Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Although Dickinson’s family was devout Calvinist Christian, she never could accept the teaching of “original sin” (when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge). (Source.)
It could be that the poem's issues with vision and perception were front of mind for Emily Dickinson. She suffered from an eye condition that most today think was iritis. (Source.)
Broken promises = good news for us. On her deathbed, Dickinson asked her sister to burn all of her poems, almost all of which had gone unread by anyone. Fortunately, they were not burned, but published. (Source.)