Emily Pauline Johnson’s "The Marshlands": Poetry Analysis

by Mikaela Brewer ​for The 44 North

A foggy marsh at sunrise

A thin wet sky, that yellows at the rim,

And meets with sun-lost lip the marsh's brim.

The pools low lying, dank with moss and mould,

Glint through their mildews like large cups of gold.

Among the wild rice in the still lagoon,

In monotone the lizard shrills his tune.

The wild goose, homing, seeks a sheltering,

Where rushes grow, and oozing lichens cling.

Late cranes with heavy wing, and lazy flight,

Sail up the silence with the nearing night.

And like a spirit, swathed in some soft veil,

Steals twilight and its shadows o'er the swale.

Hushed lie the sedges, and the vapours creep,

Thick, grey and humid, while the marshes sleep.

Note: This poem is in the public domain!

"The Marshlands", by Emily Pauline Johnson (March 10th, 1861 - March 7th, 1913), first appeared in The White Wampum (Copp Clark Co., 1895). Johnson was born and raised on Six Nations Reserve near Brantford, Ontario, and often published under her grandfather’s name, Tekahionwake (“double wampum”). Her work—in publication and on the stage—often braided English storytelling/poetic structure with Indigenous beliefs and storytelling, reflective of being homeschooled by her father, who was a Mohawk Chief, alongside her English mother. Johnson is listed as a Person of National Historic Significance and was one of 12 women considered to appear on a Canadian banknote.

This poem uses a ten-beat line—five sets of two beats—in iambic pentameter. It’s a sort of sonnet blended with heroic couplets that are each one sentence, employing a comma to break the line—not quite enjambment. "The Marshlands" also uses intentional verbs, adverbs, nouns, and adjectives. But what does all this mean, and how does it work? How many verbs, adverbs, nouns, and adjectives can you find? Let’s take a look:

​​A sonnet typically has narrative flow, but it’s also lyrical, brief, memorable, and musical. The heroic couplet is commonly used for moralizing warnings, as "The Marshlands" does. These types of poems are particularly poignant when written to explore climate change iniatives, Land Back movements, Indigenous Stewardship, and the braiding of the three. For example, we’re witnessing this need in real time as many communities endure and recover from the LA fires. Marshes, further, are lands frequently dismissed and exploited because our language for them includes: dreary, swampy/boggy (check out the difference between marshes, bogs, and swamps here!), putrid, damp, melancholic, muddy, brackish, murky, and muggy. Many of us don’t encounter marshes on a typical day, and Johnson makes the inaccessible accessible via her poem—she brings us to a marsh without any of the words just mentioned. This engages (hopefully!) an action-oriented empathy. 

Similar to common nursery rhymes (which are frequently written in rhymed iambic pentameter), the rhythmic form Johnson uses enacts steadiness and peace—it’s flexible and soft while remaining strict and sure of itself, not unlike the laws of nature. The commas serve as gentle pauses—breaths to take in the surroundings—while the periods are a stronger stop to shift to another view in the marsh. Johnson uses an elegant, secretive mystery to entice our curiosity throughout the entire poem.

Circling back to our verbs, adverbs, nouns, and adjectives, Johnson’s word choices paint a picture of night’s onset, potentially amid a storm. However, she infuses a sense of safety, enclosure, and shelter in this space by zooming into the aliveness of the landscape. The approaching night is not portrayed as empty or evil—it’s full of life via rich stillness, sleep, slowness, gentleness, and calm. This is indicative of the generative silence that accompanies quiet rest, of which sleep is through dreaming. There is an ebb and flow of silence and vivaciousness, but both are active and both are alive. In The Marshlands, the combination of form, diction, syntax, and image help us feel this.