Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye,
Much sense, the starkest madness
'Tis the majority'
In this, as all, prevail:
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur, you're straightway dangerous
And handled with a chain
For this poem I looke up a whole bunch of words, for some reason the way she uses the words together just doesn't click with my brain. I first looked up "discerning" which means showing a good understanding. When talking about divinest usually means in a biblical reference of pertaining to god. Demur means objecting to something. When looking up these definitions I definently think I understand the poem better. I believe that Emily is talking about how "Madness" is a gift from God. She says this by saying Madness is the divinest sense. Then saying that having the sense about "Madness" is the "starkest Madness", meaning complete madness. Then she talks about that if you believe, you are sane and will possibly go to heaven, because of the biblical reference of divenest. Then if you "Demur" something of objection and this is dangerous if you don't believe in madness. What has me stumped is the last line in the poem. "And handled with a chain" to me this line just seems random and don't really knows how it connects. I guess that it could possible be a biblical reference also. My problem is that I don't know much about the bible or being Christian for that matter. I like this poem and how it shows that if you think you are sane, that is wrong, and if you believe in madness, it means you are sane. I don't know if this makes sense, I kind of wrote about what was going on inside my head while reading this poem and looking up definitions.
Good work looking up the words. You may have known them, but when they are used differently it is a little foreign. I think you have a good start here of the dialogue in your head. Can you go a little deeper with the structure, using some of our poetry terms to make the whole thing come together?
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