If you were coming in the fall, Analysis

If you were coming in the fall,

I'd brush the summer by

With half a smile and half a spum,

As housewives do a fly.



If I could see you in a year,

I'd wind the months in balls,

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

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,

And taste eternity.



But now, all ignorant of the length

Of time's uncertain wing,

It goads me, like the goblin bee,

That will not state its sting.

.: :.

~ This poem is about love and separation
~ She is definitely in love with him, but does not know when he will return
~ The length of time until he returns is unimportant, as long as he returns
~ She makes the time in between sorter by comparing it top other things
~ She would brush the summer away like a house wife brushes a fly away
~ She reduces a year into months, which are then compared to balls of yarn kept
separately in drawers
~ Storing them separately is like putting having them as separate units, which are
easier to handle
~ She minimizes the length of a century by using the word “only” with it, and this
time she uses her fingers instead of balls. This is another way to handle the
time in smaller more manageable units
~ In the last stanza she compares time to eternity. She is willing to die as long as
they will be together forever
~ The last stanza is now in present tense, and all the other stanzas were
hypothetical. Now she is speaking of how time leaves her in uncertainty, doubt,
distress, and anxiety

| Posted on 2006-03-12 | by Approved Guest

.: :.

Van Dieman's Land...Australia is the place down under. Her fingers go down under her palms as she counts. This is the metaphor in stanza 3. Also the sting of the evil goblin is in her side that she needs to know the cure for...the cure is knowing when her lover will return. When she knows, she will be able to pass the time willingly. Stanza 1: She waits with half a smile and half a spurn like women wait for their husbands whom they are angry with for not telling them where they have been. Also she brushes the fly away like she brushes the seasons between her lover and herself.

| Posted on 2004-10-16 | by Approved Guest