Bring me the sunset in a cup,
Reckon the morning’s flagons up
And say how many Dew,
Tell me how far the morning leaps —
Tell me what time the weaver sleeps
Who spun the breadth of blue!

Write me how many notes there be
In the new Robin’s ecstasy
Among astonished boughs —
How many trips the Tortoise makes —
How many cups the Bee partakes,
The Debauchee of Dews!

Also, who laid the Rainbow’s piers,
Also, who leads the docile spheres
By withes of supple blue?
Whose fingers string the stalactite —
Who counts the wampum of the night
To see that none is due?

Who built this little Alban House
And shut the windows down so close
My spirit cannot see?
Who’ll let me out some gala day
With implements to fly away,
Passing Pomposity?

Analysis, meaning and summary of Emily Dickinson's poem Bring me the sunset in a cup,

10 Comments

  1. Debbie says:

    Of course the wampum of the night is dew.

  2. Dianna says:

    I feel Emily is describing the type of sunset she likes. Some people like the type of sunset that is hidden behind clouds splaying beautiful colors across the sky. Others, like Emily, prefer the type of sunset where the big round ball can be clearly seen and counted down as it slips behind the horizon. Envision a teacup held into the air as the sun slowly pours itself into the cup.

  3. Taisir says:

    The poem is really highly discriptive, it discripes the world in an inquisitive manner! Emily wanders: what kind of geneous hands that make this wonderful world! she chalinged all humanbeings to bring her the sunset in a cup! what a nise words she selected! she explained to us in the last stanza that when we will die we will discover the real things and who creates this world he is ofcorse the God (Allah

  4. sourav maiti says:

    i think that the poem is dealing withdeath and immortality, it also deals with the physical aspect of death, written in elegiac note.

  5. Britnifer says:

    I have to disagree with Ryan. I see nothing in this poem that suggests that Dickinson feels herself to have present access to the kind of spiritual freedom she is looking for. This poem is an appeal to God (or whatever higher being is responsible for creating the world. She wants to understand the nature of… well nature. She wants connection, enlightenment, and the unashamed joy that nature exhibits. “Who counts the wampum of the night To see that none is due?” Wampum is an Indian currency of white beads. Even the money in the poem is an article of nature. She wonders who preserves the order of the world.
    In the last stanza she establishes herself as trapped, within the limits of a mortal body and/or a limited mind. However, this state will not last. Someday she will obtain freedom (death) and be given the implements to fly away from pomposity, or false assumptions of human importance.

  6. Aldo says:

    I wish I lived in the period when Emily was alife so that I could try to contact and meet her…and..who…knows….make love with her..just imagination

  7. Ryan says:

    This poem is not what not about emilys death or god it is related to transcendentalist and romantic ideas. She has a flagon (beer glass) full of “nature” which allows her to tanscend into a spiritual ecstacy of natures devine over soul. She wonders how many times the animals experience this drunkness of nature. Nature is free to experience, there is nothing that set it up how it is. It is there to experience. Man and nature in one. Society and church (albane)confine ones spirit and make them not able to experience this drunkenness of nature.

  8. Joseph says:

    What a great poem! The person she keeps wondering about throughout the poem (e.g “who will release me some gala day”) is of course God. This “little Alban house” is, I think, her body from which she’s released after death.

  9. Rosa says:

    This poem is so buitiful, it has every aspect of life. It is just the most gorgous piece of words I have ever seen!

  10. José Luis says:

    Oh what a true poem this is! How kindly Emily imagines herself after death and asks for a cup -not of tea, but of sunset. “Bring me the sunset in a cup”. Of course. The tea-time is now, for the dead, the beauty-time; the hour of drinking the beauty of the whole world. And “this little Alban house” is actually so small and poor: what a poor house is death, from which people go out, towards the open fields, passing Pomposity. Regards from Spain. God save Amherst.

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