Poetry Explorer


Classic and Contemporary Poetry


HOW DARE THE ROBINS SING by EMILY DICKINSON

Poet Analysis

Last Line: At daybreak overcome!
Subject(s): LIFE;

How dare the robins sing,
When men and women hear
Who since they went to their account
Have settled with the year! -
Paid all that life had earned
In one consummate bill,
And now, what life or death can do
Is immaterial.
Insulting is the sun
To him whose mortal light
Beguiled of immortality
Bequeaths him to the night.
Extinct be every hum
In deference to him
Whose garden wrestles with the dew,
At daybreak overcome!



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