"Except the smaller size"

By Emily Dickinson
[Analysis]
Except the smaller size [1]
No lives are round -- [2]
These -- hurry to a sphere [3]
And show and end -- [4]
The larger -- slower grow [5]
And later hang -- [6]
The Summers of Hesperides [7]
Are long. [8]
Poem 1067 [F606]
"Except the smaller size"
Analysis by David Preest
[Poem]
These eight lines, sent both to Sue and Thomas Higginson in 1865, are the first half of a poem written three years earlier, but with the
second half now discarded. In a letter (L316) sent to Higginson the eight lines are led into by the words,
'If I still entreat you to teach me, are you much displeased? I will be patient -- constant, never reject your knife and should my slowness
goad you, you knew before myself that Except the smaller size. . .'
In other words, only small talents, like small apples, reach the roundness of fruition and completion quickly. Larger talents, such as her
own, and larger apples, such as those of the Hesperides, grow more slowly and hang later from the tree.
The Hesperides were three nymphs who guarded the golden apples which Jupiter had given to Juno on the day of their nuptials. Hercules,
for his eleventh labour, was given the task of obtaining some of these apples.
The copy of the poem sent to Sue may have been accompanied by a gift of apples.
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