Explore the poem

What does the ocean represent for you? Adventure? Escape? Beauty? Remarkably the reclusive Emily Dickinson had never seen the sea when she wrote this haunting, poignant poem.

It begins with the simple task of taking her dog for a walk by the sea but notice how she transforms the sea through metaphor in to a much more familiar house complete with basement and upper floor. The relationship between the sea and the poet’s imagination initially appears innocent and almost childlike with references to mermaids and mice but in the third verse the sea threatens to “eat me up-“and is now presented as a dangerous menacing man. The word “started” from line one is now used again in verse four but the connotations attached to it are very different. Is there a kind of ambivalent response to the whole experience?

Is there something attractive about the shoes overflowing with “pearl”? Is this a poem in part about desire and sexuality? In the end she returns to the “solid town” and we are left to reflect on the simple intensity of this imagined experience. Much of Dickinson’s work is influenced by hymns and ballads. What features of those forms do you see in this poem? How is your appreciation of this poem affected by reading the poem out loud as opposed to reading it silently?

About Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson spent most of her life in Amherst, Massachusetts, where the Dickinsons were affluent and influential members of the local community. She spent some time as a young girl at the Amherst Academy and then as an energetic and fully involved member of a female seminary. She was independently minded and, at a time when a Calvinist declaration of faith in Jesus Christ and readiness to be ‘saved’ was encouraged, Emily remained true to her own religious principles and would not accept the doctrine of original sin.

However, she became increasingly reclusive in her late twenties, and there is much speculation as to why she retreated into her family home. Whatever the reason for her seclusion, she continued to produce hundreds of poignant, acutely observed poems. Only a few were published in her lifetime, and it was not until 1955 that the complete works of 1,750 poems became available.

Read more about Emily Dickinson in the
American National Biography