“This World is not Conclusion” was written by the 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson. Since most of Dickinson’s poems were unpublished during her lifetime, the year in which Dickinson originally composed “This World is not Conclusion” remains unknown. However, the poem first appeared in print in the posthumous collection Poems: Third Series in 1896. Like many of Dickinson’s poems, “This World is not Conclusion” is concerned with the topic of eternity and life after death. With subtle humor, Dickinson describes the unsolvable “riddle” of eternity, portrays the great lengths people have taken to understand and possess eternal life, and challenges the blind faith and ignorance on the topic demonstrated by many Christians.

Although Dickinson wrote roughly 1,800 poems, she only published ten of them during her lifetime, including the famous poems “Nobody knows this little rose” (1858), “I taste a liquor never brewed” (1861), “Success is counted sweetest” (1864), and “A narrow fellow in the grass” (1866). Some literary historians speculate that this enormous disparity between published and written poems arose because Dickinson’s enigmatic poetry was not suited to 19th century American readers’ tastes and could not find an interested audience. Other critics have insisted that Dickinson deliberately avoided publication, unwilling to compromise her art by selling it commercially. Either way, it is clear that Dickinson’s poems were not without an audience. Throughout her life, Dickinson regularly shared poems through correspondence with family, close friends, and even a few acquaintances within the publishing industry.

Dickinson’s work found international acclaim once several family members and acquaintances published a volume of her poetry in 1890, four years after she died. This first volume, Poems, was instantly successful, and publishers printed 11 editions of this collection in less than two years. For decades, the Dickinson family labored to transcribe and publish volumes of poetry from Emily Dickinson’s numerous manuscripts, preserving the majority of her writings and ensuring her legacy as one of America’s foremost poets.

Poet Biography

Emily Dickinson was born December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, a town with a strong Puritan tradition. Her father Edward Dickinson was a wealthy lawyer and American statesman, so her childhood was spent comfortably with her siblings Austin and Lavinia at Homestead, a mansion built by her grandfather on Amherst’s main street. Dickinson attended Amherst Academy, where she received instruction in the strict Calvinist Puritan doctrine with which she would struggle in her poetry. Amherst Academy offered its female students an unusually rigorous education in arithmetic, the sciences, and literature. Dickinson also regularly attended lectures by Amherst College president Edward Hitchcock, whose passion for scientific observation kindled a similar interest within Dickinson and inspired many of her future poems. Although she wrote poetry during this period, none of her adolescent poems have been preserved.

After graduating from Amherst Academy in 1847, Dickinson studied at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Dickinson quickly became dissatisfied with Mount Holyoke. Some historians suggest that Dickinson disagreed with the school’s “invasive religious practices” (Habegger, Alfred. “Emily Dickinson.” Britannica.com). Others propose that Dickinson found the education redundant or that she was merely homesick. Regardless of the true reason, Dickinson abandoned her studies at the seminary after one year and returned home where she would reside with her family for the rest of her life. In 1847, concurrent to this period of uncertainty, Dickinson also met Susan Gilbert, who would become her closest friend, literary critic, sister-in-law, and possible lover.

The next decade brought significant changes to Dickinson’s life, many of which troubled her. As more of her school friends married and had children, Dickinson’s social circle rapidly dwindled. Her dislike of domestic labor and its constraints on her intellectual freedom inspired a lifelong aversion to marriage, which she portrayed in poems like “I’m ‘wife’—I’ve finished that” and “She rose to his requirement, dropped.” This isolated Dickinson from her peers, and she increasingly retreated into her own world, limiting visitors and devoting herself to poetry. Although she maintained some friendships through correspondence, these were largely based on literary interests. Dickinson’s correspondence with Susan Gilbert shows Gilbert introducing Dickinson to the work of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as well as the Brontë sisters, all of whom influenced Dickinson. These letters also reveal Dickinson’s growing perception of herself as a poet.

In the 1850s, Gilbert married Dickinson’s brother Austin. The newlywed couple moved next door to Homestead in 1856. The friendship remained constant, if sometimes turbulent. Their letters demonstrate Gilbert’s importance to and influence on Dickinson’s poetry. Dickinson saw Gilbert as an indispensable critic and sent her at least 270 poems. A number of Dickinson’s poems were dedicated to Gilbert, including “I have a Bird in spring” (1858).

By 1860, Dickinson had written over 150 poems. From the start, Dickinson’s poetic vision was clearly defined. These early poems employ the same kind of hymn and ballad meter she often used; they explore her feelings of abandonment, her sense of spiritual dissatisfaction, and her wonder at death, mortality, eternity, and solitude. The early 1860s were the most productive writing years of Dickinson’s life. Although exact numbers are unknown, historians estimate Dickinson wrote nearly 1,000 poems between 1861 and 1865 alone. Disturbed by the US Civil War and suffering from losing her sight, Dickinson withdrew nearly completely from society. Her poems from this time envision the stillness of death (“I heard a Fly buss—when I died”), depict metaphorical carriage rides with mortality (“Because I could not stop for Death”), and describe everyday events in the language of tombs and funerals (“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” and “I died for Beauty—but was scarce”).

While Dickinson’s poetic output slowed in the last 20 years of her life, she still wrote roughly a third of her poetry in this period. These years saw the composition and even publication of some of her most famous poems. “A narrow Fellow in the Grass” was published in Springfield Daily Republican in 1866, and “Success is counted sweetest,” although likely written years earlier, appeared in the 1878 poetry anthology A Masque of Poets, which featured work by well-known writers like Louisa May Alcott and Christina Rossetti. Dickinson also composed the famous poems “Tell all the truth but tell it slant” and “Apparently with no surprise” sometime in the 1870s and 1880s, respectively. Likely written in 1884, after the deaths of Dickinson’s father, mother, and nephew, “Apparently with no surprise” depicts the sudden death of a once beautiful flower during winter, questioning the casual cruelty of a god that would design such senseless death. One of Dickinson’s final poems, “Apparently with no surprise” is perhaps her last poetic meditation on the reality of death and the nature of divinity.

Emily Dickinson died in Amherst in 1886. The cause of death was likely kidney disease. Shortly after her passing, her younger sister Lavinia discovered her poetry collection. Together with Susan Gilbert and Austin Dickinson’s mistress Mabel Loomis Todd, Lavinia Dickinson preserved her sister’s poetic legacy. Just four years after Dickinson’s death, the first collection of her poetry, simply titled Poems, debuted in 1890.

Poem Text

This World is not Conclusion.

A Species stands beyond—

Invisible, as Music—

But positive, as Sound—

It beckons, it baffles—

Philosophy, don’t know—

And through a Riddle, at the last—

Sagacity, must go—

To guess it, puzzles scholars—

To gain it, Men have borne

Contempt of Generations

And Crucifixion, shown—

Faith slips—and laughs, and rallies—

Blushes, if any see—

Plucks at a twig of Evidence—

And asks a Vane, the way—

Much Gesture, from the Pulpit—

Strong Hallelujahs roll—

Narcotics cannot still the Tooth

That nibbles at the soul—

Dickinson, Emily. “This World is not Conclusion.” 1896. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

“This World is not Conclusion” opens with the speaker’s titular assertion that her current life will not conclude with this world—death will be merely a step in a larger journey, since there is a “species” which “stands beyond” (Line 2), waiting for the departed to join them. Dickinson describes this new “species” of people and their other world using similes: The other world and its inhabitants are “Invisible, as Music” (Line 3) and as “positive, as Sound” (Line 4). With these comparisons, Dickinson expresses her paradoxical “positive” certainty that an eternal world exists despite her inability to see that world and her ignorance of its true nature.

The next two quatrains explain that the next world “beckons” and yet “baffles” (Line 5) people on Earth. Human constructs like philosophy “don’t know” (Line 6) what to make of eternity, and although “scholars” (Line 9) may “guess” (Line 9) at the nature of eternity, they are ultimately puzzled by it. “Sagacity” and traditional methods of judgment “must go” (Line 8), Dickinson argues, before one is able to understand and solve the “Riddle” (Line 7) of the other world. At the same time, there are those who attempt to “gain” (Line 10), or secure, their place in the next world—“Men” who have “borne” (Line 10) the “contempt of Generations” (Line 11) and have endured “Crucifixion” (Line 12) or violent martyrdoms to become worthy of entering the next life.

The remainder of the poem focuses on the concept of faith. Immediately following the reference to men undergoing crucifixion to attain eternal life, Dickinson challenges the idea of steadfast faith, a concept she personifies. Instead, she argues, faith “slips” (Line 13), “rallies” (Line 13), and “blushes” (Line 14) if anyone should see its lapse. This anxious faith “plucks at a twig of Evidence” (Line 15) to justify its existence and “asks” a weathervane to tell it “the way” (Line 16) to go. Dickinson portrays faith as desperate to find some form of proof of itself.

The final quatrain portrays the ways people overcompensate for and stifle their religious doubts. No one is safe from doubt—even religious leaders use excessive gesturing and “strong Hallelujahs” (Line 18) to convince their congregations “from the Pulpit” (Line 17). In other words, those with shaky faith attempt to reassure themselves with loud and confident displays of religious zeal. Ultimately, these efforts are futile, Dickinson suggests. The poem concludes by stating, “Narcotics cannot still the Tooth / That nibbles at the soul” (Lines 19-20), a couplet arguing that despite people’s efforts to quell their doubts, there will always be a gnawing skepticism from which their soul cannot escape.