Summer’s Armies

Summary


Summer's Armies is a short Emily Dickinson poem that turns the arrival of warm weather into a shimmering military parade. Dreamy butterflies stir, sleepy pools hum an old tune, and baronial bees march out in murmuring platoons. Robins crowd fences like snowflakes, while an orchid greets her old love, the Sun. The speaker watches a leaderless regiment of woods and hills and wonders whose multitudes these are. It is a playful, vivid portrait of nature waking up.

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SOME rainbow coming from the fair!
Some vision of the world Cashmere
I confidently see!
Or else a peacock’s purple train,
Feather by feather, on the plain
Fritters itself away!

The dreamy butterflies bestir,
Lethargic pools resume the whir
Of last year’s sundered tune.
From some old fortress on the sun
Baronial bees march, one by one,
In murmuring platoon!

The robins stand as thick to-day
As flakes of snow stood yesterday,
On fence and roof and twig.
The orchis binds her feather on
For her old love, Don the Sun,
Revisiting the bog!

Without commander, countless, still,
The regiment of wood and hill
In bright detachment stand.
Behold! Whose multitudes are these?
The children of whose turbaned seas,
Or what Circassian land?


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Credits

Emily Dickinson was a reclusive 19th-century American poet, celebrated for her compact, inventive verse and unconventional dashes. In this poem she borrows the language of soldiers, fortresses and far-off lands, such as the "Circassian land," to describe the season's return.