Table of contents
1. Emily Dickinson "312"
Emily Dickinsona
written c. 1862, published 1914
Her – “last Poems” –1
Poets – ended –
Silver – perished – with her Tongue –
Not on Record – bubbled other,
Flute – or Woman –
So divine –
Not unto its Summer – Morning
Robin – uttered Half the Tune –
Gushed too free for the Adoring –
From the Anglo-Florentine –
Late – the Praise –
‘Tis dull – conferring
On the Head too High to Crown –
Diadem – or Ducal Showing –
Be its Grave – sufficient sign –
Nought – that We – No Poet’s Kinsman –
Suffocate – with easy woe –
What, and if, Ourself a Bridegroom –
Put Her down – in Italy?
Notes
a.
From The Complete Poems
of Emily Dickinson, ed. Thomas H. Johnson (Boston: Little, Brown, 1997). Like most of
her work, these tributes to EBB were published only after the death of American poet
Dickinson (1830-86). For a third poem on EBB (#363), see the supplementary website. Gary
Lee Stonum argues that a fourth poem by Dickinson, # 631 (“Ourselves were wed one
summer”), also pays tribute to EBB, and reports that in the twelve to eighteen months
following EBB’s death, Dickinson had received three pictures of EBB and referred to her
in five letters, once asking a friend traveling in Europe, “Should anybody where you go,
talk of Mrs. Browning, you must hear for us—and if you touch her Grave, put one hand on
the Head for me—her unmentioned Mourner” (Stonum, The Dickinson Sublime [Madison: U of
Wisconsin P, 1990], 40-41). See Bogus (1984) and Swyderski (2000, 200! 3), documenting
the extent of EBB’s influence on the imagery and form of Dickinson’s poems, as well as
on the organization of her manuscript sequences.
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