Did You Ever Stand in a Cavern’s Mouth
poem 590
Did You Ever Stand in a Cavern’s Mouth - meaning Summary
Facing Imagined, Near-death Fear
Dickinson imagines two moments that produce the same gut reaction: standing at a cavern’s mouth and staring down a cannon. Both scenes provoke a bodily shudder, held breath, and the sense of being pursued or judged. The poem links physical isolation and imminent death, making loneliness feel monstrous and a near-death encounter feel like a tribunal. Memory of having survived such an ordeal reframes present fear; recollection makes the haunting image credible and immediate. The speaker treats inner terror and external threat as interchangeable experiences of existential confrontation.
Read Complete AnalysesDid you ever stand in a Cavern’s Mouth Widths out of the Sun And look and shudder, and block your breath And deem to be alone In such a place, what horror, How Goblin it would be And fly, as ’twere pursuing you? Then Loneliness looks so Did you ever look in a Cannon’s face Between whose Yellow eye And yours the Judgment intervened The Question of To die Extemporizing in your ear As cool as Satyr’s Drums If you remember, and were saved It’s liker so it seems
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