Emily Dickinson

As children bid the guest good-night

Summary


"As Children Bid the Guest Good-Night" by Emily Dickinson is a short poem that draws a tender parallel between the nightly closing and morning opening of flowers and the reluctant bedtime and joyful waking of children. With quiet charm, Dickinson imagines blooms pulling on their nightgowns at dusk and then peeping and prancing from their cribs at dawn — transforming the garden into a nursery full of small, spirited lives governed by the same rhythms as childhood.

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AS children bid the guest good-night,
And then reluctant turn,
My flowers raise their pretty lips,
Then put their nightgowns on.

As children caper when they wake,
Merry that it is morn,
My flowers from a hundred cribs
Will peep, and prance again.

Credits

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) was an American poet now regarded as one of the most original voices in literary history, though the vast majority of her nearly 1,800 poems were published only after her death. This short poem is a fine example of her gift for finding domestic intimacy in the natural world, animating flowers with the same mischievous energy she observed in children.
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