To Learn the Transport by the Pain
poem 167
To Learn the Transport by the Pain - meaning Summary
Longing Teaches Its Own Knowledge
The poem argues that deep understanding and poetic exaltation are forged by suffering. Using images—blind men learning the sun, dying of thirst imagining brooks, and homesick feet on a foreign shore—Dickinson presents pain and yearning as necessary teachers. The speaker calls this state a "Sovereign Anguish" and labels sufferers "patient Laureates," whose subdued songs rise toward a mysterious divine poet. Suffering thus yields an inward, nearly inaudible knowledge.
Read Complete AnalysesTo learn the Transport by the Pain As Blind Men learn the sun! To die of thirst suspecting That Brooks in Meadows run! To stay the homesick homesick feet Upon a foreign shore Haunted by native lands, the while And blue beloved air! This is the Sovereign Anguish! This the signal woe! These are the patient Laureates Whose voices trained below As cend in ceaseless Carol Inaudible, indeed, To us the duller scholars Of the Mysterious Bard!
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