"Reportless Subjects, to the Quick"

By Emily Dickinson
[Analysis]
Reportless Subjects, to the Quick [1]
Continual addressed -- [2]
But foreign as the Dialect [3]
Of Danes, unto the rest. [4]
Reportless Measures, to the Ear [5]
Susceptive -- stimulus -- [6]
But like an Oriental Tale [7]
To others, fabulous -- [8]
Poem 1048 [F1118]
"Reportless Subjects, to the Quick"
Analysis by David Preest
[Poem]
Emily is perhaps describing her own poems. To those who are quick of understanding the subjects of her poems continually have
meaning, though they are as foreign as Danish to everybody else. The measures of her poems are a stimulus to the receptive ear, but to
others are something as fabulous and unreal as an 'Oriental Tale' from The Arabian Nights.
'Reportless,' as in poem 1382, means 'of which it is difficult to give a cut and dried account.'
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