The poem makes contrast between joyful innocence (“happy flower ... at its play”) and fearful destruction (“beheads it”). The chief difference would seem to be that the cause of destruction—“the blond assassin”—is specifically identified, while the lamb seems to have died in its sleep, pillowed as it is in grass and surrounded by flowers. But the metaphorical sleep is no less a death than that delivered by an assassin—lambs do die, and frost actually does destroy flowers. In the poem, what makes the horror of the killing worse is that nothing else in nature is disturbed by it or seems even to notice it. The sun “proceeds unmoved /To measure off another day.” Nothing in nature stops or pauses. The flower itself is not surprised. And even God—the God who we have been told is benevolent and concerned over the least sparrow’s fall—seems to approve of what has happened, for He shows no displeasure, and He supposedly created the frost as well as the flower. Further irony lies in the fact that the “assassin” (the word’s connotations are of terror and violence) is not dark but “blond,” or white (the connotations here are of innocence and beauty). The destructive agent, in other words, is among the most exquisite creations of God’s handiwork. The poet, then, is shocked by what has happened, and is even more shocked that nothing else in nature is shocked. What has happened seems inconsistent with a rule of benevolence in the universe. In her ironic reference to an “approving God,” therefore, the poet is raising a dreadful question: are the forces that created and govern the universe actually benevolent? And if we think that the poet is unduly disturbed over the death of a flower, we may consider that what is true for the flower is true throughout nature. Death—even early or accid9ntal death, in terrible juxtaposition with beauty—is its constant condition; the fate that befalls the flower befalls us all. In Dickinson’s poem? that is the end of the process.
The poem makes contrast between joyful innocence (“happy flower ... at its play”) and fearful destruction (“beheads it”). The chief difference would seem to be that the cause of destruction—“the blond assassin”—is specifically identified, while the lamb seems to have died in its sleep, pillowed as it is in grass and surrounded by flowers. But the metaphorical sleep is no less a death than that delivered by an assassin—lambs do die, and frost actually does destroy flowers. In the poem, what makes the horror of the killing worse is that nothing else in nature is disturbed by it or seems even to notice it. The sun “proceeds unmoved /To measure off another day.” Nothing in nature stops or pauses. The flower itself is not surprised. And even God—the God who we have been told is benevolent and concerned over the least sparrow’s fall—seems to approve of what has happened, for He shows no displeasure, and He supposedly created the frost as well as the flower. Further irony lies in the fact that the “assassin” (the word’s connotations are of terror and violence) is not dark but “blond,” or white (the connotations here are of innocence and beauty). The destructive agent, in other words, is among the most exquisite creations of God’s handiwork. The poet, then, is shocked by what has happened, and is even more shocked that nothing else in nature is shocked. What has happened seems inconsistent with a rule of benevolence in the universe. In her ironic reference to an “approving God,” therefore, the poet is raising a dreadful question: are the forces that created and govern the universe actually benevolent? And if we think that the poet is unduly disturbed over the death of a flower, we may consider that what is true for the flower is true throughout nature. Death—even early or accid9ntal death, in terrible juxtaposition with beauty—is its constant condition; the fate that befalls the flower befalls us all. In Dickinson’s poem? that is the end of the process.
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