“A Clock stopped—” is an 18-line poem written in 1861 by Emily Dickinson, an American poet who lived in New England during the 19th century. The poem employs an extended metaphor of a broken clock to discuss the inevitability and irreversible quality of death. Dickinson, who was little known as a poet in her lifetime, is now regarded as one of United States’s preeminent literary figures. Dickinson only published 10 poems during her lifetime—“A Clock stopped—” was not one. Upon Dickinson's death, Dickinson’s sister discovered that the poet had written almost 1,800 poems, which Dickinson had shared with only a select few.

The poems break with traditional form and meter; Dickinson wrote her poems in her own unique format with short lines, slant rhyme, unusual capitalization, and numerous dashes for punctuation. Her poems deal primarily with mortality, spirituality, solitude, and nature. All of these elements are present in “A Clock stopped—.” Dickinson’s poems were initially published in the 1890s in heavily edited versions (See: Textual Context). It wasn’t until 1955 that a complete, mostly unaltered edition appeared. This poem is not as widely known as some of Dickinson’s other poems about death, such as “Because I could not stop for Death” or “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died.” Even so, the poem was written during Dickinson’s most prolific period, from 1858-1865, a period that coincided with the American Civil War (1861-1865).

Poet Biography

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, on December 10, 1830, to prominent lawyer Edward Dickinson and his wife, Emily Norcross Dickinson. Emily was the middle child, with an older brother named Austin and a younger sister, Lavinia, often called Vinnie. Emily enjoyed an active life when she was young. Unlike many young women in the 19th century, she received formal schooling and attended Amherst Academy, then Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. She had close friends, both male and female. Dickinson had marriage proposals of her own but did not choose to marry. Her first published work appeared during her early twenties, including a letter in a student publication at Amherst and a poem in the Springfield Daily Republican. Both were unattributed.

Themes of death and spirituality appeared in Dickinson’s work from its inception, but while many of her family and friends made formal declarations of faith in 1845 during a Calvinist revival, Emily did not. “I am one of the lingering bad ones,” she wrote to a friend (Emily Dickinson Museum). Emily’s feelings about mortality, spirituality, and the afterlife were complex in part due to the deaths of family, friends, and the crisis caused by the American Civil War (1861-1865).

Emily’s adulthood was spent in domestic duties in the household. She despised dusting and other cleaning but took joy in baking. Besides writing and reading, Dickinson sung and played the piano. She was an avid gardener, and her father later built her a conservatory so she could raise plants indoors as well as without. She was particularly well known in her Amherst community for sending bouquets with poetic notes. Although Emily was affectionate with her father, her relationship with her mother was strained.

In 1856, Austin Dickinson married one of Emily’s closest friends, Susan Gilbert. The couple built and lived in a house next door to the Dickinson family. The Austin Dickinsons were part of a lively social group. Emily was close to them and to their eventual three children. Susan Gilbert was Emily’s main confidante throughout her life, and some critics have suggested that their relationship may have been romantic, although Emily also described interest in several intellectual men.

Between the ages of 28 and 35, Dickinson’s creative output was significant. She wrote over 1,000 poems, recording them in small handmade books. It appears she rarely showed these to anyone. Her short lyrics were focused on faith, doubt, mortality, and immorality, especially within the cycles of nature. It is also during this period that Emily wrote three letters that became known as “The Master Letters,” a group of missives to an unknown man, whom she purportedly loved.

In approximately 1866, Dickinson dressed in all white and stopped socializing, becoming reclusive while remaining kind to those who came to the house. She developed iritis, an ocular condition that was painful and necessitated treatments in Boston. However, after her return, she rarely ventured beyond her home into Amherst. According to her later editor, Mabel Loomis Todd, she was known as “The Myth” (See: Further Reading & Resources).

In the 1870s, Dickinson’s work was read publicly (although anonymously), and her famous poem “Success is counted sweetest” appeared in A Masque of Poets (1878). For much of the later 1870s and 1880s, Dickinson’s life was punctuated by her own illness and the death of loved ones. In 1877, Dickinson developed a close attachment to Otis Phillips Lord, a recently widowed family friend and member of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. There is evidence that they planned to marry, but his ill health ended this contemplation.

Dickinson died on May 15, 1886, at the age of 55. It was after her death that her sister Lavinia discovered her poems and worked to get them published. She approached Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson for help. In editing Emily’s poetry, they took liberties to make the poetry align to more standard conventions. After Austin’s death, there was a dispute that resulted in a portion of Emily’s manuscripts remaining with Todd and her descendants. Subsequently, it wasn’t until 1955 before a mostly unaltered version of the majority of Emily Dickinson’s work appeared to the public.

Poem Text

Dickinson, Emily. “A Clock stopped—" 1861. Emily Dickinson Archive.

Note: This citation includes three of the common variants of the poem: the 1896 version, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd, which removes capitalization and Dickinson’s dashes; a restored 1955 version edited by Thomas H. Johnson (#287); and the 1998 version by Ralph Franklin (#259), which features additional words and line breaks mimicking Emily’s original manuscript.

Summary

The speaker of the poem notes that a clock, not the one that sits on the shelf above the fireplace, has ceased working. This non-localized clock cannot be repaired, even by the greatest Swiss clockmaker. The speaker then goes on to detail what happened when the “clock stopped” (Line 1), especially how the arms “quivered” (Line 8) until they stopped exactly on the hour of 12 in the afternoon. The clock continues to “not stir” (Line 10). Whether medical professionals or shopkeepers urge it, the pendulum is like “snow” (Line 11) and both the hands (the pointer and the secondary) refuse to move. No resurrection is possible for the broken mechanism. While the “Shopman” (Line 12) has worked on it for “Decades” (Line 16), it now belongs to “Him” (Line 18).