poems sent from dickinson to higginson


Thomas Johnson's Note on Poem 1396

MANUSCRIPT:This poem survives in an original worksheet draft, in a redaction of that draft, and in two fair copies-all written in 1877. The fair copy reproduced above (BPL Higg 34) is one of four poems ED enclosed in a letter to T. W. Higginson (BPL Higg 73) written in August and identified in the letter by title as an "Epitaph." The fair copy to Mrs. J. G. Holland (H H 35), written about the same time, is in pencil and was sent without accompanying message. It is identical in form and text with the copy to Higginson except for one word:

2. confiding] mechanic

It is signed "Emily." In the upper corners of this copy ED pasted two cuttings from newspapers: at the left a star and crescent, and at the right tombstones slanting one against another. The tombstone illustration is a clipping from the Hampshire and Franklin Express of 12 December 1856. ED enclosed funerary scraps in messages from time to time, and thus suggested clues to the inspiration for certain verses. The disparity in the date of the clipping and the poem leads one to conjecture that she kept a scrap. book or a file of items which to her were meaningful.

The worksheet draft (Bingham 98-4B-12), in pencil, reads thus:
And this [strikethrough: confiding] subjunctive Stone
Still states to Dates that have forgot
The News that he is gone

So constant to it's stolid trust
The Shaft that never knew -
It shames the Constancy that fled
Before it's emblem flew.

The redaction (Bingham 103-9), also in pencil, is as follows:
She laid her docile Crescent down
And this mechanic stone
Still states to Dates that have forgot
The News that she is gone -
So constant to it's stolid trust
The shaft that never knew
It shames the Constancy that fled
Before it's emblem flew -

It is written on a discarded scrap of paper on which the word "Corn" has been scratched out. In the copy to Mrs. Holland, ED adopted the "mechanic" of the redaction. In the copy to Higginson she returned to "confiding," the word first written, then discarded, in the worksheet draft. A possible fifth copy, now lost, is discussed below.

PUBLICATION: Poems (1896), 157, titled "The Monument." It follows the text of the variant that adopts "mechanic" in line 2. Since Mrs. Todd had not seen the copy to Mrs. Holland, the text must derive from the redaction (Bingham 1O3-9). It is arranged as two quatrains. The same text is reproduced by Mrs. Bianchi in CP (1924), 233. In the Centenary edition (1930) and later collections, edited by Mrs. Bianchi and Mr. Hampson, "confiding" replaces "mechanic." The editors thus are following either the text of a copy now lost or (more probably) the text of the copy to Col. Higginson. The variant to Mrs. Holland is in LH (1951), 105.


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Last updated on September 24, 1998