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This is a poem about love, time and
separation. It is addressed to and is about someone who is
away. The usual assumption is that the speaker is a woman, because of the
domestic metaphors (the housewife and the fly, the balls of yarn),
because the writer was a woman, and, I think, because it is traditionally
women who wait.
Four of the stanzas begin with "if," a word that indicates
uncertainty. This poem plays off certainty and uncertainty against each
other. She is certain of her love for him; what she doesn't know is when
they will be together and for how long. The time of absence gets longer in each stanza,
progressing from fall in stanza one to a year to centuries to eternity
in stanza four.
But the length of absence is unimportant, provided his return and
their reunion are certain. She dismisses the importance of how long he may be absent by
trivializing it; she brushes off the absence of a summer as a
housewife would shoo a fly away. "Spurn" connotes contempt or scorn. A year
is reduced to months, a smaller unit, and those are compared to balls of
yarn to be stored separately. Storing them separately is like counting
off individual units, making them more manageable and giving her a sense
of control. "Befalls" continues the image of balls. She
minimizes a century-long wait by modifying "century" with "only" and calling his
absence "delayed." "Delayed" implies that eventually he will return. She
counts time on her fingers, rather than on balls. The reference to Van
Diemen's land indicates someplace far away. Van Diemen's land is the old
name for Tasmania, an island off Australia. Why her fingers would drop
is puzzling. One suggestion is that she has in mind a riddle: one person
would curl her fingers under and then ask where they had gone; the answer
was Van Diemen's Land or "down under."
The fourth stanza introduces a different time, eternity or
timelessness. She would willingly die if they would be together forever.
She compares her mortal life to a "rind." As the rind is the outer skin
which protects the food, so her body (the "rind") contains a spirit or essence which
would continue after her death. She continues the
food metaphor with "taste." There
is a tension and irony in the juxtaposition (placing next to each other)
of "If" and "certain." How are these two words incongruous?
The final stanza abruptly introduces a new train of thought, which is
indicated by the first word "but." The previous stanzas were
hypothetical--if; that is, they discussed imagined possibilities in the
future. In this stanza she is in real time, "now." She deals with her
reality, which is a frightening one. She calls time "uncertain"; she
does not know (is "ignorant") what time or timelessness is or will bring.
Her ignorance distresses or "goads" her. She uses the metaphor of a wing for the length of
time to pass. The threatening potential of time continues the wing
metaphor in her comparison of time to a "goblin bee." The bee threatens
with its painful sting. But time's threat is even greater because
unstated; it leaves her in uncertainty, doubt, distress. The degree of
threat which time presents is suggested by "goblin;" a goblin is at best
mischievous, at worst evil.
This is also a poem about anxiety, even dread.
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