On this long storm the rainbow rose,
~Emily Dickinson
On this late morn the sun;
The clouds, like listless elephants,
Horizons straggled down.
The birds rose smiling in their nests, 5
The gales indeed were done;
Alas! how heedless were the eyes
On whom the summer shone!
The quiet nonchalance of death
No daybreak can bestir; 10
The slow archangel’s syllables
Must awaken her.
Surprise! It’s an Emily Dickinson poem about…death!
This poem follows the same sensibility of many of Dickinson’s poems on the subject. Either a man or a woman has died, while all around them, life goes on as usual. There is a sense of bereavement from those left behind, but in the grave, all is quiet, accepted.
What strikes me as particularly marvelous about this Dickinson poem about death is the simile of the elephants in the first stanza. Exactly halfway through the poem, there is a very clear shift from images of beauty in nature and a sense of relief at coming through the storm to a sense of loss–a shift from life to death.
The elephantine clouds in the first stanza, however, are the foreshadowing. While the rest of nature is bright and vibrant, the clouds are “listless” and straggle down the horizon. It sounds like these elephants are on their last legs. There’s a sense of heaviness, too, in the choice of elephants, which is wonderfully paradoxical–clouds are light, floating.
Dickinson goes on to mention birds, a gale, and an archangel–all light things, flying things. The elephants in the sky, listlessly straggling down the horizon, stand in stark contrast. It’s a wonderful simile, and an excellent example of Dickinson on her A-game–offering up a view of the world from a surprising and challenging perspective.
The Emily Project 