Context: The retiring Emily Dickinson, noted for the simplicity and economy of her poetic style, the sharpness of images, and the assonance and "off-rhyme" of her brief poems, often comments on the ways and nature of man. In "The Soul selects her own Society–," she notes that the soul of man sometimes chooses one companion and then rejects all others. Typically, she counters her majestic images, "chariots" and "emperor kneeling," with homey ones, "low gate" and "upon her mat." The complete poem reads: