Theme Of A Narrow Fellow In The Grass By Emily Dickinson

In the first stanza she simply states that just because one can’t see or have never seen something doesn’t mean that it can’t or doesn’t exist. That being said, Dickinson then says that she has not ever “spoken with God” or visited heaven in the third pair of lines (Dickinson 1273). The final set of lines says that she is “certain of the spot” (Dickinson 1273). This second stanza clearly confirms that she is confident of her place in heaven. Dickinson believes in all of these things even though she hasn’t observed any of them. (Benfey 25) This particular poem shows of her assurance of God and heaven.

However, Dickinson’s poem is very different from Whitman’s in structure and language. In “324,” the speaker explains how they observe Sabbath, in nature rather than going to a service, when saying “With a Bobolink for a Chorister — / And an Orchard, for a Dome —” (lines 4-5). Dickinson, like Whitman, provides visual imagery; of a bird instead of the Church choir and an orchard instead of the “Dome,” which represents a church. In these lines, readers can envision the beautiful nature scene that the speaker treasures. Furthermore, as Whitman also did, Dickinson uses auditory imagery as the speaker explains further how the spend their Sabbath, “And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church, / Our little Sexton — sings” (lines 8-9). Here, the sounds of the Church’s bell is what the speaker traded for the charming bird’s song in their form of worship. Like Whitman, Dickinson uses imagery to illustrate to readers her preference for nature that connects her to God and religion, unlike for many others who choose to attend church. Moreover, in contrast to Whitman’s poem, Dickinson writes in an abcb rhyme scheme where the second and fourth lines rhyme and have a meter. To demonstrate, every even-numbered line rhymes; Home” and “Dome,” “Wings” and “sings,” “long” and “along.”

Where can happiness be found in the world? John Muir answers this question in his essay “The Calypso Borealis,” and William Wordsworth answers this in his poem “I Wondered Lonely as a Cloud.” They both describe the positive relationship that they have with nature, and how happy nature makes them. But the literary devices they use to express their relationships with nature are slightly different. Both John Muir in "The Calypso Borealis" and William Wordsworth in "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" use positive connotations of words and personification to express their relationships with nature, but Muir also uses specific imagery to show how he appreciates nature, whereas Wordsworth uses unique syntax to help show how joyful nature makes him.

The poem “Before I got my eye put out” portrays the idea that most living things are unable to recognize the beauty of sight until they lose it. The speaker reflects the true beauty of the world when she says “The Motions of the Dipping Birds-/ The Morning’s Amber Road-/ For mine-/ to look at when I liked-/ The News would strike me dead-” (14-17). This demonstrates the image of nature that the speaker “looks at” but actually “sees” the beauty of sight. Dickinson conveys the idea that one’s vision from

The narrator believes you do not have to attend church to be spiritual and that common practice can be done in a peaceful place such as the orchard in her yard. The last two lines of the poem state, “So instead of getting to Heaven, at last- / I’m going, all along” (Dickinson 639). I interpreted this as the long journey to heaven has become a huge part of her life. It is not just a look into the future, but a continuous look in the present. The symbols Dickinson uses in this poem are by far the highlight of this short piece of poetry. In the first stanza, a bobolink and orchard are used to replace things that modern churches value as sacred and holy. Those natural occurrences are used by Dickinson to show her love for nature. More examples of this are shown in the second stanza. The narrator uses her own “sexton” to call her holly time instead of a brass bell to call church service. This is important to analyze as yet another natural occurrence that highly defines the authors writing style.

“I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean” (Socrates). What does it mean to be this type of poet? How can someone accomplish such success in poetry, the answer is just two words Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson spent a large portion of her life in isolation, not because she was forced to or because she was ill, Dickinson simply wanted to be alone and because of her isolation she became one of the greatest female poets of all time. Emily Dickinson set the bar high for other female poets and created some of the most renowned poems in the world. The two poems “The Soul Selects Her Own Society” and “Tell all the Truth but Tell it Slant” are drastically different poems that tell two different stories, but there are some aspects that cause them to be similar: Imagery, tone, and the statement that the two poems make.

The change begins in the next poem, “He touched me, so I live to know”. This “He”, presumably God, has the effect of calming Dickinson’s myriad small fears. She tells us, “I groped opon his breast--/It was a boundless place to me/And silenced, as the awful Sea/Puts minor streams to rest,” (2-5). At first it may seem that the “silenced” applies to Dickinson here—that this masculine God has taken away even more of her confidence in her own voice (4). When considered with the rest of the

This passage implies Dickinson as a morbid observer witnessing a routine frightens bird decapitates a worm for a meal. It is significantly a nature drama.

What then is happiness? Perhaps happiness is a basic and familiar concept, yet it may occur to be perplexing when one has to convey it through the medium of words. Lyubomirsky defines the term as “the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile” (Lyubomirsky 32). It is often subjective, personal, and can stem from a myriad of activities: some may experience similar feelings by engaging in sports, spending time with family and friends, others while reading or simply being in solitude. Due to the personal nature and subjectivity of happiness, a handful of myths pertaining to this concept has emerged. Three happiness myths were presented within the chapter: 1. Happiness must be found. 2. Happiness lies in changing our circumstances. 3. You either have it or you don’t. The first myth greatly piqued my interest, since I, too, have once externalized happiness and assumed that it would be found outside.

John Stuart Mills, in chapter five of his autobiography “A Crisis in My Mental History: One Stage Onward”, (1909-14), suggest that mankind can never find happiness when it is their goal, they can only find it when their minds are fixed on something unrelated to the topic. He supports his claim by first stating, that happiness is only found when we have our minds fixed on something else than our happiness, then he says that when we are conscious of our feelings and when we feel happiness that is when we feel the most misery and sorrow, and finally he suggests that happiness will come naturally as long as we don’t dwell on the feeling. Mill’s purpose is to express that we are not supposed to be focused on happiness, it will come just as naturally as the air we breathe, but if we do we will just find ourselves in a state of misery. He establishes a very informative serious tone for anybody anywhere.

(14, 18). During this poem, Dickinson wants us to simply see her version of a person's trip during death. The imagery is supposed to lead us into seeing what the author is describing.

The most used sense in this particular poem is that of the visual, in which Dickinson uses it in every stanza. The visual sense seems to be the most powerful tool in presenting an idea to someone. Although we will not all create the same picture in our mind we do share the same common or given characteristics. Dickinson describes the snake as it suddenly emerges from the grass and then its outward physical appearance. Then the location is visually created as it is described as a “boggy acre,” this is where we all create our own picture of the location of the poem. Another appealing visual aspect is the “Whip lash” unbraiding in the sun, the boy completely unaware of what the rope

Although both Dickinson and Baudelaire write to motivate readers to appreciate nature, Baudelaire uses personification to convey the symbolism of nature. In, “Correspondances,” Baudelaire begins the poem personifying nature as a temple that can communicate with us. He says, “The pillars of nature’s temple are alive/ and sometimes yield perplexing messages” (1-2). This personification is significant because nature is not talking with us, but figuratively it is telling us something about ourselves that

Two of Dickinson’s universal techniques are metaphor and the fresh application of language; both techniques result in powerful images, and can be seen in two of her poems that focus on nature themes, “ A Bird came down the Walk” and “narrow Fellow.” She closes the poem, “ A Bird” with a stanza equating flight through the air with movement through water,

We are immediately made aware at the beginning of the poem that there is nothing out of place about this day except that they lost a family member. Dickinson was letting it be known that while the rest of the world continued as usual, they sat there in a room watching one of their suffering family members take her last breath. Death makes life different somehow. As Dickinson states, “-this to Us Made Nature Different” (lines 3,4), she tells us that when her family member died it changed them. This poem shows the raw emotion of sadness and the effect of grief overtaken her in just 6 short stanzas.