Emily Dickinson

Autumn

AUTUMN.

meeker

Not 'cooler' or 'shorter'—meeker. Dickinson personifies mornings as having humility or gentleness, like they've lost their summer boldness.

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.

out of town

Social language for a flower. The rose hasn't died or wilted—it's gone visiting, like a neighbor who left for the season.

gayer scarf

'Gay' meant bright or showy. The maple's fall colors become fashion—a deliberate accessory, not decay.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,

old-fashioned

The turn: after watching nature dress up in fall colors, the speaker worries about being outdated if she doesn't accessorize too.

I'll put a trinket on.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Fashion Show, Not Funeral

Dickinson treats autumn as a social season, not a dying one. Every change gets described in the language of fashion and society: the maple wears a scarf, the field wears a gown, the rose has gone out of town like a lady making social calls. Even the berry's 'plumper cheek' sounds like someone who's been eating well, not rotting.

This matters because 19th-century autumn poetry usually meant elegy—death, decay, the year winding down. Dickinson reverses it. Her autumn is getting dressed up, not lying down. The morns are 'meeker' (gentler, more humble), but the landscape is louder, brighter, wearing 'gayer' colors.

The final couplet clicks it all together. After watching nature accessorize, the speaker decides she'd better 'put a trinket on' or risk being 'old-fashioned.' It's funny—nature's doing the dying, but the human worries about being out of style. Dickinson makes mortality into a fashion problem, which is either delightful or deeply unsettling depending on how you read her tone.

Dickinson's Clothing Obsession

Dickinson uses clothing imagery constantly—over 300 references in her poems. She spent her adult life wearing exclusively white dresses, which her neighbors found eccentric. For someone who barely left her house, she thought a lot about what things wore.

Here, the clothing = identity equation runs through the whole poem. The maple doesn't just turn red; it chooses a 'gayer scarf.' The field doesn't just change color; it puts on a 'scarlet gown.' These aren't passive transformations—they're active choices, like getting dressed for a party. By the end, the speaker feels social pressure to match.

The word 'trinket' is doing work. Not a scarf or gown like nature wears—just a small ornament. The speaker's gesture is modest, maybe even ironic. Is she really worried about being old-fashioned, or is she gently mocking the whole idea of keeping up with seasonal trends? With Dickinson, the joke and the serious point often occupy the same sentence.