The Props assist the House –

The Props assist the House –
Until the House is Built –
And then the Props withdraw –
And adequate – Erect –

The House support itself –
And cease to recollect
The scaffold, and the Carpenter –
Just such a Retrospect
Hath the Perfected Life –
A Past of Plank – and Nail –
And slowness – then the Stagings drop –
Affirming it – A Soul –

    -F729, J1142, Fascicle 35, 1863


This is fairly straightforward for an Emily Dickinson poem. But even in a straightforward Dickinson poem there are oddities to ponder. The basic gist here is that a soul is like a house. It must be propped up by a scaffolding as it is being built, and then, when you pull the scaffolding away, it stands erect. Once the house is up it no longer remembers the scaffolding, nor the tools and the carpenter. 

The person no longer “recollects” the support system that helped perfect it. That could be a dig at the way people tend to forget all the help they had along the way. Perhaps this is a poem that wishes to recognize the process, yet it also points forward to when it is time to let the support system go. 

It is an encouraging reminder that we will eventually reach equilibrium in life if we have support, which also reminds us of the importance of being that support for others. Poetry itself is something we use to prop ourselves up. 

This poem may also be read as a declaration of independence, like the one made in the poem, “I'm ceded—I've stopped being Theirs—” Dickinson is moving toward a kind of absolute independence in her life. 

I’m drawn to the word “slowness." The process of a “perfected life” takes time. It takes patience. I also admire the idea of a “perfected life.” What does that mean for a poet like Dickinson? Is there such a thing as a perfected life? There is something powerful about the idea that the thing we are working toward is becoming a soul. Normally we think of a soul as something we inherently have, but in Dickinson’s view, in this poem, it appears to be something we are working toward. A soul is something to be achieved. 

  -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

A modern take on the idea in this poem

P.S. An alternative word for "scaffold" in the 8th line that Dickinson provides is "Augur." This is also the word Dickinson used in an alternate version of the poem she later gave to Susan Dickinson. The use of the word Augur here is intriguing. The Dickinson Lexicon tells us

augur, n. [Word play: pun on “auger” the tool and “augur” the omen.]

[ED's var. spelling of “auger”; OE nafu, nave of a wheel + gar, piercer, borer, spear.] Carpentry tool; drill bit; long metal shank; [fig.] beak; hard bird mouth.

[L. av-is, bird + -gar, talk; or L. augēre, increase, promote.] Prophet; diviner; soothsayer; Roman religious official who carried a staff; one who predicts future events in accordance with omens from the behavior of birds.

So, in this one line of this poem, as it appears in the alternate version, “The augur, and the Carpenter,” we have a pun that encompasses the old testament (the prophets) and the new (since Jesus was a carpenter). Part of the perfected life, it implies, is following the example of Christ. But I think Dickinson is also hinting here that eventually even that is a prop that falls away. 

P.P.S. A few days after writing this I came across an Elizabeth Bishop poem called "The Imaginary Iceberg" in which I read these lines, "Icebergs behoove the soul/ (both being self-made from elements least visible)/ to see them so: fleshed, fair, erected indivisible." Here is another great poet talking about the soul being created, rather than inherent.