Hannibal

Hannibal - meaning Summary

Questioning the Value of Causes

The speaker asks whether any cause can truly be hopeless or lost to time. Addressing the persistence of youthful feeling and artistic grief, the poem suggests doubt that lapse of years makes a struggle vain. It frames compassion and poetic lament as potentially restorative rather than futile, implying that memory, feeling, or art can redeem causes that seem abandoned. The rhetorical questions leave the answer open but lean toward sustaining hope in generosity and song as meaningful responses to injustice or loss.