Emily Dickinson

Aurora

AURORA.

Bronze and blaze

The northern lights—aurora borealis. Dickinson saw them in Amherst in 1851 and 1882, rare events at that latitude that caused local sensation.

OF bronze and blaze
The north, to-night!
So adequate its forms,
So preconcerted with itself,

Preconcerted with itself

Self-choreographed, self-sufficient. The aurora doesn't perform for anyone—it just is. Notice the contrast with Dickinson's own performance anxiety about poetry.

So distant to alarms,—
An unconcern so sovereign
To universe, or me,
It paints my simple spirit
With tints of majesty,
Till I take vaster attitudes,

Strut upon my stem

Flower metaphor—she's a bloom on a stalk. The verb 'strut' is absurd for a rooted plant, which is the point. Her inflation is ridiculous.

And strut upon my stem,
Disdaining men and oxygen,
For arrogance of them.
My splendors are menagerie;
But their competeless show

Competeless show

Without competition, unrivaled. Dickinson coined this word—it doesn't exist in standard English. The aurora's display has no equal.

Will entertain the centuries
When I am, long ago,

Island in dishonored grass

A grave mound. 'Dishonored' because unmaintained, overgrown. She'll be a forgotten burial plot that only wildflowers visit.

An island in dishonored grass,
Whom none but daisies know.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Aurora as Artist-God

Dickinson uses the northern lights as a mirror for artistic ambition and its futility. The aurora is "preconcerted with itself"—utterly self-sufficient, needing no audience. It's "distant to alarms" and shows "unconcern so sovereign / To universe, or me." This indifference is what makes it majestic.

The poem's turn comes in lines 8-13, where Dickinson catches the aurora's arrogance like a disease. Watching this cosmic display "paints my simple spirit / With tints of majesty" until she starts to "strut upon my stem." The comedy is deliberate—she's a flower trying to swagger, "disdaining men and oxygen" with borrowed grandeur.

CONTEXT Dickinson published only 10 poems in her lifetime, all anonymously. She knew her work might not be read for generations, if ever. The aurora becomes a figure for the artist who creates without regard for recognition—but Dickinson can't quite pull off that indifference. Her "splendors are menagerie"—a ragtag collection, a sideshow compared to nature's "competeless show."

The final image is devastating: she'll be "an island in dishonored grass, / Whom none but daisies know." Not a monument, just an overgrown grave. But notice what's missing—regret. The aurora will "entertain the centuries" whether anyone watches or not. Dickinson is teaching herself the same lesson.

Dickinson's Weird Grammar

The poem's syntax mimics the aurora's strangeness. Lines 3-7 pile up adjectives without a main verb: "So adequate... So preconcerted... So distant... An unconcern so sovereign." We're suspended in description, watching the lights shift. The sentence doesn't resolve until line 8—"It paints my simple spirit"—when the aurora finally acts on her.

Watch the pronouns shift. The aurora starts as "it" (singular) but becomes "their" in line 15—"their competeless show." Dickinson does this often, treating natural phenomena as both singular force and plural multitude. The northern lights are one event made of many shimmering forms.

"Competeless" is Dickinson's invention. She needed a word for "without competition" and made one. Her lexicon is full of these coinages—she treats English as raw material, not fixed law. When the dictionary fails her, she mints new words.