Stanza 1 Summary

Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.

I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –

So the speaker lives in Possibility, huh? Must be kind of hard for the mailman to find her.
It seems like these first two lines are basically getting at how much more awesome poetry is than prose. Them's fightin' words.
The speaker doesn't use the word poetry specifically, but she does say that wherever she lives is better than "Prose."
Therefore, we can assume that the speaker is substituting the word "Possibility" for "poetry."
Could she implying that poetry is better than prose because poetry has more possibilities? Because it opens up the mind more?
Because it's not as concrete? Yeah, probably.
The speaker is also slipping a metaphor in here on us by saying that possibility (a.k.a. poetry) is a "House."
She doesn't dig into this metaphor quite yet, but we have a feeling it's going to come up again.
Also, notice the wordplay with the word "fairer." This can mean either "more beautiful" or "more just." How do you think either meaning might apply here?
We also couldn't help but see that these first two lines have a pretty steady rhythmic form. Line 1 is in iambic tetrameter and Line 2 is in iambic trimeter. Check out "Form and Meter" for more on these vocabs.
This isn't the only poem where Emily uses this form, so we wonder if she'll keep going with it.

More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –

Ah, the house metaphor continues. We'll now officially dub this an extended metaphor because it keeps going and going and… well, you get the idea.
The speaker continues her argument from the first two lines about how poetry is better than prose because it's more open.
Here, that openness is represented by a house with tons of windows and doors. Whoa, are those metaphors within metaphors?
Looks that way.
And let's not miss the rhyme games the speaker is playing here. "Windows" in Line 3 rhymes with "Prose" in Line 2.
Then we have an internal rhyme in Line 4 with "Superior" and "for," and the line ends with a slant rhyme, "Doors."
This is far from a typical rhyme scheme; in fact, it seems a little willy-nilly, if we may say so.
Of course, this is a poem about the limitless power of poetry, so maybe it wouldn't make sense to tame it with a steady rhyme scheme.
We also notice that for some unknown reason, Emily decides to separate "for Doors" with a dash in line 4. What's up with that?
Why would she choose to emphasize the doors more than the windows in line 3?
Maybe it's because doors are a bigger symbol of openness, because we actually walk through them to go other places.
We can also go through windows, but normally we only do that when we don't want our parents to know we sneaked out of the house.
Before we go to the next stanza, we just want to point out that we've totally shifted away from rhythmic pattern of the first two lines. Just go to "Form and Meter" for the whole rundown.