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Emily Dickinson

If you were coming in the fall

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1890

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Introduction

“If you were coming in the Fall”

  • Originally Published: 1890
  • Form/Meter: Lyrical ballad; 5 quatrains; alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter
  • Literary Devices: Metaphor, simile, repetition
  • Central Concern: The speaker is willing to wait any amount of time to be reunited with their love, but uncertainty regarding the length of the wait leaves the speaker anxious; this conveys ideas of longing and separation

Emily Dickinson, Poet

  • Bio: Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830 to an upper-class family; attended Amhurst Academy; began Mount Holyoke Female Seminary but left after a year; after her early and young adult years, lived an increasingly reclusive lifestyle during which she wrote most of her poetry and many letters; published only a few poems in her lifetime; poems discovered after her death in 1886 first published in 1890 with significant revisions; straddles the line between the Romantics, Transcendentalists, and Realism; addresses themes of death, religion and faith, the natural world, and love; commonly attributed as one of the most important American poets, especially with regard to experimentation in form and line structure
  • Other Works:  Almost 1,800 other poems including “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” “Much Madness is divinest Sense-,” and “Success is counted sweetest”; various letters

Themes

  • Eternal Love
  • Longing and Separation
  • Time

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