The Full Text of “The saddest noise, the sweetest noise”
1The saddest noise, the sweetest noise,
2The maddest noise that grows,—
3The birds, they make it in the spring,
4At night’s delicious close,
5Between the March and April line—
6That magical frontier
7Beyond which summer hesitates,
8Almost too heavenly near.
9It makes us think of all the dead
10That sauntered with us here,
11By separation’s sorcery
12Made cruelly more dear.
13It makes us think of what we had,
14And what we now deplore.
15We almost wish those siren throats
16Would go and sing no more.
17An ear can break a human heart
18As quickly as a spear.
19We wish the ear had not a heart
20So dangerously near.
The Full Text of “The saddest noise, the sweetest noise”
1The saddest noise, the sweetest noise,
2The maddest noise that grows,—
3The birds, they make it in the spring,
4At night’s delicious close,
5Between the March and April line—
6That magical frontier
7Beyond which summer hesitates,
8Almost too heavenly near.
9It makes us think of all the dead
10That sauntered with us here,
11By separation’s sorcery
12Made cruelly more dear.
13It makes us think of what we had,
14And what we now deplore.
15We almost wish those siren throats
16Would go and sing no more.
17An ear can break a human heart
18As quickly as a spear.
19We wish the ear had not a heart
20So dangerously near.
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“The saddest noise, the sweetest noise” Introduction
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Emily Dickinson's "The saddest noise, the sweetest noise" reflects on the bittersweet relationship between beauty and grief. Listening to the birds singing on a springtime morning, the speaker feels as much pain as pleasure: these "sweetest" of noises are also the "saddest," reminding the speaker of all the lost loved ones who used to enjoy spring at the speaker's side. Like most of Dickinson's poems, this one wasn't published until well after her death; it first appeared in print in the 1955 Complete Works of Emily Dickinson.
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“The saddest noise, the sweetest noise” Summary
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The most heartbreaking, lovely, maddening sound in the world is the sound the birds make at dawn in the springtime.
They sing like this in the border between March and April, that enchanted time when it seems as if summer is blissfully (and almost overwhelmingly) close.
The birdsong makes us think of our dead loved ones who once strolled with us on days like these. The cruel magic of death makes us love them all the more now that we can't be with them.
And the birdsong reminds us of what we once had, and of what we're so sad and angry to have lost. The bittersweet emotion is so intense that we nearly wish the birds would stop singing that lovely, dangerous tune.
Certain sounds can break people's hearts just as easily as a stab from a spear. We all wish that our ears weren't such a quick path to our feelings.
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“The saddest noise, the sweetest noise” Themes
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The Bittersweet Nature of Grief and Memory
In “The saddest noise, the sweetest noise,” grief transforms beauty into pain. To this poem’s speaker, the sound of dawn birdsong in spring is no longer just “sweet,” but sad and even maddening; it reminds them of all their dead loved ones who once relished the springtime, too. But though the speaker feels their heart breaking as they listen to the birds sing, they can’t quite bring themselves to wish the music would stop. The poem suggests that, while grief is agonizing, it’s also bittersweet: a painful longing for the beloved dead can feel like a precious thread of connection to the people one has lost.
Grief, the speaker observes, has the power to transform the “sweetest noise” into the “saddest” and “maddest” one, infecting beautiful experiences with the pain of loss. The speaker can’t simply enjoy the lovely sounds of birds singing on a spring morning because it reminds them of times when their now-dead loved ones were alive and sharing their delight. Deep in mourning, the speaker thus feels as if birdsong (and the memories it inspires) can stab them through the heart “as quickly as a spear.” This beauty has become agony to them; they “deplore” what was once lovely because it reminds them that their “dear” ones are gone and they’re all alone.
But even if the birdsong breaks their heart, the speaker can only “almost wish” that the birds would stop singing. They can’t completely wish the music, and the memories it conjures, would go away. Death has made their loved ones feel “cruelly more dear” to them, and if listening to the birdsong brings their memories of those dear ones closer, maybe it’s worth the suffering. Perhaps the pain is even what makes this “noise” the “sweetest”! This bittersweet predicament leaves the speaker feeling dismayed that their “ear” is so “dangerously near” to their heart (in other words, that birdsong can hurt them so deeply), but also moved by the “delicious” beauty of this sad springtime.
Grief, the poem thus suggests, leaves the speaker stranded on a strange “frontier” between the land of the living and the land of the dead: longing to escape their pain, the speaker still can’t quite wish away the memories that evoke it.
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The Power of Music and Sound
Stabbed with grief by the “saddest” and “sweetest” sound they know—dawn birdsong in the springtime—the speaker of this poem reflects that the “ear” has a direct path to the “human heart.” Music and sound, the poem suggests, have a “dangerous” power over people’s emotions: they can slice right through people’s defenses, plunging them into deep feeling before they know what hit them.
Sound, in this poem, isn’t just “noise,” but a gateway to memory. Listening to spring birdsong, the speaker feels assailed by poignant memories of their lost loved ones who once “sauntered with [them] here,” enjoying this lovely music alongside them. What was once a purely delightful sound has now become a reminder of happier times—and thus a source of terrible pain. Because music connects so strongly with memory, the speaker suggests, it can fling people straight into the past.
And this isn’t just the speaker’s problem, the poem says, but a universal one. “An ear,” the speaker reflects, “can break a human heart” as surely and swiftly as a stab from a “spear”—and the right sound inevitably “makes us think” about things we’d rather not. Being deeply affected by music is a shared human predicament, for better and for worse.
The poem thus suggests that music and sound have a terrifying power. Precisely because music works so effectively on people’s emotions (and connects so deeply to people’s memories), the loveliest sound in the world can also become the “saddest” and “maddest” one—and crush a person’s heart before they know it. Perhaps the speaker’s thoughts on the power of sound are also a subtle reflection on the power of poetry: this poem itself, after all, is a kind of sweet, sad song.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The saddest noise, the sweetest noise”
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Lines 1-4
The saddest noise, the sweetest noise,
The maddest noise that grows,—
The birds, they make it in the spring,
At night’s delicious close,The poem begins with a complicated sound:
The saddest noise, the sweetest noise,
The maddest noise that grows,—The parallel structure in these lines makes it clear that this "noise" is all of these things at exactly the same time: heartbreaking, lovely, and liable to drive a person crazy (or a little crazy-sounding itself). Perhaps all these qualities even cause each other: the noise might be sad because it's sweet, sweet because it's maddening, maddening because it's sad.
What's more, this noise "grows." That might mean it starts quietly and gets louder. But it might also metaphorically suggest that this sound feels alive, like a flower shooting up from underground.
In the next two lines, the speaker reveals where this powerful, poignant, mysterious sound comes from:
The birds, they make it in the spring,
At night’s delicious close,This noise, in other words, is the dawn chorus—the sound of birds welcoming a spring sunrise.
The speaker has framed this poem so that the "noise" of birdsong comes before the birds themselves appear—and it "grows" on its own, like an independent being. Readers who think of their own experiences of early-morning birdsong might see the truth in that: since one can't see all the singing birds, the sound does seem to grow straight out of the landscape.
Similarly, describing dawn not as the beginning of morning but as "night's delicious close," the speaker evokes the in-between feeling of the very edge of dawn, when it's neither quite morning nor quite night. And if it's "delicious," perhaps there's something special to be savored about that in-betweenness.
A "noise" that's at once the "saddest," "sweetest," and "maddest" fits right into this in-between landscape. There's an edge of tension, mystery, complexity here: no sound and no sight is one thing or the other. This bittersweet poem will take place in the borderlands between times and feelings.
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Lines 5-8
Between the March and April line—
That magical frontier
Beyond which summer hesitates,
Almost too heavenly near. -
Lines 9-12
It makes us think of all the dead
That sauntered with us here,
By separation’s sorcery
Made cruelly more dear. -
Lines 13-16
It makes us think of what we had,
And what we now deplore.
We almost wish those siren throats
Would go and sing no more. -
Lines 17-20
An ear can break a human heart
As quickly as a spear.
We wish the ear had not a heart
So dangerously near.
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“The saddest noise, the sweetest noise” Symbols
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Springtime
Spring, in this poem, symbolizes time passing and life going on—a bittersweet thing for the grieving speaker to come to terms with.
With its new life, its blossoms, its birdsong, and its promise of a warm "summer" to come, the springtime suggests that the world keeps moving on even as the speaker feels trapped in their memories. The natural cycle of the seasons, so often an image of hope, becomes agonizing to the poor speaker: each new spring can only remind them of past, happier springs, when their beloved "dead" were still at their side.
And that, the poem suggests, is a big part of the pain of grief. Sorrow can make even the liveliest part of the year feel deathly.
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“The saddest noise, the sweetest noise” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Metaphor
Metaphors invite readers into this poem's complex emotional world.
In the first stanza, for instance, the speaker imagines the "noise" they describe as a thing that "grows." This could simply suggest the swell of morning birdsong, from a few little cheeps to a whole dawn chorus. But it also suggests that sound is a living thing. A "growing" noise might have its own power, its own will, and its own intentions; the speaker might feel as if they have a relationship with such a sound.
And in earlier times, before birdsong reminded the speaker of loss and grief, that relationship might have been a better one—even a "magical" one:
- As the speaker describes the time of day when this "saddest," "sweetest" sound sprouts, they call it "delicious," taking physical pleasure in the hours when night fades into dawn.
- Similarly, they delight in the "magical frontier" of the "March and April line"—another kind of enchanting in-between time, a border between one thing and another. (In fact, they feel that the birdsong isn't at its most poignant just "between" March and April, but "between the March and April line": in other words, in the in-between of an in-between!)
- All these images of a "delicious," delightful spot between one thing and another—night and day, March and April—culminate in an image of a personified "summer" that "hesitates," not quite ready to come onstage. But it's still so "near" that it feels "almost too heavenly."
This sequence of metaphors suggests that a close-but-not-quite feeling is part of what the speaker finds so moving (and "madde[ning]") about this season. Perhaps that's because a feeling that something is almost there feels a lot like the speaker's intense memories of their lost loved ones: everpresent but unreachable.
That feeling gets even clearer in yet another metaphor. When the speaker describes "separation's sorcery," which "cruelly" makes the beloved dead feel even "more dear," death becomes a kind of black magic, transforming lost things into the most precious.
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Simile
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Parallelism
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Allusion
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Assonance
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Sibilance
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Alliteration
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Repetition
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"The saddest noise, the sweetest noise" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Maddest
- Sauntered
- Sorcery
- Deplore
- Siren
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This word might suggest that the "noise" is maddening—crazy-making—or a little crazy-sounding itself.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The saddest noise, the sweetest noise”
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Form
"The saddest noise, the sweetest noise" is written in one of Dickinson's favorite forms: ballad stanzas. That means that each of the poem's five stanzas is a four-line quatrain in common measure with an ABCB rhyme scheme—just like the stanzas of the old ballads this form is named for.
Here as elsewhere, Dickinson uses this simple form to examine a deep subject. Earthy, straightforward ballad stanzas fit in with the speaker's resigned sense that "we"—humanity as a whole—all have to deal with the bittersweet relationship between beauty and grief at one time or another. This poem's form is as ubiquitous as the experience it describes.
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Meter
"The saddest noise, the sweetest noise" is written in common measure (also known as ballad meter). That means that the poem alternates between lines of iambic tetrameter (lines of four iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm) and lines of iambic trimeter (lines of three iambs).
Here's how that sounds in the first two lines:
The sad- | dest noise, | the sweet- | est noise,
The mad- | dest noise | that grows,—This steady, unobtrusive meter provides a blank canvas for Dickinson to paint on. Its swinging rhythm can feel almost hypnotic, helping readers to sink into the poem's images.
The meter's general steadiness also allows for moments of surprise. Listen to how the meter changes in line 8, when the speaker describes the part of the year when summer feels:
Almost | too heaven- | ly near.
(Note that "heaven," in much 19th-century poetry, would have been pronounced as one syllable: hevn.)
Here, a stress jumps out at the front of the line: the first foot here is a trochee, the opposite of an iamb, with a DUM-da rhythm. That means that the word "almost"—an important one in this poem!—jumps out, too.
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Rhyme Scheme
Like a lot of Dickinson's poetry, "The saddest noise, the sweetest noise" uses the rhyme scheme of a ballad:
ABCB
This lilting pattern, familiar from everything from hymns to nursery rhymes, gives the poem the flavor of a simple song. But that simplicity is enriched with a ton of internal rhyme. One of the most striking examples turns up in the last stanza:
An ear can break a human heart
As quickly as a spear.
We wish the ear had not a heart
So dangerously near.All those insistent /ear/ rhymes, underscored by the diacope on the word "ear" itself, make this final stanza's image of helpless heartbreak sound quietly intense.
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“The saddest noise, the sweetest noise” Speaker
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The poem's speaker is a person all too familiar with grief. They've spent more than one spring morning reflecting on the way that birdsong evokes happier times with lost loved ones. Moved by the beauty of the dawn chorus and speared by pain in the selfsame moment, they almost wish the birds might stop singing—but only almost.
They also feel prepared to speak for everyone: "we" will all one day feel these feelings, they say. The speaker thus becomes something more like a voice for humanity than a particular character, wishing on everyone's behalf that the sound of birdsong (and the hovering threat of grief) couldn't stab people to the "heart" quite so easily.
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“The saddest noise, the sweetest noise” Setting
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This poem is set in the in-between "frontier[s]" of life: "night's delicious close" (the border between night and dawn), the "March and April line" that separates early spring from late. All these in-between times and places suggest that the speaker also feels caught in an in-between place. Grieving over dead loved ones, the speaker might feel as if they have one foot in the land of the living and one in the land of the dead, able neither to forget their grief and go cheerfully about their life on a fine spring morning nor to be with the people who are gone.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The saddest noise, the sweetest noise”
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Literary Context
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) published almost nothing during her lifetime, and after 1865 she rarely even left her family home in Amherst, Massachusetts. But from within this circumscribed world, she explored the heights and depths of human experience through her groundbreaking, world-changing poetry.
No one else sounds quite like Dickinson. Her poems use simple, folky forms—ballad stanzas, for instance—to explore profound philosophical questions, passionate loves, and the mysteries of nature. "The saddest noise, the sweetest noise" is a perfect example: in its five short common measure stanzas, it explores not just the pain of grief, but its bittersweet pleasure.
While Dickinson wasn't too publicly involved in the literary world of her time, she was still part of a swell of 19th-century American innovation. Her contemporary Walt Whitman (who became as famous as Dickinson was obscure) was similarly developing an unprecedented and unique poetic voice, and the Transcendentalists (like Emerson and Thoreau) shared her deep belief in the spiritual power of nature.
Dickinson herself was inspired by English writers like William Wordsworth and Charlotte Brontë, whose works similarly found paths through the everyday world into the sublime, terrifying, and astonishing.
After Dickinson died, her sister Lavinia discovered a trunk of nearly 1,800 secret poems squirreled away in a bedroom. Published at last, Dickinson's poetry became internationally famous and beloved. Dickinson's work and her life story still influence all kinds of artists.
Historical Context
Dickinson wrote most of her poetry during the American Civil war, which ran from 1861 to 1865. She was firmly on the Union side of that bloody conflict; in one of her letters, she writes with delight about the ignominious defeat of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, who was reportedly trying to make his escape disguised in a woman's skirt when he was finally captured.
However, Dickinson rarely addressed the political world around her directly in her poetry, preferring either to write about her immediate surroundings or to take a much wider philosophical perspective. But many of Dickinson's poems about death—"The saddest noise, the sweetest noise" included—might indirectly reflect her feelings about wartime grief. Forced to reckon with many personal losses (like the death of her formidable father), she would also have been surrounded by mourning families grieving their war dead.
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More “The saddest noise, the sweetest noise” Resources
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External Resources
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Dickinson's Legacy — Listen to three contemporary writers discussing what Emily Dickinson means to them.
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to the poem read out loud.
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A Portrait of Dickinson — See a recently rediscovered photo of Dickinson and learn more about the mysteries around Dickinson's reclusive later years.
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The Dickinson Museum — Visit the website of the Emily Dickinson Museum to learn more about her life and work.
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The Dickinson Society — Visit the Emily Dickinson Society to learn more about Dickinson's continuing influence.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Emily Dickinson
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