No Man Can Compass a Despair
poem 477
No Man Can Compass a Despair - meaning Summary
Despair as a Journey
The poem compares newly felt despair to a traveler on a “goalless road,” emphasising how one cannot gauge its scope while immersed in it. Dickinson shows progress as limited and unaware: the sufferer moves forward but is blind to the distance and the setting sun. This ignorance becomes both handicap and guide, depicted as an angelic pilot who leads the person through pain they cannot yet fully measure or understand.
Read Complete AnalysesNo Man can compass a Despair As round a Goalless Road No faster than a Mile at once The Traveller proceed Unconscious of the Width Unconscious that the Sun Be setting on His progress So accurate the One At estimating Pain Whose own has just begun His ignorance the Angel That pilot Him along
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