Wild Nights – Wild Nights!
- Author
- Emily Dickinson
- Date
- c. 1861
- Language
- English
- Country
- Form
- Three quatrains in short lines, with slant rhyme, repetition and extended nautical imagery
- First published
- Poems, Second Series, 1891 (posthumous, edited)
The source
Wild nights - Wild nights!
Were I with thee
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile - the winds -
To a Heart in port -
Done with the Compass -
Done with the Chart!
Rowing in Eden -
Ah - the Sea!
Might I but moor - tonight -
In thee!
Commentary
Dr. Ruxandra RouxHead of Literary Research & Development
Emily Dickinson, around 1861. The manuscript survives in one of her fascicles. Nobody can say who “thee” is, and the poem does not need a name.
Pure appetite, in three short stanzas. If she and the beloved were together, the heart would be in port: no more compass, no more chart, no winds deciding her direction. The last image is “Rowing in Eden”: she wants not only to arrive but to stay moored. It is strikingly confident. Most Dickinson poems keep desire at a distance. This one arrives. Anyone who files her only under death and solitude has not read it, or has read it and looked away. It was published after her death, in Poems, Second Series, 1891, when her editors still tidied her punctuation and grammar.
Songs
The song made from Wild Nights – Wild Nights!.
