Further in Summer than the Birds
Pathetic from the Grass
A minor Nation celebrates
Its unobtrusive Mass.
No Ordinance be seen
So gradual the Grace
A pensive Custom it becomes
Enlarging Loneliness.
Antiquest felt at Noon
When August burning low
Arise this spectral Canticle
Repose to typify
Remit as yet no Grace
No Furrow on the Glow
Yet a Druidic Difference
Enhances Nature now
Seems pretty straightforward to me. Dickinson imagines the crickets’ sound as the musical chorus of a mass. It contrasts to the lovely birdsong of summer which lifts spirits in the usual way of the Romantics, who took nature as their spiritual inspiration. The crickets’ “song” expresses something less hopeful, indeed rather ominous, like those old mysterious pagan folk.
However, the poem ends with a gentle command not to end the grace that summer , no furrowing of the brow that would express a response to the end of summer’s glow,but something older than the Christian (and Romantic) hope expressed in poems and masses, and even a touch ominous
(“Repose to typify” is a puzzle. Does “repose” mean what we get in the grave at last. This cricket chorus is a glimmer of the end.)
Dickinosn wittily and good-naturedly offers a different take on the Romantic spiritualization of nature. Not the songbirds but the crickets are her chorus. How to do that without going on about it, or taking one’s own fancy too seriously, is not easy. She uses ideas without being taken over by them since they are understood as expressions of attitudes and not claims to truth. The crickets enhance in their fashion, which is a bit ominous but not fatal.
I would not want to have been in her razor sharp gaze.
wow… this poem is highly confusing … now i can see why so many people looked at it but left no comments, they are not sure what she is trying to say… well it basically means is … i have no clue … hope that helped anyone one who need clarification … i kno i would be lost if i dint see this post .