This three-stanza poem was written shortly before Dickinson moved ever deeper into seclusion at The Homestead, her family home. The poem expresses a side of Dickinson that may seem incongruent with the conventional persona that so often relegates her to virginal solitude.
Here, the speaker has traditionally been understood to be Dickinson herself. The seemingly buttoned up poet--descendant of the Great Puritan Migration and granddaughter of Amherst College’s founder--seems to reference unbridled passion in an age when such outward expressions were considered improper. But her sentiment is not wanton; instead it has sharp focus on a single, unidentified person.
Stanza One: “Were I with thee”
Dickinson’s ardent affections appear directed at one person. The selection of the verb “were” is a conspicuous use of the subjunctive tense, indicating that Dickinson is separated from the person she desires. She therefore speaks in the hypothetical, projecting forward into the fantasy of what would happen were they to come together.
‘Luxury,’ the word which pointedly concludes the first stanza, bears complicated meaning. It makes an oblique reference to carnality by way of its contemporary definition, which involves excessive or superfluous indulgence. However, its archaic dictionary definition is more direct: “lust; lasciviousness; lechery.” Dickinson would most likely have been aware of this antiquated definition and used it purposefully.
Stanza Two: “To a Heart in port”
In this stanza, Dickinson expresses the concentrated singularity of her affection by using nautical metaphors. She begins the stanza with “Futile—the Winds—/To a Heart in port—“. Here, Dickinson communicates that she is constant, and her affection cannot be moved, even by strong winds.
The final two lines reference her having put aside the compass and chart. Since she has found what she has been looking for, she has put away her map and directional guide. They are no longer required.
Stanza Three: “Might I but moor”
The final stanza again employs nautical imagery. Because of its seemingly veiled reference to intercourse, the final lines have inspired the greatest amount of controversy. Scholars have even theorized that Dickinson's choice of phrasing, “Might I but moor – Tonight – / In Thee!”, indicates that she was attempting to write in a male voice.
Dickinson’s Literary Mentor, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who edited several posthumously published volumes of Dickinson’s poetry, wrote to co-editor Mabel Loomis Todd in 1891, “One poem only I dread a little to print – that wonderful ‘Wild Nights,’ – lest the malignant read into it more than that virgin recluse ever dreamed of putting there. Has Miss Lavinia [Emily Dickinson's sister] any shrinking about it? You will understand and pardon my solicitude. Yet what a loss to omit it! Indeed it is not to be omitted.”
Poetic Devices: Rhyme Scheme
As is characteristic of Dickinson’s poetry, the meter is inconsistent, and her rhymes are a mixture of exact and slant. In some cases, as with stanza one, the rhyme scheme runs: ABBB, as lines two, three, and four are exact rhymes.
However, this changes in stanza two, whose rhyme scheme runs ABCB. In stanza two, ‘port’ at the conclusion of line six makes an imperfect rhyme with ‘Chart!’ at the end of line eight.
Like stanza two, the rhyme scheme of the final stanza also runs ABCB. In the closing stanza, ‘Thee!’ in the twelfth and final line concludes a perfect rhyme with ‘Sea!’ in the tenth line.
Commentary -- Dickinson the Enigma
The poem’s final stanza deepens the enigma that is Emily Dickinson. A little less than a year after the poem was allegedly written, Dickinson largely disappeared from society. She became a local Amherst eccentric, always dressed in white. Near the end of her life, she shunned company of any kind. This image of Dickinson, along with her austere portrait, taken at the age of 18 at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, have jointly impressed on readers the notion of the poet’s ascetic restraint. But “Wild Nights” depicts a more radiant inner existence, to which she has allowed readers only a glimpse.
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