by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)
It sifts from leaden sieves
Language: English
Our translations: GER
It sifts from leaden sieves, It powders all the wood, It fills with alabaster wool The wrinkles of the road. It makes an even face Of mountain and of plain, - Unbroken forehead from the east Unto the east again. It reaches to the fence, It wraps it, rail by rail, Till it is lost in fleeces; It flings a crystal veil On stump and stack and stem, - The summer's empty room, Acres of seams where harvests were, Recordless, but for them. It ruffles wrists of posts, As ankles of a queen, - Then stills its artisans like ghosts, Denying they have been.
About the headline (FAQ)
View text with all available footnotesText Authorship:
- by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), appears in Poems by Emily Dickinson, first published 1891 [author's text not yet checked against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by Ernst Bacon (1898 - 1990), "Snowfall", alternate title: "Alabaster wool", 193-? [sung text checked 1 time]
- by Timothy Hoekman , "It sifts from leaden sieves", 2002, published 2006 [ voice and piano ], from To Make a Prairie, no. 3 [sung text not yet checked]
Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2019, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Malcolm Wren [Guest Editor]
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 20
Word count: 101