Emily Dickinson

By my window have I for scenery

BY my window have I for scenery

sea with a stem

The pine tree becomes an ocean turned vertical. Dickinson refuses the ordinary word, forcing you to see the tree as waves of green needles.

Just a sea with a stem—
If the bird and the farmer deem it a "Pine",

quotation marks

Those scare quotes around "Pine" reject the farmer's utilitarian view. She's saying: your word is inadequate for what I'm seeing.

The opinion will serve for them.
It has no "Port", nor a "Line", but the jays
That split their route to the sky,

giddy peninsular

The branch becomes geography—a peninsula jutting into air. "Giddy" because the squirrel is high up, but also dizzy with the vertigo of height.

Or a squirrel whose giddy peninsular
May be easier gained this way.
For inlands the Earth is the underside
And the upper side is the Sun,
And its commerce—if commerce it have—

commerce of spice

Pine resin smells like trade goods—frankincense, myrrh. She's making the tree into an economy, a merchant ship carrying aromatic cargo.

Of spice, I infer from the odors borne.
Of its voice to affirm, when the wind is within

dumb divulge

"Dumb" means mute—can something without speech reveal God? The pine's wind-sound is language without words.

Can the dumb divulge the Divine?
The definition of melody is
That definition is none.

definition is none

True melody can't be defined—it exceeds language. Same logic she's applying to the tree: the real thing escapes all names.

It suggests to our faith, they suggest to our sight,—
When the latter is put away,
I shall meet with conviction I somewhere met
That Immortality.
Was the Pine at my
Window a "Fellow"

Royal Infinity

Capitalizing makes infinity a kingdom, the pine a member of divine aristocracy. "Fellow" suggests companionship, equality with the eternal.

Of the Royal Infinity?
Apprehensions are God's

Apprehensions

Double meaning: both fearful awareness and acts of grasping/understanding. God introduces himself through moments of startled recognition.

Introductions
Extended inscrutably.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Tree as Metaphor Machine

Dickinson builds a systematic rejection of literal language. The poem's central move is refusing to call the pine tree a pine tree—it's a "sea with a stem," and those quotation marks around "Pine" in line 3 announce that ordinary names are insufficient. She's not being whimsical; she's making an epistemological argument about how language fails to capture reality.

Watch how the metaphors multiply: the tree is a sea (line 2), then a route to the sky (line 6), then a peninsula (line 7), then a merchant ship carrying "spice" (line 12). Each metaphor captures something the word "pine" misses—the wave-like needles, the vertical climb, the jutting branches, the aromatic resin. The jays don't use the tree, they "split their route" through it, turning the pine into navigable space.

The poem's logic: if the tree exceeds the word "pine," then maybe everything exceeds its name. Line 15-16 make this explicit: "The definition of melody is / That definition is none." Music can't be captured in words. Neither can the divine. The pine's wind-sound (line 13-14) asks "Can the dumb divulge the Divine?"—can wordless things speak God? Dickinson's answer is yes, but only if you stop trusting language and start trusting "apprehensions"—those sudden graspings that come before words.

Dickinson's Commerce with Infinity

CONTEXT Dickinson rarely left her Amherst home after 1860, spending years looking out her bedroom window at the same trees. This poem transforms that limited view into infinite access.

The economic language is deliberate. The tree has "commerce" (line 11), it lacks a "Port" or "Line" (line 5)—shipping terms. But its cargo isn't lumber; it's "spice," those luxury goods (frankincense, myrrh) associated with biblical gift-giving and temple worship. The pine becomes a merchant vessel trading in the sacred. Notice "I infer from the odors borne" (line 12)—she's smelling resin and extrapolating an entire theology.

The final stanza's question—"Was the Pine at my / Window a 'Fellow' / Of the Royal Infinity?"—uses "Fellow" in its old sense: a peer, an equal member. Is this ordinary tree part of the eternal aristocracy? The answer comes in the last two lines: "Apprehensions are God's / Introductions." Those moments of startled recognition (apprehension as both fear and understanding) are how God introduces himself. You meet infinity not through doctrine but through suddenly *seeing* the tree at your window differently.

The poem repeats itself entirely (lines 27-52 duplicate lines 1-26), which most editors consider a manuscript error. But the repetition enacts the poem's theme: you look again at the same thing and see it new. The second reading isn't redundant—it's the practice of re-seeing that the poem teaches.