Alter! When the Hills do—

Alter! When the Hills do—
Falter! When the Sun
Question if His Glory
Be the Perfect One—

Surfeit! When the Daffodil
Doth of the Dew—
Even as Herself—Sir—
I will—of You—


     -F755, J729, Fascicle 36, 1863

This is the last poem in Fascicle 36. It's a solid closer.

Though the syntax of the second stanza is a little tricky to get, this poem is fairly simple on the surface. Dickinson is telling her lover (and by extension, the reader) that she will never alter her love, that it will never falter, and that she will never grow tired of receiving love back. She compares her love to the hills, which aren’t going anywhere, to the sun, which has a perfection beyond question, and to the Daffodils, which can never get too much of the morning dew.

What is fantastic is that Dickinson is able to keep this promise of long-term love long after her own death through the creation of a perfect poetic form. The perfection of the frame is what locks the content, the love, into place.

This one makes itself special in a few ways.

1. For starters, its meter is trochaic, instead of the normal iambic. This means the rhythm goes TA da TA da TA da instead of the more common ta DA ta DA ta DA. This makes the poem sing-songy and emphatic. The effect is that there is a build up, a push, so that in the final line there is extra emphasis on the “I” beginning the line: I will. And, by switching to an iamb in the last two words, “of You,” there is extra attention created by the rhythmic tension as the new beat falls on “You.”

2. Dickinson also emphasizes the meter by making the first words of the first two lines rhyme, “Alter” and “Falter.” It’s very noticeable and seems to nail the words in place.

3. There are many musical subtleties here too. For instance, in the first line the L sound in "hills" echoes the L sound in “Alter.” This may seem like a small thing, but just try imagine ANY other word besides hills in this line and the perfection of form falls apart.

There are other moments like this in the poem, like the subtle rhyme of “Sur” and “sir,” the V sound in “of you” echoing the V sound in “Even,” and the alliteration of Daffodil, Doth and Dew. It all works to create a gem of a poem that will last the ages.

Another very subtle thing is that the final beat of the trimeter in lines two and four are missing, so that there is extra emphasis on the rhyme of Sun and One. The expectation of the ending beat also has the effect of springing the rhythm forward to the next line, which gives even more oomph to the accented syllable in the trochee that begins it. The effects are exquisitely controlled.

4. The end stop of the first line lets loose into the enjambment of the second line into the third and then, continuing, in the fourth line. There is a subtle feeling created of bursting forth, like water from a dam. The second stanza also enjambs, but in the flow that follows the first line there are internal dashes for extra rhythmic variation, all perfectly balanced.

The form of this poem has the solidity of the hills, the brilliance of the sun and the beauty of the daffodils of which it speaks. Therefore, simply reading it reassures us in the same way that nature does. It enmeshes us in a feeling of an eternal sublime.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

When the Daffodil Doth of the Dew...