From: LouisFors@aol.com
Message-Id: <35307c57.34dddf2a@aol.com>
Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 11:36:56 EST
To: emweb@fmgmt.mgmt.utoronto.ca
Mime-Version: 1.0
Subject: A Sunday morning thought about #927
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: owner-emweb@fmgmt.mgmt.utoronto.ca
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: emweb@fmgmt.mgmt.utoronto.ca
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

So, how does one read #917?

Absent Place -- an April Day --
Daffodils a-blow
Homesick curiosity
To the Souls that snow --

Drift may block within it
Deeper than without --
Daffodil delight but
Him it duplicate--

I read the poem as a comment on human perception.  Now an intellectual
analysis that destroys ED's lovely, ambiguous, little song:

1.  Here we are on an April day, spring in bloom, daffodils blowing in the
wind.
But the scene is a curiosity for people (souls) who prefer winter and the
snow.
Such folks feel homesick for a preferred season--the time of snow.

2.  But the preference for snow (the Drift) is a mental block within the
viewer, not a
function of the actual scene which is outside (without) the viewer.  Thus the
daffodil
delight is missed.  But this is God's (nature's) system.  Better be open to
that system; don't close off.

I do have questions about "it." used twice in the second stanza, but I'll have
to contemplate that further.  Anyway, that's my Rorschach, and I'm publicly
stuck with it for the moment.  Be gentle.

Lou Forsdale