In regard to that quote, I am addressing those specific seven subjects in Dickinson’s poetry: snakes, flies, grass, stones, wind, rain, and the moon.
Today’s focus: Grass
When it comes to plants, the word “flower” appears in 90 different poems by Dickinson, “tree” is mentioned in 58 – and “grass” is included in 33.
Perhaps the most well-known poems which mention “grass” are “A narrow fellow in the grass” (the poem I discussed in my post on “snake”) (LINK) and “A Bird came down the walk.”
Here are the first two stanzas:
A Bird, came down the Walk -
He did not know I saw -
He bit an Angle Worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw,
And then, he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass -
And then hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass -
The complete poem is HERE.
Two other notable works are “The wind began to knead the grass” (with one variant that begins “The wind began to rock the grass”) and “The grass so little has to do.”
Dickinson wrote “I wish I were a hay” as the ultimate line (as in a single blade of grass with so little to do), and Mable Loomis Todd was fine with that; however, Thomas Wentworth Higginson dissented. He thought, grammatically, “I wish I were a hay” would be too objectionable to public taste as “hay” is an uncountable noun, a mass – so he insisted on “I wish I were the hay.”
Higginson won that debate – until the late twentieth century when new volumes of Dickinson’s poems were published.