“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