Emily Dickinson

From the Chrysalis

Summary


"From the Chrysalis" is a short poem that places you inside a tightening cocoon, where a restless speaker feels for air and senses a dim capacity for wings. Colors tease through the walls, and the dress she wears begins to chafe. Across three compact stanzas, longing for flight collides with the clumsy work of deciphering hints and signs. Will blundering lead to the divine clue? The poem rewards slow, repeated reading.

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MY cocoon tightens, colors tease,
I’m feeling for the air;
A dim capacity for wings
Degrades the dress I wear.

A power of butterfly must be
The aptitude to fly,
Meadows of majesty concedes
And easy sweeps of sky.

So I must baffle at the hint
And cipher at the sign,
And make much blunder, if at last
I take the clew divine.

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Credits

Emily Dickinson was a reclusive 19th-century American poet, famed for her slant rhymes, dashes and brief, startling verses. "From the Chrysalis" appeared in the posthumous collections of her work, which began appearing in the 1890s, and its butterfly imagery echoes a motif she returned to often.