The House on the Hill

The House on the Hill: analysis

Introduction

"The House on the Hill" is a villanelle, a tightly patterned form built on two repeated lines. Its speaker stands before an empty, ruined house whose people are gone. Two refrains alternate through the poem: "They are all gone away" and "There is nothing more to say."

The speaker insists that nothing can be done or said. Yet the speaker and others still "stray / Around the sunken sill," drawn back to the place. The poem sets the finality of loss against the human urge to linger over it. Its strict repetitions enact that circling return.

Summary

The speaker announces that "They are all gone away." The House is shut and silent. There is nothing more to say about it.

Winds blow bleak and shrill through the broken gray walls. The first refrain returns: they are all gone away. The house is exposed to the weather now.

There is no one left today to speak of them, either well or badly. No one remains to praise or blame the people who lived there. Again the speaker says there is nothing more to say.

The speaker then asks a question. Why do "we" still wander around the sunken doorsill of the house? The people are gone, so the visit seems to have no purpose.

The speaker answers, in effect, that the visitors' imagining is useless. The visitors' "poor fancy-play" about the people who lived there is "wasted skill." The speaker repeats that there is nothing more to say.

The final stanza sums up. Ruin and decay have taken "the House on the Hill." The two refrains come together at the end. They are all gone away, and there is nothing more to say.

Themes and meaning

The central theme is loss and absence. The people of the house are never named or described. They are only "all gone away." The poem does not say whether they died or left, and the vagueness makes the absence total.

A second theme is the limit of words. The line "There is nothing more to say" recurs as a refrain. Yet the poem keeps speaking, and its lines are almost all repetition. The poem can be read as showing speech that can only circle a loss it cannot change.

A third theme is the pull of the past. The speaker admits that "we stray / Around the sunken sill." This is a confession that the visitors cannot keep away. The question "Why is it then" shows the speaker unable to explain this pull.

A fourth theme is the futility of imagination. The "fancy-play" the visitors spin about the vanished people is "wasted skill." Imagining their lives cannot bring them back. The capitalized "House" in lines 2 and 17 may suggest a family line as well as a building, and both have fallen to "ruin and decay."

Tone

The tone is elegiac and resigned. The refrains are flat statements with no protest in them. "There is nothing more to say" closes each discussion before it starts. The weather adds bleakness, with winds "bleak and shrill."

The fourth stanza brings a flicker of doubt. The question "Why is it then we stray" shows the speaker troubled by an urge that resignation does not remove. For a moment the voice sounds less certain than its refrains.

The fifth stanza turns self-critical, calling the visitors' imagining "poor" and "wasted." The last stanza returns to calm finality. The two refrains close the poem together like a door being shut.

Form and structure

The poem is a villanelle: 19 lines in 6 stanzas, five of 3 lines and a final one of 4. It uses only two rhyme sounds, in the scheme ABA for each tercet and ABAA for the last stanza. Line 1 returns as line 6, line 12 and line 18. Line 3 returns as line 9, line 15 and line 19.

The lines are short, of 6 or 7 syllables, in iambic trimeter. Some, like "There is nothing more to say," drop the opening light syllable. The tight form and constant return of the refrains mirror the speaker's circling around the empty house.

Poetic devices

Refrain line 6

They are all gone away The opening line returns throughout the poem. Each return restates the loss without explaining it.

Refrain and paradox line 9

There is nothing more to say The line claims silence while the poem keeps talking. The repetition shows speech circling a loss it cannot change.

Symbol line 2

The House is shut and still The capital letter makes the house more than a building. It can stand for a family or a whole way of life now ended.

Imagery line 5

The winds blow bleak and shrill Cold sound and wind fill the ruin. The "b" sounds of "blow bleak" add weight to the desolation.

Rhetorical question line 10

Why is it then we stray The speaker questions the visitors' own behavior. It is the one moment where resignation gives way to doubt.

Imagery line 11

Around the sunken sill The sinking threshold shows the house settling into decay. The visitors circle the entrance but do not go in.

Metaphor line 13

And our poor fancy-play Imagining the lost people is called a kind of play. The word "poor" judges it as feeble and useless.

Negation line 7

Nor is there one to-day No one remains even to judge the vanished people. They have passed beyond praise or blame.

Alliteration line 17

In the House on the Hill The "h" sounds echo the title. They give the final stanza a closing, sealed sound.

Words worth knowing

to-day

An older hyphenated spelling of today.

speak them good or ill

Speak of them well or badly; praise or blame them.

stray

Wander aimlessly.

sill

The threshold, the timber or stone at the foot of a doorway.

fancy-play

Imaginative play; the stories visitors make up about the people who lived there.

Context

Edwin Arlington Robinson lived from 1869 to 1935. Readers left 7 comments on "The House on the Hill" here between 2004 and 2019. One reader asked for help with lines 13 and 14, the poem's hardest passage.

What readers have said

• Joanna asks what "our poor fancy-play" being "wasted skill" means, which shows lines 13 and 14 as the poem's hardest point for readers. Joanna, 2005