Emily Dickinson

If you were coming in the fall

IF you were coming in the fall,
I'd brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn,

Housewife dismissing fly

Domestic simile for emotional control—she'd flick away three months like a minor annoyance. Notice 'half a smile and half a spurn,' the precise emotional ratio.

As housewives do a fly.
If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls,

Months in balls

Yarn-winding image. Dickinson's turning time into a household task—organized, manageable, stored away until needed.

And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.
If only centuries delayed,
I'd count them on my hand,
Subtracting till my fingers dropped

Van Diemen's land

Tasmania's colonial name—the furthest place from Massachusetts she could imagine. Her fingers would literally fall off from counting centuries before reaching that distance.

Into Van Diemen's land.
If certain, when this life was out
That yours and mine should be,
I'd toss it yonder like a rind,

Life as rind

Orange peel logic: if reunion is certain in the afterlife, this life becomes disposable packaging. The casual violence of 'toss it yonder' is the point.

And taste eternity.
But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time's uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee,

Goblin bee

Impossible creature—bees that threaten but never sting. Uncertainty is worse than any definite pain because you can't prepare for it.

That will not state its sting.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Conditional Staircase

The poem is built on four if-then statements that climb a ladder of time: fall (months), year, centuries, eternity. Each stanza escalates the waiting period but maintains the speaker's confidence—she could handle any delay if she knew its length. The verbs get more violent as time expands: brush away, wind up, count down, toss aside. By the fourth stanza, she's ready to discard her entire mortal life 'like a rind.'

Then the structure collapses. That final stanza—'But now'—demolishes everything. The problem isn't the length of separation; it's the uncertainty. Notice how the poem's careful domestic control (drawers, balls of yarn, counting) gives way to being 'goaded' by something she can't manage or measure.

The goblin bee is Dickinson's invention for psychological torture: a threat that never resolves. Real bees sting and it's over. This one hovers forever, keeping you in permanent anticipation. The poem argues that humans can endure anything except not knowing what they're enduring.

What Dickinson Doesn't Say

CONTEXT Dickinson wrote this around 1862, during her most prolific period. Scholars debate whether these separation poems address a real person—candidates include her sister-in-law Susan, or various male correspondents. The poem never specifies.

Notice what's absent: no description of the beloved, no explanation of the separation, no gendered pronouns. The poem is structurally about waiting rather than about who she's waiting for. This makes it universal—anyone who's endured uncertain separation recognizes that goblin bee.

The domestic images (housewives, drawers, yarn) are classic Dickinson: she uses the 19th-century woman's limited physical world to express unlimited emotional and philosophical range. She's trapped in her father's house in Amherst, but her mind travels to Van Diemen's land and eternity. The poem's power comes from that tension between small domestic spaces and cosmic time scales.