Perish with him - that Keyless Rhyme!.
So - Children told how Brook s in Eden -.
Bubbled a better - Melody -.
Quaintly infer - Eve's great surrender -.
Urging the feet - that would - not - fly -.
Children - matured - are wiser - mostly -.
Eden - a legend - dimly told -.
Eve - and the Anguish - Grandme's story -.
But - I was telling a tune - I heard -.
Not such a strain -the Church - baptizes -.
When the last Saint - goes up the Aisles -.
Not such a stanza splits the silence -.
When the Redemption strikes her Bells -.
Let me not spill - it's smallest cadence -.
Humming - for promise - when alone -.
Humming - until my faint Rehearsal -.
Drop into tune - around the Throne -.
(Poem 698).
The significance of Puritan-Calvinism's interpretations of the Bible is further emphasized in the final two stanzas. She tells us that the church would not approve of the tune she heard: "Not such a strain - the Church - baptizes.""(Poems of Dickinson, Poem 698) The church's approval or disapproval must be of concern to her, or she would not mention it. However, her experience has been so profound as to overwhelm the church's power over her; even Christ's gift of immortality pales in comparison: "Not such a stanza splits the silence -- When the Redemption strikes her Bells -.""(Poems of Dickinson, Poem 698) Again, she has explained what this epiphany is not or does not represent, while at the same time establishing the importance of what she rejects. Dickinson's approach to translating the language, the "tunes,"" of the church, of nature is specified by the term "Keyless Rhyme."" The word "Keyless- suggests that the sounds that were "Better - than Music- did not adhere to any accepted formal structure. (Poems of D., Poem 698)(E. Dickinson, 482) For "Rhyme,"" or poetry, to be keyless would mean that some essential structuring device would be removed. In Dickinson's poetry, this structuring device is the Puritan-Calvinist interpretation of the Bible and the cultural values that emerge from that interpretation.
