Emily Dickinson

Flowers Well If Anybody

poem 137

Flowers Well If Anybody - meaning Summary

Nature's Delicate Paradox

Dickinson observes flowers as carriers of a conflicted feeling that is part joy, part sorrow, and beyond easy explanation. She admits inability to locate the source of this emotional "fountain" yet offers the hillside daisies as a gesture of connection. The poem shifts to compare human sensitivity with the effortless grace of butterflies, whose "system of aesthetics" seems superior to the speaker’s. Overall it contrasts humble human perception with a richer, inscrutable natural beauty that both moves and eludes precise language.

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Flowers Well if anybody Can the ecstasy define Half a transport half a trouble With which flowers humble men: Anybody find the fountain From which floods so contra flow I will give him all the Daisies Which upon the hillside blow. Too much pathos in their faces For a simple breast like mine Butterflies from St. Domingo Cruising round the purple line Have a system of aesthetics Far superior to mine.

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