All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.
The opening stanza presents the poem's central image: the speaker’s beloved, dressed in green, on horseback, going outdoors at dawn. The phrase “my love,” as well as the naturalistic visual imagery of this stanza, builds the expectation that this will be an ode or love poem in the mode of a traditional ballad. (The stanzas to follow, however, run counter to this expectation.)
From the very first stanza, the poem is loaded with visual imagery, most of which emphasizes colors. The first thing we learn about the speaker’s beloved is that she is clad in green. Here, Cummings encourages us to make connections between the speaker’s beloved and the realm of the sylvan, mythical, and otherworldly. The color green, paired with the image of horseback riding, evokes medieval narratives such as that of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The green clothing gains more symbolic significance when we later learn that the beloved figure is an allusion to Diana, goddess of wild animals and the hunt. References to the colors gold and silver allow us to associate the beloved with luxury and regality—here, we learn that the beloved inspires a sense of awe or wonder in the speaker, in the manner of a deity.
This stanza also primes us for the metrical patterns of the poem. The trochees (each stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable; “ALL in GREEN went MY love RI-ding”) mimic the rhythm of horseback riding, and also let us know that Cummings is adding a bit of a twist to the traditional iambic meter (each unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable) of the ballad.
In addition, this stanza clarifies the temporal setting of the poem. The tense of the main verb “went” indicates that the speaker is narrating events from the past.
four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the merry deer ran before.
The second stanza takes us to the image of hounds chasing deer. Here, we learn that the speaker’s beloved is a hunter. These lines also introduce a sense of dynamism and motion into the poem—the spondee (consecutive stressed syllables) in “four lean hounds” contributes to the rapid rhythm of this stanza.
Something, however, is surreal about this hunting scene, in which both the hounds (“smiling”) and the deer chased by them (“merry”) seem to be in a state of delight. The ecstasy of these personified animals hint at an interesting, unconventional dynamic between the hunters and the hunted.
Another anomaly of this stanza is its capitalization: The letter “f” in “four,” despite being the first letter of the sentence, is lowercased. Perhaps it mirrors the image of the hounds “crouch[ing] low.” Or, perhaps it is Cummings’s way of breaking the norms of majuscule and minuscule in the traditional ballad. Whatever this lowercase “f” may signify, it definitely adds a sense of unconventionality to the poem.
Fleeter be they than dappled dreams
the swift sweet deer
the red rare deer.
Deer were considered sacred to the Roman goddess Diana. It is in this stanza, in which Cummings puts great emphasis on deer imagery, that the allusion to Diana becomes clear.
Cummings introduces a complex and abstract simile between “dreams” and the “deer.” This comparison may bear a couple of different meanings, depending on the definition of the word “fleeter.” If we were to take the adjective “fleet” to mean “swift and nimble,” the simile would be comparing the speed of the deer to the speed at which images zoom by in a “dappled,” or kaleidoscopic, dream. On the other hand, if we consider “fleet” as a word meaning “evanescent, shifting, and passing away,” this would be a simile comparing the short lifespan and imminent death of the deer to the brief, ephemeral nature of a dream.
Cummings further emphasizes deer imagery using alliteration and color imagery. The deer are “swift” and “sweet,” “red” and “rare.” In being “red,” they form a visual contrast with the speaker’s beloved, dressed in green clothing. The stanzas to come may illuminate both the meaning of these complementary colors and the relationship between the deer and the speaker’s beloved.
In addition, this stanza exemplifies Cummings’s reversal of modern English syntax in this poem. Instead of saying, for instance, “They were fleeter than dappled dreams,” Cummings inverts the order of subject and verb, evoking syntactical structures we would see in older forms of English.
Four red roebuck at a white water
the cruel bugle sang before.
Cummings presents to us more wild animals and more color imagery. The roebuck, like the deer from the previous stanza, are red. The water, on the other hand, is white, and like the “silver dawn,” it evokes a sense of mysticism.
This stanza also features the first instance of auditory imagery in this poem. The “bugle,” a brass instrument often used during hunts, signifies the hunter’s successful pursuits of roebuck and other wild animals. Cummings personifies the bugle, too, when he mentions that it “sang.”
Interestingly, the bugle is also personified as being “cruel.” Here, we are given a taste of the speaker’s own perspective—a subjective experience of repulsion or fear toward the bugle and maybe even the act of hunting. We begin to think that the speaker identifies with the wild animals that the speaker’s beloved is pursuing.
Horn at hip went my love riding
The fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth stanzas are repetitions of the first, second, third, and fourth, with slight variations in content. The horn in this line thus allows for a smooth transition from the first “verse” of the poem to the second, as it evokes the bugle at the end of the fourth stanza. The phrase “Horn at hip” also features a notable alliteration of the “h” sound.
Softer be they than slippered sleep
the lean lithe deer
the fleet flown deer.
In addition to mirroring the previous iteration of this structure (“Fleeter be they […]”), this stanza repeats the reference to sleep. The phrase “slippered sleep” compares sleep to a pair of feet in soft slippers, and associates this softness with that of the deer. The references to “dreams” and “sleep” in this poem also point to the notion of death, which is often referred to as “Sleep’s sister.”
Furthermore, Cummings loads this stanza, like others, with alliteration: “Softer […] slippered sleep,” “lean lithe,” “fleet flown.”
Four fleet does at a gold valley
the famished arrow sang before.
The structure of this stanza repeats that of the fourth. It introduces more wild animals (four of them), situates them in a specific setting associated with a specific color, and personifies an object used in hunting. The “does,” like the “roebuck,” have been hunted by the speaker’s beloved, and the “gold valley,” like the “white water” of the fourth stanza, hearkens back to the mythical, sylvan landscape created in the first stanza. The “famished” arrow, like the “cruel” bugle, bears human qualities.
The arrow may be another allusion to mythology. In addition to being the hunter goddess Diana’s weapons of choice, the bow and arrow are used by Cupid, another Roman god, to make humans fall in love with one another. The romance element of this poem, first introduced by the phrase “my love” in the opening, is thus brought back in this stanza: With her arrows, the speaker’s beloved is not only killing her prey, but also making them fall victim to love.
Bow at belt went my love riding
Cummings repeats the tactic he used in lines ten and eleven. Just as he follows “bugle” with “horn,” he follows “arrow” with “bow,” allowing the poem to transition smoothly into its third section. In doing so, he once again incorporates an alliteration (“Bow at belt”).
Paler be they than daunting death
the sleek slim deer
the tall tense deer.
This iteration of the “(adjective) + be they than + (adjective) + (noun)” structure is the darkest and most intense of the three. While the previous two iterations referred to “dreams” and “sleep,” this one points directly at “death” and signals the imminent doom of the deer. The deer that other stanzas describe as being merry, beautiful, and swift, are “tense” in this stanza, as though threatened by something. Their color has also changed, from red to a hue “Paler” than death itself. In this stanza, Cummings prepares us for the tragic ending of the poem.
Four tall stags at a green mountain
the lucky hunter sang before.
The color green returns. Green is a symbol for the speaker’s beloved; a “green mountain” would be her territory, where her power extends over all the wild animals, including the “Four tall stags” dwelling in it.
This time, instead of personifying an inanimate object like a bugle or an arrow, Cummings directly refers to the hunter as the entity that is singing. This moment in the poem thus marks a high point for the speaker’s beloved, who is now triumphant, lucky, and powerful.
All in green went my love riding
The poem comes back to its opening stanza. Like the transitions from bugle to horn, and from arrow to bow, this line smoothly connects “the lucky hunter” to “my love.” The verses flow into one another, and the poem as a whole achieves a sense of closure as it revisits its beginning.
my heart fell dead before.
The final line of the poem reveals that the speaker, in fact, was a deer pursued and killed by his beloved hunter. The deer referred to throughout the poem, then, are models of the speaker himself. Thus, in describing a prey animal in love with its hunter, Cummings tells the story of a violent romance. It may be that the speaker's great affection for the hunter, like an arrow going through his heart, destroys him emotionally. It may also be that the speaker is rejected by the hunter herself, and that this rejection feels to the speaker like being murdered.
The form of the ending also mimics the abrupt death of the deer, as the latter two stanzas of this verse seem to be missing. Cummings shocks us with both an unexpected plot twist and a violent shift in form. The poem falls dead, along with the deer, and along with the speaker’s unreciprocated love.
