Emily Dickinson

April

AN altered look about the hills;

Tyrian light

Tyrian purple was the most expensive dye in the ancient world, made from sea snails. Dickinson uses it for the reddish-purple tones of early spring.

A Tyrian light the village fills;
A wider sunrise in the dawn;
A deeper twilight on the lawn;
A print of a vermilion foot;

vermilion foot

The first red flowers of spring—likely hepatica or trillium, both early bloomers in Amherst. She's personifying spring as leaving footprints.

A purple finger on the slope;
A flippant fly upon the pane;
A spider at his trade again;

chanticleer

Medieval name for a rooster (from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales). His strut is more confident because breeding season starts in spring.

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

Nicodemus' mystery

John 3:1-21—Nicodemus asks Jesus how someone can be 'born again.' Jesus answers: 'The wind blows where it wishes...so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.' Spring is the annual answer to spiritual rebirth.

Receives its annual reply.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Catalogue Structure

The entire poem is one sentence—a list of small observations building to a biblical conclusion. Dickinson uses anaphora (repetition of "A" or "An" at the start of each line) to create a breathless, accumulating effect. Each line adds one more piece of evidence that spring has arrived.

The list moves from large to small: hills and village, then sunrise and twilight, then individual flowers, insects, and sounds. By line 13 she admits defeat—"All this, and more I cannot tell"—because spring's changes are too numerous to catalog completely.

Notice the shift at "A furtive look you know as well." She breaks the pattern by addressing the reader directly. Spring isn't just visible changes; it's a feeling, something secretive and shared. The word furtive (sneaky, sly) suggests spring arrives like something half-hidden, not announced.

Why Nicodemus?

CONTEXT In John 3, Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night and asks how an old man can be born again. Jesus tells him spiritual rebirth is like wind—invisible but real: "You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going."

Dickinson treats spring as theological proof. The "mystery" of spiritual rebirth gets an "annual reply" every April—nature demonstrates resurrection. This wasn't metaphorical for her audience; the connection between spring and Easter (resurrection) was standard Christian typology.

But notice she says "Nicodemus' mystery," not "Jesus' answer." She's interested in the question, the mystery itself, more than the doctrinal explanation. The poem catalogs evidence but doesn't explain it—just like Nicodemus couldn't see the wind but knew it was real. Spring remains furtive, half-hidden, even as it's everywhere.