The Hemlock
"The Hemlock" is a short poem by Emily Dickinson that turns a single evergreen into a portrait of stubborn endurance. The speaker pictures the tree standing at the edge of the snow, feeding on the gnash of northern winds and savoring cold the way others savor wine. Frost, bareness and austerity become sources of strength rather than hardship. Dickinson sets the hemlock's bleak, wild landscape against softer, "satin" lives, then closes on children playing and wrestlers running beneath its boughs.
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The skinny
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