As imperceptibly as grief

As imperceptibly as grief

  The summer lapsed away, —

  Too imperceptible, at last,

  To seem like perfidy.

  A quietness distilled,

  As twilight long begun,

  Or Nature, spending with herself

  Sequestered afternoon.

  The dusk drew earlier in,

  The morning foreign shone, —

  A courteous, yet harrowing grace,

  As guest who would be gone.

  And thus, without a wing,

  Or service of a keel,

  Our summer made her light escape

  Into the beautiful.

Composition Date: ca. 1865.Form: abcb (off-rhyme)1. The poem is differently divided in the existing manuscript version, The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson, edited by R. W. Franklin in two volumes (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1981: II, 1069; set 5; PS 1541 A1 1981 ROBA). 12. who: the existing manuscript version of poem 1540 reads "that".14. keel: flat-bottomed boat