If you were coming in the fall

“If you were coming in the Fall” is a lyrical ballad, similar to most of Dickinson’s poetry. Lyric poetry is a broad category, but this poem has many lyric qualities. It contains a single speaker who records an emotional personal narrative, the poem is short and written in form, and the poem is songlike in its rhythm and rhyme. In this sense, the poem follows the English Romantic tradition popularized by poets, such as William Wordsworth and John Keats.

The poem is also written in ballad stanzas with an ABCB rhyme scheme. The first and third lines use iambic tetrameter, four metrical feet comprised of one unstressed then one stressed syllable, while the second and fourth lines use iambic trimeter, a line of three metrical feet with the unstressed then stressed pattern. This alternating between metrical feet gives the lines a musical quality while the iambs give them a sing-song feeling.

While Dickinson certainly wrote during the Romantic era in America and was inspired by the Romantics, most critics don’t classify her as a Romantic poet. This poem is a good example of how she both uses Romantic notions and undermines them.