Bound a Trouble – and lives will bear it!

Bound a Trouble – 
and lives will bear it!


Circumscription – enables Woe –

Still to anticipate – Were not limit –

Who were sufficient to Misery?

State it the Ages – to a cipher –

And it will ache contented on – 


Sing at its pain, as any Workman – 


Notching the fall of the even Sun –

                                                            F240 (1861)  269

This is one of what I call Dickinson’s wisdom poems.  It is also a poem that takes a bit of reconstruction and quite a bit of imagination to work through. Helen Vendler noted that “Dickinson sits in a transparent house with no visible door, enjoying the self-selected sympathizers who can slip inside the glass” (Dickinson: Selected  Poems and Commentaries). I don’t think that’s true for all her poems but it certainly is true of this one. The first task is to define and fill in some words.

Circle circumscribing a polygon

            The first stanza sets out the problem, its solution, and the need for solution. “Bound a Trouble” is the same as circumscribing “Woe” : you are drawing a boundary around it, so to speak, as if indicating that the woe goes this far but no farther (imagine drawing a circle around a polygon). To circumscribe woe is to make it endurable . Imagine having  a throbbing toothache. If you can circumscribe the pain (it is only in one part of my  jaw and an antibiotic will make the pain go away in a couple of days) then you can endure the pain quite easily, if not happily. On the other hand, if you had no idea of how long it would go on, you might get frantic. The same is true of emotional pain, which is no doubt what Dickinson is talking about here. If you “Bound” it by reminding yourself that it only hurts at night, or when walking in the garden; or that a year from now the sharp ache will be diminished, then you will still be able to anticipate life beyond the Bound, despite the woe. Without knowing the limits of the specific woe or “Misery,” who would be “sufficient” or equal to handling it?

Man circumscribed
(da Vinci)

            The second stanza personifies Misery as a “Workman.” But, Dickinson implies, first it must be stated to “the Ages” – even if only “to a cipher.” –“Cipher” is an old-fashioned word for a zero, a nonentity or nobody. Just the stating of a Misery or woe is in itself a bounding of it. Writing a poem about a misery, whether the poem is read by posterity or stays forever on a blank page, is an act of circumscription. It embodies the misery, gives it a job. Misery’s sole job is pain and it will sing at it as a “Workman” sings at his work to help the time pass. The workman notes the passing hours of the day, waiting for quitting time. Misery counts its time in days, making a notch for each day – or the setting of the evening sun – until its limited time is over.