Recently I posted some of Dickinson’s poems which mention the month of “May.” One of them, “One sister have I in our house,” led me to explore Dickinson’s “house” poems.
When one searches “house” on the online Dickinson Archive, 204 entries pop up, and that represents 79 different poems.
One of those 79 poems is “I dwell in possibility” (which provides “a fairer HOUSE than prose”), and I shared a blog post yesterday about that poem constructed by “a Carpenter & Poet living ‘up in Vermont.’”
Another “house” poem – one of Dickinson’s most famous – is “Because I could not stop for death.” That poem includes this image of a grave:
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground--
The Roof was scarcely visible--
The Cornice—in the Ground--
A “house” poem that caught my eye on the archive, one with which I was unfamiliar, opens with “Doom is the house without the door.”
How eerily perfect and perfectly eerie is that? “Doom is the house without the door”: being trapped in some situation of doom and there is no escape.
That image intrigued me, so I searched for that poem to read it, and the second line completely floored me, “'Tis entered from the Sun –.” I was not expecting a bright and cheerful image at all – but then the stanza takes another sinister turn: “And then the Ladder's thrown away, / Because Escape – is done –.”
Chilling! Some condition “entered from the Sun” leaves the speaker in a “house” with no escape. Is this life itself?
The second stanza is just as paradoxical with its mix of disturbing and spirited (pun intended) lines, where squirrels play and berries dye (and I suspect that pun was intended too):
'Tis varied by the Dream
Of what they do outside--
Where Squirrels play—and Berries dye--
And Hemlocks—bow—to God--
The opening line of that stanza calls to mind Hamlet’s conundrum:
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
And while the one trapped inside this house of doom can only dream “Of what they do outside," perhaps a carriage will pass by – slowly – and its horses heads are toward eternity?
How do you interpret this poem?
When one searches “house” on the online Dickinson Archive, 204 entries pop up, and that represents 79 different poems.
One of those 79 poems is “I dwell in possibility” (which provides “a fairer HOUSE than prose”), and I shared a blog post yesterday about that poem constructed by “a Carpenter & Poet living ‘up in Vermont.’”
Another “house” poem – one of Dickinson’s most famous – is “Because I could not stop for death.” That poem includes this image of a grave:
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground--
The Roof was scarcely visible--
The Cornice—in the Ground--
A “house” poem that caught my eye on the archive, one with which I was unfamiliar, opens with “Doom is the house without the door.”
How eerily perfect and perfectly eerie is that? “Doom is the house without the door”: being trapped in some situation of doom and there is no escape.
That image intrigued me, so I searched for that poem to read it, and the second line completely floored me, “'Tis entered from the Sun –.” I was not expecting a bright and cheerful image at all – but then the stanza takes another sinister turn: “And then the Ladder's thrown away, / Because Escape – is done –.”
Chilling! Some condition “entered from the Sun” leaves the speaker in a “house” with no escape. Is this life itself?
The second stanza is just as paradoxical with its mix of disturbing and spirited (pun intended) lines, where squirrels play and berries dye (and I suspect that pun was intended too):
'Tis varied by the Dream
Of what they do outside--
Where Squirrels play—and Berries dye--
And Hemlocks—bow—to God--
The opening line of that stanza calls to mind Hamlet’s conundrum:
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
And while the one trapped inside this house of doom can only dream “Of what they do outside," perhaps a carriage will pass by – slowly – and its horses heads are toward eternity?
How do you interpret this poem?
RSS Feed
