in the shade under a tree.
While the sun is so hot and with the doves and shepherd boy enjoying a relief from action, the speaker decides to stop his own active walk. Thus, he lies down upon the grass by the water and stretches out his tired body to enjoy a respite from the strenuous task of hiking.
Fourth Versagraph: Ridicule for Taking a Rest
My companions laughed at me in scorn; they held their heads high and hurried on; they never looked back nor rested; they vanished in the distant blue haze. They crossed many meadows and hills, and passed through strange, far-away countries. All honour to you, heroic host of the interminable path! Mockery and reproach pricked me to rise, but found no response in me. I gave myself up for lost in the depth of a glad humiliation in the shadow of a dim delight.
The speaker’s walking buddies, however, chide him for wishing to take a break and rest. So, they continue on with their walk. As they continue, they strike supercilious poses with their heads in the air. They take no second notice of the speaker, as they disappear into “distant blue haze.”
Nevertheless, the speaker remains in his resting position with the determination to enjoy his leisurely rest, even as the others rapidly continue on with their swift strides. The speaker reports that his fellow hikers are pressing on as they continue to trek through the “meadows and hills.” They show that they are not as lazy as he is. The speaker’s fellows are continuing to push “through strange, far-away countries.”
He gives them credit for their adventuresome nature, and he confesses that he has experienced some guilt for remaining in leisure and not accompanying them, but he just could not urge himself on to continue this particular walking excursion.
The speaker also confesses that he has ambiguous feelings: on the one hand, he feels “lost” not remaining with the others, but on the other hand, he experiences a “glad humiliation,” feeling that he must be reclining “in the shadow of a dim delight.”
Fifth Versagraph: Rethinking the Reason for the Hike
The repose of the sun-embroidered green gloom slowly spread over my heart. I forgot for what I had travelled, and I surrendered my mind without struggle to the maze of shadows and songs.
As the speaker goes on lounging about, he takes notice that the sunset is “spread[ing] over his heart”—an act that unveils for a second time his emotions fraught with ambiguity. Such gloom is “sun-embroidered,” reminiscent of the old saw, “every cloud has a silver lining.”
The dawdling speaker then admits that he can no longer remember why he originally decided to set out on this hike. Thus, he just lets his mental body go, no longer struggling with his true urgings any more. He allows his heart and mind to continue musing through “the maze of shadows and songs.”
Sixth Versagraph: Nearing the Door-Heart of the Divine Creator
At last, when I woke from my slumber and opened my eyes, I saw thee standing by me, flooding my sleep with thy smile. How I had feared that the path was long and wearisome, and the struggle to reach thee was hard!
Finally, the speaker wakes up from his ambiguous torpor; he then realizes that he has discovered what he was searching for. He had surmised that walking such a spiritual path was out of his reach, as it was considered to be such an arduous task.
But after his discovery, he is able to realize that all he had to do was permit his inner self to be guided to the door-heart of the Divine Belovèd. All lesser journeys, including those on the physical plane, become irrelevant as one becomes ensconced in that sacred environment, near the door of the DivineCreator-Father.
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