I never saw a Moor.
I never saw the Sea -
Yet know I how the Heather looks
And what a Billow be -
I never spoke with God
Nor visited in Heaven -
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the Checks were given -
The speaker in the poem describes her faith. She explains that despite the fact that she has never seen a "Moor" or the "Sea," she knows what they are and understands them to a degree. Her lack of experience does not negate her understanding, comprehension, or belief in their existence. Similarly, though she has never spoken with God or been to heaven she is "certain" of their existence as if she had received physical proof. The thoughts begin with the physical world and blend into the metaphysical on a grander scale.
The speaker believes in God and in heaven just as she believes in the moors and the seas. Whether or not this is the Christian God and heaven, we cannot know, but it is clear that the speaker has some sort of faith in a version of the two. Moors and seas are natural places that are semi-related. A moor is a “place saturated with water, usually overgrown with grass, weeds, and heath” (“moor”). It is land uncultivated just as the sea is water uncultivated. The sea is unpredictable, vast, and deep. Similarly, moors are uncontrolled, overgrown, and expansive.
The sea and the moor are compared to God and Heaven in an interesting way. Both the sea and moor are unruly, so what does that say about God and heaven? One argument could show that the two comparisons are opposites of each other. While moors and seas are uncultivated, God and heaven are refined. You need a “Check” or ticket for heaven, but there is free access to the seas and moors. Also, it only takes passive action, seeing, to verify the moor and sea’s existence while it takes physical action, speaking and visiting, to verify the validity of God and heaven. It takes more effort to gain certainty of the eternal.
One could also argue that the speaker compares the two to draw similarities between the two stanzas. God and heaven are like the sea and moor: vast, raw, uncultivated. This would align with Dickinson’s biographical history of skepticism. The religion of her time and society was strict and orderly, but, she did not conform to that ideology despite her saturation in puritan New England. She had her own concept of God and heaven which resided with nature, like the sea and moor. Dickinson can see nature and engage in the eternal, yet the speaker of the poem does not have to do either to know of their existence.
The formal choices in the first two lines of each stanza shows the speaker’s feelings towards the subjects at hand. Dickinson ends the first line with a period which is rare for her poetry. The second line states a new fact similar to the first: she has never seen a moor or the sea. Both of these parts of nature are physical, definite, and secure. However, in the second stanza she uses enjambment to tie the thoughts of God and heaven to the freedom in the metaphysical world. God and heaven are not concrete but abstract, as is her lack of punctuation between the lines. This is a subtle choice, but clearly intentional as Dickinson always was about her punctuation and formal choices.
http://edl.byu.edu/
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