I Taste A Liquor Never Brewed

"Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue." - Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson is able to successfully describe the exhilarating effect that nature has on her in this poem. She uses the extended metaphor of drunkenness and intoxication to show how the beauty of nature makes her happy, just as alcohol makes a drunken person happy.  The speaker establishes this literary technique immediately in the first stanza.  She states that her liquor is even better than that of the Rhine River (The Rhine River runs through Germany, a country well-known for its alcohol.).  I thought this was an incredibly clever way of showing how much nature elated her.

For some reason I found the second stanza to be sort of humorous.  I am not quite sure if this is the effect Dickinson wanted to create or if it is just me.  She depicts herself being drunk on air and dew.  I found this image to be funny because I just envisioned a person prancing through a field of flowers, breathing in the air and dew, and becoming increasingly more drunk.  I guess the whole situation is a little weird to me because although I do love nature and enjoy being outside during spring and summer, I don't really feel as if I am made so incredibly happy by it that it could be seen as the equivalent of being drunk.