‘A spider at his trade again’
“American Homestead Spring’’
An altered look about the hills;
A Tyrian light the village fills;
A wider sunrise in the dawn;
A deeper twilight on the lawn;
A print of a vermilion foot;
A purple finger on the slope;
A flippant fly upon the pane;
A spider at his trade again;
An added strut in chanticleer;
A flower expected everywhere;
An axe shrill singing in the woods;
Fern-odors on untravelled roads, —
All this, and more I cannot tell,
A furtive look you know as well,
And Nicodemus' mystery
Receives its annual reply.
— “April,’’ by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), a poet whose imagination traveled widely in her home town, which she almost never left.
Amherst, most known for its colleges, in the year of Emily Dickinson’s death.