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Emily DickinsonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Originally, this poem was left untitled—using the first line as the title is a long-time poetry convention. Therefore, it is best to examine the poem without the title for the contained sense of balance it carries as six freestanding stanzas. The first line is completely self-contained—it ends in an exclamation mark, finishing the thought rather than carrying it over to the next line. This use of simple, straightforward language and closing punctuation causes the line to act as a thesis statement for the rest of the poem. Every image that follows is in support of the idea that even a small, enclosed space like a well holds unknowable and possibly unfathomable depths.
The first stanza introduces the theme of mystery in an intimate, jovial tone. The water is described as a “neighbor” (Line 3), and the well is shrunk into a “jar” (Line 4). This perspective builds a personal relationship between the speaker and the well, one that is reinforced in the second stanza, when the speaker is identified through the pronoun “I” while the well is personified as “he.”
By Emily Dickinson
A Bird, came down the Walk
Emily Dickinson
A Clock stopped—
Emily Dickinson
A narrow Fellow in the Grass (1096)
Emily Dickinson
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Emily Dickinson
"Faith" is a fine invention
Emily Dickinson
Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)
Emily Dickinson
Hope is a strange invention
Emily Dickinson
"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers
Emily Dickinson
I Can Wade Grief
Emily Dickinson
I Felt a Cleaving in my Mind
Emily Dickinson
I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain
Emily Dickinson
If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking
Emily Dickinson
If I should die
Emily Dickinson
If you were coming in the fall
Emily Dickinson
I heard a Fly buzz — when I died
Emily Dickinson
I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
Emily Dickinson
Much Madness is divinest Sense—
Emily Dickinson
Success Is Counted Sweetest
Emily Dickinson
Tell all the truth but tell it slant
Emily Dickinson
The Only News I Know
Emily Dickinson