Emily Dickinson

Had I presumed to hope.

Counterfactual grammar

Past perfect subjunctive—'Had I presumed' means she didn't. The whole poem builds on something that never happened.

HAD I presumed to hope.
The loss had been to me
A value for the Greatness'
Sake,
As giants gone away.

Giants gone away

Biblical echo of Numbers 13:33—the giants in Canaan. Loss of something huge becomes proof it was real.

Had I presumed to gain
A favor so remote,
The failure but confirm the
Grace
In further Infinite.
'Tis failure not of Hope

Diligent Despair

Oxymoron—despair is usually passive collapse, but hers works hard. She's making not-hoping into an active discipline.

But diligent Despair
Advancing on celestial lists

Celestial lists

Tournament language—'lists' are jousting grounds. She's fighting for heaven with earthly weakness.

With faint terrestrial power—
'Tis Honor—though I die
For that no man obtain

Justified by Death

Legal/theological term—'justified' means declared righteous. Protestant doctrine: you're saved by grace, proven by death.

Till he be justified by Death—
This is the second gain!
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Logic of Not-Hoping

Dickinson builds the poem on a grammatical trick. 'Had I presumed to hope' is past perfect subjunctive—it describes something that didn't happen. She never hoped, never tried to gain 'a favor so remote.' The entire argument unfolds from this non-event.

The first two stanzas work through the logic: *if* she'd hoped and lost, that loss would prove the thing was great ('As giants gone away'). *If* she'd tried and failed, failure would confirm the 'Grace / In further Infinite'—the favor was real, just unreachable. Both stanzas end with the same paradox: losing would be winning, because it would prove the prize existed.

But stanza three pivots: ''Tis failure not of Hope / But diligent Despair.' She didn't fail at hoping—she never hoped at all. Instead she practices 'diligent Despair,' an oxymoron that makes giving-up into active work. The phrase 'celestial lists' borrows from medieval tournaments—she's jousting for heaven with 'faint terrestrial power,' knowing she'll lose.

The final stanza claims 'Honor' in this deliberate defeat. The prize is something 'no man obtain / Till he be justified by Death'—Protestant theology compressed into a line. You can't win until you die and God declares you righteous. So the 'second gain' is the honor of fighting a battle you know you'll lose, for a prize you can't claim while alive. Dickinson finds dignity in not presuming to hope—in keeping desire alive without the arrogance of expectation.

Dickinson's Renunciation Poems

CONTEXT Dickinson wrote dozens of 'renunciation poems' in the early 1860s, the period of her most intense productivity. These poems practice giving up—love, fame, heaven, even hope itself—as a spiritual discipline. They often use economic language ('value,' 'gain,' 'favor') to weigh what you lose against what you keep.

This poem's 'favor so remote' has biographical echoes. Dickinson never married, rarely left her house after age 30, and published only 10 poems in her lifetime (anonymously, heavily edited). Whether the 'favor' is human love, literary fame, or salvation, she frames not-pursuing it as a choice, not a defeat.

The repetition of the entire poem (it's printed twice) might be a manuscript issue—Dickinson's poems survive in hand-sewn booklets and letters, often with variants. But the doubling also performs the poem's argument: saying it again with the same words, like a liturgy or a discipline you practice daily. 'Diligent Despair' requires repetition.