As imperceptibly as grief
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 ROBA). 12. who: the existing manuscript version of poem 1540 reads "that".14. keel: flat-bottomed boat
