Nature Is What We See

Nature Is What We See - context Summary

Composed in 1863

Written in 1863 and published in the 1891 collection Poems by Emily Dickinson, Second Series, this short lyric exemplifies Dickinson’s concentrated attention to the natural world. The poem lists sensory encounters—sight, sound, and a kind of knowing—to argue that nature manifests in simple, immediate phenomena yet resists full capture by human wisdom or art. It reflects Dickinson’s lifelong habit of observing Amherst surroundings and turning those observations into compact philosophical statements about perception, language, and the limits of intellectualizing what is essentially simple and direct.