Emily Dickinson Group
Question:
How does does Dickinson use land/landscape/place in her poem 'How the old Mountains drip with Sunset'?
Answers:
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accessteacher Teacher
High School - 10th GradePosted by accessteacher on Sunday April 19, 2009 at 6:41 AMA significant number of Dickinson's poems take as their subject the relationship between the human and the antural world. In this sense, she can be associated with the Romantic poets, who likewise took as the subject for their poetry nature and humans. This poem clearly shows her appreciation of the external beauty of the natural world, with her celebration of sunsets. The natural world acts as a gallery if you like for the beauty of the sunset, with a series of implied metaphors that compare the sunset variously to paint that has been lavished with great abandon over the mountains ("How the mountains drip with sunset"), to fire that burns up the foliage ("How the hemlocks burn"). Place serves as a canvas which the sunset can use to paint her beauty.
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