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.
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