I Have Never Seen Volcanoes
poem 175
I Have Never Seen Volcanoes - meaning Summary
Volcanoes as Hidden Emotion
Dickinson contrasts outward calm with latent, explosive suffering by imagining volcanoes she has never seen. Travelers' accounts of buried, eruptive force become a metaphor for human faces that keep composure while feeling "smouldering anguish." The poem asks whether smothered pain will eventually break out and whether future observers might exult over what was once buried, like discovering Pompeii. It reflects Dickinson's interest in inner turmoil and emotional concealment.
Read Complete AnalysesI have never seen Volcanoes But, when Travellers tell How those old phlegmatic mountains Usually so still Bear within appalling Ordnance, Fire, and smoke, and gun, Taking Villages for breakfast, And appalling Men If the stillness is Volcanic In the human face When upon a pain Titanic Features keep their place If at length the smouldering anguish Will not overcome And the palpitating Vineyard In the dust, be thrown? If some loving Antiquary, On Resumption Morn, Will not cry with joy Pompeii! To the Hills return!
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