Spinster
Spinster - meaning Summary
Order Against Seasonal Chaos
The poem depicts a woman who is unnerved by spring's noisy disorder and by a suitor whose movements mirror that confusion. She craves winter's stark, disciplined order and recoils from the season's fertility as a threat to her composure. Rather than engage, she withdraws and fortifies her home against intrusion, equating emotional restraint with personal defense and refusing love that would disrupt her chosen neatness.
Read Complete AnalysesNow this particular girl During a ceremonious april walk With her latest suitor Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck By the bird's irregular babel And the leaves' litter. By this tumult afflicted, she Observed her lover's gestures unbalance the air, His gait stray uneven Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower; She judged petals in disarray, The whole season, sloven. How she longed for winter then!- Scrupulously austere in its order Of white and black Ice and rock; each sentiment within border, And heart's frosty discipline Exact as a snowflake. But here - a burgeoning Unruly enough to pitch her five queenly wits Into vulgar motley- A treason not to be borne; let idiots Reel giddy in bedlam spring; She withdrew neatly. And round her house she set Such a barricade of barb and check Against mutinous weather As no mere insurgent man could hope to break With curse, fist, threat Or love, either.
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