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Paraphrase Emily Dickinson's "It Sifts from Leaden Sieves".
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Emily Dickinson's poem "It Sifts from Leaden Sieves" metaphorically describes snow's transformative power. Snow falls gently, likened to sifted flour or icing sugar, enhancing and equalizing the landscape by covering roads, fields, and objects with a white blanket. This creates a uniform, peaceful scene that conceals the marks of time and activity. The snow acts as a symbol of oblivion, erasing distinctions and memories, urging a pause for rest and reflection on nature's beauty.
"It Sifts from Leaden Sieves", by American lyric poet Emily Dickinson, considers the attributes of snow. Snow softly falls as if icing sugar that dusts a plain dessert to enhance its visual appeal. Snow, like icing sugar (figuratively speaking), can sweeten the picture before us. Snow can, in a sense, clean a landscape up with its whitewashing effect. Snow is alluded to as something that hides the ravages of time, such as filling in “The Wrinkles of the Road.”
Snow is something that makes all things equal as it covers things up with its natural blanket. No more is there a competition between places and things for the attention of interested observers. With snow covering forests, roads, mountains, plains, parks, front lawns, driveways, and even man-made vehicles and such, it is like a gentle mother tucking everyone in and encouraging everyone to stop and rest peacefully for a...
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bit and enjoy life for what it is.
Snow ensures there is no distinction between the things it covers. Man makes distinctions. Snow, with its inherent beauty, causes us to ponder its beauty as it transforms the landscapes around us. It’s as if an abundant snowfall is telling us to slow down, quit fretting, and rest as the land must rest before it can be productive and bountiful again.
This excellent poem actually is based on an extended metaphor to describe snow and how it covers up nature as if it were flour being sifted and falling in a bowl to make a cake. Note the way in which the first verse makes this connection:
It sifts from Leaden Sieves --
It powders all the Wood.
It fills with Alabaster Wool
The Wrinkles of the Road --
The snow "powders" the wood and "fills... the Wrinkles of the Road" with its "Alabaster Wool." Snows ability to level everything by covering it up is shown with the "even face" it makes of mountains and of plains. Snow is shown to fill "Summer's empty room," refering to fields, making any evidence of it having been used to grow crops forgotten except for the memory of them. Snow seems to function in this poem as a kind of oblivion, as it denies the artisans "have been," makes harvests "recordless" and fences are "lost in fleeces." This poem can therefore be interpreted as exploring the beauty of snow and how it functions in nature and in our imagination, acting as a powerful symbol of oblivion.