Analysis of It Is With Awe

Awe aimed at the ordinary

The poem’s central claim is that awe can be triggered by the simplest, most common thing—if you truly look. Basho doesn’t point to a mountain or a storm; he points to “fresh leaves, green leaves,” made “bright in the sun.” The tone is quietly reverent, almost devotional, but it’s devotion without a church: the holiness arrives through attention. The opening phrase, “It is with awe,” sets the emotional pitch immediately, and what follows is a steady narrowing of focus from the speaker’s feeling (“I beheld”) to the plain facts of color and light.

“Fresh” and “bright”: a moment that can’t be kept

The key image is the leaves themselves, but the poem insists on their immediacy: “fresh” suggests newness, and “bright” suggests a particular instant of sunlight striking them. There’s a gentle tension here between what the speaker experiences and how quickly it must pass. Leaves will dull; sunlight shifts; freshness fades. Yet the poem refuses to mourn or preach—it simply records a moment when the world becomes suddenly vivid. The small turn happens as the speaker’s “awe” is justified not by explanation but by description: the feeling doesn’t lead to a lesson, it leads to seeing. In that sense, the poem asks us to accept a contradiction: that something so everyday can feel immense, and that the only way to meet that immensity is through a brief, ungraspable “beheld” moment.