This is a poem about the soul. Despite her extensive familiarity with centuries of theological writings, Emily Dickinson is not going to solve in an eight-line poem the problem that has perplexed Christian theologians and secular philosophers since Antiquity: what exactly is the soul? It is, however, her interest. After all, the poem would scan the same had she used the word “heart” instead of soul or even “brain,” familiar and accessible entities that would have in turn removed the weight of ambiguity.

Much like her fellow New Englander Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose Transcendental publications Dickinson read with interest, Dickinson here must be content not to define the soul, which exceeds the grasp of even the most intrigued poet, but rather to argue its importance. I am not sure what the soul is, the poem argues, but it is important, central to how a person engages life and crucial to how the person handles the dynamics of relationships, the integrity of yearning, and ultimately the reality of isolation. The soul then is offered here as the central element of a person’s life. Without limiting the soul to the strictures and dogma of any religion, the poem offers rather how this thing we agree to call a soul at once expresses emotions and ideas, feelings and thoughts.