Grammar/ Poetry Explication of Emily Dickinson`s `The Bustle in The House`

Grammar and Poetry Explication of Emily Dickinson 's The Bustle in the House

The Bustle in the House ' is a short but dramatic work , written in iambic trimester (c . 1866 ) which in the space of two stanzas , each consisting of one sentence , manages to convey intense meaning . The Bustle in the House ' uses grammar in the form of nouns , verbs appositives and gerunds and the meaning of language , to masterfully compare the physical and the spiritual , leading the reader on a journey similar to the one taken when we die

The

first two lines are as follows and set the mood and tone immediately

The bustle in a house

The morning after death

The words bustle (verb ) and death ' convey opposite images and show that there is life after death . They also show us that there has been tragedy in the house of the speaker . The lack of punctuation throughout the poem leads to a very brisk pace - indicative of the feeling that after death we are supposed to get on with things very quickly , and after the stillness and somberness of death comes the action of bustle , by those who remain . The first verse is completed by the following two lines

Is solemnest of industries

Enacted upon earth , -

In this case , the word solemnest ' acts as appositive to the noun industries , as it describes and reinforces what is meant here . An appositive is a noun or pronoun -- often with modifiers -- set beside another noun or pronoun to explain or identify it (Owl , 2006

The word industries ' is again in contrast with death as it conveys action - reinforced by the verb enacted , although the phrase itself suggests that the survivors are just going through the motions

The noun earth ' reminds us that we are still in the physical realm in the first verse , and as the last word in that verse , serves as a good way to transport us to the spiritual , as the dead are transported from the physical to the spiritual . It is also directly after earth ' that we see two of the only four instances of punctuation in the poem - the comma and the dash . There is meaning in this use of language . In general , Dickinson 's work around that time showed a transition from a dominant use of the exclamation mark to a preference for the dash . This accompanied her shift from ejaculatory poems to poems where the energies exist more in the relationships between words and between the poet and her words - such as The Bustle in the House (Denman , 1993 . We are transported to the next stanza

The use of terminology and phraseology in the last verse is interesting

The sweeping up the heart

And putting love away

A gerund is a verbal that ends in -ing and functions as a noun . The term verbal indicates that a gerund , like the other two kinds of verbals , is based on a verb and therefore expresses action or a state of being . However...