Resource for Emily Dickinson’s poetry

The first print of Emily Dickinson’s poetry in 1890, by Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, became criticized as a heavy edit on the original poetry. For his publication of 1955, Thomas Herbert Johnson used fascicle copies. We may compare the copies, the first print, and — where necessary — Johnson’s edition as well, to have a view.

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The text makes fair use of standard copyright, for the purpose of fascicle and print comparison: Thomas H. Johnson, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, 1955.
The text may be used under any of the following licenses:
■→Creative Commons License 4.0, BY-SA 3.0, and License 2.5.
The first print selected verses, along with a few by Carl Sandburg, are semantic field exercise in part four of the Travel in Grammar. Feel welcome,
■→travelingrammar.com.

■→This text is also available in Polish.

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My ■→Google Drive for Emily Dickinson links to fascicle copies arranged according to the first print. It is enough we open two browser windows. The print by Higginson and Todd is available via the Internet Archive, ■→Poems, 1890. Screenshot contrast is enhanced.

Emily Dickinson Archive allows browsing the samples by their content; we type the phrase we are looking for in the search field: ■→http://www.edickinson.org/editions/1/image_sets/235351

Poem titles here link to my edit, available also in PDF from the Internet Archive, along with my translation to Polish, Creative Commons License:
■→Poems by Emily Dickinson,
■→Wiersze Emilii Dickinson.

Reportedly, Emily Dickinson tolerated advice by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who also was her long time acquaintance. She wrote him in a letter: Thank you for the surgery; it was not so painful as I supposed. I bring you others, as you ask, though they might not differ (as published in ■→The Atlantic).

The first print yet limps, mostly on the shape of the stanza, and I wanted an edition simply for my happy bookshelf, that is, one to make me really glad.

Johnson used primarily hyphens or dashes, and Higginson and Todd used regular punctuation, for what looks to be structure markup in manuscript samples. Let us view sample J67, the Success:

The markup is neither punctuation, nor hyphens or dashes. In J67, we have markup around the words today or defeated. Thomas Johnson separated the word dying with dashes, and chose punctuation as in the Masque of Poets, for other words. He was arbitrary, if we compare Higginson and Todd, who followed standard punctuation.

Johnson’s editorial despotism afflicted most pieces. It is not only in sample J113, Our Share of Night, that line end structure tags do not look like dashes at all.

Johnson’s print:
Our share of night to bear —
Our share of morning —
Our blank in bliss to fill
Our blank in scorning —

The dash alone expands or highlights on thought; with a comma, it marks off a phrasal antecedent. With Johnson’s overuse, both the roles are lost.

Obvious punctuation, as the comma for non-defining time clauses, happens to be omitted in the manuscripts.
So bashful_when I spied her… (Nature XIX)
The flower or herb is not a metaphor; the poetic person carries it. The plant is “shy” — grows in foliage — it does not become hidden the moment the person approaches. As children bid the guest, in Nature XVII, does give flowers eyes and lips, but with affection that does not use touch: the poet muses on times of day and plant behavior (some close their chalices at night) only as an observer.

For the following comparison, I mostly note on differences in words and phrases. Punctuation becomes part of the picture only when the happy shelf requires, and I mark adjustment as {P}. Thematic rearrangement is marked as {T}, spelling as {S}, and grammar as {G}. Where the first print and manuscript sample agree in word content, I mark it A, and include from the first print as-is, unless the other markup would apply.

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LIFE

(1) ■→I. Success {T}
Johnson has the poem conclude as,
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!

As the strains are distant, and the enemy’s victory transient, Higginson and Todd make better sense:
The distant strains of triumph
Break, agonized and clear.
A broken triumph allows a moment of quiet, where the poet would be the only one to give a shout, with the exclamation. My happy shelf resolve: the first print content, with a thematic layout as in the Masque of Poets. Please compare the Notes, ■→marked here for Thomas Niles, the publisher.

(2) ■→II. Our Share of Night to Bear / A
Fascicle and Johnson punctuation:
Some lose their way!

First print punctuation:
Some lose their way.
Afterwards — day!

Punctuation characters as the exclamation, question, or dash, decrease in strength and appeal with overuse. I follow the first print.

(3) ■→III. Rouge et Noir / A {P}

(4) ■→IV. Rouge Gagne {S}
First print content:
Life is but life, and death but death!
Bliss is but bliss, and breath but breath!
And if, indeed, I fail,
At least to know the worst is sweet.
Defeat means nothing but defeat,
No drearier can prevail!

Fascicle sample P90-4, J172:
No drearier can befall!

Trente et Quarante is a card game. In one context with belief and promise of afterlife, the verb to befall would implicate predestination: people would be saved or condemned regardless of own conduct. The poetry does not evidence such faith (compare If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking), and the card game is won based on prevalence. My happy shelf: the first print, Heaven capitalized, for the standard reference to religion.

(5) ■→V. Glee! The Great Storm Is Over! {P}
Johnson’s edit disregards fascicle suggested corrections:
Then a softness — suffuse the Story —
And a silence — the Teller’s eye —
And the Children — no further question
And only the Sea — reply

The first print is preferable also for verb agreement:
Then a silence suffuses the story,
And a softness the teller’s eye;
And the children no further question,
And only the waves reply.

(6) ■→VI. If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking / A

(7) ■→VII. Almost! {P} {T}
Fascicle copy and Johnson:
So unsuspected Violets
Within the meadows go —
Too late for striving fingers
That passed, an hour ago!

The first print:
So unsuspected violets
Within the fields lie low;
Too late for striving fingers
That passed, an hour ago.

The poem is about a countryside walk, which brings locomotion into the picture, and violets never go anywhere on their own. Repetitiveness on short lexical items of close shapes, as go ~ ago is stylistically weak, for a finished poetic form. High vowels gain, in the phrase within the fields lie low.

My happy shelf follows the first print, with a thematic layout, one more comma, and one more exclamation mark:
So unsuspected, violets… An hour ago!

(8) ■→VIII. A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest / A

(9) ■→IX. The Heart Asks Pleasure First / A
Sample J536 shows Johnson’s edit ignore fascicle suggested correction; Johnson says:
The privilege to die —

Higginson and Todd say:
The liberty to die.
For a heart as human emotion to belong with the soul as well, it is liberty to make sense; a privilege might imply anticipation of a torturous life, after death as well, absent from the poetry. Please compare Rouge Gagne (Life IV) and Webster 1828, for paregoric, elixir, and inquiry, as correlate with truth.
Internet Archive:
■→Webster 1828 Volume I
■→Webster 1828 Volume II.

(10) ■→X. In a Library {T}
Sample J371 is probably of the greatest variance of all, in shapes for the letter T. Lexemic repetitiveness, as of man/a man, ascertain/certainty might induce special emphasis on the last syllable, in the verb to ascertain: an effect the poetry does not employ (and people may read time and again, with pleasure).
Johnson:
His quaint opinions – to inspect —
His thought to ascertain
On Themes concern our mutual mind —
The Literature of Man —

What interested Scholars – most —
What Competitions ran —
When Plato – was a Certainty —
And Sophocles – a Man —

…As One should come to Town —
And tell you all your Dreams – were true —
He lived – where Dreams were born —

The first print:
His quaint opinions to inspect,
His knowledge to unfold
On what concerns our mutual mind,
The literature of old;

What interested scholars most,
What competitions ran
When Plato was a certainty,
And Sophocles a man;

…As one should come to town
And tell you all your dreams were true:
He lived where dreams were sown.

My happy shelf: the first print with the content arranged into thematic stanzas, that is, regardless of classicist strict proportion.

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(11) ■→XI. Much Madness Is Divinest Sense / A {P}
Please compare the Notes here, for the Latin and Greek in the poetry.

(12) ■→XII. I Asked No Other Thing / A
Johnson’s edit ignores a suggested correction.
I asked no other thing —
No other — was denied —
I offered Being — for it —
The Mighty Merchant sneered —

My happy shelf: the first print.
I asked no other thing,
No other was denied.
I offered Being for it;
The mighty merchant smiled.

(13) ■→XIII. Exclusion
Johnson’s edit ignores corrections altogether. The first print does not have lids for valves: with a woman figure in the picture, lids collocate with eyelids, and stone would make a heavy impression; valves might bring on a heart, firm against influence (the woman’s gate is “low”). Rush may remain ignored, as most doormats were made of rush, before synthetic rubber.

(14) ■→XIV. The Secret / A {P}

(15) ■→XV. A Lonely House / A {P}
My happy shelf: I accept one idea for edit, for the sake of high vowels, antique in the place of ancient.

(16) ■→XVI. To Fight Aloud Is Very Brave / A {P}

(17) ■→XVII. Dawn / A {T}

(18) ■→XVIII. The Book of Martyrs / A {P}

(19) ■→XIX. The Mystery of Pain
There is no image available from Emily Dickinson Archive. Johnson uses a potentially dialectal shape, begun, where the first print has the regular second form, began. His edit does not have the noun realms; it brings a thought of syntactic government in the first print: Its infinite realms contain…
Johnson: Its Infinite contain…
Please compare the Notes ■→here, for word sense and human living experience.

(20) ■→XX. I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed / A
Thomas Johnson printed quotes on landlords and drams, which brought redundant literalness, for drunken Bees at the foxglove’s door, inns of molten blue, and other phrases of poetic imagery.

(21) ■→XXI. A Book / A {T}

(22) ■→XXII. I Had No Time to Hate
There is no image available from Emily Dickinson Archive. Where the first print reports, the subjunctivus is Thomas Johnson’s resolve:
The little Toil of Love —
I thought
Be large enough for Me —

My happy shelf follows the first print, as evaluation happens to change also in feelings.
The little toil of love, I thought,
Was large enough for me.

(23) ■→XXIII. Unreturning / A

(24) ■→XXIV. Whether My Bark Went Down at Sea / A {T}

(25) ■→XXV. Belshazzar Had a Letter / A {P}
My shelf: I adjust the punctuation, to avoid the impression there might be a conjunctive missing.
Belshazzar’s correspondent
Concluded — and begun
In that immortal copy:
The conscience of us all
Can read without its glasses
On revelation’s wall.

(26) ■→XXVI. The Brain within Its Groove / A

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LOVE

(1) ■→I. Mine {P}
Sample J528 proposes alterations, as bolts for the place of bars, and while the ages steal for long as ages steal; a good affidavit would be to replace the delirious charter. The sample is suggestive of “onion skin exercise”, practice in following written characters in line, on semi-transparent paper.

■→Link to original screenshot

The above compares with counterfeit; the regular practice of the times was to copy below handwritten samples, to learn to write. It might result in alternate letter shapes, please compare the shape H for In Vain, below.

(2) ■→II. Bequest {P}
The fascicle copy has the word shape “sire” in the place of “sweet”. Please compare the bookmark for the poem, and the note right next here.

(3) ■→III. Alter?
The manuscript sample has the word shape “sir” in the place of “friend”, and exclamations in places for question marks. The contextual daffodil yet makes an association friendly, rather than that for a difference in status or other quality. Question marks accord with friendly enthusiasm better. Please compare Webster 1828, to daff: to toss aside, to put off.

(4) ■→IV. Suspense / A

(5) ■→V. Surrender {P}
The first print does not have the manuscript last stanza (J275). The first stanza tells about a book that briefly describes God, and the phrase the whole of me is a development on sufficiency of such description. The book is probably a dictionary.

If to change the object of thought from a book to a man, the fascicle stanza would be imposing a picture of an intimate affair, with its reference to body parts, brow to barefoot: the woman would be promising whether life or love, intimately to be worthy of God.

Most of the difference between the first print and handwritten copies looks a bad joke on the poet — a single woman — implying that she was mad about finding a man. In the Library, the fascicle lines for ascertaining and man, would be followed by an idea as a born Dream.

Let us avoid comment on Emily Dickinson’s privacy, as there is nobody able to claim having been invited. Only as a person to tell what there shows — the contrary is probable, Emily Dickinson was not desperate to find company. Her close friend died and she was unwilling to have another. She reportedly wrote to Thomas Higginson: When a little girl, I had a friend who taught me Immortality; but venturing too near, himself, he never returned (as published in The Atlantic).

Along the Potomac, Time and Eternity XXXIII:
When I was small, a woman died.
… Proud in apparition,
That woman and her boy
Pass back and forth before my brain,
As ever in the sky.

The Proof (Love VIII) would tell about an acquaintance that did not begin as a love affair.
That I did always love,
I bring thee proof:
That till I loved
I did not love enough.

It is not only the change in the object of thought to make me believe the fascicle stanza for the Surrender is an insertion. The first print is a collection of pieces to look verbally correlate with Webster 1828, whereas the fascicle stanza — if to sustain and reflect — might correlate with another dictionary and fascicle notes for the poem Mine, but not with the Surrender as in the first print or Webster. (The first print does not have the “corrections” for Mine either, ■→this place in the Notes). Let me explain how we can correlate with a dictionary.

It is probably a natural thought, also with early use of dictionaries, that words occur: not only as entries, but in definitions as well. My early experience was with a Latin-Polish dictionary by ■→Łukasz Koncewicz, where I was able to use entries only if the word shape was similar due to etymology. I was just a curious kid.

Let us take up a few word shapes, as grave from the Latin gravis, bay from the Latin baia, and triangle from triangulum. We read the dictionary for the selected words. Webster 1828 has all our three shapes meet on display page 232, in the entry ■→base.

Here we go: the sense can be as the lowest or gravest part in music (There’s a Certain Slant of Light, Nature XXXI); it can be a rustic play, called also bays, or prison bars (Mine, Love I); and we can learn that any side of a triangle may be called its base, but this term most properly belongs to the side which is parallel to the horizon. For this shape, we may try One Dignity, Time and Eternity I.

If we look up Webster 1828 for bolts as suggested to edit the poem Mine, along with the Gray’s Inn, the name Emerson will surface over the Internet, with the King’s Bench and Common Pleas, for the “onion skin” good affidavit.[1]

The “insertion dictionary” might have been that by ■→Joseph Emerson Worcester. His competition against Webster became described as a “dictionary war”: Noah Webster would Americanize, and Joseph Worcester “Britishize”. [2] Fascicle insertions and alterations would not have been made by a friend.

Worcester’s was the dictionary “on which, as is well known, the literary men of this metropolis are by special statute allowed to be sworn in place of the Bible”, wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes senior (1809 – 1894), a medic and author from Boston, one of the ■→Fireside Poets. I do not imply him for the author of the good affidavit. For some more of my angle on the Surrender, please use the Notes, ■→Word sense and human living experience.

(6) ■→VI. If You Were Coming in the Fall
Having “gotten it off my chest” in the preceding note, I add here that my happy shelf is definitely not into the fascicle version for this poem as well. I describe my reservations ■→here in the Notes and keep the first print.

(7) ■→VII. With a Flower / A

(8) ■→VIII. Proof / A

(9) ■→IX. Have You Got a Brook in Your Little Heart
The first print:
Then look out for the little brook in March…

Fascicle handwriting and Johnson:
Why, look out for the little brook in March…
The stanza to follow has the phrase and later, underlined; the invocatory why continues to be used when telling “what there would be to miss out on”, as it suggests for the Transplanted, right next in the first print.

(10) ■→X. Transplanted / A {P} {T}

(11) ■→XI. The Outlet / A {T}

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(12) ■→XII. In Vain {P} {T}
Fascicle copy J640 has an atypical letter shape “x”. An edit as consequence in the place of excellence would imply predestination (please compare Rouge Gagne). Exercise for sustenance, and white instead of the first print pale, privilege to be deleted, there is no suggestion for replacement.

White appears along with fire in the insertion for Surrender, too. In turn, an alternate character H may visually give an impression as “white ideal”, for the “White Heat” (J365).

■→Link to screenshot

The White Heat does not look a piece to belong with the Hemlock (Nature, XXX). A quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson might come to mind, “Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul”. [3] The fascicles yet have no consequence for the notation, and the pieces do not agree in their poetic mood.

(13) ■→XIII. Renunciation / A (copy F325)

(14) ■→XIV. Love’s Baptism / A (copy P90-40)

(15) ■→XV. Resurrection / A {T}

(16) ■→XVI. Apocalypse {S}
Fascicle copy:
How odd the girl’s life looks
Behind this soft eclipse
I think that Earth feels so
To folks in Heaven now

The first print:
How odd the girl’s life looks
Behind this soft eclipse!
I think that earth seems so
To those in heaven now.

The word shape “folks” would be strangely colloquial, with regard to Emily Dickinson’s style generally, and the verb to seem is better than the verb to feel, to get along with the verb to look. The first print does not capitalize the Earth and Heaven, which I do for the sake of my happy shelf and the language standard.

(17) ■→XVII. The Wife {P} {T}
Fascicle copy: in using wear away; first print: in using wore away. My happy shelf: the first print with thematic stanzas.

(18) ■→XVIII. Apotheosis / A {P} {T}

NATURE

(1) ■→I. New Feet within My Garden Go / A

(2) ■→II. May-Flower / A {T}

(3) ■→III. Why? / A

(4) ■→IV. Perhaps You’d Like to Buy a Flower? / A {T}

(5) ■→V. The Pedigree of Honey / A

(6) ■→VI. A Service of Song / A {P}

(7) ■→VII. The Bee Is Not Afraid of Me / A
Sample P90-51 has the piece noted on the same page with Success.

(8) ■→VIII. Summer’s Armies / A {P} {T}

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Notes for Emily Dickinson’s poetry

Poems
Life | Love | Nature | Time and Eternity

(9) ■→IX. The Grass {P}
Sample F379 has suggestions for edit the first print does not include.

(10) ■→X. A Little Road Not Made of Man {P}
There is no image from Emily Dickinson Archive available. I follow the first print:
If town it have, beyond itself,
‘T is that I cannot say;
I only sigh, no vehicle
Bears me along that way.

Johnson:
If Town it have — beyond itself —
‘T is that — I cannot say —
I only know — no Curricle that rumble there
Bear Me —

(11) ■→XI. Summer Shower / A

(12) ■→XII. Psalm of the Day {P} {T}
The poem was preserved on separate sheets of paper; Johnson dated the two sheets for 1858 and 1862, and regarded them as two individual poems. He gave the “first part” an end that does not persuade — it interrupts a development:
So looking on — the night — the morn
Conclude the wonder gay —
And I meet, coming thro’ the dews
Another summer’s Day!

The first print holds the matter together, and lets the piece develop until another dawn:
The heaven unexpected came,
To lives that thought their worshipping
A too presumptuous psalm.

The first print has phrasal development in the first stanza:
A something in a summer’s noon,
An azure depth, a wordless tune,
Transcending ecstasy.

The fascicle copy and Johnson remain limited to nouns.
A something in a summer’s noon —
A depth — an Azure — a perfume —
Transcending ecstasy.

Fascicle handwriting has phonemic repetitiveness:
Like flowers that heard the news of dews…
The first print:
Like flowers that heard the tales of dews…

(13) ■→XIII. The Sea of Sunset {P}
Fascicle and Johnson copies have merchantmen “vanish like orioles”, where the visual effect a bird might give jumping off a fence does not have any appeal as an idea for human business. More, the word shape “orioles” is likely to bring linguistic equivalence; we might say (orioleez) or (orioulz), and that is maybe a minor, yet a hindrance, for a position as stanza (and poem) end. I follow the first print: vanish with fairy sails.

(14) ■→XIV. Purple Clover {P} {T}
Fascicle copy:
Her sturdy little countenance
Against the wind be seen…

The first print: is seen. My happy shelf: the first print and thematic stanzas.

(15) ■→XV. The Bee / A {T}

(16) ■→XVI. Presentiment / A

(17) ■→XVII. As Children Bid the Guest Good-Night / A

(18) ■→XVIII. Angels in the Early Morning / A {P}

(19) ■→XIX. So Bashful, When I Spied Her / A {P}

(20) ■→XX. Two Worlds / A {P} {S}
I capitalize Judgment, for a standard reference to religion.

(21) ■→XXI. The Mountain / A {P}

(22) ■→XXII. A Day / A {P} {T}

(23) ■→XXIII. The Butterfly’s Assumption-Gown / A

(24) ■→XXIV. The Wind {P} {T}
I believe the fascicle copy has an insertion of 12 lines. The style does not occur anywhere except suspected inserts. As with the Surrender, the following features are the most diagnostic.

• Personal projection on ■→anthropomorphism:
  The object of thought becomes shifted from non-human (here, a wind) to invoke body parts.

Original anthropomorphism:
The wind does, working like a hand
Whose fingers brush the sky..

The personal projection in the insert:
Inheritance, it is, to us…
… gotten not of fingers —
And inner than the Bone —

The “hand” by the first print wind does not have even one bone, and own self receives a different treatment in the Emancipation. For the Surrender, an insert projects a male onto a dictionary.

(a) ■→Antinomy or contradiction on material existence:
A meteorological phenomenon as a wind might be inheritance to a human being, tells the fragment, only to place an “origin” for physical motion with human remains:
And even in the Urn,
I cannot vouch the merry Dust
Do not arise and play…

With the Surrender, an insert says a woman would make a gift of dust — as if earthly precipitation of dirt particles was what people might cherish in “some distant heaven”. The third grammatical person replaces the first, for the poetic person.

(b) Atypical verb phrase, infixed in The Wind:
Beyond the trait to take away
By Robber…

We may compare The Lonely House, regardful of material existence and verb phrases as well. Just to note, sample F334A is the only to have one word for the top, first line entire, and the word is overhead. For atypical predicates, we also have a note with The Chariot.

(25) ■→XXV. Death and Life / A {T}

(26) ■→XXVI. ’T Was Later When the Summer Went / A {P}

(27) ■→XXVII. Indian Summer {P}
The first print:
These are the days when skies put on…
Fascicle copy and Johnson: resume.

The phrasal verb to put on makes sense as to dress up, pretend; real June is no fraud on the bee (see the stanza to follow right next). To resume would make a vowel contour to stress the same vowel, [ū], in four consecutive lines — an idea also verses by Carl Sandburg do not promote.

Johnson concludes with the following lines:
Oh Last Communion in the Haze—
Permit a child to join.

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

Partake and take are the lexemic repetitiveness as for Life VII, Almost. A poet may “get away with it” only in humorous pieces, let us compare the Assumption Gown. More, Webster 1828 explains communion as giving and receiving — the first print persuades, not only on the vowel contour.
Thy consecrated bread to break,
Taste thine immortal wine!

(28) ■→XXVIII. Autumn / A

(29) ■→XXIX. Beclouded {P}
Sample P90-73 suggests an edit, visually parties. I follow the first print.

(30) ■→XXX. The Hemlock / A {P} {T}
Webster 1828 says that satin spar is selenite, fibrous lime stone, and rathoffite was the name for a mineral brought from Sweden. Browsing Webster 1828 for the word shape “spar” can help appreciate the poetry (other examples being truth, true, grave).

(31) ■→XXXI. There’s a Certain Slant of Light / A {P}

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TIME AND ETERNITY

(1) ■→I. One Dignity Delays for All / A {P}

(2) ■→II. Too Late {P} {S}
Sample P90-77 has the word shape “joy” in the place of the first print glee. The substitution might imply that a “loving” person could have pleasure in the “loved” one dying, and the poetry does not have such bias or word misuse. The Notes ■→here tell about the phrase “glee and glory”.

I capitalize Victory, as the Latin word shape for it is “victoria”, the same as the queen’s given name. Fascicle copies F67A and P90-77 (F67B or J58) have the noun capitalized.

(3) ■→III. Astra Castra / A
Sample P90-78 suggests edits, but the form clouds leaning like ushers and the vowel contour as cancelled/disperse would not gain with the changes.

(4) ■→IV. Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers
The Notes ■→bookmark tells about the “mechanical” error in sample F124B.

(5) ■→V. On This Long Storm the Rainbow Rose / A {P}

(6) ■→VI. From the Chrysalis / A {G} {P}
Sample P90-81 has suggestions for edit the first print does not integrate. The add-on word shape “implies” instead of “concede” would be tipping the balance towards interpreting “Meadows” for a proper noun. We may compare Peter Parley’s description of his visit to London, for the coronation of queen Victoria, it yet does not fit here contextually at all. [4] The only first print reference to the queen is in the poem Too Late.

For my happy shelf, I adjust the verb agreement, meadows concede.

(7) ■→VII. Setting Sail / A {P}

(8) ■→VIII. Look Back on Time with Kindly Eyes / A

(9) ■→IX. A Train Went through a Burial Gate (No Image) {T}

(10) ■→X. I Died for Beauty {P}
Fascicle copy and Johnson’s print:
And I — for Truth — Themself are One —

The first print:
And I for truth, the two are one…

(11) ■→XI. Troubled about Many Things / A {P}

(12) ■→XII. Real
There is no fascicle image from Emily Dickinson archive available. Johnson does not differ from the first print, in word content.

(13) ■→XIII. The Funeral / A {P} {T}

(14) ■→XIV. I Went to Thank Her / A {P} {T}

(15) ■→XV. I’ve Seen a Dying Eye
The manuscript copy has one inconsistent suggestion for edit, the word shape “somewhat” for the place of something.

(16) ■→XVI. Refuge / A {G}
For my happy shelf, I have the word shape “stuff” alone, rather than a phrase as a stuff: there was not, and there still is no such poetic use.

“Stuff” might have been used the same as the word something happens to be today: before we think up a resolve on the shape of our written matter, we may write in “a sth”. The matter would have become a fait accompli over time.

(17) ■→XVII. I Never Saw a Moor {S}
The first print:
I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.
Johnson: And what a Billow be.

I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.
Johnson: As if the Checks were given—

Webster 1828 describes a ■→billow as a great wave or surge of the sea, occasioned usually by violent wind. The dictionary compares the word shape ■→check for associations as a game of chess, or growing old, blaming, and rebuking, terms inconsistent with the poetic mood here.

The Webster’s entry for ■→travel does not have reference for travelers checks: American Express issued its papers first in 1891, the British spelling to remain cheques. I follow the first print.

(18) ■→XVIII. Playmates / A

(19) ■→XIX. To Know Just How He Suffered / A
The conscious consciousness brings on gradation or intensity, the noun to build on the adjective. It is not the lexemic repetitiveness as in the inserts, those maybe to misconstrue this device here.

(20) ■→XX. The Last Night that She Lived {P}
The fascicle and Johnson have an insert I believe, with the atypical verb phrase, antinomy, and transfer in grammatical person, as before.
As We went out and in
Between Her final Room
And Rooms where Those to be alive
Tomorrow were, a Blame…

The capitalized Those might suggest a pronoun. We can compare Love XVI, the Apocalypse:
I think that Earth seems so
To those in Heaven now.

Guilt is contradicted by jealousy:
Tomorrow were, a Blame
… A Jealousy for Her arose
So nearly infinite —

Regarding Emily Dickinson’s style, rooms, and people, there is the Suspense, Love IV.
Elysium is as far as to
The very nearest room,
If in that room a friend await
Felicity or doom.

There also is I Died for Beauty, Time and Eternity, X:
And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms…

A phrase as between a room, in the singular, might suggest a curtain or screen and a healthcare context. Webster and Worcester differ in occurrences for the word shapes “compartment” or “bay”. The first print correlates with Webster 1828.

Would Holmes senior have been an envious poet? He was a pioneering physician to recognize puerperal fever as a contagion. Another doctor, ■→Ignaz Semmelweis, became ostracized for the same point. Holmes certainly had enemies, too.

Thomas Niles was the publisher where and when the poem Success became changed in print. The change introduced contradiction or actually aporia, an idea contended by Aristotle: victory was to be defined in failure as undeniable as losing the flag to the royal purple enemy who wins. An aporia is a statement impassable for a conclusion.

Objectively, we yet can have only linguistic insight. Verb structures are a diagnostic:
… As we went out and in between Her final Room
And Rooms where Those to be alive…
Emily Dickinson used antecedents for elliptic predicates, please compare the note for The Chariot.

(21) ■→XXI. The First Lesson / A {P}

(22) ■→XXII. The Bustle in a House / A {P} {T}

(23) ■→XXIII. I Reason, Earth Is Short / A

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(24) ■→XXIV. Afraid? / A

(25) ■→XXV. Dying / A {P}

(26) ■→XXVI. Two Swimmers / A

(27) ■→XXVII. The Chariot {P}
The fascicle copy and Johnson:
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess — in the Ring —
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain —
We passed the Setting Sun —

Striving during leisure is a contradiction, noted about The Wind, Surrender, and The Last Night that She Lived, for similar fragments.

A phrase as we passed the setting sun belongs well with imagery by a person of interest in astronomy. The pieces right next in the volume are She Went as Quiet as the Dew, and Resurgam. Johnson yet has a “correction” on the picture, where the first person singular “jumps into” the stanza with elliptic predication of no antecedent:
Or rather — He passed Us — {3rd person}
The Dews drew quivering and chill — {3rd person}
For only Gossamer, my Gown — {about “me”}
My Tippet — only Tulle — {about “me”}

Emily Dickinson used verb antecedents for elliptic predicates, as in The Bee:
His feet are shod with gauze,
His helmet is of gold; {antecedent}
His breast, a single onyx {the ellipsis “is”}
With chrysoprase, inlaid.

Johnson:
The Dews drew quivering and chill —
For only Gossamer, my Gown — {no verb}
My Tippet — only Tulle — {no verb}

Repetitive phonemics remains characteristic of inserts:
The Dews drew quivering and chill…

Characteristically as well, word stress on vowel quality [e] in three consecutive line closures might incur phonological compensation in the fourth. We may compare The Indian Summer, where we would have four consecutive lines of word stress on the vowel [ū].
Since then — ’t is Centuries — and yet —
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity —
The first print: Since then ’t is centuries; but each…

Finally, Johnson’s print includes a handwritten “mechanical” mistake, odd for an author to make in own text:
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground —
The Roof was scarcely visible —
The Cornice — in the Ground.
The first print: The cornice but a mound.

(28) ■→XXVIII. She Went As Quiet As the Dew {S}
There is no difference in word content, between the first print and manuscript copy, except the spelling Leverrier, which might have been a customary assimilation in the time, supported by editors. ■→Urbain Le Verrier was a French astronomer, renowned for having calculated the position of Neptune.

(29) ■→XXIX. Resurgam / A {T}

(30) ■→XXX. Except to Heaven, She Is Nought / A

(31) ■→XXXI. Death Is a Dialogue
The handwritten copy suggests the verb to reason for the verb to argue; the latter yet works well in the poetic metaphor for spontaneous behavior, and in text auditory reception.

(32) ■→XXXII. It Was Too Late for Man
The fascicle suggests replacing the phrase our old neighbor with our new neighbor, for God. Religion was not a new phenomenon in the times of Emily Dickinson, and I follow the first print.

(33) ■→XXXIII. Along the Potomac {P}
“Throughout the (civil) war, the river functioned largely as it always had — as an avenue for transport”, we can read in ■→Encyclopedia Virginia.

■→Encyclopedia of Death and Dying says, “These were not normal times for sure, so some families, particularly the more affluent families in the North, would do whatever they could to bring the body of a loved family member’s home, either by making the trip south on their own, or paying someone to locate, retrieve, and ship the body north.”

The fascicle copy suggests the word shape “ourself” for the phrase I never. My preference is the first print.

(34) ■→XXXIV. The Daisy Follows Soft the Sun / A

(35) ■→XXXV. Emancipation {P} {T}
Fascicle copy and Johnson’s print:
Two Bodies—therefore be—
Bind one— The Other fly —
I follow the first print, Bind one, and one will flee.

(36) ■→XXXVI. Lost / A

(37) ■→XXXVII. If I Shouldn’t Be Alive / A

(38) ■→XXXVIII. Sleep Is Supposed to Be / A {P}

(39) ■→XXXIX. I Shall Know Why / A

(40) ■→XL. I Never Lost As Much but Twice / A

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The word fascicle comes from the Latin fasciculus, a small bundle. ■→Roman Antiquities, a book by Alexander Adam from year 1872, page 191, tells about Fascinus, an inferior Roman deity to prevent fascination, which might have inspired the forgery fascicle form. Inserts, lacking the poet’s license, would have been to deny her finesse.

Sample J365 alternate letter shapes {s} and {e} are visually able to suggest that words as German zu or zum co-occur with the variant H “white ideal”. It would be naive for a phonological device. Character {z} serves spelling, to compare a word as basic as information, in German.
■→Wikimedia Audio, ‘Information’ in German

The poet was not an analphabet, and I truly believe many of the manuscripts are forgeries: maybe to suggest that Emily Dickinson was obsessed with the German-kindred queen, Victoria, which the poetry does not support, or that she had sibylline sympathies. I doubt this very much, too.[5]

It is possible that Emily Dickinson’s interest in Aristotle became known to her contemporaries, with the poet’s self-education to allow her sovereign interpreting the written matter: the philosopher’s extant text remains problematic in its form, and translations disagree, also today.

Not only Aristotle was skeptical on oracles and prophets. Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason is in the public domain today, and everyone may access. The time he lived, Paine was condemned. In Emily Dickinson’s times as well, the work was widely disparaged. Counsel with Paine yet is not destined. When I first got hold of Aristotle, I had no idea Thomas Paine ever existed; the Greek will be an independent perseity to my mind.

The world has always appeared to me perpetual (…); it is better to believe it without beginning or end. — Thomas Taylor, Collectanea.

Thomas Taylor was a renowned translator of Aristotle’s works in Emily Dickinson’s times.
For a more explicit proof of the eternity of time and motion, see the 8th book of Aristotle’s Physics, and the 12th book of his Metaphysics.
Free download: Tayor, Thomas. 1806. ■→Collectanea. London: C. Whittingham.

Things perpetual, — these are not in time, but in eternity.
Free download: Taylor, Thomas. 1812. ■→A Dissertation on the Philosophy of Aristotle, in Four Books. London: Robert Wilks.

Greek lexical items for Aristotle’s Physics and Emily Dickinson’s first print converge, beyond coincidence. It is enough to parse the philosopher’s vocabulary, to tell. My ■→Lexica has parsing samples and Aristotle in Simple English. Feel welcome; work is in progress.

Correlation with Antiquity was a regular poetic practice. For a curious tidbit, I offer comparison with Mickiewicz, ■→Poezye:
Koń równym krokiem, równą stąpa drogą.
Zgadniesz że dójdzie do nieśmiertelności!
(The horse’s tread on the causeway is steady,
It gets, you will guess, to eternity).
Emily Dickinson’s ■→Chariot says:
I first surmised, the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity
We may also compare Thomas Taylor’s Collectanea, for the word chariot.

Endnotes

[1] Crompton, John. Baker, John Sellon (ed). 1798. The Practice of the Courts of King’s Bench and Common Pleas. Second edition. London: A. Strahan. Link to ■→free PDF.

[2] Worcester, Joseph Emerson. 1860. A Dictionary of the English Language. Link to Internet Archive ■→free resource.

[3] Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1849. Nature; Addresses and Lectures. Boston: J. Munroe. See in ■→Wikisource

[4] Parley, Peter. 1838. Visit to London. London: Charles Tilt. ■→Free ebook.

[5] Regarding variance in letter shapes (s), Houghton sample F313A has the letter (s) so similar to (z) at times, that the Archive transcriber typed in “teazing” rather than “teasing”.

■→Link to original screenshot | live page at ■→edickinson.org.

The sample has three features characteristic of inserts: shift in person reference (her translated faces), elliptic predication of no antecedent (too vague — the face, too far — the strength), and lexemic repetitiveness as guess guessing.

The content “recycles” the poem Surrender, with words as dim, timid, or the phrase far sake for distant heaven. The shape z and the phrase translated faces might have been to suggest queen Victoria, in correlate with Thomas Paine. Common Sense tells about the strength of one man: it does not equal his wants. Paine refuted the idea of building strength on unity between England and the USA. The phrase the home of the brave was widely known in Emily Dickinson’s times, from the song about Fort McHenry, The Star Spangled Banner.

Generally, the inserts for the first print could have been to make ground for presenting entire pieces under Emily Dickinson’s name. Content recycling would have been to give the impression the “bits” had something of the author, familiar to the reader. F313A looks a forgery, entire.

The style lacks appeal: verbless wooing at a man (and probably a soldier: brave eyes, far away), would plod into alluding to another woman and “teasing the want”. The “train of thought” is not attractive, even for a casual message.

It will have to remain a speculation, whether the poet might have independently written up a translation of Aristotle. Emily Dickinson’s sister burned her notes, upon her request.

Her Final Summer Was It has similar recycling, even vulgar in mood:
When duller than our dullness
The Busy Darling lay…
To imagine the text in sound, it would be a “drunk Everyman” rather than the poet in Troubled about many things, or The Last Night that She Lived.

The method Emily Dickinson herself used to create — morphophonemic inspiration, correlate with Webster and Aristotle’s works — would let one write for a thousand years if not longer, without repeating oneself.

If her skill was taken for supernatural, the world may never have seen her original handwriting, for prevention of a direct effect or influence, I guess.

Mabel Loomis Todd did purport belief in “powers” and “witches”. Her paper, ■→Witchcraft in New England (■→Download), quotes I Had No Time to Hate in context with suspects, though there was no way to claim they did not hate the injurious persecutions as well as the persecutors.

About the opening of the Christian era we can trace outlines of the more modern witchcraft beliefs. The early observations of nature in the East had seemed to show that two great powers were in command over the world, and continually warring. The two mighty antagonists used men as puppets and played with and upon them.

Even Christianity allowed that perhaps the devil was the head, and that it was possible for persons to join him for the overthrow of the church. In this belief lay the kernel of all subsequent action upon the crime of witchcraft, she wrote.

Altering a manuscript would not have been anything vile to her recognition. For torture and burning, she stated that some victims were witches.
One inquisitor, or so called judge, Regius, condemned and burned over nine hundred (…) He practiced the most awful tortures, remarking that otherwise he could not get them to confess. Most intelligent persons believed that witches communicated with Satan. Most of the sufferers were innocent, but some were undoubtedly evil, and knew they had been imposing on the world.

In her concluding paragraphs she added, I never see the splendid sunsets burning behind Witch Hill in Salem without a quicker breathing. This is where she brought in I Had No Time to Hate.

Belief in witchcraft hardly ever was real. The real thing was envy or rivalry, for money and other matters. Emily Dickinson does not look a believer of the “witching” nonsense. With her, spells are linguistic spelling and a mild sense of humor:
The murmur of a bee
A witchcraft yieldeth me… (■→Why?)
As described on the poetic inspiration, the Greek sweepings, ■→κόρημα, is in chunk with ■→ρημα, independently to mean a word, saying, or that which is said, spoken. A corresponding “brooming” word in Latin, ■→everriculum, shares with deverbero, thrashing or lashing, and verbum, a word. No devil.

Regarding sibylline empathies, the Great Seal has happened to be explained with the use of Virgil’s sibylline stanzas, which do have the words novus, ordo, and seclorum, but Out of one, many, tells the sibyl, and Out of many, one, says the Seal.

One can pronounce (tseptis) for the cœptis, and the letter shape {z} may represent the sound [ts] in German, but F313A would be the strangest in the world, for a treatment on country insignia.

Importantly, Virgil wrote for Octavian Augustus, who had Cicero proscribed and executed. The Framers might have used the poetry to learn Latin; but would they have followed Virgil for the Seal? Cicero was inspiration to the American republican. Feel welcome to read ■→A New People and ■→The Latin demeanor.

I absolutely do not want to diminish the scope of Emily Dickinson’s works, and my pursuit for her poetry ends here. I prefer to work on Aristotle alone, and the first print is enough for my semantic field exercises with Travel in Grammar. Feel welcome:
■→travelingrammar.com.

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The only picture stated to present Emily Dickinson is a daguerreotype her sister would have given to one Austin Baxter Keep in 1890s. It now belongs with Emily Dickinson collections at Amherst College.

I do not like ■→this daguerreotype simply as an image of a human being. A considerable proportion of the poet’s head would be missing, on shoulders unnaturally narrow, if to supplement the line of the hair. The broad nose has no confirmation among Dickinson family features as photographed later. Lip asymmetry would imply a stroke, or another set of lips on a laterally wider jaw.

Of a caring sister, to give the only picture away would have been extremely strange (maybe except suspicion of “witchcraft”). When I first saw it, I understood it was expended of as faulty, and daguerreotypes overall must have brought plenty of customer complaints. As ■→Wikipedia notes, new processes were developed for “more readily viewable images”. For the times Emily Dickinson lived, it remains strange that there are actually no pictures of her.

Well, we people are never going to know what Shakespeare looked like, either. To illustrate my video for the poem Surrender, I first thought about processing for pencil, to make an illustration as those for the Bard. I split a color photo of the daguerreotype into CMYK. Layer Y inspired me to remove the scratches, nose enlargement, and extra lips. The result is an illustration in gray.

I have merged layer Y with source, to see for potential alteration: I have not painted anything.
■→Layer Y merge;
■→Source.
Here is the photo, Wikimedia Commons have the image with some scratches removed. It is titled ■→Black-white photograph, with regard to the color scale of the daguerreotype itself, but the photo of the daguerreotype is in color, as the golden frames show also here:
■→Daguerreotype, color photograph;
■→CMYK layer Y.
It would remain for specialist analysis, if the daguerreotype might be hiding an image of a person different from the one in the surface layer — of the “witch” or rather the belle of Amherst.

Whatsoever shadowing that could be associated with eyelashes occurs only in layer Y, yellow. All other layers show the eyes actually without lashes. Well, I am not a specialist in photography. I can only tell there is nothing peculiar about layer Y itself, and already early tricolor presentations used yellow (Wikimedia have ■→material from 1902). We also can compare ■→Abraham Lincoln.

Feel welcome to the video. Layer Y is only an illustration here — who is there to tell own self entire?