My Dreams, My Works, Must Wait Till After Hell
My Dreams, My Works, Must Wait Till After Hell - meaning Summary
Hope Deferred, Provisions Kept
Brooks's poem speaks plainly about deferring personal ambitions and pleasures while enduring severe suffering. The speaker metaphorically stores "honey and bread"—love, creativity, sustenance—in jars, pledging self-discipline to survive a period she calls "hell." Hungry and incomplete, she waits with quiet resolve, hoping that when hardship ends she will still recognize and reclaim simple joys and old purities without having been hardened or dulled by pain.
Read Complete AnalysesI hold my honey and I store my bread In little jars and cabinets of my will. I label clearly, and each latch and lid I bid, Be firm till I return from hell. I am very hungry. I am incomplete. And none can give me any word but Wait, The puny light. I keep my eyes pointed in; Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt Drag out to their last dregs and I resume On such legs as are left me, in such heart As I can manage, remember to go home, My taste will not have turned insensitive To honey and bread old purity could love.
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