I taste a liquor never brewed
‘A liquor never
brewed’ refers to the instantaneous, nectar made by flowers which is not
fermented or boiled. It is present naturally. This liquor is better than what
is available by the Rhine .
‘Inebriate of Air’
– drawn to the fragrance of the flowers
‘Debauchee of Dew’
- addicted to dew formed on the flowers
overnight
Endless summer days
– length of the day, and continuous ritual
When landlords – The caretakers, mothers?
When butterflies renounce drams – does this refer to the
time the butterflies stop drinking – night.
Foxglove’s door –
wiki says that there is a myth that fairies live in foxgloves. So when Dickinson next talks of
till ‘Seraphs swing their snowy hats’,
is this vision a result of hallucination caused by foxgloves. Could it also
refer to the passage of time from summer to snow.
To see the little tippler lean against the sun – drink until
morning.
The poem has the traditional bee: flower :: man: woman
metaphor going on but while listening to Al about sonnet’s main use of
proclaiming love and dead metaphor of love, even though it is against the grain
of modernism to employ the silly bee, flower symbols, I believe the ‘alcohol’
refers to love. Love is potent in that once you taste it, you are addicted to
it like the victims of ‘La Belle dame sans Merci’. No body or no time is going
to restrain the narrator’s being in love which she expects to exalt her. She
will continue to love day in and day out.
Like in the ‘I dwell in the house of Possibility’, the
metaphor of lover seeking love/nectar in the form of bees, butterflies is
repetitive if they are to mean the same. The narrator must be referring to some
difference in the nature of bees and butterflies.
No comments:
Post a Comment