A Light exists in Spring
by Patricia | 3.20.09by Emily Dickinson
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.
March 20th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
This was nice. Thank you!
I always find Emily Dickinson a little oblique, but I like her all the same. The rhyme scheme in this one throws me. Makes me stumble a little as I read. It’s unexpected. But maybe that’s because the light she is talking about is unpredictable?
Where do you start when you interpret a poem like this?
March 20th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
The other thing I’m pondering as I read: the capitalization of words like Slope. For me, there’s a little personification going on there. But why “Solitary Fields” and “furthest Tree”. . . are fields naturally more solitary? Maybe that minutiae, but it has me pondering all the same.
March 20th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Then there’s the last stanza where she capitalizes “Content”, “Trade”, and “Sacrament”–it’s a shift that starts with “Formula of sound” and it builds up to “Sacrament” but I’m still mulling over the why. . . okay, that enough commenting for now :)
March 20th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Laura,
Your comments are wonderful, thank you for making them.
Dickinson is known for the unconventional structure and syntax of her verse—BFO for us, but her early editors acted to normalize what they perceived as errors or imprecisions. Scholars nowadays acknowledge that such (what to our standardized eyes appear as) oddities are aesthetic choices. I find her sudden uppercasing affects me rather strongly as my eye hooks on sharpened words, provoking me to wonder longer over them, to judge their weight more carefully.
Kinda like how you said such details affect you.
You asked:
Where do you start when you interpret a poem like this?
Me? I start with my own experience. I’ve witnessed the effect she celebrates, that “Light/ Not present on the Year/ At any other period…”
I feel the arrival of spring as a turn from the low tide of winter light, rising, for instance, in the canyons, up along the rock walls, where things camoflaged in shadow beneath the sun’s lowlier angles become illuminated, etc. Reflections, such as sunlight off water, somehow shift. The color of earth and sky change. So on and so forth.
We live with vistas so tight nowadays it might be hard to sense her intent when she tells how this different light, not present at any other time, shows the furthest tree and slope. If you live somewhere that provides your eye somewhere to go, it will often alight on such distant etchings of trees against the horizon or streaks of color heightened light lying along far slopes. Does it almost speak to one? I think it does speak, or I think the mind strives to make something of it.
About that word “Content.” How do you read it?
I wonder, because I was traveling across country once with a friend of high feeling. We drove beneath an interstate sign telling us we were approaching the town of Content. We read the word at the same time, I with my English nerd background as “CON-tent” and my sentimental friend as “con-TENT.”
To read more about Dickinson’s unique style click here.
March 21st, 2009 at 8:29 am
I read it “con-TENT” because that’s how it scanned better in my brain. And it felt like it rhymed better with sacrament, but who knows! I like the double meaning possibilities.
I like hearing how your personal experience informs your reading. My personal experience is much more suburban, since I live in with a tight vista. If I look out my back door I can watch one neighbor’s television or watch a different neighbor shower–I try to avoid both, but that last one especially. We use to have a view of the mountains from our street corner but they’ve built a retirement center, a Walgreens, a Carl’s Junior, and a liquor store that obscures the view.
So I guess I think of spring’s special light in reference to my flowers and garden: the contrast of the daffodil and hyacinth buds and leaves against the dusty dirt and dead grass or the way the shadows on my windows change because of budding leaves. And in reference to my children: the way the light in their eyes sparks because of the delight of forgotten warmth rediscovered and new bugs to follow and budding treasures to spy underneath the leftover, haggard winter un-growth.
This poem has awakened a real longing for nature. I think I might drag my kids up to the mountains today :)
March 21st, 2009 at 9:24 am
This poem has awakened a real longing for nature. I think I might drag my kids up to the mountains today :)
You go, girl! If I lived in Colorado (or you in Utah), I’d say, let’s go together, even though my kids are much older than yours. But they don’t discriminate based on age. I like that about them. :)
When I lived in Provo I’d take my kids to the Provo River whenever I could so they could wade the riffles and turn over rocks.
So I guess I think of spring’s special light in reference to my flowers and garden: the contrast of the daffodil and hyacinth buds and leaves against the dusty dirt and dead grass or the way the shadows on my windows change because of budding leaves.
This was me in Payson. Occasionally migratory birds–strangers–would suddenly show themselves in the leaves of the lilac hedges. Every couple of years barn owls would show up late winter to nest at the old Academy building and fly screeching through the neighborhood into early spring. The scraggle of a forsythia would put on its sunshine mid-March. To me, it all counts as spring.
And in reference to my children: the way the light in their eyes sparks because of the delight of forgotten warmth rediscovered and new bugs to follow and budding treasures to spy underneath the leftover, haggard winter un-growth.
It doesn’t take much to ignite that kid/nature relationship, does it? That light flicks on in their eyes and their souls open wide. Their breathing changes.
I’d be interested in hearing how being out in nature affects your daughter, the one we’ve spoken of.
Very nice, Laura. Thank you for commenting.