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poems sent from dickinson to elizabeth holland
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 scrapbook 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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