In the Brambles (Dans les Ronces)
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"In the Brambles" (Dans les Ronces) is a color lithograph made in 1898 by the French artist Henri Detouche (1854–1913). The printed image measures roughly 35 by 25 cm on a slightly larger sheet.
Color lithography, which involves drawing on separate stones or plates for each color, was widely used in France during the 1890s, a period when artists and publishers treated the lithograph as an independent artistic medium rather than a reproductive one.
The print came to the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2016 as a bequest of Elizabeth Carroll Shearer.
Background drawn from Cleveland Museum of Art
Today's poem
The skies can't keep their secret!
The skies can't keep their secret! They tell it to the hills -- The hills just tell the orchards -- And they the daffodils! A bird, by chance, that goes that way Soft overheard the whole. If I should bribe the little bird, Who knows but she would tell? I think I won't, however, It's finer not to know; If summer were an axiom, What sorcery had snow? So keep your secret, Father! I would not, if I could, Know what the sapphire fellows do, In your new-fashioned world!
Emily Dickinson · Public domain
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Emily Dickinson wrote prolifically but published almost nothing during her lifetime; largely unknown while she lived, she is now regarded as a canonical American poet. The Poetry Foundation credits her with creating "a distinctively elliptical language for expressing what was possible but not yet realized."
This poem personifies the natural world as keeper of a secret passed down a chain — from skies to hills to orchards to daffodils — with a bird as accidental eavesdropper. The speaker imagines bribing the bird to learn the secret, then declines, preferring not to know.
The poem turns on the value of mystery over certainty: "It's finer not to know," since "If summer were an axiom, / What sorcery had snow?" The final stanza addresses a "Father," refusing to know "what the sapphire fellows do." Its short, hymn-like quatrains and conversational address are characteristic of Dickinson's compressed style.
Background drawn from PoetryDB & Wikipedia