happy letter

Posted by: lee lee on: July 10, 2008

• In: a fairer house than prose | happy-letters
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i just discovered this poem by Emily Dickinson (my FAVE!). i like the phrase “happy letter”and i also like the sentiment in the poem, of how the letter itself was begging to be finished, but the writer of the letter wasn’t quite ready to let go. i also-also like that it’s in the section of her poems called “LOVE.”

…possible name for my bidness? Happy Letters: Write. Edit. Share.

“GOING to him! Happy letter! Tell him—
Tell him the page I did n’t write;
Tell him I only said the syntax,
And left the verb and the pronoun out.
Tell him just how the fingers hurried, 5
Then how they waded, slow, slow, slow;
And then you wished you had eyes in your pages,
So you could see what moved them so.

“Tell him it was n’t a practised writer,
You guessed, from the way the sentence toiled; 10
You could hear the bodice tug, behind you,
As if it held but the might of a child;
You almost pitied it, you, it worked so.
Tell him—No, you may quibble there,
For it would split his heart to know it, 15
And then you and I were silenter.

“Tell him night finished before we finished,
And the old clock kept neighing ‘day!’
And you got sleepy and begged to be ended—
What could it hinder so, to say? 20
Tell him just how she sealed you, cautious,
But if he ask where you are hid
Until to-morrow,—happy letter!
Gesture, coquette, and shake your head!”

Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924.

Part Three: Love

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