35 pages • 1 hour read
Emily DickinsonIf you were coming in the fall
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1890A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Yarn-like Balls
The second stanza uses an elaborate metaphor about how time can be measured with physical objects. In this case, different yarn-like balls represent the months of a year. To make these months move faster, the speaker says they will tie them into balls and then store them separate from another to make it easy for them to measure the time. This gives the speaker some sense of power over time and an ability to break it down into parts instead of having to deal with all of it together, as it would be if the balls merged.
The Fly and the Bee
The fly and the bee act as symbols for time and the difficulty and burden it places on people. The progression from the annoying yet harmless fly to the annoying and dangerous bee shows how time grows in strength the longer one has to endure it. Not only does the bee present a constant danger, but it also lurks and prepares to strike at any time, adding to the already large amount of dread the speaker feels at the thought of losing their love forever. The bee is also a goblin, which traditionally is a creature that steals. In this case, time is stealing away the speaker’s love and life.
Van Diemen’s Land
Van Diemen’s Land represents the unknown, the far away, and the desolate. Dickinson knew she would never be able to see places like this, so to her, they must have been completely alien lands and almost mythical. Not only that, but Van Diemen’s Land would have represented an empty desert for Dickinson—a place where convicts were sent so far away they could never again bother society. In the third stanza where Dickinson represents this place, the context is that the speaker's body will literally fall apart to be scattered in this distant land. It almost serves as a kind of hell or purgatory where nothing really exists. Even the name sounds like Van “Demon’s” Land, which could be an intentional pun Dickinson uses here.
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By Emily Dickinson
