Emily Dickinson The saddest noise, the sweetest noise

 

The saddest noise, the sweetest noise

The saddest noise, the sweetest noise,
  The maddest noise that grows,—
The birds, they make it in the spring,
  At night’s delicious close.

Between the March and April line—
  That magical frontier
Beyond which summer hesitates,
  Almost too heavenly near.

It makes us think of all the dead
  That sauntered with us here,
By separation’s sorcery
  Made cruelly more dear.

It makes us think of what we had,
  And what we now deplore.
We almost wish those siren throats
  Would go and sing no more.

An ear can break a human heart
  As quickly as a spear,
We wish the ear had not a heart
  So dangerously near.

 

Spring-season of rebirth

Dickinson subverts this classic convention

This moment should be full of joy and excitement

Spring-death, loss

Universal situation-all who live will die

Stanza one

Auditory images- three adjectives-noise can be heard but not understood

Spring and life is  noise- something incomprehensible

The birds make that sound in the spring-it introduces a second conceit-the passing of seasons , the idea of change-life begins, then one dies, the cycle is endless-lack of control

Night is dark and frightening

Delicious-nature stimulates the senses.

Stanza two

Line metaphor-boundaries-allusive

Frontier-military

Magic motif

These edges are, according to British myth, the realm of faery so these allusions bring with them an air of beauty tainted with mischief and loss.

Summer hesitates-personification-it suggests summer’s reluctance to experience this growth (fear to grow)

Heavenly-signifying the yearning to connect to nature and yet the necessity to accept that to wholly be part of nature one must die

There’s irony in the choice of the word. Dickinson’s fear of death- Paradoxical need to die in order to belong to nature

Stanza three

She uses inclusive language pointing out confidently the shared experience of losing a loved one and the pain of recollection

It stresses the bitter-sweet experience

The binary opposition depicts the paradox of life and death

There’s a kind of sorcery which shows the nature of human bereavement with hypnoting enchanting lyricism, highlighting the bitterness of loss and cruelty of making the emotions more powerful for those gone

Alliteration s sound-sauntered, separation, sorcery….us-s consonance

s-hypnotic, musical-life-death-relationships

 

Stanza four

Sense of loss

Inclusive language-shared experience

Past and Present tense

The use of had-past affects the present

Sirens-mythological allusion-image of seduction-sinful temptation-painful consequences

Sing no more-allusion-sin no more

It suggests the powerful desire for such pain and relationships to end

 

Stanza five

Synecdoche in the first line

To live is to expect to be broken-life is pain

The auditory experience is devastating

The simile-sharp suddenness of grief and shock

The reader’s desire not to be harmed by life’s relationships

Death-mortality

 

Life, love pain, loss

The noise of existence

The desire to connect and the impossibility to do so

To belong is to acknowledge your own mortality and that of those you love

The poem uses inclusive language, particularly first person plural, to generalise the experience. We, too, have lost loved ones and must suffer through reminders of that loss as the seasons change.