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.
I 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
311
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 Rail
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.
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