Emily Dickinson

A Well

WHAT mystery pervades a well!
The water lives so far,

Neighbor in a jar

Dickinson's typical compression—water is both close (in the well) and impossibly distant (underground). The jar image makes it domestic and strange at once.

Like neighbor from another world
Residing in a jar.
The grass does not appear afraid;
I often wonder he

Grass as 'he'

She genders the grass masculine throughout. In her era, masculine pronouns often marked the rational/bold versus feminine fear—she's noting the grass's courage.

Can stand so close and look so bold
At what is dread to me.
Related somehow they may be,—

Sedge by the sea

Sedge grows in coastal marshes where water has no bottom—'floorless.' The grass family isn't afraid of abysses humans fear.

The sedge stands next the sea,
Where he is floorless, yet of fear
No evidence gives he.
But nature is a stranger yet;
The ones that cite her most
Have never passed her haunted house,

Haunted house

Those who 'cite' nature are scientists and naturalists. She's saying even experts haven't entered nature's real mystery—they catalog the outside.

Nor simplified her ghost.
To pity those that know her not
Is helped by the regret
That those who know her, know her less
The nearer her they get.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Why the Well Is Terrifying

Dickinson starts with dread—her word, not 'wonder' or 'mystery' alone. The well frightens her because it's an abyss in your backyard. Victorian wells were hand-dug, often 30-60 feet deep, and children drowned in them regularly. But her fear isn't practical; it's ontological.

The jar image in line 4 is doing two things: making the well domestic (water stored in kitchens) and emphasizing containment of the uncontainable. Wells hold water from underground rivers, aquifers—whole hidden systems. You drop a bucket into another world.

She contrasts her fear with the grass's boldness. Grass roots go down into that same dark water source, live in it, yet show 'no evidence' of fear. The sedge comparison extends this: sedge grows where ocean meets land, where water literally has no floor, is 'floorless'—yet the plant is fine. She's observing that the natural world is native to the abyss humans find terrifying. The grass belongs to the mystery; we don't.

The Failure of Expertise

The volta at line 13—'But nature is a stranger yet'—shifts from wells to epistemology. 'Stranger' means both 'more strange' and 'more of a stranger': nature remains alien no matter how much you study it.

'Those that cite her most' are the scientists, naturalists, taxonomists of her era—people who name and categorize. Dickinson says they've 'never passed her haunted house': they've cataloged the exterior but haven't entered the actual mystery. The ghost they haven't simplified is nature's essential unknowability.

The final stanza delivers her paradox: proximity increases ignorance. 'Those who know her, know her less / The nearer her they get' reverses the scientific assumption that study brings mastery. Dickinson is arguing that intimacy with nature reveals how little human categories capture—the closer you look, the more the mystery deepens. This is her epistemology throughout: knowledge as expanding mystery, not diminishing it.