The reclusive, introverted poet, Emily
Dickinson (1830-86), spent her life in Amherst, Massachusetts, not far from
Edwards's Northampton, and was an acute participant in, observer of, and
dissenter from, the religious culture that he had done so much to shape. Her
poems are full of the themes, imagery and sensibilities that informed Edwards's
writings, but interestingly, there is only one explicit mention of him in all
of her work-in a letter to a child. That child, Thomas Gilbert Dickinson, her
nephew, was to die before reaching his teenaged years. In 1881, when Gilbert
was six years old, his aunt gave him a note for his teacher, which included one
of her poems-and, reportedly, a dead bee. The gnomic poem (no. 1522) is here
given a title, which explains the strange enclosure. Where Edwards dwelt on the
spider, Dickinson frequently incorporated the bee--which she described as a
"Buccaneer of Buzz"-into her poems. In this note, there is also a postscript-like
the title, not included in the poem--citing Edwards and Jesus. The biblical
phrase over Edwards's name, from Revelation 21:8, promises for all sinners
punishment "in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." Edwards cited
that verse in a sermon series, not published until 1852, entitled "Charity and
Its Fruits," and Dickinson's association of this cryptic phrase with Edwards
suggests she had read at least that work. [1]
The more inviting motto over Jesus's name comes only slightly later in the book
of Revelation, chapter 22, verse 17. (Source: MS, Harvard College Library,
B177; Letters of Emily Dickinson.
Thomas H. Johnson, ed. 3 vols. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1958). Vol. III, p.
701.)
For Gilbert to carry to his
Teacher-
The Bumble Bee's Religion-
His little Hearse like Figure
Unto itself a Dirge
To a delusive Lilac
The vanity divulge
Of Industry and Morals
And every righteous thing
For the divine Perdition
Of Idleness and Spring-
"All Liars
shall have their part"-
Jonathan Edwards-
"And let him
that is athirst come"-
Jesus-
[1]
See Works of Jonathan Edwards, 9, Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey (New
Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1989), 320-21.
