“This World is not Conclusion” Introduction

• In "This World is not Conclusion," Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) explores the tension between faith and doubt. The poem's speaker intuits that this world isn't the only one and that people go on to another world after they die. But their belief stands on shaky ground. Though many have tried, the speaker uneasily observes, no one can really prove the existence of an afterlife—so it's hard to really get comfortable with the idea, and doubt gnaws at them. This poem (like nearly all of Dickinson's work) wasn't published until after her death; it first appeared in the 1896 collection Poems.

• Read the full text of “This World is not Conclusion”

“This World is not Conclusion” Summary

• Our time on earth isn't all that there is. Something exists beyond death—invisible as music, but just as real as sound. This other world invites us to come closer, and it perplexes us; philosophy can't explain or confirm it, and even great wisdom must accept that this puzzle doesn't seem to have an answer. Scholars can't guess whether the other world is there—but, for the sake of getting there, people have endured the world's scorn, and even been martyred. Faith sometimes stumbles in thinking about the afterlife, and laughs nervously, and tries to get back on its feet, blushing with embarrassment if anyone notices it faltering; it grasps at the tiniest slivers of evidence and looks to a weathervane to see if it can point the way toward an answer. Up in the pulpit, preachers wave their arms and cry "Hallelujah!" But there's no drug that can numb the pain of doubt, which gnaws away at the soul.

“This World is not Conclusion” Themes

• 

  Faith vs. Doubt

  This poem begins with a bold declaration: "This World is not Conclusion." In other words, this life and this world is not the only one: something "stands beyond" the life we know. But as the speaker explores this notion further, their confidence falters. They simply can't say why they believe in a world beyond this one, and that leaves them grasping for an assurance that they can never find. Even an intense intuition of an afterlife, the poem suggests, is not quite strong enough to keep fear and doubt from "nibbl[ing] at the soul."

  Some part of the speaker is absolutely certain that there's a life after this one. They're sure of it in the same way that they're sure of music, which—though "invisible"—is also "positive," most definitely and inarguably real. That melodious simile suggests this intuited afterlife feels alluring, too: it "beckons" like the sound of a distant violin.

  But even as the afterlife beckons, it "baffles," refusing to come out and show itself plainly. The speaker's sense of the world to come is purely intuitive, founded on nothing that one could call evidence, exactly. That's because there's no evidence to be found, no way to prove that an intuition in a life after death is real. As the speaker bluntly puts it, "Philosophy don't know"; "sagacity" (or wisdom) is no use at all in unravelling the great mystery. Even "Faith" itself stumbles sometimes in the face of this problem and "plucks at a twig of Evidence," searching for some kind of external support.

  In the end, the speaker says, philosophy, science, religion, and other such "narcotics" are no help: none can blunt the needly "Tooth" of doubt, which gnaws away even at those who feel in their bones that "this World is not Conclusion." Or, at the very least, none of these supports is any help to the speaker, who's left suspended between intuitive faith and rational uncertainty.

  • See where this theme is active in the poem.

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “This World is not Conclusion”

• Lines 1-4

  This World is not Conclusion.
  A Species stands beyond—
  Invisible, as Music—
  But positive, as Sound—

  The first lines of this poem appear to be the speaker's fervent declaration of faith:

  This World is not Conclusion.
  A Species stands beyond—

  In other words: there is a world and a life beyond the one we know; the "conclusion" of life here isn't the end. What lies in the "beyond," exactly, the speaker can't say. It's just a "species," a something, and it's as "invisible, as Music." But it's also "positive, as sound."

  Those paired similes suggest that the speaker's faith in the world beyond relies on a kind of perception very different from the ordinary. As the cliché has it, seeing is believing—but the world after ours most definitely cannot be seen. Thus, metaphorically speaking, it can't be understood, defined, or confirmed. Nonetheless, it can be perceived, as music can. There's no arguing that something doesn't exist just because you can't see it; sound is the proof.

  By presenting the other world as a phenomenon like music, the speaker doesn't simply suggest that it's invisible but real. They also hint that it feels as alluring and haunting as the sound of a distant pipe over the hills.

  In these first four lines, then, it sounds as if the speaker has a firm faith in something beautiful to come after this life. This apparent certainty, however, will shift into unease over the course of this poem's 20 lines. Already, the poem's form gives some hint of that shift:

  • The ABCB rhyme scheme here cuts through the long unbroken stanza, making the poem feel more like five quatrains (or four-line stanzas) running into each other than a continuous train of thought. That shape will match the speaker's state of mind: a nervous, fretful one, in which very different thoughts and feelings chase each other's tails.
  • The meter similarly suggests tension. Most of the lines here are written in iambic trimeter—that is, lines of three iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "A Spe- | cies stands | beyond." Occasionally, however, a longer line of iambic tetrameter (four iambs) intrudes. The rhythms thus feel as edgy as the rhymes—anxiously tight and unpredictable.

• Lines 5-8

  It beckons, and it baffles—
  Philosophy, dont know—
  And through a Riddle, at the last—
  Sagacity, must go—

  

  

• Lines 9-12

  To guess it, puzzles scholars—
  To gain it, Men have borne
  Contempt of Generations
  And Crucifixion, shown—

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 13-16

  Faith slips—and laughs, and rallies—
  Blushes, if any see—
  Plucks at a twig of Evidence—
  And asks a Vane, the way—

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 17-20

  Much Gesture, from the Pulpit—
  Strong Hallelujahs roll—
  Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
  That nibbles at the soul—

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

“This World is not Conclusion” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Simile

  "This World is not Conclusion" uses twin similes to evoke all that's beautiful and ungraspable about the afterlife.

  Whatever "stands beyond" this world, the speaker says, it's:

  Invisible, as Music—
  But positive, as Sound—

  The afterlife, in other words, can't be perceived with the eyes any more than music can. But it's certainly there, just as sound is. Through these similes, intuition becomes the ability to believe in what is unseen. Perhaps that's especially fitting because people so often use sight as a metaphor for understanding and comprehension. One needs a different kind of sense to perceive the world beyond, one that's more like the ear than the eye.

  Notice the subtle distinction between "music" and "sound" here, too. Presenting the world beyond as music, the speaker hints that there's something haunting and alluring about it; to think of it is like hearing a piper playing from far away. "Sound," meanwhile, is a broader and less romantic idea, just a "positive," certain fact of most human experience. In their moments of faith, then, the speaker feels the promise of the afterlife as something at once lovely and uncomplicated. They just know that the other world is there, as simply as one knows when one hears a sound.

  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Personification

  

  
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Allusion

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Parallelism

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

"This World is not Conclusion" 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.

• Species
• Positive
• Sagacity
• Borne
• Vane
• Narcotics

• "Species," here, doesn't mean "a grouping of creatures," but something more like—well, "something," some unknown type of existence.

  • See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “This World is not Conclusion”

• Form

  Dickinson uses a variation on one of her favorite forms here. While the poem is written as one long stanza of 20 lines, its ABCB rhyme scheme also divides it into five quatrains (or four-line stanzas)—a shape Dickinson often turned to. The meter is unfamiliar, too:

  • The poem is mostly written in iambic trimeter (lines of three iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "A Spe- | cies stands | beyond") with an occasional line of iambic tetrameter (four iambs in a row, as in " Narcot- | ics can- | not still | the Tooth").
  • These are both characteristic Dickinson rhythms (though she more often arranged them in the steady alternating pattern known as common meter).

  In both its rhymes and its rhythms, then, this poem feels as if it's trying out an experiment, tweaking familiar ballad stanzas into a new shape. Perhaps the single-stanza form here suggests the speaker's dilemma: their faith and their doubt run right into each other, like nervous thoughts.

• Meter

  For the most part, "This World is not Conclusion" is written in iambic trimeter. That means that its lines use three iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm. Here's how that sounds in the first two lines:

  This World | is not | Conclusion
  A Spe- | cies stands | beyond—

  (Note that the first line uses what's known as a feminine ending: an extra soft, unstressed syllable at the end of the line.)

  Here and there, though, Dickinson introduces a longer line of iambic tetrameter (four iambs in a row)—for instance, in line 19:

  Narcot- | ics can- | not still | the Tooth
  That nib- | bles at | the soul—

  In these closing words, the longer line works like a drumroll, a buildup to the poem's anxious conclusion.

  Dickinson often used a mixture of iambic tetrameter and trimeter in her poetry—though more often in the regular alternating pattern known as common meter. The unpredictable mixture of shorter and longer lines here helps to support the poem's uneasy mood: all those trimeter lines feel urgent and breathless, and the occasional spike of a longer line keeps the poem's rhythm from settling into comfortable predictability.

  Little variations in the meter support that sense of unease, too. Listen, for instance, to the description of a personified "Faith" stumbling over its doubts in lines 13-15:

  Faith slips— | and laughs, | and rallies—
  Blushes, | if an- | y see—
  Plucks at | a twig | of Ev- | idence—

  Lines 14 and 15 begin with a trochee, the opposite foot to an iamb, with a DUM-da rhythm. That up-front stress evokes Faith's stumble, its faltering—and its embarrassed attempts to "rall[y]" from doubt.

• Rhyme Scheme

  The poem uses a repeating ABCB rhyme scheme, subtly breaking one long stanza into five groups of four lines (with new rhyme sounds introduced in each). Much of Dickinson's poetry uses a similar pattern of rhyme, and its singsong steadiness helps to create her distinctive effect: complex, mysterious thought comes wrapped in familiar sounds.

  Also distinctively Dickinsonian are all the slant rhymes here. Pairing beyond with Sound, borne with shown, and see with way, Dickinson subtly tugs the poem's rhymes away from chiming perfection—an effect that feels especially fitting in a poem about doubt and mystery.

“This World is not Conclusion” Speaker

• The poem's speaker is a person caught between faith and doubt. On the one hand, they feel certain that there's a world beyond this one: they're sure of it as they're sure of music. On the other, they can't quite explain their reasons for that intuition—and this gives them pause. Though they know that many have believed so deeply in the afterlife that they've suffered and died for its sake, they also know that there's no way to prove that those people didn't die in vain. (That thought is particularly worrying when applied to the "Crucifixion," the death that Christianity maintains opened the door to the heavenly afterlife!)

  The speaker's instinctive belief thus keeps pressing up against the sharp "Tooth" of doubt. Intuition and hope, for them, are not quite enough to live on; some part of them longs for concrete proof that what they suspect about the world beyond is true.

“This World is not Conclusion” Setting

• "This World is not Conclusion" doesn't have a clear setting. In one sense, it takes place in the speaker's mind; in another, it simply takes place in the earthly world. The philosophical questions the speaker raises here—Is there an afterlife? How can one live with faith? How can one live with doubt?—are matters relevant to every living person. But they're also the speaker's most private anxieties and dilemmas. Some thinkers might say, "Faith means believing without evidence"; some might say "I won't believe in anything without proof." This speaker is caught uneasily between these positions.

  While the setting here is more internal than external, readers might still be inclined to read the speaker as a person from Dickinson's own time and place. The speaker's unimpressed depiction of a preacher making "Much Gesture, from the Pulpit"—flailing around in an impassioned sermon—feels as if it's taken from observation, a snapshot of a Sunday at church in 19th-century New England.

Literary and Historical Context of “This World is not Conclusion”

• 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 her circumscribed world, she explored the heights and depths of human experience through her groundbreaking poetry.

  No one else sounds quite like Dickinson. Her poems use simple, folky forms—ballad stanzas, for instance—to explore profound philosophical questions, passionate loves, and the mysteries of nature.

  While Dickinson didn't get too 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 also 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.

  After Dickinson died, her sister Lavinia discovered a trunk of nearly 1,800 secret poems squirreled away in a bedroom and began (after a great deal of family drama) to publish them. This poem, likely written in the 1860s, finally appeared in print some thirty years later in Poems (1896). Released into the world at last, Dickinson's poetry became internationally famous and beloved. Her work and her life story still influence all kinds of artists.

  Historical Context

  Dickinson's most active writing years coincided with one of the most tumultuous times in American history: the Civil War (1861–1865). However, Dickinson rarely addressed the political world directly in her poetry, preferring either to write about her immediate surroundings or to take a much wider philosophical perspective.

  Dickinson grew up in a religious community (her father was a noted minister) and came of age during the religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening. Dickinson herself was swept up by this religious movement for a time. Though she ultimately questioned and moved away from organized religion, her poems remain preoccupied with questions of faith and doubt. Many express wonder about the afterlife or speculate on what it's like to meet God—if that's indeed what happens when people die, which Dickinson wasn't always sure of. This speaker's mixture intuitive faith and uneasy doubt might reflect Dickinson's own spiritual conflict.

More “This World is not Conclusion” Resources

• External Resources

  • Dickinson's Legacy — Read contemporary novelist Helen Oyeyemi's essay on what Dickinson means to her.

  • The Emily Dickinson Museum — Visit the website of the Emily Dickinson Museum to find a detailed overview of the poet's life and work.

  • The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem.

  • Dickinson and Religion — Read an article discussing Dickinson's complicated relationship with religious faith and doubt.

  • Emily Dickinson Archive — Visit the Emily Dickinson Archive to see images of Dickinson's manuscripts and learn about how they were discovered and published.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by Emily Dickinson

  • A Bird, came down the Walk

  • After great pain, a formal feeling comes –

  • A Light exists in Spring

  • A Murmur in the Trees—to note—

  • A narrow Fellow in the Grass

  • An awful Tempest mashed the air—

  • As imperceptibly as grief

  • A still—Volcano—Life—

  • A Word dropped careless on a Page

  • Because I could not stop for Death —

  • Before I got my eye put out

  • Fame is a fickle food

  • Hope is the thing with feathers

  • I cannot live with You –

  • I cautious, scanned my little life

  • I could bring You Jewels—had I a mind to—

  • I did not reach Thee

  • I died for Beauty—but was scarce

  • I dreaded that first Robin, so

  • I dwell in Possibility –

  • I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

  • If I can stop one heart from breaking

  • I had been hungry, all the Years

  • I have a Bird in spring

  • I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -

  • I like a look of Agony

  • I like to see it lap the Miles

  • I measure every Grief I meet

  • I’m Nobody! Who are you?

  • I started Early — Took my Dog —

  • I taste a liquor never brewed

  • It was not Death, for I stood up

  • I—Years—had been—from Home—

  • Like Rain it sounded till it curved

  • Much Madness is divinest Sense -

  • My life closed twice before its close

  • My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun

  • Nature is what we see

  • One need not be a Chamber — to be Haunted

  • Publication — is the Auction

  • Safe in their Alabaster Chambers

  • Shipwreck

  • Success is counted sweetest

  • Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

  • The Brain—is wider than the Sky—

  • The Bustle in a House

  • The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants

  • There came a Wind like a Bugle

  • There is no Frigate like a Book

  • There's a certain Slant of light

  • There's been a Death, in the Opposite House

  • The saddest noise, the sweetest noise

  • The Sky is low — the Clouds are mean

  • The Soul has bandaged moments

  • The Soul selects her own Society

  • The Wind – tapped like a tired Man –

  • They shut me up in Prose –

  • This is my letter to the world

  • 'Twas the old—road—through pain—

  • We grow accustomed to the Dark

  • What mystery pervades a well!

  • Whose cheek is this?

  • Wild nights - Wild nights!