Dickinson/Higginson Correspondence: Poem 1259

poems sent from dickinson to higginson

Thomas Johnson's Note on Poem 1259

MANUSCRIPT: There are four autograph copies of this poem, all written in late 1873 or early 1874. The copy reproduced above (Bingham 99-2) concludes with the notation: "December 5th." What event or circumstance ED associates with the date is not known. In a copy to Sue (H B 190) the last two lines are wanting, but the texts are otherwise identical:

A Wind that rose though not a Leaf
In any Forest stirred,
But with itself did cold engage
Beyond the realm of Bird.

A Wind that woke a lone Delight
Like Separation's Swell -

ED incorporated the four final lines in a letter to T. W. Higginson (BPL Higg 84) written in January 1874 to thank him for a New Year's remembrance. The text is identical with that reproduced above:

A Wind that woke a lone Delight
Like Separation's Swell -
Restored in Arctic confidence
To the Invisible.

A semifinal draft (Bingham 99-l) is the text from which the fair copies derived:

A Wind that rose though not a Leaf
In any Forest stirred -
But with itself did cold engage
Beyond the realm of Bird.

A Wind that woke a lone Delight
Like separation's swell -
Restored in Arctic confidence
To the invisible.

Though "engage" (line 3) is crossed out and "commune" written in pencil at the bottom, ED did not adopt it in the later copies.

PUBLICATION: The copy to Sue furnished the text in FF (1932), 256-257, where lines 7 and 8 are present. The sheet on which they were written, now missing, must then have been extant. One word is altered:

3. cold] cool

The copy to Higginson is in Letters (ed. 1931 only), 307.

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