Stanza 2 Summary

Lines 5-6

Inebriate of air – am I –
And Debauchee of Dew – 

• "Inebriate" and "Debauchee"? Dickinson sure does know a lot of words for being chronically drunk, doesn't she?
• Now, though, we find out just what the speaker is getting drunk on: "air" and "Dew." Come again? Is this speaker mixing Mountain Dew with some fancy new liquor called "air"? 
• Not quite—rather, it's the elements of nature (the cool breezes in the air, the dew on the leaves) that make our speaker feel drunk. The "liquor never brewed" is nothing more than a tall frosty mug of Mother Nature.
• Once that's clear, these lines are pretty straightforward: the speaker is getting drunk just off of breathing and getting her slippers damp in the mornings when she walks through the grass to retrieve the newspaper. And who hasn't been there? 
• Well, it's likely that there aren't many of us out there who can catch such a buzz from the smallest element of nature. To learn more about this flower child of a speaker, check out our "Speaker" section.
• And how about the punctuation here? It almost looks like periods weren't invented yet the way Dickinson uses all those dashes, but that's not the case. Dickinson was highly influenced by church hymns, and the dashes create the same kind of musical rhythm that would be present if the poems were sung as a hymn. We tend to pause and put emphasis on the words surrounded by dashes, like in line 5. The dashes create a rhythm that might not be as apparent if the lines were written with plain old commas or periods. (Check out "Form and Meter" for more on this.)
• The unconventional capitalization also puts visual emphasis on certain words. They almost shout "Hey! Look at me!", giving those sounds more punch as we read through the poems. 
• With or without the dashes, though, these two lines are jam-packed with literary devices—assonance, alliteration, and iambic rhythm can all be found here. We don't want to spend too much time on all that here. Be sure to check out the "Sound Check" section for a more detailed discussion of these devices and how they work in the poem.

Lines 7-8

Reeling – thro' endless summer days –
From inns of molten Blue –

• "Reeling" could mean several things, but it's doubtful that Dickinson meant that she was fishing or doing a Scottish dance.
• Instead, she means that she was dizzy and swooning from the beauty of nature around her. 
• We couldn't help but notice the word "thro'," which is the shortened form of the word "through." Apparently little shortcuts for spellings aren't just a digital age thing, u know? 
• So, our speaker continues her "nature makes me feel drunk" metaphor by visiting "inns of molten Blue." Now, a popular drinking ritual that's still alive today is the "pub crawl." A big group of buddies get together and go from pub to pub, drinking the night away. And pubs were often located at the local inn, since combining copious amount of alcohol with a place to sleep was a really good business move. So our speaker's on her own little pub crawl through nature.
• The inns here are made of molten blue because she is likely talking about the sky. Idyllic summer skies are known for being bright blue and fairly cloudless, so she's reeling in the loveliness of the summer sky. Good times.
• This second stanza also gives us the first solid evidence of Dickinson's rhyme scheme in this poem. The rhyme in the first stanza is imperfect (or slant, as we mentioned) at best, but the rhyming of "Dew" in line 6 and "Blue" in line 8 is a solid end rhyme to wrap this stanza up. What's next up for this nature-loving, swooning speaker? Read on…