The Midsummer Mind

Shall I take thee, the Poet said To the propounded word? Be stationed with the Candidates Till I have finer tried -  The poet searched Philology  And was about to ring For the suspended Candidate There came unsummoned in -  That portion of the Vision  The word applied to fill Not unto nomination The Cherubim reveal -  Fr  1243 This poem is “meta”, it is a poem about the process of writing a poem. The speaker opens with the poet addressing the word choices, pondering their worthiness within the form. There is tension throughout the poem, as the poet works to find language that perfectly communicates her vision, initially without success. The speaker applies worldy, political terms to the words she considers for use. She refers to them as “candidates” and “propounded”. Her word choices seem stately in nature, ready to be chosen because of their merit in communicating the thoughts of the poem. The poet is having tro...

Split the Lark - and you’ll find the Music - Bulb after Bulb, in Silver rolled - Scantily dealt to the Summer Morning Saved for your Ear, when Lutes be old - Loose the Flood -  you shall find it patent - Gush after Gush, reserved for you - Scarlet Experiment! Sceptic Thomas! Now, do you doubt that your Bird was true? Fr 905 In her poem “Split the Lark - and you’ll find the Music”, Dickinson is concerned with epistemology. The question of knowledge and what justifies its validity is a common theme within Dickinson’s poetry. In this poem, the speaker evaluates the methods used to gain knowledge, and offers a critique on the expansive growth of empiricism as the sole method for determining the validity of evidence. The speaker also seems to differentiate “knowledge”, gathered by empirical evidence, and a deeper, more subtle “truth”.  The poem follows a familiar form for Dickinson, it is written in quatrains with an ABCB rhyme scheme. This rhyme sch...

The Lilac is an ancient Shrub But ancienter than that The firmamental Lilac Opon the Hill Tonight - The Sun subsiding on his Course Bequeathes this final plant To Contemplation - not to Touch - The Flower of Occident, Of one Corolla is the West - The Calyx is the Earth - The Capsule’s burnished Seeds the Stars - The Scientist of Faith His research has but just begun - Above his Synthesis The Flora Unimpeachable To Time’s Analysis - “Eye hath not seen” may possibly Be current with the Blind But let not Revelation By Theses be detained - Fr 1261 “The Lilac is an ancient Shrub” can certainly be grouped as a nature poem, the lines are full of natural imagery that is sublime in nature. However, like many of Dickinson’s nature poems, the nature included is used as a tool for metaphor for some larger truth or idea. The poem largely focuses on one scene, the sun setting behind a lilac on a hill. The choice of a sunset as a backdrop invokes the...

Faith - is the Pierless Bridge Supporting what We see Unto the Scene that We do not - Too slender for the eye It bears the Soul as bold As it were rocked in Steel With Arms of steel at either side - It joins - behind the Vail To what, could We presume The Bridge would cease to be To our far, vascillating Feet A first Necessity. Fr 978 This poem is an attempt to explain and visualize the idea of “faith”.  The poem focuses on the nature of faith for humanity, as well as describing the purpose it serves. The speaker in this poem likens faith to a bridge, a connection from what we can see and experience to what we cannot yet make out with the eye. For the soul, faith is a support system as strong as steel, cradling the soul on its journey from the seen to the unseen. However, it is important to note the implications of using a bridge as a metaphor for faith. While the speaker insists that this bridge will hold strong and serve its purpose, the onl...

The Life we have is very great. The Life that we shall see Surpasses it, we know, because It is Infinity. But when all space has been beheld And all Dominion shown The smallest Human Heart’s extent Reduces it to none. Fr 1178 Like “Split the Lark - and you’ll find the Music”, this poem makes an argument against the ideas of empiricism. One method Dickinson uses to invoke themes of empiricism is her word choice. In the first four lines, the speaker has established life and what comes after it, almost in units of measurement. Life is “great”, a word that implies both value and size. But, what comes after it, what we shall “see”, or observe in the afterlife, must be greater in value and size because it is infinite. The following lines, lines 5-8,  really focus in on the ideas of empiricism, or the idea that knowledge only carries power when it can be proven with empirical evidence. The speaker posits the idea that even if one could observe all of space and t...