Emily Dickinson

The Poets Light but Lamps

poem 883

The Poets Light but Lamps - meaning Summary

Transient Lamps, Enduring Light

Dickinson contrasts the ephemeral role of individual poets with a persistent, vital poetic light that outlives them. Poets act as lamps whose own lives end, but they kindle wicks when the creative spark truly inheres. That enduring light functions like suns whose influence is refracted by each historical lens, so successive ages reinterpret and disseminate a poem’s reach beyond any single author’s lifetime.

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The Poets light but Lamps Themselves go out The Wicks they stimulate If vital Light Inhere as do the Suns Each Age a Lens Disseminating their Circumference

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