Emily Dickinson

Faith is the pierless bridge

pierless bridge

A bridge without piers—no visible supports touching the ground. The paradox is the point: faith holds you up without anything underneath.

FAITH is the pierless bridge
Supporting what we see
Unto the scene that we do not,
Too slender for the eye.

Too slender

Faith is invisible ('too slender for the eye'), yet the poem insists it's also made of steel. Dickinson wants both fragility and strength.

It bears the soul as bold

rocked in steel

'Rocked' like a cradle—maternal comfort. But the cradle is made of steel, not wood. Faith as both nurturing and unyielding.

As it were rocked in steel,
With arms of steel
At either side
It joins behind the rail—
To what—could we presume—

could we presume

The subjunctive mood—'if we dared to assume.' The dash after 'what' creates suspense: she won't tell us what faith connects to.

The bridge would cease to be—

vacillating feet

Latin *vacillare*: to waver, stagger. Our feet are unsteady, but the bridge is 'a first necessity'—we need it precisely because we're unstable.

To our far vacillating feet
A first necessity.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Engineering Problem

Dickinson opens with an impossible structure: a pierless bridge. Real bridges need piers—vertical supports sunk into the ground or water. Without them, a bridge can't exist. That's exactly her point.

The poem treats faith as architectural paradox. It's > Too slender for the eye (invisible), yet it has > arms of steel. It supports weight without touching anything below. Every engineering detail contradicts the next: the bridge is both there and not there, strong and imperceptible.

Notice what Dickinson *doesn't* do: she never tells us what's on the other side. The bridge connects > what we see to > the scene that we do not, but that second scene stays unnamed. Line 10's dash—> To what—could we presume—hangs in mid-air. If we knew the destination, > the bridge would cease to be necessary. Faith only works as long as the far side stays unknown. The moment you can see where you're going, you don't need faith anymore—you have knowledge.

Dickinson's Doubt

CONTEXT Dickinson wrote hundreds of poems about faith, most of them skeptical. She attended Congregationalist services but refused to convert during the religious revivals that swept Amherst in the 1840s-50s. Her letters show someone fascinated by belief but unable to commit to it.

This poem's tone is slippery. Is she celebrating faith or exposing its absurdity? The vacillating feet in line 12 are ours—the believers who need the bridge. 'Vacillating' means wavering, unsteady. We're not confident walkers; we're staggering across on something we can't even see. The bridge is > a first necessity precisely because we're so unstable.

The repetition matters. Dickinson copied this poem twice in her fascicles (her hand-sewn manuscript books), and both versions repeat the entire text. The doubling could be emphasis—or it could be her circling the same problem twice, unable to resolve it. Faith as both essential and impossible, both steel-strong and too slender to see.