The Mystery of Mortality
The poem contrasts the image of the living, autonomous buck with that of the dead one, never revealing or even speculating about the cause of his death. By leaving these two images linked but avoiding a clear narrative of cause and effect between them, Millay stresses the inexplicability of death. The speaker is especially intrigued by the relationship between death and life, which seems at once stark and fluid—the buck is irrevocably changed by dying, and yet remains similar to his living self in so many ways. Meanwhile, even as death presents a mystery, so does continued life in the form of the doe: life is made mysterious and strange in the presence of death.
The Indifference of Nature
One aspect of the poem that makes it feel serene and disturbing all at once is the portrayal of nature's indifference to both life and death. The speaker begins the poem by asking the sky (a "white sky," evoking both the cold and an impenetrable opaqueness) whether it has witnessed the scene of the deer in the orchard. This question is left unanswered. While the speaker carefully watches the deer and forms opinions about them, the landscape itself remains passive. Both before and after the buck's death, the speaker repeats descriptions of the snowy hemlocks, as if to emphasize that these forms and cycles remain constant regardless of what happens in their midst. Indeed, the deer are indifferent to and uninterested in the speaker, running from her as she watches and embodying that same disinterest.
The Human/Animal Divide
The poem's speaker is interested in the deer and even finds them beautiful at times, but they are fundamentally unknowable to her. In fact, the unbridgeable divide between the speaker and the animals is part of the reason they seem to fascinate her. She repeats the phrase "I saw them," giving the impression of slight disbelief, but also stressing that her relationship to the animals is one of distant observation rather than intimate interaction. Whether alive or dead, the animals remain a mystery to the speaker. She notes the "wild blood" of the dead buck, asserting his strangeness in death as well as life. But she also speculates that the doe has moved farther into the woods, keeping out of sight and remaining unknowable to people.
