As imperceptibly as grief The summer lapsed away, — Too imperceptible, at last, To seem like perfidy. A quietness distilled, As twilight long begun, Or Nature, spending with herself Sequestered afternoon. The dusk drew earlier in, The morning foreign shone, — A courteous, yet harrowing grace, As guest who would be gone. And thus, without a wing, Or service of a keel, Our summer made her light escape Into the beautiful.
Composition Date: ca. 1865.
Form: abcb (off-rhyme)1.
The poem is differently divided in the existing manuscript version,
The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson, edited by R.
W.
Franklin in two volumes (Cambridge,
Mass., and London:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1981:
II, 1069; set 5;
PS 1541 A1 1981
BA). 12. who: the existing manuscript version of poem 1540 reads "that".14. keel: flat-bottomed boat
