1. Johnson, Thomas H., ed., The Poems of Emily Dickinson, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1955), poem 285CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hereinafter, poems quoted in the text that derive from this edition will be identified by the Johnson numbering within parentheses – for example, “(J 285).”

2. Paulson, Ronald, Emblem and Expression: Meaning in English Art of the Eighteenth Century (London: Thames & Hudson, 1975), p. 9Google Scholar. Subsequent page references to Paulson are incorporated in the text within parentheses.

3. Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, preface to Poems by Emily Dickinson, ed. Todd, Mabel Loomis and Higginson, T. W. (Boston: Roberts Bros., 1890), p. v.Google Scholar

4. Scott, Winfield Townley, Exiles and Fabrications (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961), p. 43.Google Scholar

5. Prioli, Carmine A., “Emily Dickinson's Reading of Francis Quarles,” Dickinson Studies, No. 35 (06 1979), pp. 3–7Google Scholar; Capps, Jack L., Emily Dickinson's Reading: 1836–1886 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966), p. 12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Miller, Ruth, The Poetry of Emily Dickinson (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1968), pp. 275–76.Google Scholar

7. For a historical survey of the subject, see Skidmore, Maria Elisabeth, “The American Emblem Book and Its Symbolism,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1946.Google Scholar

8. Doebler, John, Shakespeare's Speaking Pictures: Studies in Iconic Imagery (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1974), p. 6.Google Scholar

9. Leyda, Jay, The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1960), I, 98–99.Google Scholar

10. Johnson, Thomas H. and Ward, Theodora, eds., The Letters of Emily Dickinson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), II, 359–60Google Scholar. Hereinafter, for letters and accompanying notes quoted in the text that derive from this edition, volume and page numbers will be cited in parentheses thus: “(L, II, 359–60).” The note is also reproduced in Bianchi, Martha Dickinson, The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1924), facing p. 156Google Scholar. Emblem letters from an American Puritan poet to his future wife, Fitch, Elizabeth, are studied in Howard, Alan B., “The World as Emblem: Language and Vision in the Poetry of Edward Taylor,” American Literature, 44 (1972), 364.Google Scholar

11. Merritt, Howard S., Thomas Cole (Rochester, N.Y.: Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, 1969), p. 37Google Scholar. Wallach, Alan explores Cole's debt to the emblem tradition in “The Voyage of Life as Popular Art,” Art Bulletin, 59 (06 1977), 234–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Kasson, Joy S. details his contemporary sources and analogues in “The Voyage of Life: Thomas Cole and Romantic Disillusionment,” American Quarterly, 27 (03 1975), 42–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12. Reproduced in Sewall, Richard B., The Life of Emily Dickinson (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1974), II, facing 375Google Scholar. Dickinson's sketch bears a close resemblance to two of the headstone tailpieces by the famous English wood engraver Thomas Bewick (1753–1828). These were contrived for his Fables of Aesop and Others (Newcastle, 1818)Google Scholar and reproduced in Dobson, Austin, Thomas Bewick and His Pupils (London: Chatto & Windus, 1884), p. 139Google Scholar. Emily Dickinson's beloved Brontes also were impressed by Bewick's illustrations. As a child Branwell Bronte copied a similar tailpiece of slanting headstones, which Charlotte vividly describes in Jane Eyre. See Wilks, Brian, The Brontes (New York: Viking Press, 1975), p. 46.Google Scholar

13. Tashjian, Dickran and Tashjian, Ann, Memorials for Children of Change: The Art of Early New England Stonecarving (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1974), pp. 176–77.Google Scholar

14. Morley, John, Death, Heaven and the Victorians (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971), pp. 53–54.Google Scholar

15. [Higginson, T. W.], “Recent Poetry,” The Nation, 63 (10 8, 1896), 275.Google Scholar

16. Ripa, Cesare, Baroque and Rococo Pictorial Imagery: The 1758–60 Hertel Edition of Ripa's ‘Iconologia’ with 200 Engraved Illustrations, introduction, translation, and commentaries by Maser, Edward A. (New York: Dover, 1971), p. 139Google Scholar. Maser translates from the 1603 edition, p. 86. Subsequent references to this edition will be incorporated parenthetically within the text.

17. Holmes, William and Barber, John W., Emblems and Allegories (Cincinnati, Ohio: John H. Johnson, 1851)Google Scholar, two volumes in one, separately paginated, contains Religious Emblems (1846)Google Scholar and Religious Allegories (1848)Google Scholar. References to this edition of Emblems and Allegories are cited in the text by volume and page number within parentheses – for example, “(Emblems, pp. 89–90)”Google Scholar or “(Allegories, p. 11).”Google Scholar

18. Reproduced in Lichten, Frances, Decorative Art of Victoria's Era (New York: Bonanza, 1950), p. 225Google Scholar. Other poems in which Dickinson draws notably on the emblem for “Fortitude and Constancy” are “Fortitude incarnate” (J 1217), “Longing is like the Seed” (J 1255), and “‘Faithful to the end’ Amended” (J 1357), which argues that “Constancy with a Proviso / Constancy abhors.”

19. Leyda, , Years and Hours (note 9 above), I, 44.Google Scholar

20. Goodrich, [S. G.], Peter Parley's Book of Fables (Hartford, Conn.: R. White, 1841 [1834]), p. [5]Google Scholar. Our edition of Parley's Book of Fables is in the collection of the Jones Library, Amherst, Mass. For a discussion of the influence of Parley's Magazine on Dickinson's poetry, see Armand, Barton L. St., “Emily Dickinson's ‘Babes in the Wood’: A Ballad Reborn,” Journal of American Folklore, 90 (10–12 1977), 430–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. See Freeman, Rosemary, English Emblem Books (London: Chatto & Windus, 1948), p. 209Google Scholar, and Howard, , “World as Emblem” (note 10 above), 364.Google Scholar

22. Howe, Henry, “Sketch of John Warner Barber,” in Barber's The Picture Preacher: A Book of Morals, Comprising Esop's Fables with Additions from Modern Fabulists; also, The Ways of Man in the Social Relations of Common Life; with Bible References, Pictorial and Other Illustrations (New Haven, Conn.: Henry Howe, 1880), p. 20Google Scholar. See also Skidmore, , “American Emblem Book” (note 7 above), pp. 140–41Google Scholar. There are entries on Barber in the Dictionary of American Biography and Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography but none on William Holmes. For further information on books illustrated by Barber, see Hamilton, Sinclair, Early American Book Illustrators and Wood Engravers 1670–1870 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Library, 1958), I. 67–70Google Scholar; and II (Supplement, 1968), 42–44. Hamilton calls Barber, 's work “earnest but uninspired” (I, 67)Google Scholar, although in his own time Barber was well known as a historian and antiquarian, as well as a master wood engraver. Howe writes that Barber “was a studious, thoughtful boy, and was fed upon a few strong books, and they toughened his mental and moral life” (p. 16). He lists the books as the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, Mrs. Barbauld's Hymns, and The New England Primer and adds that Barber “has ever had a faith that it was his mission to preach the Gospel by means of pictures” (pp. 16, 20). Barber's first original production, and emblematic engraving done in 1822 and entitled A Miniature of the World in the Nineteenth Century, was “said to have been the principal means of converting the Queen of the Sandwich Islands to Christianity” (p. 18).

23. See “Handlist of Books Found in the Home of Emily Dickinson at Amherst, Massachusetts, Spring, 1950,” unpublished manuscript, Houghton Library, Cambridge, Mass., 1951. Two editions of The New England Primer are noted, one published in Worcester, Mass., in the 1830s, another published in Hartford, Conn., in 1843.

24. “Jottings Down,” The Indicator, 1 (02 1849), 212–13.Google Scholar

25. “Editors' Corner,” The Indicator, 2 (02 1850), 223–24.Google Scholar

26. Bartram, William, The Travels of William Bartram (New York: Macy-Masius, 1928), pp. 87–89.Google Scholar

27. For a discussion of the complexities of this manuscript, see Matchett, William H., “Dickinson's Revision of ‘Two Butterflies Went Out at Noon,’” PMLA, 77 (09 1962), 436–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and for the argument that the manuscript itself is the poem, see Monteiro, George, “In Question: The Status of Emily Dickinson's 1878 ‘Worksheet’ for ‘Two Butterflies Went Out at Noon,’” Essays in Literature, 6 (Fall 1979), 134–41Google Scholar. In The Poetry of American Women from 1632 to 1945 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977)Google Scholar, Emily Stipes Watts notes the similarity of Dickinson's use of the chrysalis-butterfly image to that of other women poets of her time (p. 125). Parley's Magazine also contains a number of illustrated articles on the theme of insect metamorphosis, scientific, moral, and poetic. Dickinson would also have been familiar with the frontispiece, entitled “Emblems of the Resurrection,” depicting caterpillar, chrysalis, and butterfly in Hitchcock, Edward's Religious Lectures on Peculiar Phenomena in the Four Seasons, 2nd ed. (Amherst, Mass.: J. S. & C. Adams, 1851)Google Scholar. This plate is reproduced in Sewall, , Life (note 12 above), II, facing 349Google Scholar. In his first lecture on “The Resurrections of Spring,” Hitchcock uses the phenomenon of the metamorphosis of insects to grace his argument for the doctrine of the resurrection of the body; yet he also warns:

Now so striking is the analogy between these metamorphoses and the reanimation of man, that many able writers on natural theology, have considered them as direct proof of his future resurrection. But unfortunately there is one defect in the analogy, that seems to have been overlooked. When man is laid in the grave, we know that no vestige of life remains. We may inflict whatever injury we please upon the dead body, but it will exhibit no signs of sensibility. Not so with the chrysalis. In its most torpid state, you can always find marks of vitality, or rather, if you cannot discover signs of life, it will never come forth as a perfect insect. The conclusion, therefore, is that the curious facts respecting insect metamorphosis, although a beautiful emblem of man's resurrection, are but a poor argument in direct proof of the doctrine. They do, however, show us in what widely different states the same animals may exist, and what curious means nature has provided, by which they may pass from one of those states into another, not only unharmed, but with higher developments of beauty and richer means of enjoyment; all this, I say, does afford a strong presumption that the change of death may pass upon man with no other effect upon his interior nature, than to fit it to unfold in higher perfection in eternity, [p. 38]

28. Anderson, Charles R., Emily Dickinson's Poetry: Stairway of Surprise (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1960), p. 262.Google Scholar

29. Martz, Louis L., The Poem of the Mind: Essays on Poetry, English and American (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 91.Google Scholar

30. For complementary essays on Emily Dickinson's evolving view of Heaven, see Armand, Barton L. St., “Paradise Deferred: The Image of Heaven in the Work of Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps,” American Quarterly, 29 (Spring 1977), 55–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Monteiro, George, “Love & Fame or What's a Heaven For?: Emily Dickinson's Teleology,” New England Quarterly, 51 (03 1978), 105–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31. See Chew, Samuel C., The Pilgrimage of Life (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1962).Google Scholar

32. The Bible Looking-Glass: A Mirror for All People (Cincinnati, Ohio: Howe's Subscription Book Concern, 1866).Google Scholar

33. See Monteiro, George, “Dickinson's ‘On This Wondrous Sea,’” Explicator, 33 (05 1975). item 74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. Bingham, Millicent Todd, Ancestors' Brocades: The Literary Debut of Emily Dickinson (New York: Harper & Bros., 1945), p. 127.Google Scholar

35. Whicher, George F., This Was a Poet: A Critical Biography of Emily Dickinson (New York: Scribners, 1938), p. 274Google Scholar; Wells, Henry W., Introduction to Emily Dickinson (Chicago: Packard, 1947), p. 253Google Scholar; Johnson, Thomas H., Emily Dickinson: An Interpretive Biography (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1955), p. 98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anderson, , Dickinson's Poetry (note 28 above), p. 169Google Scholar; Cody, John, After Great Pain: The Inner Life of Emily Dickinson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 385CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “A Dirty Hand”: The Literary Notebooks of Winfield Townley Scott, foreword by Armitage, Merle (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969), p. 152Google Scholar; and Brooks, Cleanth, Lewis, R. W. B., and Warren, Robert Penn, American Literature: The Makers and the Making (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973), II, 1242Google Scholar. For a fuller survey of critical opinion about the poem, see Duchac, Joseph, The Poems of Emily Dickinson: An Annotated Guide to Commentary Published in English, 1890–1977 (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979), pp. 608–11.Google Scholar

36. Faris, Paul, “Eroticism in Emily Dickinson's ‘Wild Nights!’” New England Quarterly, 40 (06 1967), 269–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wain, John, “Homage to Emily Dickinson,” Carleton Miscellany, 15 (Fall-Winter 1974–1975), 2–17Google Scholar; and Miller, , Poetry (note 6 above), p. 92.Google Scholar

37. Mather, Cotton, Work upon the Ark: Meditations upon the Ark as a Type of the Church (Boston: Samuel Green, 1689), p. 4.Google Scholar

38. For an overview of the modern use of this trope, see Monteiro, George, “The Pilot-God Trope in Nineteenth-Century American Texts,” Modern Language Studies, 7 (Fall 1977), 42–51.Google Scholar

39. Mather, Cotton, A Christian at His Calling: Two Brief Discourses, One Directing a Christian in His General Calling; Another Directing Him in His Personal (Boston: printed by B. Green and F. Allen for Samuel Sewall, Jr., 1701).Google Scholar

40. See Monteiro, George, “Hawthorne's Emblematic Serpent,” Nathaniel Hawthorne Journal 1973 (Englewood, Colo.: Microcard Editions, 1973). pp. 134–42.Google Scholar

41. Waggoner, Hyatt, “Art and Belief,” in Pearce, Roy Harvey, ed., Hawthorne Centenary Essays (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1964), pp. 167–95.Google Scholar

42. Bunyan, John, “The Strait Gate; or, Great Difficulty of Going to Heaven,” Works (New Haven, Conn.: Nathan Whiting, 1833), III, 93–94.Google Scholar

43. See Monteiro, George, “Dickinson's ‘I Never Lost as Much But Twice,’” Explicator, 30 (09 1971)Google Scholar, item 7, and “Emily Dickinson's Brazilian Poems,” Inter-American Review of Bibliography, 22 (10–12 1972), 404–10.Google Scholar

44. The expression is Hijiya, James A.'s in his “The Rascal Emily Dickinson,” Emily Dickinson Bulletin, No. 24 (Second Half 1973), 226.Google Scholar

45. “Meditation 26” (second series), in Stanford, Donald E., ed., The Poems of Edward Taylor (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1960), p. 129.Google Scholar

46. Edwards, Jonathan, “Personal Narrative,” in Faust, Clarence H. and Johnson, Thomas H., eds. Jonathan Edwards: Representative Selections (New York: Hill & Wang, 1962), p. 60.Google Scholar

47. According to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, the practice of retaining such lugubrious souvenirs gave rise to the French expression “You carry a rope in your pocket,” said of lucky gamblers.

48. The close association of the image of the plank with dangerous and catastrophic situations in the popular literature of the time can be seen in the following poem from A Gift for My Young Friends (New York: Leavitt & Allen, n.d.). pp. 167–68Google Scholar, edited by the ubiquitous “Peter Parley.” Entitled “The Little Voyagers,” this morbid piece focuses on Holmes and Barber's favorite theme of the disasters attendant on idle and thoughtless pleasure seeking:

The Lake was smooth and not a breath

Stirred through the sleeping grove;

The oak tree hung as mute as death

Upon the hills above.

“Come, sister,” said the young Ernest

While sporting on the bank;

“Come o'er this water's silvery breast-

Let's sail upon this plank.”

“Yes, brother,” and the plank she drew

Along the slippery sand,

Around his neck her arms she threw-

And they drifted from the land.

Poor children! though these waters lie

Sleeping in sunshine bright,

That ray, which dazzles now the eye,

Shall melt away in night.

Yet forth they drifted, till the lake,

Roused by the evening breeze.

Around the plank began to break.

And swell in little seas;

“Alas, my brother!” cried Florelle,

And raised a piteous scream:

Till both grown sick and dizzy, fell

Into the treacherous stream.

So, they who sail on pleasure's streams.

Move beauteously away;

For every scene around them, seems

Elysian and gay;

But, when attracted from the shore

By zephyr's scented breath.

The threat'ning waves begin to roar.

And waft them on to death.

49. The imagery is also that of mid-nineteenth-century pulpit oratory. In A Sermon. Occasioned by the Loss of the Arctic, Preached in the Second Presbyterian Church, Troy, October 15, 1844 (Troy, N.Y.: A. W. Scriber, 1854), pp. 2–3Google Scholar, for example, we read: “Ribs of iron are broken; the plarik that stood between passenger and eternity is rudely reft asunder. … The pump only shews, it cannot prevent the filling of the ship. The strength of a thousand arms cannot plug that awful leak.”

50. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, “The Man of Adamant,” in Charvat, William et al. , eds., The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. XI: The Snow-Image and Uncollected Tales (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1974), 161Google Scholar.

51. Leyda, , Years and Hours (note 9 above), 1, 249Google Scholar. In calling Lothrop a “ministerial wolf,” the writer in the Amherst Record could probably count on his readers recognition of the emblem in Holmes and Barber for “Hypocrisy.” which depicts a wolf in sheep's clothing. That the emblem was particularly appropriate to clergymen is argued by Holmes and Barber, who write, “Of all hypocrites, the false teacher of religion is the most dangerous. He it is that scatters firebrands, arrows, and death” (Emblems, p. 107).Google Scholar

52. Ibid., II, 257.

53. Ibid., II, 310.

54. Sewall, , Life (note 12 above), II, 678–79, 688–94Google Scholar: Capps, , Dickinson's Reading (note 5 above), pp. 61, 187.Google Scholar

55. Emily Dickinson's unique poetic achievement in her “pier” poems can be readily measured when we compare them with the flaccid treatment of the same emblematic trope in “Suspension Bridge,” a poem by one “W.,” which appeared in 1872. It will be noted that the latter poet begins with a “realistic” account of a manmade bridge over Niagara and then “discovers' in that bridge an emblem for “The Bridge of Heaven,” without convincing the reader that he or she has earned the insight. The poem follows in its entirety as it appeared in the periodical Old and New, 6 (12 1872), 648Google Scholar:

Raise high strong piers of solid masonry!

Stretch to and fro the slender iron nerves.

Which, bound together, matchless strength impart,

To span the rapid, broad Niagara!

What wondrous power in man's best skill and art!

How fitly joined, in his most noble work,

To bear in safety, o'er the whirlpool drear,

Earth's richest freight of human joy and fear.

Emblem of Life! type of Humanity!

Our gentler ministries are the strength of life:

Breathe kindly words in tender, soothing tones:

Let goodness speak, with soft-eyed pity true;

Strengthen the helping hand with willing heart:

Double God's gifts by sharing each with all.

This web of life, if thus composed, will be

Of strength and weakness, joy and sorrow, made;

But still round all the eternal law of God

Shall bind its golden chain of ceaseless love.

Thus shall the gulf of Time be safely spanned;

And raised the Bridge of Heaven securely be,

Uniting Earth with vast Eternity.

56. Sypher, Wylie, Four Stages of Renaissance Style: Transformations in Art and Literature 1400–1700 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955), p. 6.Google Scholar

57. Ibid., p. 189.

58. Ibid., p. 270.