Lyric Poem · Summer
Summer is shorter than any one
Summer is shorter than any one —
Life is shorter than Summer —
Seventy Years is spent as quick
As an only Dollar —
Sorrow — now — is polite — and stays —
See how well we spurn him —
Equally to abhor Delight —
Equally retain him —
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“Summer is shorter than any one” by Emily Dickinson — quilloak.com/poems/summer-is-shorter-than-any-one
Quick facts
- Poem
- Summer is shorter than any one
- Poet
- Emily Dickinson
- Length
- 8 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem, Short Poems
- Themes
- Summer, Nature, Sad, Short
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 8 lines · 2 quatrains
- Line length
- Consistent with common metre. Alternating eight- and six-syllable lines — the hymn stanza (8.6.8.6), the most-used quatrain in English verse.
Want the rules this form is measured against? Read what makes a lyric poem, or run your own draft through the form checker to see the same measurements on your lines. How we measure · Report a mistake
Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- Emily Dickinson1830–1886
- Source record
- PoetryDBSummer is shorter than any one by emily-dickinson, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 f44059030a0b81ea…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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