It Sifts From Leaden Seives - ED

Emily Dickinson’s poem “It Sifts from Leaden Sieves” at first glance appears to be a simple riddle, with the obvious answer being snow. As is typical of Dickinson’s poetry, there is much to be found within for contemplation and her profound perspective of nature, life, and the human condition shines forth. Written in simple, mostly monosyllabic words and with a masterful use of poetic devices she produces some powerful themes within the beautiful imagery. Though the words are simple and the poem is among the easier to understand of her almost 1800 poems she produced during her lifetime, it is a technically complex poem that has at least two meaningful and powerful themes hidden within.
As is typical of much of Dickinson’s poetry most of the rhyme is ‘slant’, or words that do not quite rhyme such as wood and road. Composed of five, four line stanzas, with the rhyme scheme abcb defe, etc. for the first three and last stanza, with the third stanza’s scheme of jklj. With this interruption of the meter she effectively stresses a break in the poem’s imagery development to stress a change. It is also a pivotal point in the poem’s theme, too, as she reflects on the barren land after the autumn harvest. It almost can be sung, the flow of the words’ sound almost as pleasing as the imagery of the snowy countryside scene she depicts. With heavy use of metaphor she describes the winter scene while never using a word that normally is associated with weather such as frozen, snow, or temperature references. In the last two lines of the first stanza, she cleverly uses the cold, white marble like stone alabaster and blanket of wool to represent snow with the words “It fills with Alabaster Wool The Wrinkles of the Road-” (Dickinson lines 3-4). Her puzzling use of punctuation and hyphenated pauses mostly creates metrical rhythm throughout and adds to the lilting qualities, although the pause at the end of the poem leaves question as to the author’s intentions. With assonance and