Unknown Recipients -- and Unknown Links

Two days ago I posted a Wikipedia link for a list of Emily Dickinson’s poems (HERE).  The list provides lots of info related to each poem's first and later publication dates – plus most of the first lines link to each poem's text (usually its first publication) at Wikisource; however, not every poem is linked.

Yesterday, I discussed a couple of reasons why some poems are not linked (HERE), and I’ll continue that discussion today with one poem that’s a bit of a mystery, “But that defeated accent.”

The poem is shown to be number 1660 in Franklin’s edition of Dickinson’s poems, but it doesn’t appear at all in Johnson’s 1955 edition – so I assume the poem was discovered after 1955?

The poem is written on a piece of paper that states at the top, “Insure With The Agent Of HOME INSURANCE CO. NEW YORK. Cash Assets over SIX MILLION DOLLARS,” and the four lines read like this:

But that defeated accent
is louder now than him
Eternity may imitate
The Affluence of time

However, Dickinson jotted down other alternative word choices as well – see the pics below.

​I wonder if there was another page to this that’s now lost to the ages – since the poem begins with the word “But…” – OR – perhaps were these lines meant to be combined with another existing poem?

Similarly, the poem “Ferocious as a bee without a wing” appears in Franklin but not in Johnson; however, it feels more like a poem to me (albeit a short one).

About this poem Franklin’s research notes state, “Amherst Manuscript # 184 - Emily Dickinson letter to unknown recipient”; interestingly, though, this poem – like one I discussed yesterday – is NOT included in the index of letter poems/poem enclosures in the Miller & Mitchell book “The Letters of Emily Dickinson.”

I tried to find the text from the letter to the “unknown recipient,” but I couldn’t find it.  Hmm…but what’s this?  At the Amherst College Library site I found an image of a scrap of paper with these words – and on the reverse side, Dickinson wrote “Prof Tuckerman.”  Is this the letter – to the “unknown recipient”?  

BTW:  The online Dickinson archive with her letters has a category called “letters from Dickinson to unknown recipients” – and of the twelve letters there, none of them include this poem.

Sooo…was this poem an enclosure in a letter? Were these lines the full text of the letter? Was it sent to “Prof Tuckerman,” a professor at Amherst College?  Alas, I don’t know! 

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