Emily Dickinson

A great Hope fell

Summary


"A great Hope fell" is a short poem in which Emily Dickinson describes a collapse so silent that no one hears it. The ruin happens within, a cunning wreck that tells no tale and lets no witness in. As the speaker hides the wound until it swallows a whole life, the mind's strength is tested like a ship foundering on land. The poem ends with a closing lid and a patient carpenter at work.

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A great Hope fell
You heard no noise
The Ruin was within
Oh cunning wreck that told no tale
And let no Witness in

The mind was built for mighty Freight
For dread occasion planned
How often foundering at Sea
Ostensibly, on Land

A woman sits by a window gazing at a small closed box, a stranded shipwreck outside, illustrating A great Hope fell.

A not admitting of the wound
Until it grew so wide
That all my Life had entered it
And there were troughs beside

A closing of the simple lid
That opened to the sun
Until the tender Carpenter
Perpetual nail it down—

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Credits

Emily Dickinson was a 19th-century American poet from Amherst, Massachusetts, famous for her compact, dash-filled verse on death, loss and the inner life. Most of her poems were found after her death, and this one shows her gift for turning private grief into striking, unexpected images.