What mystery pervades a well - Emily Dickinson

"Those who know her, know her less." - Emily Dickinson on Nature.  

In "What mystery pervades a well," Emily talks about three strange and mysterious things: well, the sea and nature.  Their limits are unknown. Even to the ones who get near them.  In fact the ones who are nearer actually even more perplexed by its beauty.  

The ones who are truly near, are not afraid. Like the grass next to the well. Or the sedge next to the sea.  They are fearless.  Nirbhau says Guru Nanak in Mool Mantra.  Bold, not afraid, not timid in Emily's words.  

I found it interesting that the grass and the sedge are male.  They don't understand. Even when they get near, and they try to know, they don't.  They might be talking about her all the time, citing her the the most. But they have never really visited her house, the haunted house.  They have not understood her invisible ghost.  Not understood. Not known.  Perhaps knowing is impossible.  And they should be focusing on loving, and not knowing. 

This poem reminds me of Guru Nanak's Aarti: "You have thousands of eyes, but none is yours. you have thousands of shapes, yet not one is yours. Thousands of pure scented paths are yours. I am amazed at how many scents you have." It also reminds me that he says, "As big you are, as big are your gifts."

What mystery pervades a well!

- Emily Dickinson

What mystery pervades a well!
That water lives so far --
A neighbor from another world
Residing in a jar

Whose limit none have ever seen,
But just his lid of glass --
Like looking every time you please
In an abyss's face!

The grass does not appear afraid,
I often wonder he
Can stand so close and look so bold
At what is awe to me.

Related somehow they may be,
The sedge stands next the sea --
Where he is floorless
And does no timidity betray

But nature is a stranger yet;
The ones that cite her most
Have never passed her haunted house,
Nor simplified her ghost.

To pity those that know her not
Is helped by the regret
That those who know her, know her less
The nearer her they get.

- Emily Dickinson


Another Emily Dickinson poem about how innumerable nature is:

Bring me the sunset in a cup


Bring me the sunset in a cup,
Reckon the morning’s flagons up
And say how many Dew,
Tell me how far the morning leaps
Tell me what time the weaver sleeps
Who spun the breadth of blue!

Write me how many notes there be
In the new Robin’s ecstasy
Among astonished boughs
How many trips the Tortoise makes
How many cups the Bee partakes,
The Debauchee of Dews!

Also, who laid the Rainbow’s piers,
Also, who leads the docile spheres
By withes of supple blue?
Whose fingers string the stalactite
Who counts the wampum of the night
To see that none is due?

Who built this little Alban House
And shut the windows down so close
My spirit cannot see?
Who’ll let me out some gala day
With implements to fly away,
Passing Pomposity?

- Emily Dickinson





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