🐚 WONDERFUL WORDS: “The Frosts were her condition”

For all late bloomers, young and old, our homeschool poem-of-the-week for this second week of October is a tiny autumnal gem from Emily Dickinson (1830–1886). Read it with your students — your own little gentians, perhaps — and give them a new friend for life.

God made a little Gentian —
It tried — to be a Rose —
And failed — and all the Summer laughed —
But just before the Snows

There rose a Purple Creature —
That ravished all the Hill —
And Summer hid her Forehead —
And Mockery — was still —

The Frosts were her condition —
The Tyrian would not come
Until the North — invoke it —
Creator — Shall I — bloom?

Great writers are always great observers, and Dickinson knew the wildflowers of her native New England well. This poem is about a specific plant, the Fringed Gentian (Gentianopsis crinita), one of the late-blooming wildflowers of the northeastern United States. The showy flowers of exuberant summer tend to attract all the attention — they’re the extroverts of the natural world. The late bloomers, by contrast, just bide their time, wait for the noise to die down, and then “ravish all the hill.”

“God made a little Gentian” isn’t quite as formally metrical as many of Dickinson’s poems, but it does follow her usual pattern of short lines of six to eight syllables, and it has just enough rhyme to produce a strong sense of structure: Rose–Snows, Hill–still, come–bloom. Note also the lovely verbal plays on Creature and Creator as well as on Rose (the flower) and rose (the past-tense verb).

The glowing vocabulary word in this poem is Tyrian. That’s a jewel of a word for your students to look up in your family dictionary, and you can use that one word to teach a whole collection of little lessons in geography, history, natural history, art, and much more. (Be sure to track down the source of Tyrian in your homeschool atlas.) 🐚

Rare color words like Tyrian can be very powerful in writing, but they have to be used sparingly, like a sharp spice. Consider how many striking words there are for blue and purple alone: amethyst, azure, cerulean, cobalt, hyacinth, turquoise, Tyrian, violet, and more. (“There are [words] to which I lift my hat when I see them sitting princelike among their peers on the page. Sometimes I write one, and look at his outlines till he glows as no sapphire.”)

At the risk of perpetuating stereotypes, “God made a little Gentian” is the quintessential young girl’s poem. You already know an enormously popular modern “translation” of it — I guarantee you do.

There rose a Purple Creature / That ravished all the Hill:

The Frosts were her condition.

What glowing words have you found and what lovely literary discoveries have you and your students been making in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ The cold never bothered me anyway: If a special line or turn of phrase happens to strike you in one of our weekly poems, just copy it onto your homeschool bulletin board for a few days and invite your students to speak it aloud — that’s all it takes to begin a new poetical friendship and learn a few lovely words that will stay with you for life. ❄️

❡ Literary lives: The website of the Poetry Foundation includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Emily Dickinson) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers. ✒️

❡ This is a printable lesson: Down at the bottom of this post you’ll find a custom “Print” button that will let you create a neat and easy-to-read copy of this little lesson, and it will even let you resize or delete elements that you may not want or need (such as images or footnotes). Give it a try today! 🖨

❡ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar to follow along with us as we visit fifty of our favorite friends over the course of the year, and add your name to our River Houses mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox every week. 📫

❡ Homeschool calendars: We have a whole collection of free, printable, educational homeschool calendars and planners available on our main River Houses calendar page. They will help you create a light and easy structure for your homeschool year. Give them a try today! 🗓

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❡ Join us! The aim of the River Houses project is to create a network of friendly local homeschool support groups — local chapters that we call “Houses.” Our first at-large chapter, Headwaters House, is now forming and is open to homeschoolers everywhere. Find out how to become one of our founding members on the Headwaters House membership page. 🏡