Emily Dickinson

I bring an unaccustomed wine

Unaccustomed wine

Not her usual offering—she's bringing something special, unfamiliar. The word 'unaccustomed' suggests this is an extraordinary attempt at comfort or healing.

I BRING an unaccustomed wine
To lips long parching, next to mine,
And summon them to drink.
Crackling with fever, they essay;

Crackling with fever

The sound of dry, burning lips. 'Essay' means 'attempt'—they try to drink but can barely manage it.

I turn my brimming eyes away,
And come next hour to look.
The hands still hug the tardy glass;
The lips I would have cooled, alas!

Superfluous cold

Beyond cold, excessively cold—the cold of death, not fever. The temperature has inverted while she looked away.

Are so superfluous cold,
I would as soon attempt to warm
The bosoms where the frost has lain
Ages beneath the mould.

Frost beneath the mould

'Mould' is dirt, earth. She's talking about corpses frozen in graves for ages—that's how impossible warming these lips would be.

Some other thirsty there may be
To whom this would have pointed me
Had it remained to speak.
And so I always bear the cup
If, haply, mine may be the drop
Some pilgrim thirst to slake,—
If, haply, any say to me,

Unto the little

Matthew 25:40—'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.' Christ's words about serving the humble.

"Unto the little, unto me,"
When I at last awake.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Death Between Stanzas

The poem's central shock happens in the white space between stanzas two and three. Dickinson leaves the room in line 6 ('I turn my brimming eyes away') and returns in line 7 to find the person dead. That phrase 'next hour' does brutal work—in sixty minutes, fever becomes the 'superfluous cold' of a corpse.

Notice 'tardy glass'—the drink arrived too late. The hands still grip it, frozen in the gesture of trying to drink. This is Dickinson's typical method: she shows you the physical detail (hands clutching glass, cold lips) and lets you deduce the horror. She never says 'died' or 'death.'

The 'bosoms where the frost has lain / Ages beneath the mould' gives us her emotional math. Warming these lips would be as futile as warming bodies buried so long they're frozen into the earth. The comparison isn't about difficulty—it's about impossibility.

The Cup She Still Carries

After the failed attempt, she doesn't throw away the cup. The final three stanzas shift to 'always bear the cup'—she keeps carrying her offering of comfort, hoping to find someone she can actually help before they die.

'If, haply, mine may be the drop'—'haply' means 'perhaps by chance.' She's reduced her ambition from a full glass of wine to a single drop that might slake 'some pilgrim thirst.' The religious language intensifies: pilgrim, and then the direct biblical quotation.

That final 'When I at last awake' most likely refers to Christian resurrection—when she wakes in heaven, will anyone say she helped them? The poem becomes about the anxiety of usefulness: what if you keep trying to help but always arrive too late, or after death makes helping impossible?