If you were coming in the fall

“If you were coming in the Fall” plays with the poetic cliché of eternal love. In most stories, love is often placed on a pedestal and treated like something that conquers all things. This romantic vision of love is common in books, plays, poems, and movies, and this idea has even bled into culture where many people believe in the power of love to last through all trials and tribulations. Poems like Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee” (1849) express this concept of a love that is so strong it even transcends death, a concept Dickinson also uses in this poem. However, where Dickinson differs from other works that explore this concept is she questions love's ability to transcend the heartbreak and despair of time. As the speaker ponders on the time they will wait for their love, they almost talk themself out of fantasy and into a realistic understanding of just how long time can be. They realize that while love is strong, waiting is excruciating and may be stronger than the love they have for their lover.

This inversion does not necessarily discredit eternal love, but it frames it in a more realistic way that acknowledges the difficult nature of life.