Who abdicated Ambush by Emily Dickinson

Кто тайности отрёкся
тот сумерками скрыт,
где имя льёт свой аромат,
там звёздочка стоит.
Я в ней уверюсь как в себе,
неколебима тут,
и вся неувядаемость
укрыта под звезду...


(Эмили - Сэму Боулзу, любовнику, живому.)

[David Preest:
The two drafts of this poem differ only in the first line,
the earlier poem reading ‘He lived the life of Ambush’ and
the later ‘Who abdicated Ambush.’ The later version was sent
by Emily in a letter (L935) to Samuel Bowles the younger.
Both versions are discussed here.
The later poem was accompanied by a spray of pressed jasmine
from a jasmine plant which Samuel Bowles the elder had once
given to Emily, and the poem about him is introduced by
the words, ‘A Tree your Father gave me, bore this priceless
flower. Would you accept it because of him.’ The earlier version
opens with the thought that Bowles, like the rest of us, lived
his life waiting for death to ambush him and finally did die;
the second version with the thought that Bowles gave up waiting
for death to ambush him and quietly resigned himself to the long
Dusk of death. But now we are as confident and impregnable
in our belief that he is immortal, as is the star or asterisk
against his name which marks him as departed but possessing
‘the whole of Immortality.’ Judith Farr suggests that ‘subtle’
is used in its meaning of ‘elusively fragrant’ and that Emily
is saying that Bowles’s name is as fragrant as the jasmine plant
he once gave her.]

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Who abdicated Ambush by Emily Dickinson

Who abdicated Ambush               
And went the way of Dusk,            
And now against his subtle name       
There stands an Asterisk               
As confident of him as we -            
Impregnable we are -               
The whole of Immortality               
Secreted in a Star -