Stanza 2 Summary

Lines 5-6

Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of eye – 

• These two lines get the award for most cryptic in the poem.
• Line 5 continues the house metaphor by talking about the "Chambers," or rooms of the house.
• The line makes our head hurt a little bit when it uses a simile to compare the "Chambers" to "Cedars," which are a type of tree.
• How is a room like a tree?
• Well, this is a house of openness, so maybe the rooms are like trees because they grow.
• Or it could be that the poem is using "the Cedars" to represent a forest. The spaces between trees in a forest are kind of like rooms in a house, but they're a lot more open, right? (This house is starting to sound kind of drafty; we wouldn't want that heating bill.)
• We also wonder why the speaker compares the rooms to specifically to cedar trees.
• When Emily's at the helm, it's usually safe to look for Biblical interpretations. Cedar trees are talked about in nothing but glowing terms in the Bible. The Hebrews couldn't get enough of them. Lots of important palaces and temples were built out of cedar. In fact, one of King Solomon's most important buildings was called "the house of the forest of Lebanon." (Kings 7:2).
• "House of the forest"? Oh snap, isn't our speaker comparing the rooms of her poetry house to a forest right now?
• It could be that she specifically talks about cedars here to allude to all these holy buildings from the Bible. Maybe she's saying that poetry is made of things that are just as holy as anything you'll find in the Good Book.
• Okay. So far so good. 
• But line 6 is a bit of a head scratcher at first, too. "Impregnable of eye"? What is that supposed to mean?
• Well, "impregnable" describes something that is incapable of being taken by assault, like an impregnable fortress or something like that. 
• So if this place is "Impregnable of eye," then it seems like the speaker is saying that nobody can see into her poetry house, no matter how hard they try. 
• Here's the question, though…
• Up until now the speaker has been telling all about how open her poetry house is. So why is she now making it sound like it's closed off?
• Could it be that she's saying that the naked eye isn't enough to see into it? Instead, maybe the only way to enter is through the imagination or the mind.

Lines 7-8

And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky –

• The speaker continues to blend her extended house metaphor with nature by comparing the roof with the sky. We're back to some clear-cut symbols of openness again.
• This house doesn't have a normal roof; this roof is "everlasting." The word "everlasting" could imply that the roof/sky goes on forever in terms space or time. 
• How about this word "Gambrels"? We'll admit it: we had to look that one up, too. It turns out a gambrel is the sloped style of roof that we usually see on barns. 
• It's interesting how we went from Biblical temple with "the Cedars" to a barn roof. Could Emily D be trying to make a connection there?
• This poetry house seems to know no boundaries—even when it comes to class. 
• These two lines are really starting to make us think about a central paradox in this poem:
• If the speaker is ultimately trying to describe how much more open poetry is than prose, then why did she bother with a house metaphor to begin with? Couldn't she have just said that "poetry is the sky" and gotten to the point a lot quicker? Most houses have walls and roofs—they're contained structures. So why is a house a useful metaphor for openness?
• Wait a sec… Maybe what the speaker is trying to tell us isn't quite that simple. Maybe she wants us to feel the built-in contradiction in the idea of a house that encompasses everything. 
• Isn't that what a poem is: a little block of words on a page that can open the mind to the universe? This is officially getting deep.