Joy to Have Merited the Pain
poem 788
Joy to Have Merited the Pain - meaning Summary
Joy Through Endured Pain
The poem reflects on finding joy in having endured pain because that suffering merits release and closer sight of a beloved. Dickinson contrasts transient presence with an enduring, almost sacred memory: old-fashioned eyes that saw the loved one before and are validated by that past. The speaker frames loss as both an apparition and a lasting haunting, suggesting that love and remembrance transform temporal grief into an almost eternal state.
Read Complete AnalysesJoy to have merited the Pain To merit the Release Joy to have perished every step To Compass Paradise Pardon to look upon thy face With these old fashioned Eyes Better than new could be for that Though bought in Paradise Because they looked on thee before And thou hast looked on them Prove Me My Hazel Witnesses The features are the same So fleet thou wert, when present So infinite when gone An Orient’s Apparition Remanded of the Morn The Height I recollect ‘Twas even with the Hills The Depth upon my Soul was notched As Floods on Whites of Wheels To Haunt till Time have dropped His last Decade away, And Haunting actualize to last At least Eternity
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