No Man can compass a Despair –

No Man can compass a Despair –

At 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 –

F(714)

With this poem, Dickinson dives headfirst into a commentary about the grief process. It is asserted that no one knows how to navigate through the pain, but instead they trek through slowly, dragging themselves out of it. However, in their blind stumbling, they are oblivious to how long it will take them to be liberated from the pain and do not realize that their progress will eventually reach a standstill. Contrary to what would be assumed, the poem finishes in saying that ignorance is bliss as it keeps one from recognizing the scope of the task they are undertaking.

When encountering something as complex and difficult to grasp as grief or “despair,” it is nearly impossible to know the correct way to overcome it. Our mental and emotional capacities can only extend so far until we reach the pinnacle of our understanding at which point, we are left to wander aimlessly for concrete answers. This sentiment is reflected in the first stanza as the speaker emphasizes man’s inability to find their way through despair; without a definite goal, there is no way to be certain of what direction to travel. Due to this lack of guidance, man is left to feel their way through it one mile at a time.

In this piece, Dickinson is very strategic in her placement of dashes at the end of specific lines. Each come at a place that suggests an ignorance to what lies ahead. Each of the dashes are laden with unsaid words, inviting the reader to fill in the gaps for themselves. Much like what man is forced to do, Dickinson wants the reader to feel the same cluelessness as they work to understand the unexplainable. At the close of the first verse there is a dash following despair which demonstrates man’s lack of know-how for navigating through grief; the second dash at the close of the first stanza shows the mystery of what is to come. However, the open-ending that most encompasses the theme of the poem is found at the end of the fifth verse, “Unconscious of the Width –” (5). The placement of the dash plays off the preceding words and reinforces the idea that there is no definable limit to Despair. Unconscious to man, Despair has the power to continue indefinitely, and the use of any other mode of punctuation would not have given the same effect of endlessness.

Dickinson concludes the poem in saying that the beginning of Despair is the easiest part of the process as one is under the illusion that they have an accurate vantage point. During this time – with ignorance as his saving grace – man feels as though he has a grasp on his situation. Such is the case when anyone embarks on a new journey. They go into it with a false confidence and without true knowledge of the path ahead of them. Dickinson’s ultimate message is that it is man’s proud assumption of knowledge that leads the way as he is too ignorant to reality to begin to comprehend its magnitude.