Summary
In the poem's second half, the speaker becomes terrified of the ocean's power and depth. She imagines herself being swallowed up in its vastness and tries to escape. The water follows close behind her but eventually turns away as she reaches more solid ground. She is successful in narrowly avoiding capture, but the experience has clearly shaken her.
Analysis
The poem's second half concerns itself primarily with the speaker's visceral sense of fear. Caught up to her neck in water, she is now trapped. She believes that the ocean intends to "eat" her "up - / As wholly as a Dew / Opon a Dandelion's Sleeve." These lines closely follow the speaker's earlier perception of her smallness in the eyes of the "frigates" and "mermaids." However, now things have become much more dire. She does not see herself simply as small in the gaze of an object; she finds herself facing the real prospect of being engulfed by the water and drowning. She is now acutely aware of the ocean's violence and great expanse. She sees herself as a drop of "dew" on the "sleeve" of a "dandelion" because she feels truly helpless and insignificant in this turbulent moment. She attempts to make an escape: "And then - I started - too -" as the dashes underscore her panicked state of mind. In imagining the possibility of being pulled out further, she tries to break away. She is literally escaping the pull of the tide but also is figuratively resisting the dominating male influence of the water. Her departure is not seamless, as the ocean follows "close behind" making its "Silver Heel" felt on the speaker's ankle as her "shoes" "overflow with Pearl." Dickinson takes these traditionally appealing images of "silver" and "pearl" and makes them menacing. The reader senses the ocean's pull on the speaker as he refuses to let her leave.
The final stanza concludes with the speaker's narrow escape. As she reaches "Solid Town" (presumably the shoreline) the sea finds "No One" he seems to know. In turn, he bows and, "with a Mighty look" at the speaker, withdraws back into the depths. This section is unnerving because the speaker comes so close to being dragged out into deep water and because the water maintains its "mighty" aggression even as it retreats. There is a sense that the speaker has not conquered the ocean so much as survived it. The reader gets the sense that there will be other encounters and other dangers to be faced. As with the previous lines, this final part also provides an image of masculinity as threatening and the ocean as inherently violent. In personifying the ocean as male, Dickinson imagines the fright that comes with the possibility of being erased and devoured by an unstoppable force. While she does not make reference to a specific man, she creates a composite portrait of natural force. It is a comment both on gender and the power of nature.
In this strange, dark poem, Dickinson charts her speaker's journey from wonder to concern to terror at the mysteries of the ocean and its power. The speaker begins as observer but is immediately drawn into this other world. She gives the reader a picture of what happens when someone quite literally gets in over their head. In coding this frighteningly vast stretch of water as male, Dickinson is able to comment on both the overwhelming force of men (on women) in society and the relentless pull of the sea. Still, as with so much of Dickinson's work, it is not reducible to a single emotional state. The speaker entertains a spectrum of feelings about her experience, implying that the sea is as much a place of magic as it is of terror.
