Rethink.

These are the days when Birds come back
Emily Dick­in­son

These are the days when Birds come back –
A very few — a Bird or two –
To take a back­ward look.

These are the days when skies resume
The old — old sophistries of June –
A blue and gold mistake.

Oh fraud that can­not cheat the Bee –
Almost thy plau­si­bil­ity
Induces my belief.

Till ranks of seeds their wit­ness bear –
And softly thro’ the altered air
Hur­ries a timid leaf.

Oh Sacra­ment of sum­mer days,
Oh Last Com­mu­nion in the Haze –
Per­mit a child to join.

Thy sacred emblems to par­take –
They con­se­crated bread to take
And thine immor­tal wine!

Com­men­tary:

The birds that come back cheat us. We think it will all be the same again, for­get­ting that what we’re see­ing is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of another’s nos­tal­gia at best, at worst, our own nos­tal­gia. Those “blue and gold” mis­takes are the same as the birds; from the third stanza, we know it is our mind at work, look­ing for any lit­tle hint that all will be the same again, that is mak­ing us con­fused about when the begin­nings of sum­mer are.

At this point, I want to dis­tin­guish between mind, body and soul. If you’ve read the Repub­lic, you know there is a ratio­nal ele­ment in the soul, and an appet­i­tive ele­ment. But how does the soul move, torn between the two? If one side gains a greater “force” than the other, how do we account for that force?

Socrates intro­duces the ele­ment of spirit­ed­ness, or will­ful­ness, and it seems arti­fi­cial. It is most clear in the virtue of courage, but is courage dis­pas­sion­ate, inde­pen­dent of the appetites? In one sense, no, for the move­ment of the Repub­lic is show­ing that a class of purely spir­ited indi­vid­u­als — the guardian class — will col­lapse into the appet­i­tive (the love of one’s own that undoes the Children’s Creche, the most pri­mal and foun­da­tional and crit­i­cal form of eros). The argu­ment of the Repub­lic seems to be that the spir­ited ele­ment needs to be tied to the ratio­nal and respect­ful of appet­i­tive, in order that tyranny be curbed. Whether there is a spir­ited ele­ment is an open ques­tion, even; it does seem to stand for pure will, the fact that we make a choice between what we per­ceive as ratio­nal and our desires. (Con­trast this with the Phae­drus, where spirit­ed­ness is a “higher pas­sion,” higher than erotic desires, that allows rea­son to gov­ern those lower pas­sions. You can see some of this in the Repub­lic, in the inevitable turn to reli­gion. Reli­gion uses Glaucon’s spirit­ed­ness to keep away the deletri­ous effects of the appetitive.)

With a mind, body, soul dis­tinc­tion, then, all of a sud­den Dickinson’s poem becomes really com­pli­cated. The mind is being fooled in long­ing for sen­su­al­ity, and it is the “bee” which, in its per­sis­tent but thought­less labors, that can see through the false signs of the sea­sons. If the ratio­nal were to take its intel­lec­tual labors seri­ously, per­haps the speaker could see the sea­sons rightly.

But it gets even more com­pli­cated than that, for as I have noted before, there is a pagan/Christian divide in the poem. One half of it hear­kens to a falsely opti­mistic pagan­ism, the other half to an almost tragic Chris­tian­ity. The stanza that seems to facil­i­tate that move­ment is here:

Till ranks of seeds their wit­ness bear –
And softly thro’ the altered air
Hur­ries a timid leaf.

Our speaker believes the fraud, ignor­ing the bee’s “wis­dom,” until she sees a leaf float­ing through the air. The ques­tion is that of where the seeds are. Faith like a mus­tard seed hasn’t been planted in the ground yet; it is just float­ing about. The speaker’s hopes for what was are based on inci­dents, not trust or com­mit­ment or char­ac­ter. Our speaker sees him­self in that leaf — that word “timid” is what is char­ac­ter­is­tic of the intel­lect, I think, as opposed to the bee, which is more spir­ited (a spir­ited many is not con­so­nant with the Repub­lic. But it cer­tainly makes sense in Homer). The word “altered” is the poem’s mid­point, it evokes “altar” not ter­ri­bly sub­tly. That word “ranks” implies that all the seeds for spring­time are there, and implies a hier­arachy, but a hier­ar­chy that wit­ness had to be borne to. Our speaker gets the intel­lect back, but because of an asso­ci­a­tion made almost on faith. See­ing your­self in a leaf is a God’s eye per­spec­tive, as it pushes you to see your lifes­pan in the con­text of what is, what is being some­thing very large and almost indif­fer­ent to one.

Our speaker’s con­ver­sion is that of embrac­ing mys­tery, and going to a child­ish­ness in order to have a love from within, as opposed to depend­ing on the love of another. That’s the sig­nif­i­cance of the com­mu­nion imagery, I think: but has the intel­lect com­pletely receded in the face of spirit­ed­ness made manifest?

Well, the last words are “immor­tal wine,” and if one remem­bers the Sym­po­sium or the Laws, wine isn’t merely a tool of the erotic. It cre­ates the socia­bil­ity, or per­haps in this speaker’s case, the lack of worry, which allows the intel­lect to rise again, above petty details.

• A Per­sonal Reac­tion to “These are the days when Birds come back,” poem #130 by Emily Dickinson
• Wis­dom and Rule: On Poem 343 of Emily Dick­in­son, “My Reward for Being”
• Mak­ing Excuses: On Poem 224 of Emily Dick­in­son, “I’ve noth­ing else — to bring, You know…”
• A Con­sid­er­a­tion Regard­ing Mourn­ing: On Dickinson’s “To hang our head — osten­si­bly…” (105)
• Emily Dickinson’s Human­ism? Or Is That Mak­ing This Too Com­pli­cated? On Poem 464, “The power to be true to You”

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