Summer's Obsequies

Emily Dickinson

Teacher card

Published: 1890, in Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete
Length: 19 lines, 89 words, 1 word in 18 is long
Year band: Reading load: Years 5–6. A guide from word length, not a curriculum level.
Themes: autumn
Time: 5–10 min, depending on the activity

The text

The gentian weaves her fringes,The maple's loom is red.My departing blossomsObviate parade.

A brief, but patient illness,An hour to prepare;And one, below this morning,Is where the angels are.

It was a short procession, —The bobolink was there,An aged bee addressed us,And then we knelt in prayer.

We trust that she was willing, —We ask that we may be.Summer, sister, seraph,Let us go with thee!

In the name of the beeAnd of the butterflyAnd of the breeze, amen!

Emily Dickinson (died 1886), Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete (1890), lines 5834–5856 of Project Gutenberg ebook #12242. Public domain in Australia: the author died before 1955. Copied word for word and checked against the ebook.

What to do with it

One link and one task line for each activity. Send a student the one you want them to do, or print this page and hand it round; each link has a QR code.

Its lines are dealt for the sky in the weather poemsin weatherline · 19 lines · about 5–10 min
Task for students (you can change the sentence before you print; nothing is saved)See where weatherline takes lines from this poem, then read today's poem the sky has chosen.
See where weatherline takes lines from this poem, then read today's poem the sky has chosen.
weatherline.popplepoetry.com/sources#di-gentian

Send the whole hand-out

This page’s link. Students open it, read the text and pick what to do; nothing asks them to sign in.

Link for the whole text

https://popplepoetry.com/find/dickinson-summers-obsequies · popplepoetry.com