The day after

I'm taking it easy today - the day after getting my first COVID vaccination. My arm is sore, but not too bad - that arm is always sore anyway because of the problems in my shoulder, so this isn't very different! Otherwise, I feel ok, but am not taking on much. E.g., I'm postponing recording for the Hymnology course until tomorrow. Ellen is taking a walk with Nancy T., and I'm at the Dummerston Church.

Later this afternoon we will participate in a Guilford Church Lenten prayer group on Zoom that features the poetry of Emily Dickinson as a source of  insights into the spiritual journey of Lent.

Today's poem:

A little Madness in the Spring (1356)

A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown – 
Who ponders this tremendous scene – 
This whole Experiment of Green – 
As if it were his own!

Someone named  Jacque Hutchinson comments:

Dickinson’s word choice is very particular in the types of people that she decides to discuss in the poem: a king and a clown. Today, when we think about a “clown” we think of a jokester or performer, but “clown” in Dickinson’s time meant something much different. A “clown” was a “countryman” or “peasant” in Dickinson’s era. This would then draw a line between the royal king and the lowly peasant. The king looked on nature from the outside; he does not come into contact with it and even has his servants tend to it. But the “clown” or “countryman” would encounter nature in a more physical way. He would need to chop trees for firewood, harvest crops for food, and set traps for pests. The king, however, does not have such direct contact with nature. He observes from afar, possibly taking evening strolls, but he is not working the land. He has servants who would do that for him. He can enjoy the product of groomed nature without getting his hands dirty.

Dickinson is making the point that no one, directly or indirectly interacting with nature, can lay claim on it. It does not matter if you work with nature every day or see it from afar. Nature is to remain unclaimed, unaltered, and free.

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I think the interpretive crux in this poem is the line "God be with the Clown."

Is this negative (e.g., "God help the Clown") or positive (e.g., "God bless the Clown")