From sheds new-roofed with Carrara
Came Chanticleer's muffled crow,
The stiff rails were softened to swan's down,
And still fluttered down the snow.
1 stood and watched by the window
The noiseless work of the sky,
And the sudden flurried of snow-birds,
Like brown leaves whirling by.
And
It sifts from Leaden Sieves-
It powders all the Wood.
It fills with Alabaster Wool
The Wrinkles of the Road-
It makes an Even Face
Of Mountain, and of Plain-
Unbroken Forehead from the East
Unto the East again—
It reaches to the Fence-
It wraps it Rail by Railv Till it is lost in Fleeces-
It deals Celestial Vail
To Stump, and Stack-and Stem-
A Summer's empty Room-
Acres of Joints, where Harvests were,
Recordless, but for them—
It Ruffles Wrists of Posts
As Ankles of a Queen-
Then stills its Artisans—like Ghosts-
Denying they have been—
To be understood and appreciated, Emily Dickinson had to wait until a major shift in sensibility and expectation occurred in the decade surrounding World War I, when Imagism, a new school of poetry-precise, stripped of all extraneous verbiage, indifferent to traditional form and content, reaching always for the radical and original image, and wholly unsentimental-had established itself, preparing the way for modern American poetry. Amy Lowell's "Night Clouds," an example of the Imagist school, shows a style far more compatible with Dickinson's verse:
The white mares of the moon rush along the sky
Beating their golden hoofs upon the glass heavens;
The white mares of the moon are all standing on their hind legs
Pawing at the green porcelain doors of the remote heavens.
This is a free page. This page contains 199 words. This
biography contains 6,872 words (approx. 23 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Emily Dickinson Access Pass.
