Poem 5/April 3
(Johnson 812)
A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period —
When March is scarcely here
A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.
It waits upon the Lawn,
It shows the furthest Tree
Upon the furthest Slope you know
It almost speaks to you.
Then as Horizons step
Or Noons report away
Without the Formula of sound
It passes and we stay —
A quality of loss
Affecting our Content
As Trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a Sacrament.
*
An elegy for early March, written (I'm guessing) around this time of year, in early April. We have new reasons of our own to look back elegiacally upon the early days of March. But Dickinson seems to call our attention to aspects of sensory experience available then (when the world was more monochrome, and quieter, before birds, flowers, and leaves) that are lost now as the blank canvas of the landscape fills up with detail.
(Johnson 812)
A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period —
When March is scarcely here
A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.
It waits upon the Lawn,
It shows the furthest Tree
Upon the furthest Slope you know
It almost speaks to you.
Then as Horizons step
Or Noons report away
Without the Formula of sound
It passes and we stay —
A quality of loss
Affecting our Content
As Trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a Sacrament.
*
An elegy for early March, written (I'm guessing) around this time of year, in early April. We have new reasons of our own to look back elegiacally upon the early days of March. But Dickinson seems to call our attention to aspects of sensory experience available then (when the world was more monochrome, and quieter, before birds, flowers, and leaves) that are lost now as the blank canvas of the landscape fills up with detail.
Hi all! One thing I really dig about this poem is that it seems very compartmentalized and sequential. Dickinson focuses almost meticulously on one individual aspect at a time- for example, “A Light … in Spring,” followed by “A Color.” The simplicity of this I feel draws attention to the details she describes; whereas many of us would take for granted some of the smaller springtime developments, Dickinson makes the point of giving each of these things their own platform. This also adds to the weight of the final stanza by emphasizing Dickinson’s emotional connection to her subject; her grief and eulogizing of early spring feels more legitimate and pressing because she spent so much of the poem establishing a true connection to the subject. I also feel that this poem’s language is much more simplistic than some of her other work. The sentence structure + words she use are much easier to comprehend, even when you take into account the difference in time period and etc, and suggest the piece is more direct and honest to Dickinson’s perspective, instead of having been more revised or deliberately directed with an audience in mind.
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