Dear March — Come in —

It’s March 1st, and therefore as good a day as any, and better than most, to share an Emily Dickinson poem about hope, change, and time.

Dear March — Come in —

Dear March — Come in —
How glad I am —
I hoped for you before —

Put down your Hat —
You must have walked —
How out of Breath you are —
Dear March, Come right up the stairs with me —
I have so much to tell —

I got your Letter, and the Birds —
The Maples never knew that you were coming — till I called
I declare — how Red their Faces grew —
But March, forgive me — and
All those Hills you left for me to Hue —
There was no Purple suitable —
You took it all with you —

Who knocks? That April.
Lock the Door —
I will not be pursued —
He stayed away a Year to call
When I am occupied —
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come

That Blame is just as dear as Praise
And Praise as mere as Blame —


Four points of interest and charm in this poem:

First, upon welcoming March, whom she will subsequently observe is “out of breath,” and therefore can hardly be accused of dawdling, the narrator nevertheless ends her welcoming words with “I hoped for you before” — not quite a full reproach, but surely an indirect expression of a certain sense of lack in her life, while March was away. 

Second, after this opening mild rebuke to March for having taken so long to arrive, the speaker turns to an apologetic tone:

But March, forgive me — and
All those Hills you left for me to Hue —
There was no Purple suitable —
You took it all with you —

Though not utterly bereft of colors in March’s absence, there was one hue essential to the proper shading of “those Hills” which she simply did not have, apparently because it is the exclusive possession of March, who had all of it while away: purple.

Does it make sense to apologize to someone for not having the thing you needed, when that thing was in the possession of the very person to whom you are apologizing for not having it? Yes it does — but only in the context of love and friendship. “I tried to be what I ought to have been — to color the hills as I should — but somehow, in your absence, my best efforts were inescapably partial, incomplete.”

Third, now April has come knocking. What an impertinent rush, when she, and we, are just becoming accustomed to the renewed conversation with March! “Lock the Door,” she demands, declaring “I will not be pursued,” which is to say hurried, to the end of this happy visit from the possessor of purple. Emily Dickinson was a poet of nature, and all nature lovers, or at least those of a metaphysical bent, share two mental qualities: a resignation to change, which is to say Time; and a deep assurance of the cyclical, which is to say Eternity. Hence the impertinent intrusion of April, though unavoidable and necessary, may also be shrugged off as a trifle that looks so trivial to one engrossed in the pleasure of her moment with the long-awaited March. In fact, it is the arrival of March himself that has made April’s hasty approach seem a mere triviality.

The narrator, a nature lover, and thus both resigned to Time and assured of Eternity, is at this moment inclined toward the eternal. Indeed, to resign oneself to something is in a sense already to trivialize it. This moment with March will not so easily be given up to the mere material exigencies of change.

Finally, this:

That Blame is just as dear as Praise
And Praise as mere as Blame —

To blame one for his absence is indirectly to praise him for what he has the power to bring — the indispensable purple for coloring those hills, for instance. From which it follows, however, that to praise one for the color he alone can bring is in effect to blame him for every moment one feels the lack of that color.

Nice.


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