A House upon the Height —

A House upon the Height —
That Wagon never reached —
No Dead, were ever carried down —
No Peddler's Cart — approached —

Whose Chimney never smoked —
Whose Windows — Night and Morn —
Caught Sunrise first — and Sunset — last —
Then — held an Empty Pane —

Whose fate — Conjecture knew —
No other neighbor — did —
And what it was — we never lisped —
Because He — never told —
                                F555 (1863)  J399


The poem sets a Gothic scene suggestive of a tale. Unfortunately we will never know the tale because only Conjecture knows what happened there on the hill and why the house is deserted – and Conjecture isn't talking.
Dickinson takes us into the scene with breathy 'h' sounds and then launches into a series of spooky details. The poem is written in the same meter as the previous one, a predominately trimeter whose choppy lines contribute to the drama of the scene. 

What might have happened – or what kind of house might this be that wagons and peddlers never approached, where no dead were ever brought down, where the chimney never smoked? We can picture the house in its gloomy isolation, its window panes reflecting both sunrise and sunset – and dark and empty at night. But then the poem ends with the mystery: the 'we" – the townspeople or at least the children – never told its story because they never knew. I suspect plenty of stories were made up, though.

One could try to shoehorn in some sort of metaphor for a hillside crypt here, the repository of the dead (hence, the dead were never carried out), but wouldn't that mean that wagons did in fact reach it to deliver the dead? No, unless someone has a better story for this poem I'm sticking with the spooky mystery house idea.