Please note that there are alternative versions of this poem.

This is a poem about fear of returning home and finding people and surroundings changed, so that the speaker is alienated and disconnected from what was once familiar. This can be taken literally, but more significantly, as a metaphor for the speaker’s fear of change. The key point of the poem is the speaker’s terror.

There is an oddness about the title. The word order is unusual (a device known as anastrophe )— this would never be said in ordinary speech, as if the speaker is confused and disturbed before she has even started.

Structure
The poem is made up of six four-lined stanzas or quatrains. Dickinson characteristically uses ballad construction, that is with an ABCB rhyme scheme. Ballad line lengths can vary according to the preferences of individual poets. In this case Dickinson uses iambic trimeters (three iambs or metrical feet per line), apart from the third lines which are iambic tetrameter, (four metrical feet per line). A iamb is a metrical foot made up of one unstressed followed by one stressed syllable.

The effect is rhythmic and regular, ironically so for a poem about terror and alienation.

Frequent dashes are a characteristic of Dickinson’s poetry, as is the case here. The effect is to create a choppy, halting rhythm, appropriate to a poem about fear.

Language and Imagery
The voice is that of a first person speaker, we can assume the poet. The tone is fearful.

The language is deceptively simple and accessible. There are similes, such as “Silence — like an Ocean …” Frequent use of capitals give emphasis to the speaker’s feelings and suggest universality of experience.

The “Door” is the most important image, symbolizing the barrier to the old, secure and familiar life from which the speaker now feels alienated. It works as an extended metaphor, with related imagery in each stanza.