Emily Dickinson

The Trees Like Tassels Hit and Swung

poem 606

The Trees Like Tassels Hit and Swung - meaning Summary

Summer's Miniature Music

Dickinson sketches a small, vivid summer scene populated by trees, insects, birds, a snake, flowers and shifting sunlight. The poem focuses on sensory impressions and fleeting motion: delicate music from tiny creatures, the sun appearing and disappearing behind clouds, and vivid glimpses of life in an orchard. The closing image compares the lived scene to a painterly representation, suggesting nature’s simple, lively reality both equals and resists artistic capture.

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The Trees like Tassels hit and swung There seemed to rise a Tune From Miniature Creatures Accompanying the Sun Far Psalteries of Summer Enamoring the Ear They never yet did satisfy Remotest when most fair The Sun shone whole at intervals Then Half then utter hid As if Himself were optional And had Estates of Cloud Sufficient to enfold Him Eternally from view Except it were a whim of His To let the Orchards grow A Bird sat careless on the fence One gossipped in the Lane On silver matters charmed a Snake Just winding round a Stone Bright Flowers slit a Calyx And soared upon a Stem Like Hindered Flags Sweet hoisted With Spices in the Hem ‘Twas more I cannot mention How mean to those that see Vandyke’s Delineation Of Nature’s Summer Day!

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