The Day Came Slow Till Five O Clock Analysis

A Close Reading of The day came slow, till five o’clock, by Emily Dickinson

The poetry of Emily Dickinson is notable for its simplicity of verse, peculiar capitalisation, and unusual, irregular punctuation. The simplicity of her poetic style however does not emulate an unsophisticated treatment of her themes, nor does it shy away from political motifs. Emily Dickinson grew up in the nineteenth-century in the rural parts of New England. Nature is therefore a common scene within her poetry. She had read a breadth of literature from writers of the Romantic Movement that sought spiritual meaning in nature – Wordsworth, Emerson, and Thoreau. The nature in Dickinson’s poetry could perhaps contribute to her personal significance within nature, and how the

These temporally charged moments are visible throughout Dickinson’s work, and indeed throughout the work of many other poets. Dickinson often states the hour in the first line of her poems. In this instance, she proclaims, “The day came slow, till five o’clock.” Time in this particular poem is imperative to its meaning. The sunrise is described as slow, till the time reaches five o’clock where daylight eventually bursts. The comma allows for a balanced clause and mirrors the point in which the sun eventually breaks out. Another example would be in a poem where she announces, “The Birds began at Four o’clock -,”(#783) . The tendency for stating the hour at the beginning of her poems is something to investigate. In a letter to her friend Thomas Higginson, Dickinson states “I never knew how to tell the time by the clock until I was 15. My father thought he had taught me but I did not understand.” This written statement demonstrates an obsession with time and an infatuation to pinpoint the hour in her poetry . The release of her personal anxieties of time is demonstrated through her poetry - similar to the way the sun rises in this poem when it is released of