Emily Dickinson

Before the ice is in the pools

BEFORE the ice is in the pools,
Before the skaters go,
Or any cheek at nightfall
Is tarnished by the snow,

Serial negatives

Six "before" clauses delay the main statement. Dickinson piles up everything that *hasn't* happened yet to build anticipation—a grammatical countdown.

Before the fields have finished,
Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
Will arrive to me!
What we touch the hems of

Touch the hems

Biblical allusion to the woman who touched Christ's garment hem for healing (Mark 5:25-34). What's sacred but just out of reach in summer becomes accessible in winter.

On a summer's day;
What is only walking

Bridge metaphor

"Just a bridge away" suggests the threshold between life and death, or present and eternal. Walking distance, but you need a bridge to cross over.

Just a bridge away;
That which sings so, speaks so,
When there's no one here,—
Will the frock I wept in

The frock question

She asks if her mourning dress will "answer"—will the dead respond? Or is she asking if grief itself will fit her again? The syntax makes both readings possible.

Answer me to wear?
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Winter as Revelation Season

Dickinson treats winter—specifically the period before winter fully arrives—as a time when supernatural access opens up. The poem's first stanza counts down to this threshold: before ice, before snow, before harvest ends, before Christmas. She's marking the liminal period when the veil thins.

The "wonder upon wonder" she expects isn't Christmas presents. Line 9's "What we touch the hems of / On a summer's day" references Mark 5:25-34, where a woman touches Christ's robe for healing. In summer, the sacred is barely tangible—you can only brush against it. But winter promises direct encounter with "That which sings so, speaks so, / When there's no one here." The absent presence that's silent in summer will speak.

CONTEXT Dickinson wrote obsessively about seasonal thresholds. For her, transition periods—dusk, autumn, the moment before winter—offered access to truths hidden during stable seasons. This poem's entire first stanza is threshold: six "before" clauses that refuse to arrive at the main event.

The Mourning Dress

The final question—"Will the frock I wept in / Answer me to wear?"—has a double meaning that hinges on "answer." Is she asking if the dead will respond to her grief? Or asking if she'll need to wear mourning clothes again (will someone die)?

The phrase "answer me to wear" is syntactically ambiguous. It could mean "answer me [when I come] to wear [it]" or "answer [whether I should] wear [it]." Dickinson often used grammatical instability to hold multiple meanings at once. The frock becomes both a question and the thing being questioned.

"Frock I wept in" is past tense—she's worn mourning before. By 1862 (likely composition date), Dickinson had lost several close friends and her father's health was declining. The poem asks whether winter's promised revelations will include reunion with the dead, or just notification of new deaths. Either way, the "wonder upon wonder" of winter involves confronting mortality directly, not through summer's distant "hems."