"Trusty as the stars" By Emily Dickinson [Analysis]

Trusty as the stars[1] Who quit their shining working[2] Prompt as when I lit them[3] In Genesis' new house,[4] Durable as dawn[5] Whose antiquated blossom[6] Makes a world's suspense[7] Perish and rejoice.[8]
Poem 1369 [F1415] "Trusty as the stars" Analysis by David Preest [Poem]

This poem ends a letter (L479) to her cousins, Louise and Frances Norcross, of November 1876, in which Emily ecstatically describes finding in the late autumn woods a 'beloved witch hazel.' She adds, 'it looked like a tinsel fringe. . .witch and witching too, to my joyful mind,' and 'I had never seen it but once before, and it haunted me.' The 'fringe' probably refers to the yellow star-shaped flowers of the witch hazel which can appear on the lifeless stems in winter, and which may suggest the simile in the first line of the poem. Emily seems to imagine God himself, who 'lit' the stars, speaking in the poem and saying, 'This witch-hazel can be trusted to flower as much as the stars can be trusted to stop shining promptly at sunrise,' and is as 'durable' as the 'blossom' of the 'Dawn,' whose coming each day since antiquity removes 'a world's suspense' that it will not come and enables it to 'rejoice.'
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