Dickinson sets up a gentle, almost playful thought experiment: picture a tiny Arctic flower somehow unmoored from the polar cold and drifting south into a world of blazing sun, unfamiliar blossoms, and birdsong it has never heard. There’s a bemused wonder in imagining this out-of-place thing trying to make sense of such heat and color. The speaker then nudges the fantasy further, comparing the journey to that same flower straying into the Garden of Eden — but immediately undercuts any grand meaning. “What then? Why nothing,” she shrugs, “Only, your inference therefrom!” The whole thing dangles on a tease. The mood is light, quizzical, and strangely intimate, as if a friend has shared a curious notion and then stepped back, leaving you with a small, mysterious smile and the question of what it might mean to be a stranger in paradise.
As if some little Arctic flower — Summary
As if some little Arctic flower Upon the polar hem -- Went wandering down the Latitudes Until it puzzled came To continents of summer -- To firmaments of sun -- To strange, bright crowds of flowers -- And birds, of foreign tongue! I say, As if this little flower To Eden, wandered in -- What then? Why nothing, Only, your inference therefrom!