Yesterday I shared Dickinson’s “Besides the Autumn poets sing,” a poem which Mabel Loomis Todd titled “November” when she published it in the second series of “Poems” in 1891. In yesterday’s post I also made mention that something odd jumped out at me with this poem, and that I would cover that today – so here I am, and here again is the poem (below).
 | Before I get to the unexpected bit that surprised me, let me say that the two gentlemen in the poem, Mr. Bryant and Mr. Thomson, were poets of the day, William Cullen Bryant (1794 - 1878) and James Thomson (1834 - 1882).  In line 7, Dickinson refers to Bryant’s poem “The Death of the Flowers.” The poem is posted below (at the end of this post), and the golden rod is mentioned in the first line of the third stanza. (BTW: You can’t read the poem without thinking about Pete Seeger’s song, “Where Have All The Flowers Gone, HERE.) |
In line 8 of Dickinson’s poem, the reference is to James Thomson’s “Autumn” from his series of four poems called “The Seasons.” The first part, Winter, was published in 1726, and the completed poem cycle appeared in 1730. Here’s the portion from “Autumn” with the mention of “sheaves”:
 | The full text for “Autumn” is HERE. So back to that bit of “Besides the autumn poets sing” that surprised me: It’s found in lines 10 and 11, “Mesmeric fingers softly touch / The Eyes of many Elves,” and it’s the word “Mesmeric,” as in “mesmerize,” as in the eponym for Franz Anton Mesmer who developed the idea of "animal magnetism," later referred to as mesmerism, a precursor to hypnotism. I’ve always heard of Mesmer and the state of being “mesmerized,” but I had no idea about his time period – or that the concept would make its way into a poem by Dickinson. |
| Turns out that Mesmer lived from 1734 to 1815, and in an article on Wikipedia about his life, it states, “Mesmer's theory attracted a wide following between about 1780 and 1850.” Dickinson penned her poem in 1859. More on Mesmer & related topics in the coming days. Pictured at the right: Franz Anton Mesmer. The Wikipedia article on Mesmer is HERE. |  |
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