All Ye Need To Know

Recent posts have focused on Emily Dickinson’s “grammatical vagaries,” and some of them included discussion around the poem “I died for beauty – but was scarce.”
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The opening lines to that poem read as, “I died for beauty, but was scarce / Adjusted in the tomb, / When one who died for truth was lain / In an adjoining room.”

Of course the grammatical discussion centered on the use of “lain” instead of “laid,” but poetry fans probably also picked up on a familiar ring to that poem – lines from John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: 
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When old age shall this generation waste,
         Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
         "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
          Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

In her book Emily Dickinson’s Poems As She Preserved Them, Cristanne Miller points this connection out, but adds, “perhaps (the poem) also refers to more recent allusions to this ode, for example, in Emerson’s ‘Nature’ (1836) or Barrett Browning’s ‘A Vision of Poets’ (1844). The latter reads, ‘These were poets true / Who died for Beauty, as martyrs do / For truth – the ends being scarcely two,’ lines marked, perhaps by ED, in SD’s (Susan Dickinson’s) copy.”

Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is HERE.  Information on Emerson's essay "Nature" is HERE (and look on the right side of the page:  there is a spot where you can download the entire essay as a PDF).  Barrett Browning's "A Vision of Poets" is HERE -- and lo and behold, look what else popped up while I was looking for that poem, HERE. 
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