If You Were Coming In The Fall By Emily Dickenson

“If You Were Coming in the Fall” is a poem written by the acclaimed Emily Dickenson that metaphorically speaks of how time passes when waiting for someone. Throughout the piece she uses domestic objects such as balls of yarn (line six) and finger tips (line 10) to describe years and months of waiting. This poem may allude to Dickenson’s mystery and forbidden love that her younger sister Vinnie wrote of. Through just twenty short lines Emily Dickenson accurately describes what it is to love ardently and long for an unattainable dream. This poem is filled with an undeniable love. Emily, the voice believed to be behind the poem is undoubting of her devotion to the person she is waiting for. We know this by the way she states in each stanza the amounts of time she will wait for him. Even in lines thirteen and fourteen she says she will wait until death if it means they can be together. By these lines we also find that she is uncertain of how long it will be until she meets the one she is in love with again. In stanza one she says she would skip summer if it meant they will be together in the fall, but by stanza five she says “But, now, uncertain of the length Of this that is between,” we know that she does not know what will happen in the …show more content…
Stanza one she wrote “I’d brush the summer by With half a smile and half a spurn, as housewives do a fly.” (lines 2,3,4). Emily is saying in this stanza that she would quickly pass summer if it meant she could see the one she is waiting for in the fall. Dickenson uses a simile of a housewife killing a fly carelessly, to demonstrate her point. Likewise, in stanza two she uses a metaphor of balls of string to represent the years she will anticipate the reunion. This use of literary appliances allows the reader to understand Dickenson’s task of longing without end fully. This understanding in turn creates empathy and communion of emotion in the