A long, long sleep, a famous sleep
That makes no show for dawn
By strech of limb or stir of lid, --
An independent one.
Was ever idleness like this?
Within a hut of stone
To bask the centuries away
Nor once look up for noon?
That makes no show for dawn
By strech of limb or stir of lid, --
An independent one.
Was ever idleness like this?
Within a hut of stone
To bask the centuries away
Nor once look up for noon?
Sleep used to represent something so different than it does now. Emily Dickinson lived directly in the middle of the Industrial Revolution where thoughts on sleep and production radically shifted. "Idleness" she calls it, as she was taught...but then in her own charming way, still makes it seem brilliant! If ever there was an author born in a different century than she represents, it is her!
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting she compares sleep and idleness like death. I'm not an expert, but I know she lived an idle life. When should she have been born? Pretty much now is the best time we know in history to be a woman. Maybe the future would be an even better time to be a woman. Or a person suffering from depression or illness.
ReplyDeleteI read another Death poem by Dickinson early today at a conference. I'm going to post it for tomorrow
One of my clients was talking about idleness, or the constancy and consistency of time periods in our lives where there is no high and low. We were relating it to health and fitness where the times where there are no holidays, no travel or social plans, when you can really just practice life. You can eat healthy, move, and sleep and just be. Idleness in this sense takes on a positive tone. Was Emily Dickinson happy in hers?
ReplyDeleteShe was very much a dreamer. I wonder if she would be disappointed by the way people live now...