I Can’t Tell You but You Feel It
poem 65
I Can’t Tell You but You Feel It - meaning Summary
Ineffable April Experience
Dickinson presents an exhilarating, almost sacred April experience that resists literal description. The speaker insists it cannot be named yet is universally felt, likening its sweetness and swiftness to vanished play and galloping horses. Reverent modesty—veiled faces, archangels—frames the feeling as inappropriate for casual or fashionable talk. Instead it functions as a gentle, preparatory revelation, like a children's moral story leading toward a higher, ineffable understanding.
Read Complete AnalysesI can’t tell you but you feel it Nor can you tell me Saints, with ravished slate and pencil Solve our April Day! Sweeter than a vanished frolic From a vanished green! Swifter than the hoofs of Horsemen Round a Ledge of dream! Modest, let us walk among it With our faces veiled As they say polite Archangels Do in meeting God! Not for me to prate about it! Not for you to say To some fashionable Lady Charming April Day! Rather Heaven’s Peter Parley! By which Children slow To sublimer Recitation Are prepared to go!
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