Emily Dickinson

Of Silken Speech and Specious Shoe

poem 896

Of Silken Speech and Specious Shoe - meaning Summary

Fickle Devotion as Betrayal

The poem likens a flattering admirer to a treacherous bee: outwardly attentive and graceful, but insincere and transient. The speaker emphasizes that the bee’s service and courtship are chance-based, ephemeral, and ultimately disloyal—its promise limited by circumstance and season. What seems continual is actually a repeated pattern of banishment and separation, suggesting a broader warning about seductive appearances that conceal fleeting commitment and inevitable abandonment.

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Of Silken Speech and Specious Shoe A Traitor is the Bee His service to the newest Grace Present continually His Suit a chance His Troth a Term Protracted as the Breeze Continual Ban propoundeth He Continual Divorce.

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