Dickinson begins with a startling comparison: summer feels short, but human life is even shorter, and a full seventy years vanishes as quickly as a single dollar spent. The image is matter-of-fact, almost wry — there’s no sentimentality, just a flat acknowledgment of how fast time goes.
Then she pivots. Sorrow, she says, is “polite” and refuses to leave. We might pretend to push it away, but the truth is we cling to it just as fiercely as we distrust joy. The second stanza has a strange, self-aware bitterness: we spurn sorrow yet retain it, and we hold delight at arm’s length. The mood is quiet, knowing, and a little resigned — as if the speaker has stopped fighting the way life and loss actually work. The poem leaves a lingering feeling of life’s double bind: time slips away, and we stubbornly hold onto the very pain we claim to reject.