Make Me a Picture of the Sun
poem 188
Make Me a Picture of the Sun - meaning Summary
Imagination Over External Reality
Dickinson's short lyric stages a deliberate retreat into imagination to replace or postpone literal experience. The speaker asks for painted sun, a drawn robin, and invented warmth so that perception becomes willful make-believe. Seasonal images—orchards, buttercups, frost, russet—are used as props to sustain a chosen mood and to deny change. The poem explores how imagination can shape feeling and postpone the discomforts of reality.
Read Complete AnalysesMake me a picture of the sun So I can hang it in my room And make believe I’m getting warm When others call it Day! Draw me a Robin on a stem So I am hearing him, I’ll dream, And when the Orchards stop their tune Put my pretense away Say if it’s really warm at noon Whether it’s Buttercups that skim Or Butterflies that bloom? Then skip the frost upon the lea And skip the Russet on the tree Let’s play those never come!
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