Houses - So the Wise Men Tell Me

Houses - So the Wise Men Tell Me - context Summary

Composed 1859, Published 1891

Written in 1859 and first published posthumously in 1891 in Poems: Second Series, this short lyric shows Emily Dickinson engaging with religious language about the afterlife while quietly undermining it. She takes the Biblical phrase "many mansions" and reframes it in domestic, tactile terms—warmth, exclusion of storms, children finding a way—so the promised comfort feels both literal and ironically uncertain. The poem reflects Dickinson’s sustained preoccupation with faith, immortality, and how theological assurances meet everyday experience in her inward, skeptical voice.