An Everywhere of Silver
With Ropes of Sand
To keep it from effacing
The Track called Land.
-F931, J884, Sheet 15, 1865
This is a very short poem and therefore it leans heavily on a few words to do a lot of work. Let's focus on two from this poem, “Silver”and “Track.”
Because of the clues of “sand” and “land” we know that descriptor in the first line, "Everywhere of Silver," refers to the sea. Dickinson could have easily written “Everywhere of Ocean,” but by saying “Everywhere of Silver” she takes it beyond any name. Instead she turns the ocean into a ubiquitous substance that is luminous and precious.
Silver is reflective. When you look at a moonlit sea you see a continuous sheet of shimmering light. That fits the word "Everywhere." The ocean ceases to be an object and becomes a field of radiance spreading across the horizon. Silver becomes the color of something whose edges are hard to locate.
Silver is liquid, fluid, whereas "Land" is fixed and narrowly defined as a "Track." Dickinson gives the sea a glowing expansiveness that overwhelms all distinctions. Silver is not warm and earthy like gold. It feels cool and mysterious.
"Everything of Silver" makes it seem less like a body of water and more like a dazzling force, which makes the fragile survival of the "Track called Land" feel astonishing. The poem marvels at how this boundless shining infinity is prevented from erasing land protected by nothing more than "ropes of sand."
Now let's consider the word "Track." “Everywhere” is limitless, but a "Track" is narrow. Dickinson compresses the world as we know it into something resembling a path, a way through something larger. If the sea is "Everywhere," then land is a path cut through the immensity.
But a track can also be defined as a mark left behind, like an animal’s footprint. Calling land a "track" makes it seem less like a permanent continent and more like a temporary mark on the surface of existence. Compared to the ocean's "Everywhere," land becomes merely a trace. A track is something that can be erased by the wind or waves, so the verb "effacing" becomes meaningful. You don't normally think of a continent being effaced, but you can easily imagine this little trace we happen to call "land" being effaced.
Silver is liquid, fluid, whereas "Land" is fixed and narrowly defined as a "Track." Dickinson gives the sea a glowing expansiveness that overwhelms all distinctions. Silver is not warm and earthy like gold. It feels cool and mysterious.
"Everything of Silver" makes it seem less like a body of water and more like a dazzling force, which makes the fragile survival of the "Track called Land" feel astonishing. The poem marvels at how this boundless shining infinity is prevented from erasing land protected by nothing more than "ropes of sand."
Now let's consider the word "Track." “Everywhere” is limitless, but a "Track" is narrow. Dickinson compresses the world as we know it into something resembling a path, a way through something larger. If the sea is "Everywhere," then land is a path cut through the immensity.
But a track can also be defined as a mark left behind, like an animal’s footprint. Calling land a "track" makes it seem less like a permanent continent and more like a temporary mark on the surface of existence. Compared to the ocean's "Everywhere," land becomes merely a trace. A track is something that can be erased by the wind or waves, so the verb "effacing" becomes meaningful. You don't normally think of a continent being effaced, but you can easily imagine this little trace we happen to call "land" being effaced.
In this poem Dickinson reverses the hierarchy. What we experience as the substantial world is, from a larger perspective, only a fleeting mark against a much greater reality.
The poem's awe comes from the imbalance. In the infinite silver expanse the track somehow persists.
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
The poem's awe comes from the imbalance. In the infinite silver expanse the track somehow persists.
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
P.S.
This poem reminds me of one we looked at recently, F926, which gives a similar sense of being precariously balanced on a track amidst an overwhelming Everywhere. “I stepped from Plank to Plank…The Stars about my Head/ I felt about my Feet the Sea.”
P.P.S.
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