Nature is What we See

"Nature" is what we see—                          A    5

The Hill—the Afternoon—                        B    4

Squirrel—Eclipse— the Bumble bee—     A    5

Nay—Nature is Heaven—                         C    4

Nature is what we hear—                           D    5

The Bobolink —the Sea—                         A    4

Thunder—the Cricket—                            E    3

Nay—Nature is Harmony—                      A    4

Nature is what we know—                        F    5

Yet have no art to say—                            G    6

So impotent Our Wisdom is                      H    5

To her Simplicity.                                     A    3

1. Structure:

The poem is contained of only one stanza. The rhyme scheme is: ABACDAEAFGHA. It is hereby important to note the repetition of the rhyme A such as in: see, bee, sea, Harmony, and Simplicity. The repetition of this rhyme ultimately underlines the poem’s last word ‘simplicity’. Like it is common for Emily Dickinson, there are barely any periods used (only one at the end making the poem seem like on long sentence), however if one were to enter more periods and count the sentences there would be about seven sentences. For the most part of the poem the lines alternate between containing five and four words. This trait is first broken by the Line ‘Thunder-the Cricket’. This line only contains three words and thus acts as a break in the text. The next two line again have the the pattern of four and five words, and then the pattern is completely broken, the last three lines being six, five and three words.  This makes the end of the poem stand out to the reader. It is also important to note that the amount of words in the last three lines decrease, the last line containing only three words. This makes each word in the line seem more significant. The word Nature is repeated five times and is so clearly significant. Also thought the poem is only made of on stanza there are some lines that act as breaks. These lines start with the word ‘Nay’ and as there is two of the the poem is divided in three sections. A final thing that I noticed was the author's choice of capitalizing certain words to make the stand out.

2. Content

The poem describes the simplicity of Nature which can be found and seen everywhere but is difficult to describe in it beauty. Nature is described as ‘Heaven” and “Harmony”. Something that is there and is beautiful, but without our influence. In the last line it uses an objection, when first saying that one’s wisdom is too “incompetent” to describe the “simplicity” of Nature. Here the words incompetent and simplicity object each other.