The Full Text of “I did not reach Thee”
1I did not reach Thee
2But my feet slip nearer every day
3Three Rivers and a Hill to cross
4One Desert and a Sea
5I shall not count the journey one
6When I am telling thee
7Two deserts but the year is cold
8So that will help the sand
9One desert crossed—
10The second one
11Will feel as cool as land
12Sahara is too little price
13To pay for thy Right hand
14The Sea comes last—Step merry feet
15So short we have to go
16To play together we are prone
17But we must labor now
18The last shall be the lightest load
19That we have had to draw
20The Sun goes crooked—
21That is Night
22Before he makes the bend
23We must have passed the Middle Sea
24Almost we wish the End
25Were further off
26Too great it seems
27So near the Whole to stand
28We step like Plush
29We stand like snow
30The water murmur new
31Three rivers and the Hill are passed
32Two deserts and the Sea!
33Now Death usurps my Premium
34And gets the look at Thee—
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“I did not reach Thee” Introduction
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Emily Dickinson's "I did not reach Thee" is a tale of the soul's long, difficult journey through life, and of that journey's rewards. The poem's speaker goes on a perilous trek across deserts, rivers, hills, and seas. Though their way is dangerous, they're not fazed one bit: they know that their feet carry them "nearer every day" to a meeting with the "Whole," the greatness of God. Life, this poem suggests, can feel like a grueling slog, but the hope of glory at the end makes the burden lighter. Like most of Dickinson's work, this poem wasn't published until after her death; it first appeared in the 1914 collection A Single Hound: Poems of a Lifetime.
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“I did not reach Thee” Summary
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I didn't get to You—but my feet carry me closer to you every day. I have three rivers, a hill, a desert, and a sea to cross, but when I at last tell you the story of my journey, I'll feel like it was hardly any distance at all.
I have two deserts to cross, in fact—but the weather's been cold, so the sand won't burn me. I've made it across one desert already, and the second one will feel as cool as solid, grassy ground. Crossing the Sahara itself would be a small price to pay to win your hand.
Last of all, I have to cross the sea. Walk cheerfully, feet—there's only a little ways to go! We usually enjoy ourselves, but now we have to work. This last part of our journey will be the easiest.
The sun traces a different path now and night is coming, showing that we must have made our way past the middle of the ocean. We almost wish we were further away from our destination: it seems overwhelming to stand so near to the great Whole.
We walk softly, as if our feet were cushioned; we stand still as the snow. We hear the water murmuring as if for the first time. We've crossed the three rivers, the hill, the deserts, and the sea! Now, Death cuts ahead of me and gets the first look at You—
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“I did not reach Thee” Themes
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The Difficult Journey Toward God
Emily Dickinson's "I did not reach Thee" depicts life as a difficult journey toward God's embrace. The speaker has been traveling for a long, long time; they've crossed "Three Rivers and a Hill" and "two deserts" already, and they know they still have a "Sea" to go. They don't have any doubts about this pilgrimage, though, for they know that their reward will be a meeting with a divine beloved they address only as "Thee." Through the extended metaphor of the journey, the speaker suggests that life is a long hard road that's all worth it, since the great "Whole" that is God lies at the end.
The speaker takes their daunting journey in stride. Though they have to cross not one but two deserts, three rivers, a hill, and a sea, they remain enthusiastic for the long walk. For instance, while the second desert comes as a surprise—at first they thought they'd only have to cross "One Desert"—they cheerfully observe that at least the "year is cold,' so the sand won't burn so badly. In short, nothing can faze them.
That's because, no matter how arduous the travel, it's "too little price" to pay for the reward at the end of the journey: the "Right hand" of a beloved. This might make the speaker sound like a knight in a medieval romance, questing to earn their lover's hand in marriage. But there's more going on here. To reach this beloved, the speaker says, is to approach the "Whole"—language that suggests their lover is none other than the omnipresent God.
That idea gets even clearer when the speaker finally comes to the end of their journey and finds that someone else has gotten there first. At the last moment, a personified Death cuts in line in front of them to get the first look at the beloved. Death has to precede the speaker's meeting with God, in other words: the final part of the speaker's journey is to die.
The poem's extended metaphor suggests that life is often a struggle through a difficult landscape of pains and sorrows. The thought that a loving and beloved God lies at the end of these troubles gives the journey lightness and meaning.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “I did not reach Thee”
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Lines 1-6
I did not reach Thee
But my feet slip nearer every day
Three Rivers and a Hill to cross
One Desert and a Sea
I shall not count the journey one
When I am telling theeAs the poem begins, its speaker is making a journey toward a beloved "Thee" ("You") who's terribly far away. The past tense phrase "did not reach" in line 1 implies that the speaker is journeying toward someone they tried and failed to "reach" earlier. They've got a long way still to go: the speaker must cross "Three Rivers," "a Hill," "One desert and a Sea." Still, the speaker finds that their "feet slip nearer every day" to the person they're looking for.
What's more, the journey has a destination that makes long, hard travel worth it:
I shall not count the journey one
When I am telling theeOnce they've found the person they're addressing, in other words, the journey that got them there will seem like nothing at all. This beloved is worth any trek.
All the language here suggests that this is not just the story of someone going to visit a faraway friend:
- Consider those slipping feet: the landscape the speaker describes, an imposing wilderness of rocks and hills and sands and waters, isn't one that it would seem all that easy to "slip" over. But somehow, the speaker's journey happens almost involuntarily.
- The capitalized "Three Rivers," "a Hill," "One desert and a Sea" further hint that this is an archetypal landscape rather than a literal one.
- This journey, then, might be the metaphorical journey that everyone makes "every day" whether they like it or not: the slippery, unstoppable journey through life toward death.
More specifically, this long journey through life's wilderness toward an all-desirable but hard-to-reach beloved represents the speaker making their way toward God. The speaker's humble admission that "I did not reach thee" suggests that a mere mortal can't necessarily get as close to God as they'd like in life. But the speaker trusts that life will carry them toward God nonetheless—and that, once they've "slip[ped]" their way to the divine, the rewards will be so great that the difficult journey will seem like nothing.
Read aloud, and this poem sounds like it's written in Dickinson’s go-to rhythm, common meter: lines of alternating iambic tetrameter (four iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm) and iambic trimeter (just three iambs). Take lines 5-6:
I shall | not count | the jour- | ney one
When I | am tell- | ing theeOn the page, though, the poem looks more complicated. Take lines 1 and 2. While this doesn't look like common meter, it sounds like it when spoken. Line 1 is enjambed, meaning that the phrase stretches smoothly across the line break without pause. Out loud, the poem falls into the expected rhythm:
I did | not reach | Thee / But | my feet |
slip near- | er eve- | ry dayBy breaking that common-meter rhythm in irregular places across unpredictable numbers of lines, Dickinson gives the poem a halting, breathless shape that reflects the speaker’s difficult journey and gives dramatic moments plenty of space. Beneath that odd, broken form, the iambic meter pulses, steady as the speaker's faith.
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Lines 7-13
Two deserts but the year is cold
So that will help the sand
One desert crossed—
The second one
Will feel as cool as land
Sahara is too little price
To pay for thy Right hand
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Lines 14-19
The Sea comes last—Step merry feet
So short we have to go
To play together we are prone
But we must labor now
The last shall be the lightest load
That we have had to draw -
Lines 20-27
The Sun goes crooked—
That is Night
Before he makes the bend
We must have passed the Middle Sea
Almost we wish the End
Were further off
Too great it seems
So near the Whole to stand -
Lines 28-32
We step like Plush
We stand like snow
The water murmur new
Three rivers and the Hill are passed
Two deserts and the Sea! -
Lines 33-34
Now Death usurps my Premium
And gets the look at Thee—
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“I did not reach Thee” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Personification
"I did not reach Thee" embellishes its overarching extended metaphor with flickers of personification, making an old trope—life as a journey—feel fresh and strange.
In the central extended metaphor, the speaker’s journey is life itself: a long, arduous, and ultimately rewarding trek. The speaker's adventure across deserts, hills, rivers, and seas can be read as an image of life's long, strange trip, which inevitably crosses deserts of loneliness, rivers of tears, hills of difficulty. Those with faith, though, can take courage from the thought that they're heading toward the beloved "Whole": God, with whom they'll rest after death.
This is a classic metaphor; Dante and Bunyan are only a couple of the writers who famously used it before Dickinson did. As ever, though, Dickinson makes it her own. It's the details within this metaphor that make the poem lively, strange, and distinct.
Consider, for instance, the moment when the speaker personifies their own feet:
The Sea comes last—Step merry feet
So short we have to go
To play together we are prone
But we must labor now
The last shall be the lightest load
That we have had to drawThis could just be read as a "feet, don't fail me now!" moment, in which the speaker is encouraging themselves more than anything—if it weren't for the fact that the speaker goes on behaving as if their feet are their companion on the journey throughout the rest of the poem. After this passage, they're no longer an "I," but a "we."
Personified, the feet become companions; it's as if the speaker recognizes their body as a separate being with a shared goal. There's a sweetness in this relationship, too. Though the speaker and their feet have trekked over endless sands together, the speaker thinks of their feet as playmates, cheerful friends with whom they’ve had some good times.
On their personified feet, the speaker travels through a personified world. The "Sun" is a "he" here, traveling a new and "crooked" path as the speaker makes their way into another hemisphere—an image that hints that the sun offers a kind of personal encouragement, showing by its new bend that the speaker is on the right course.
Last but not least, and not for the first time in Dickinson, Death itself is a person here. As the speaker at last makes the last few reverent steps toward the "Whole," Death—who has apparently been there all along—springs out in front of them and "usurps" their place in line, stealing the first look at the sight the speaker has quested their whole life to see. Of course, considering the extended metaphor, Death might have to get out in front of the speaker in order for their journey to reach its end: to meet God face to face, one must die.
Again, there’s a strange sweetness here. Death isn't some serious robed reaper here, but something more like an eager kid. In this speaker's animate world, all is hope and excitement—even if life’s journey is long and hard.
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Allusion
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Repetition
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Simile
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Parataxis
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“I did not reach Thee” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Thee
- Draw
- Whole
- Plush
- Usurps
- Premium
Thee-
You. Here, when the speaker addresses the capital-T "Thee," they're specifically calling out to God.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “I did not reach Thee”
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Form
Through surprising line breaks, "I did not reach Thee" reshapes a straightforward form into something stranger and wilder.
At first glance, this poem looks irregular: its five stanzas don't stick to a pattern, but range between six and eight lines long. That's how the stanzas appear on the page, anyway. To the ear, though, this poem sounds a lot like it's written in regular six-line stanzas.
That’s because the poem uses the same rhythms that it would use if it were written in common meter:
- In common meter, four-line stanzas alternate between lines of iambic tetrameter (lines of four iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "We must | have passed | the Mid- | dle Sea") and iambic trimeter (three iambs, as in "But we | must la- | bor now").
- Here, it just sounds as if Dickinson has tacked an extra pair of lines onto a common meter stanza.
That's not how the stanzas look, however, because Dickinson introduces line breaks at unpredictable places. Take a look at what happens in the fourth stanza, for instance (with the meter marked up to show how the regular iambs sometimes split across lines):
The Sun | goes crook- | ed—
That | is Night
Before | he makes | the bend
We must | have passed | the Mid- | dle Sea
Almost | we wish | the End
Were fur- | ther off
Too great | it seems
So near | the Whole | to standTo the ear, it sounds just like standard alternating lines of tetrameter and trimeter (line breaks are marked with /):
The Sun | goes crook- | ed— / That | is Night
Before | he makes | the bend
We must | have passed | the Mid- | dle Sea
Almost | we wish | the End
Were fur- | ther off / Too great | it seems
So near | the Whole | to standBy stretching these words over eight lines (while preserving that steady, alternating iambic rhythm), Dickinson mirrors the stalwart speaker's experience in the poem’s appearance. Marching steadily toward their destination, the speaker nonetheless hesitates a little as they approach their goal, overawed by the thought that they'll soon be in the presence of the "Whole" itself.
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Meter
Though it doesn't look like it at first, "I did not reach Thee" has a regular meter. The lines break in unpredictable places, but beneath those breaks, there's a rhythm rather like Dickinson's favorite common meter.
In common meter, four-line stanzas alternate between lines of iambic tetrameter—lines of four iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm—and iambic trimeter, just three iambs. Lines 5-6 offer an example of what that sounds like:
I shall | not count | the jour- | ney one
When I | am tell- | ing theeNow, this poem's irregular stanzas at first don't seem to have any pattern so predictable. Listen to the rhythm of the first lines, for instance:
I did not reach Thee
But my feet slip nearer every dayThis appears to be a short line of dimeter (two beats) followed by a long line of pentameter (five beats). Read it aloud, though, and one will notice that these two lines use the same number of beats and the same stress pattern as the common meter lines above. Rearrange the lines slightly and readers can see what they hear:
I did | not reach | Thee / But | my feet
Slip near- | er ev- | ery dayEach stanza, then, sounds as if it's built from six alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. It looks very different. By breaking up the lines in unpredictable ways, Dickinson modulates the poem's rhythm, making the verse seem to struggle through its journey just as the speaker does. The steady pulse running through the irregularities keeps these strange stanzas on course.
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Rhyme Scheme
Though the poem’s irregular line breaks obscure the rhyme scheme a bit, there’s still a pattern here. In essence, the poem uses an ABCBDB pattern. But since the speaker often breaks what might usually be one line into bits, that pattern can be hard to trace.
The first stanza, for instance, ends up looking like an ABCABA pattern. But if readers listen to the poem’s meter rather than judging by its line breaks, they’ll find that the scheme here actually use a slant rhyme, linking day to Sea and thee; the first Thee thus creates an internal rhyme. Rearrange the lines a little, and it all comes together like this:
I did not reach Thee / But my feet
slip nearer every day
Three Rivers and a Hill to cross
One Desert and a Sea
I shall not count the journey one
When I am telling theeAnd there you have it:
ABCBDB
The same disguised pattern recurs across the poem. There’s a hidden form within the irregularities here, and the rhyme scheme helps readers to feel what that form is.
These ideas perfectly suit the speaker's story, in which a long and arduous journey eventually carries them to God. No matter how strange and confused the journey, the speaker trusts that their "feet slip nearer every day," divinely guided.
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“I did not reach Thee” Speaker
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The poem's speaker is a dauntless traveler on a sacred—and arduous—journey. As the poem begins, the speaker discovers that they'll have to travel over, not only "Three Rivers and a Hill," a "Desert and a Sea," but also an extra second desert they weren't expecting. And yet, at this disheartening news, they only cheerfully observe that the weather's been cold, so the sands of the second desert won't be as burning hot as the sands of the first were.
If this speaker is unfazed by their perilous trek, it's because they know there's something wonderful at the end. They're making their way toward an encounter with God, the great "Whole" that they address as "Thee" throughout the poem. This speaker's energy and hope derive from love: they want to be with God as one might want to be with a faraway lover.
Their journey, it transpires, is a lifelong one. Just after they cross the final sea, a personified Death (who seems to have been quietly traveling with them all along) leaps out in front of them and gets the first glimpse of that desired "Whole." Perhaps Death has to precede a full encounter with God: the speaker "did not reach" in life what they at last find at the end of their journey.
The speaker, then, can be read as an image of anyone who travels through life with the hope that a glorious encounter awaits them at the end.
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“I did not reach Thee” Setting
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This poem's setting is, in one sense, the whole world. The speaker's journey carries them across a vast landscape of rivers, hills, deserts, and seas—including the center of an ocean, the "Middle Sea," which might suggest middle age. For this landscape is as symbolic as it is real: the journey the speaker describes is the journey through life.
At the same time, the specific features of the poem's landscape suggest that Dickinson was thinking of the Book of Exodus, in which Moses and the Israelites cross the Red Sea and wander the desert looking for the promised land. To this poem's speaker (and to many metaphorical travelers before them), the landscape of Exodus is also the landscape of the soul's trek toward God.
Mingling archetypal images with concrete, particular imagery—consider the sands that are cooler than usual because of a cold year—Dickinson makes this poem's world feel at once timeless, mythic, and alive.
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Literary and Historical Context of “I did not reach Thee”
Literary Context
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) published almost nothing during her lifetime, and after 1865 she rarely even left her family home in Amherst, Massachusetts. But from within her circumscribed world, she explored the heights and depths of human experience through her groundbreaking poetry.
No one else sounds quite like Dickinson. Her poems use simple, folky forms—ballad stanzas, for instance—to explore profound philosophical questions, passionate loves, and the mysteries of nature. This poem was one of many that she wrote with the smallest of audiences in mind: she sent it to her beloved friend (and likely lover) Susan Gilbert. It wouldn't appear in print until Dickinson's niece published the posthumous 1914 collection A Single Hound: Poems of a Lifetime. (This niece was also Susan's daughter: Susan ended up marrying Dickinson's brother Austin, much to Dickinson's dismay.)
While Dickinson didn't get too involved in the literary world of her time, she was still part of a swell of 19th-century American innovation. Her contemporary Walt Whitman (who became as famous as Dickinson was obscure) was also developing an unprecedented and unique poetic voice, and the Transcendentalists (like Emerson and Thoreau) shared her deep belief in the spiritual power of nature. Dickinson herself was inspired by English writers like William Wordsworth and Charlotte Brontë, whose works similarly found paths through the everyday world into the sublime, terrifying, and astonishing.
After Dickinson died, her sister Lavinia discovered a trunk of nearly 1,800 secret poems squirreled away in a bedroom. Published at last, Dickinson's poetry became internationally famous and beloved. Dickinson's work and her life story still influence all kinds of artists.
Historical Context
Dickinson's most active writing years coincided with one of the most tumultuous times in American history: the Civil War (1861–1865). However, Dickinson rarely addressed the political world directly in her poetry, preferring either to write about her immediate surroundings or to take a much wider philosophical perspective.
Dickinson also grew up in a religious community (her father was a noted minister) and came of age during the religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening. Dickinson herself was even swept up by this religious movement for a time. Though she ultimately questioned and moved away from organized religion, her poems remain preoccupied with theological concerns. Many express wonder about the afterlife, speculating on what it's like to meet God—if that's what happens when people die (something Dickinson wasn't sure about). This poem reflects her more romantic, passionate, and hopeful feelings on the matter.
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More “I did not reach Thee” Resources
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External Resources
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The Poem in Manuscript — See images of the poem in Dickinson's own handwriting.
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The Emily Dickinson Museum — Visit the website of the Emily Dickinson Museum to find a treasure trove of information about Dickinson's life and work.
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A Brief Biography — Read the Poetry Foundation's short introduction to Dickinson.
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Dickinson's Legacy — Read a tribute to Dickinson by contemporary writer Helen Oyeyemi.
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The Poem Set to Music — Listen to a charmingly strange musical rendition of the poem.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Emily Dickinson
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