Nature the Gentlest Mother-Emily Dickinson

When I first read this poem, once again me and Benjamin got a little confused as to what the story was talking about. We read and analyzed this poem at least several times and yet we still could not get the grasp of it. What me and Benjamin finally got out of it was that everyone knows that a mother is caring and very loving. Me and Benjamin believe that a Emily Dickinson used Nature as a mother in this story.You think of a mother and a child and you immediately think of the bond that they share. They have such a great bond and when Dickinson says this it says that nature is like a mother. I guess that if you think about it like saying when the sun comes up, your mother gets you up and when the sun goes down, she puts you to bed. The little things in the middle of this poem may be the things that she does for you to reward you. Nature is doing the same things for us that a mother does. She treats us with love and care just like the warm summer day that the poem refers to, and when it is dark nature puts us in our beds and cools us down. Here is a quote from the story that shows how Emily Dickinson referred to a motherly sense in the story, "When all the children sleep She turns as long away As will suffice to light her lamps; Then, bending from the sky" (Dickinson). This is showing that you think of a mother putting her children away for the night, and the nature outside is calm and seemingly very caring. Dickinson also gives out a positive vibe towards by writing nature as a soothing and relaxing topic. She does this by saying things like "summer afternoon" (Dickinson). When one thinks about a summer afternoon, you think of a sunny day, not too hot, but with a perfect breeze, and being outside for this is like nothing other in the world. I love these kinds of days where it is a perfect day to play outside and chill out. Dickinson does a great job with explaining this and this is when me and Ben started to get ideas.

During a few classes we have looked at the literal meaning of the poem. After looking at the first stanza the literal meaning that we got out of this was that nature is gentle and patient to all children. Some of the words were hard to understand and we had to look them up, which made the literal meaning harder. The last part of the stanzas literal meaning comes out to be, she still gives advice to the weak and the improper. Overall, through the way me and Ben analyzing and looking at this poem, I think we did a good job with looking at how Dickinson wrote this poem and what she did to show us how she wrote all her stories.

Bibliography

Dickinson, Emily. "1. “Nature, the Gentlest Mother.” Part Two: Nature. Dickinson, Emily. 1924. Complete Poems." 1. “Nature, the Gentlest Mother.” Part Two: Nature. Dickinson, Emily. 1924. Complete Poems. Web. 28 Mar. 2012.