can somebody help me analyse this poem in terms of imaginative journey...
what are the main events in the poems, and on nother layer what is she trying to say about imaginative journey? thanks for your help.

I DID not reach thee,
But my feet slip nearer every day;
Three Rivers and a Hill to cross,
One Desert and a Sea—
I shall not count the journey one
When I am telling thee.

Two deserts—but the year is cold
So that will help the sand—
One desert crossed, the second one
Will feel as cool as land.
Sahara is too little price
To pay for thy Right hand!

The sea comes last. Step merry, feet!
So short have we to go
To play together we are prone,
But we must labor now,
The last shall be the lightest load
That we have had to draw.

The Sun goes crooked—that is night—
Before he makes the bend
We must have passed the middle sea,
Almost we wish the end
Were further off—too great it seems
So near the Whole to stand.

We step like plush, we stand like snow—
The waters murmur now,
Three rivers and the hill are passed,
Two deserts and the sea!
Now Death usurps my premium
And gets the look at Thee.

Happy to help, but first ...

We see the terms imaginative journey, inner journey, and physical journey appearing a lot here lately, usually from Aussie servers. I also remember magical journey and metaphorical journey. I am not entirely sure I understand these terms, however. For example, what is the difference between an inner journey and an imaginative one.

Any chance you could take a peek at your textbook and let me know what these (and others, if any) definitions are?

As an aside, has anyone else noticed that eliteskills.com, americanpoems.com, plagiarist.com, and poetryconnection.net have successfully managed to get themselves linked from Google on a lot of searches nowadays? I almost never see anything of value there on either critical analysis or interpretation, but they include those words on all their pages, so Google keeps returning them as possibles. Very annoying.

[tinyurl.com]

I wonder if there is a 'minus' term I can include on the searches to exclude those bozos.

Good point Hugh, they definitely get my goat, if you know what I mean.

Les

well basically imaginative journeys are journeys which "take the responders of the text into worlds of imagination, speculation and inspiration" im not sure about physical (maybe they're journeys which just take people form point A to B), but inner journeys are journeys "within a person which bring about change and transformation" i hope that helps you help...... :)

Cool, thanks for the insight. So, we need to relate the Dickinson piece to speculation and inspiration, right? We can pass on the usual questions of rhyme, meter, punctuation and the like.


I did not reach thee,
But my feet slip nearer every day;
Three Rivers and a Hill to cross,
One Desert and a Sea—
I shall not count the journey one
When I am telling thee.

(Well, it sounds like she might be talking about God, but she did not capitalize Thee, so it is probably something/someone else that is being addressed. Overcoming some sort of obstacles to reach a goal?)

Two deserts—but the year is cold
So that will help the sand—
One desert crossed, the second one
Will feel as cool as land.
Sahara is too little price
To pay for thy Right hand!

(Sounds like a pigrimage to Mecca, now, but Emily was not a Muslim, so that is also unlikely. Perhaps merely that something as difficult as crossing the Sahara would not be to great a price to pay to reach whatever the goal?)

The sea comes last. Step merry, feet!
So short have we to go
To play together we are prone,
But we must labor now,
The last shall be the lightest load
That we have had to draw.

(Lots of obstacles are overcome, and for some reason, the last one will be the easiest - what could it be?)

The Sun goes crooked—that is night—
Before he makes the bend
We must have passed the middle sea,
Almost we wish the end
Were further off—too great it seems
So near the Whole to stand.

(Now the journey is likened to the one the sun makes across the sky.)

We step like plush, we stand like snow—
The waters murmur now,
Three rivers and the hill are passed,
Two deserts and the sea!
Now Death usurps my premium
And gets the look at Thee.

(Hey, now she capitalizes Thee, so the previous ones must have been typos, or this one is? Or was she talking to/about Death itself all along? Death was the final obstacle to overcome, the easiest one? Your call.)