The Full Text of “The Bustle in a House”
1The Bustle in a House
2The Morning after Death
3Is solemnest of industries
4Enacted opon Earth—
5The Sweeping up the Heart
6And putting Love away
7We shall not want to use again
8Until Eternity—
The Full Text of “The Bustle in a House”
1The Bustle in a House
2The Morning after Death
3Is solemnest of industries
4Enacted opon Earth—
5The Sweeping up the Heart
6And putting Love away
7We shall not want to use again
8Until Eternity—
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“The Bustle in a House” Introduction
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The American poet Emily Dickinson wrote "The Bustle in a House" sometime around 1866. The poem describes the hectic work that follows the death of a loved one (arranging the funeral, organizing the deceased's possessions, and so forth), hinting that all this activity might, in part, be a coping mechanism for grief. The "Heart" and "Love" get tidied away, too, kept safe for the reunion with the departed loved one in the afterlife.
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“The Bustle in a House” Summary
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The flurry of activity that takes place in a house the morning after someone has died is the most somber, serious work ever done on this planet.
Those left behind have to sweep up the pieces of their broken hearts and store the love they had for the deceased somewhere out of sight. They won't want to use either again until the eternal afterlife.
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“The Bustle in a House” Themes
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Death and Mourning
"The Bustle in a House" explores the way that a person's death affects the loved ones they've left behind. The work a family does the morning after someone dies, the poem suggests, isn’t just about tidying the house and arranging the funeral, but about sweeping up the broken pieces of their hearts. In other words, the rituals of mourning are a way of trying to come to terms with great loss.
A house is never more hectic, says the speaker, than the morning after a death. The "bustle" of that day is the "solemnest of industries" (that is, the most serious of labors), undertaken with a strong sense of duty: someone must arrange for the funeral, inform other family members, clean the house in anticipation of visitors, and so on. In other words, death creates a lot of work!
This work might also be a way for the surviving loved ones to distract themselves from their grief, or at least to manage it. Indeed, the "morning" after a death in the family is also a time for mourning, and this activity is the "solemnest [...] on earth" because it’s agonizing. In trying to “sweep up” the broken shards of their “Heart[s],” the loved ones left behind are doing their best to work through an unendurable pain. They must try to put away their love for the dead person because there’s no longer a place for it to go—and it's too painful to keep out in the open.
A loved one's death, the poem thus suggests, causes such a great impact that it seems hard to see how the "Heart" and "Love" could ever come out in the open again—at least, in this life. The speaker imagines the family members tidying their “Heart[s]” and their “Love” away as if they were putting away holiday decorations, waiting for the time when they’ll “want to use” those things again. But that time, the speaker concludes, won’t arrive until “Eternity” (that is, the eternal afterlife) does. It's only in heaven, when people are reunited with those they've lost, that the "Heart" and "Love" will be useful once more.
These closing lines suggest that the rituals of mourning might be both a way to cope with impossible pain and a way of giving oneself hope. The metaphor of “bustle” and tidying makes a quietly hopeful claim that a mourning person’s shattered heart might just be going into winter storage for a while, ready to come out again when everyone is reunited in heaven.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Bustle in a House”
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Lines 1-2
The Bustle in a House
The Morning after DeathThe poem's opening lines set the scene: it's the morning after someone has died, and there's a "bustle," or flurry of energy, "in a House." Readers can assume that the deceased's loved ones are rushing around as they deal with the practical considerations that arise in the aftermath of a death.
The speaker doesn't go into detail regarding these chores and duties, but they might include making arrangements for the funeral, contacting other friends and family, cleaning the house in anticipation of visitors, and so on. In short, death can create a lot of work—a lot of hustle and "bustle."
These lines set up the poem's meter. For the most part, the poem uses iambic trimeter. This refers to lines of three poetic feet, each of which follows an unstressed-stressed syllable pattern:
The Bus- | tle in | a House
The Morn- | ing af- | ter DeathThis steady rhythm perhaps conveys the swift efficiency with which the people in this house go about their death-related chores. The enjambment between these lines (and, indeed, the entire stanza) adds to the sense of hurry. This flurry of activity, of course, contrasts with the lifelessness of the deceased.
Note that there's also a pun in line 2 on the word "Morning." While this refers to the actual time of day, it's also a play on the word "mourning"—that is, a period of grief. This is both a morning full of immediate practical concerns and the early stages of the grieving process. There are two realities going on at once, running in parallel: the mundane tasks made necessary by the death, which keep everyone occupied, and the thornier emotional labor going on below the surface.
That "Bustle," then, can perhaps also be taken as a metaphor for a busy internal world of thoughts and feelings in the wake of death (an idea that the second stanza will explore further).
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Lines 3-4
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted opon Earth— -
Lines 5-6
The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away -
Lines 7-8
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity—
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“The Bustle in a House” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Allusion
In its last line, "The Bustle in a House" alludes to an idea of the afterlife:
The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity—This allusion portrays life and death almost like a cycle of the seasons. Human beings come from "Eternity," live brief lives on earth, and then go back to "Eternity." After life as a physical being in the material world, a new chapter begins for the soul.
Dickinson's precise thoughts about what comes after death are much debated; she grapples with questions about God and the afterlife throughout her poetry. Here, though, the speaker seems to believe in "Eternity" as a place where loved ones, separated by death, can finally meet again.
This idea, of course, is a comforting one. It doesn't matter if earthly life never feels the same again and the "Heart" and "Love" are cleared away for good, because soon enough the people on earth will die, too, and make their way to "Eternity." The bustle in the house seems less important—all the concerns of earthly life seem less important—with the promise of the afterlife waiting on the horizon.
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Metaphor
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Pun
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Enjambment
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"The Bustle in a House" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Bustle
- Solemnest
- Industries
- Enacted
- Opon
- Eternity
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Flurry of activity.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Bustle in a House”
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Form
"The Bustle in a House" is a short poem consisting of two quatrains (four-line stanzas). These stanzas have a steady meter (iambic trimeter and tetrameter, to be specific) and rhyme scheme (ABAB). They're very close in form to the ballad stanza that Dickinson turned to often in her poetry. They also feature Dickinson's famously idiosyncratic use of capitalization; this helps add emphasis to certain words and makes the actions—like "The Sweeping up the Heart"—seem like universal practices.
Overall, the poem has a simple, musical feel to it. The stanzas are also heavily enjambed, resulting in a poem that moves swiftly down the page in a way that mirrors the flurry of activity the speaker describes.
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Meter
"The Bustle in a House" is written using a mixture of iambic trimeter and iambic tetrameter.
An iamb is a poetic foot with an unstressed-stressed syllable pattern; trimeter means there are three feet per line while tetrameter means there are four. The third line of each stanza uses iambic tetrameter, while the rest all use trimeter. This is called "short meter."
Here's the meter at work in the first stanza:
The Bus- | tle in | a House
The Morn- | ing af- | ter Death
Is sol- | emnest | of in- | dustries
Enact- | ed o- | pon Earth—The steady heartbeat of those iambs evokes the "bustle" going on—all that activity taking place in the wake of someone's death. The slightly longer third line, meanwhile, stretches across the page like mourners following a coffin.
Short meter is also commonly used in hymns. Dickinson, who grew up in a religious household, was quite familiar with such rhythms.
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Rhyme Scheme
"The Bustle in a House" uses an alternating rhyme scheme in each stanza:
ABCB DEFE
The second and fourth lines of each stanza rhyme: death/Earth and away/Eternity. In classic Dickinson fashion, these are all slant rhymes, barely perceptible on the ear. They add subtle music to the poem without overwhelming it.
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“The Bustle in a House” Speaker
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"The Bustle in a House" doesn't reveal much about its speaker. The poem feels timeless and universal in part because the speaker draws little attention to themselves, instead focusing on death, grief, and the afterlife. That said, the speaker clearly has some first-hand experience with the "Bustle" after a "Death (and Dickinson certainly knew what it was like to lose someone dear).
The speaker uses the plural pronoun "We" in the poem's second-to-last line. This suggests that the speaker is describing an experience to which most people can relate.
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“The Bustle in a House” Setting
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"The Bustle in a House" talks in general terms about what happens in a house immediately after someone who lived there has died. Though the poem doesn't go into specifics, it's easy to imagine some of the duties that might make up the "Bustle" the speaker describes: making arrangements for the funeral, notifying other friends and family, dealing with the deceased's will, tidying the house in anticipation of visitors, and so on. The poem subtly contrasts this "solemn[]" earthbound "Bustle" with the "Eternity" that the speaker declares awaits people after death.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Bustle in a House”
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Literary Context
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) published almost nothing during her lifetime, and after 1865 she rarely even left her family home in Amherst, Massachusetts. But from within this circumscribed world, she explored the heights and depths of human experience through her groundbreaking, world-changing poetry.
While Dickinson wasn't too publicly involved in the literary world of her time, she was still part of a swell of 19th-century American innovation. Her contemporary Walt Whitman (who became as famous as Dickinson was obscure) was similarly developing an unprecedented and unique poetic voice, and the transcendentalists (like Emerson and Thoreau) shared her deep belief in the spiritual power of nature. Dickinson herself was inspired by English writers like William Wordsworth and Charlotte Brontë, whose works similarly found paths through the everyday world into the sublime, terrifying, and astonishing.
Death was a frequent theme for Dickinson; she wrote about it from every conceivable perspective, from that of a heartbroken mourner to that of the deceased. Some of her most famous poems on the subject include "Because I could not stop for Death," "I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—," "I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain," and "As imperceptibly as grief." Like "Bustle," her poem "There's been a Death, in the Opposite House" specifically describes what happens to the living in the wake of someone's death.
Dickinson went to a religious school as a child and continued to be preoccupied with questions about faith and the meaning of existence throughout her life. Church literature, then, was also a major influence on Dickinson, and her poems often employ a meter and diction similar to that found in hymns.
Historical Context
Dickinson wrote most of her poetry during the American Civil war, which ran from 1861 to 1865. She was firmly on the Union side of that bloody conflict, though she rarely addressed the political world around her directly in her poetry. Instead, she preferred either to write about her immediate surroundings or to take a much wider philosophical perspective.
Still, many of Dickinson's poems about death—this one included—might indirectly reflect her feelings about wartime grief; she would have been surrounded by families grieving their war dead. By the time this poem is thought to have been written, Dickinson had also already experienced her own fair share of loss: her second cousin, Sophia Holland, died when Emily was just 13, and she was deeply moved by the death of her former principal, Leonard Humphrey, in 1850.
Dickinson also grew up in a religious community and came of age during the religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening. Dickinson herself was even swept up by this religious movement for a time. Though she ultimately rejected organized religion, her poems remain preoccupied with theological concerns. Many express wonder about the afterlife, speculating on what it's like to meet God—if that's what happens when people die (something Dickinson wasn't sure about).
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More “The Bustle in a House” Resources
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External Resources
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Emily Blaster — A video game based on Dickinson's poetry—have fun learn some of her lines at the same time!
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Dickinson's Legacy — Listen to three contemporary writers discussing Dickinson's influence on their work.
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Dickinson's Rhythms — Check out an informative discussion of Emily Dickinson's distinctive use of meter.
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A Manuscript of the Poem — Check out "The Bustle in a House" in Dickinson's own hand.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Emily Dickinson
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