Linda's Literary Home

Tag: Thomas H. Johnson

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

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

    Emily Dickinson’s “When I count the seeds”

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

    Introduction and Text of “When I count the seeds”

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

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

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

    When I count the seeds

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

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

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

    Commentary on “When I count the seeds”

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

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

    First Stanza:  Taking Stock

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


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

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

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

    Second Stanza:  Continuing to Contemplate

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

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

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

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

    Third Stanza:   Achievement of Purpose

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Emily Dickinson’s “I taste a liquor never brewed”

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

    Emily Dickinson’s “I taste a liquor never brewed”

    Emily Dickinson’s “I taste a liquor never brewed” is one of her most enthralling little poems.  In this poem, the speaker is likening spiritual ardor to drunkenness.

    Introduction and Text of  “I taste a liquor never brewed”

    The theme of Emily Dickinson’s “I taste a liquor never brewed” is similar to Paramahansa Yogananda’s chant: “I will sing thy Name,  I will drink thy Name, and get all drunk, O, with thy Name!”   

    Dickinson’s speaker proclaims a spiritual consciousness. The poem extends the metaphor of drunkenness to describe the status of a soul in mystical union with the Divine.

    Dickinson’s speaker in “I taste a liquor never brewed” describes a consciousness steeped in a mystical state that mimics inebriation. She is inspired and enthralled seemingly just by breathing the air around her.  

    The speaker’s consciousness becomes aware of itself and propels her into an immense universe that is difficult to describe. Thus she uses the alcohol metaphor to approximate the physical sensation of what she is experiencing spiritually.

    Thomas H. Johnson numbered this poem #214 in his useful work, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, which restored Dickinson’s peculiar punctuation and elliptical style. As usual, Dickinson employed slant rime or near rime; for example, she rimes Pearl and Alcohol.

    I taste a liquor never brewed

    I taste a liquor never brewed –
    From Tankards scooped in Pearl –
    Not all the Vats upon the Rhine
    Yield such an Alcohol!

    Inebriate of Air – am I –
    And Debauchee of Dew –
    Reeling – thro endless summer days –
    From inns of Molten Blue –

    When “Landlords” turn the drunken Bee
    Out of the Foxglove’s door –
    When Butterflies – renounce their “drams” –
    I shall but drink the more!

    Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –
    And Saints – to windows run –
    To see the little Tippler
    Leaning against the – Sun —

    Commentary on “I taste a liquor never brewed”

    Emily Dickinson’s “I taste a liquor never brewed” is one of the poet’s most enthralling little poems, employing the metaphor of drunkenness to describe spiritual ardor.

    Stanza 1:  Imbibing a Non-Brewed Beverage

    I taste a liquor never brewed –
    From Tankards scooped in Pearl –
    Not all the Vats upon the Rhine
    Yield such an Alcohol!

    The speaker announces that she has been imbibing a drink, but that beverage is not one that has been brewed, which eliminates alcohol, tea, and coffee, this is, the beverages which have mind-altering capabilities.  She then begins an extended metaphor, likening the effect of her “liquor” to that of an alcoholic beverage.

    The “Tankards scooped in Pearl” simulate the vessels from which the speaker has been imbibing her rare concoction. The consciousness which the speaker wishes to describe transcends the physical consciousness of an alcohol hum; thus the speaker must resort to metaphor to communicate as nearly as possible this ineffable state.

    Those rare tankards having been “scooped in Pearl” spiritually correspond to the nature of the soul. She has, in fact, drunk a beverage that has not been brewed from a vessel that has not been manufactured by human hands.

    Stanza 2: It Resembles Being Drunk

    Inebriate of Air – am I –
    And Debauchee of Dew –
    Reeling – thro endless summer days –
    From inns of Molten Blue –

    Dickinson’s speaker continues her metaphor by revealing that the feeling she is experiencing is like being drunk on air; thus the act of simply taking a breath of air has the power to intoxicate her. 

    Not only air, but the “Dew” has this delicious effect. Further physical realities like a summer day make her feel that she has been drinking at a tavern, “Inns of Molten Blue.” All this imbibing leaves her “reeling” from this rare form of intoxicant.

    Stanza 3:  A Drunken State That Never Ceases

    When “Landlords” turn the drunken Bee
    Out of the Foxglove’s door –
    When Butterflies – renounce their “drams” –
    I shall but drink the more!

    On the stage of nature, the speaker is accompanied by “bees and butterflies,” and these fellow creatures quite literally imbibe nectar from flowers. The speaker’s brand of liquor has an advantage over that of the bees.  They have to stop their imbibing and leave their blossoms or else they will become trapped as the petals close up for the night.  

    But because of the spiritual nature of this speaker’s intoxication, she does not have stop drinking. She can enjoy her drunken state without end.   Only on the physical plane do activities begin and end; on the spiritual plane, the intoxication has no need to cease. The eternal soul is without boundaries of space and time.

    Stanza 4;  The Dash That Runs to Eternity

    Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –
    And Saints – to windows run –
    To see the little Tippler
    Leaning against the – Sun –

    The speaker boasts that she will never have to curtail her mode of mystical intoxication. As the penultimate stanza ends with the claim, “I shall but drink the more!,” the idea continues into the final stanza.  By placing the time of her stopping her drinking at two fantastic events that will never occur, she emphatically asserts that she will never have to stop her drinking binge.

    When the highest order of angels, the “Seraphs,” commit the unlikely act of “swing[ing] their snowy Hats,” and curious saints run to windows, only then shall she cease her imbibing. That time is never because Seraphs and saints do not comport themselves with such behavior. 

    The speaker calls herself “the little Tippler” and positions herself “[l]eaning against the — Sun.” Another impossible act on the physical level, but one quite possible on the mystical.

    The final clue that the speaker is asserting her ability never to stop drinking of the mystical wine is the final punctuation of the dash — that concludes her report. The period, question mark, or exclamation mark, as some editors have employed, denote finality while the dash does not.

    Thomas H. Johnson has restored the dash — to this poem in his The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. When other versions lose the Dickinsonian dash, they also lose a nuance of her meaning.

  • Emily Dickinson’s “I would distal a cup”

    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 “I would distal a cup”

    Emily Dickinson’s “I would distal a cup” mimics a toast to a departing friend.  It appears in a letter to newspaper editor Samuel Bowles, a family friend.

    Introduction and Text of “I would distil a cup”

    The text of Emily Dickinson’s “I would distal a cup” in prose form appears in a letter to Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican, the most influential newspaper in New England around 1858.  The letter begins with the writer thanking Mr. Bowles for sending her a pamphlet.  She expresses uncertainly that he is the actual sender but thanks him in case he is.

    The rest of the letter finds the writer communicating her famous claim that her friends are her “estate,” and celebrating the notion that friendship enlivens her, keeping her on her toes.  The letter bears the date August 1858 and she remarks that the workers are gathering the “second Hay.”  

    Thus the summer season is winding down.  It is at this point in the letter that she states, “I would distil a cup, and bear to all my friends, drinking to her no more astir, by beck, or burn, or moor!”

    Apparently, Dickinson thought enough of this sentence to include it as a full-fledged poem in one of the many  fascicles that Thomas H. Johnson later edited for publication in his The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, the groundbreaking work that restored Dickinson’s poems to their original forms.  

    In the letter, Dickinson’s sentence-turned-poem seems to jump up out the verbiage as a toast at a gala dinner party, wherein one would rise, raise a cup, and offer the toast to one being recognized.

    I would distil a cup

    I would distil a cup,
    And bear to all my friends,
    Drinking to her no more astir,
    By beck, or burn, or moor!

    Commentary on “I would distal a cup”

    In a letter to Samuel Bowels, Emily Dickinson puts on display her colorful, chatty conversational ability, including this original prose-statement, which later became a finished poem.

    First Movement:  Creating, Rising, and Offering

    I would distil a cup,
    And bear to all my friends,

    The speaker, as if rising to offer a toast at some gathering of friends, imparts that she wishes to offer a toast “to all [her] friends.”  The drink is likely a fine whiskey; thus the speaker conflated the manufacture of the drink with her lifting the cup.  

    She makes herself more important to the creation of the drink than she, or anyone offering a toast, would deserve.  But the exaggeration simply implies her devotion to her friends, who are by the way, her “estate.”  Not only is she offering a toast, but she is also creating the drink in order to offer it.

    Then after the speaker had created this distilled beverage, she lifts her cup and bears its contents to all of her friends.  At the point that poem appears in her letter to Bowles, she had made it clear that she can make chatty conversation.  

    She has claimed that she wishes to be forgiven for hoarding her friends.  She has surmised that those who were once poor have a very different view of gold than those who have never suffered poverty.

    The letter writer even invokes God, saying He does not worry so much as we or else he would “give us no friends, lest we forget him.”  Playing on the expression, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” she compares what one might anticipate in “Heaven” as opposed to what one experiences on earth and finds the latter more appealing.

    However, the speaker then abruptly tells Bowles that, “Summer stopped since you were here,” after which she mourns the loss of summer with several acerbic witticisms.  She offers Bowles some paraphrases from her “Pastor,” who has dismissed humanity as nothing but a “Worm.”  

    Then she poses the question to Bowles:  “Do you think we shall ‘see God’?”  This abrupt inquiry likely startled Bowles, which is no doubt the writer’s purpose.  But then she moves on to the image of “Abraham” “strolling” with God “in genial promenade,” seemingly answering her own startling question.

    Second Movement:  As Summer Abandons the Streams and Meadows

    Drinking to her no more astir,
    By beck, or burn, or moor!

    After having distilled the fine liquor, poured it into her cup, she lifts it and offers her toast to the one who is in the process of departing—her beloved summer.  The summer season is no longer “astir” in the streams or on the meadows.  

    She employs the colorful terms “beck” and “burn” (bourne) to refer to streams of water.  And then she refers to fields, heaths, or meadows as “moor,” likely also for its colorful, exotic texture.

    Immediately after the toasting sentence in the letter, the letter writer abruptly bids Mr. Bowles, “Good night,” but she still has more to say and proceeds to say it.  She then claims that “this is what they say who come back in the morning.”  

    She seems to be identifying with summer who is saying good-bye but only to return “in the morning.”  But her certainty that “Confidence in Daybreak modifiers Dusk,” allows her to accept the pair of opposites that continually blight her world.

    The speaker has difficulty even saying good-night or good-bye to a friend once she has opened the conversation. But she knows she must wind down, just a summer has done; thus she wishes blessings for Bowles’ wife and children, even going to far as to send kisses for lips of the little ones.  

    She then tells Bowles that she and the rest of the Dickinson family remain eager to visit with him again.  And she will dispense with “familiar truths,” for his sake.

    Emily Dickinson and at the Exotic

    Emily Dickinson’s penchant for exoticisms likely enamored her of some of the more cryptic expressions placed in her letters.  That penchant allowed her be so cheeky as to select certain expressions and later present them in a fascicle as a poem.  

    It also explains her employment of terms for ordinary nouns such a field, river, creek, or meadow.  She kept her dictionary handy and made abundant use of it. Luckily, her intuitive perception and ability with language kept her from suffering the clownish terminology often detected by users of a thesaurus.

    Image b: Samuel Bowles – Emily Dickinson Museum

  • Emily Dickinson’s “On this wondrous sea”

    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 “On this wondrous sea”

    In the first movement of Dickinson’s “On this wondrous sea,” the speaker addresses God as the metaphorical pilot of a metaphorical seafaring vessel; in the second movement, the speaker allows that “pilot” to speak as He answers her supplicating question.

    Introduction and Text of “On this wondrous sea”

    Emily Dickinson’s fourth poem in Thomas H. Johnson’s The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson may be thought of as the beginning of her true style and content.  The first three poems feature two Valentine messages ( “Awake ye muses nine, sing me a strain divine” and “Sic transit gloria mundi“) and an invitation (“There is another sky”) to her brother, Austin, to come and experience the new world she is creating with her poetry.

    In contrast to the first three entries in Dickinson’s complete poems, “On this wondrous sea” sets out on a journey of poetry creation that will involve her belovèd Creator, whom she will beseech and at times even argue with in her zeal to substantiate truth and beauty in her other “sky.”

    In a very real sense, the Dickinson speaker is performing a set of little dramas that resemble that of the speaker of the Shakespeare sonnets.  The Shakespeare sonneteer was interested only in preserving truth, beauty, and love in his creations for future generations.  

    In the course of those sonnets, especially the section known as “The Muse Sonnets,” the Shakespeare writer expresses his desire repeatedly to present only truth, beauty, and love in his works, in contrast to the slathering on of tinsel and meaningless blather sent out by non-serious artist wannabes, known as poetasters.

    The Dickinson speaker demonstrates the same proclivities, and it also becomes evident that she shows a keen ability to observe the tiniest detail in her environment.  Yet, even as she focuses on those details, her vision never lowers from her mystic sight.

    It is in that focus that Dickinson differs dramatically from the Shakespearean sonneteer.  While he reveals his devout awareness of the mystical in his life, he remains a mere observer compared to the active mysticism of the Dickinson speaker.

    Emily Dickinson’s rare ability to communicate the ineffable has earned her a place in American letters that no other literary figure in the English language has been able to outpace.

    On this wondrous sea

    On this wondrous sea
    Sailing silently,
    Ho! Pilot, ho!
    Knowest thou the shore
    Where no breakers roar —
    Where the storm is o’er?

    In the peaceful west
    Many the sails at rest —
    The anchors fast —
    Thither I pilot thee —
    Land Ho! Eternity!
    Ashore at last!

    Commentary on “On this wondrous sea”

    The whole physical world becomes an ocean on which the speaker finds herself tossed and wondering if she will ever be returned to the safety of land.

    First Movement:  The Sea as Metaphor

    The speaker begins by creating a metaphor for the physical level of being, this wide world, in which she finds herself tempest tossed and uncertain of the way to safety.  Calling this world a “wondrous sea,” she reports that she is quietly sailing upon this ocean of chaos, then suddenly she cries out: “Ho! Pilot, ho!”

    And then she demands of the pilot to know if he knows where there is safety, where there are no trials and tribulations, where one can find rest from the many upheavals and battles that continually confront each inhabitant of this world.  Upon first encountering, it may seem that the speaker is addressing some sea captain as she rides in some maritime vessel.

    But it quickly becomes apparent that the speaker is addressing the Creator of the universe, and she wants to know if the Creator of this seemingly confusing Creation knows where she can go to come out of “the storm.”  As the “sea” is a metaphor for the world, the “Pilot” is the metaphor for the Creator (or God), Who directs and leads His children through this confusing place.  

    As a pilot would steer a ship, God steers the ship of life, the ship of this world that only He has created.  Thus the speaker appeals to God for an answer to her question, is there anywhere that can offer peace to the poor soul who must navigate the churning waters of this world?

    Second Movement:  Where Peace Reigns Supreme

    In the second stanza, the speaker shifts from the supplicant to the Blessèd Creator, Who bestows on the questioner the answer to her question.  The storm is over where peace reigns supreme.  Metaphorically, the speaker chooses to locate the peaceful place in the “west,” likely to rime it with “rest.”  

    In that peaceful west, one can cease the constant struggle with the dualities of this world.  One can feel secure with “anchors fast,” unlike the constant heaving and tossing back and forth that the rough sea causes.  The sails can be lowered and remain in that position because the journey has reached its destination.

    The piloting Creator then assures His traveling, storm-tossed child that, in fact, He is taking her there as she speaks.  The words, “Thither I pilot thee,” must ring in the ears of this supplicant as a true balm of heaven, comforting her every nervous inclination; she knows that she is safe with this “Pilot,” Who knows where to take her and is piloting her there now.

    Then suddenly, the coveted land is in sight and the land is “Eternity.”  The speaker now knows she is being guided safely and surely through her life by the One, Who can take her “ashore” and keep her secure throughout eternity.  Immortality is hers and peace will be her existence in this eternal resting place where the soul resides with its Divine Over-Soul Creator.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The feet of people walking home

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

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

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

    Reading: 

    Commentary on “The feet of people walking home”

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

    First Stanza:  Happier on the Way Home

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

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

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

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

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

    Second Stanza:  The Value of Commodities

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Third Stanza:  Ultimate Home in Heaven

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

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

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

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

    Dickinson’s Grammar/Spelling Errors

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

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

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

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

    The Metaphor of Divinity

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

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