If I can stop one heart from breaking Summary & Analysis
by Emily Dickinson

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"If I can stop one heart from breaking" is Emily Dickinson's short, poignant reflection on suffering and tenderness. The poem's speaker describes a world full of sorrows: broken hearts, aches and pains, and helpless, fallen robins. But the poem also champions kindness as a way of combating these woes (and finding meaning in life): help one single person in your lifetime, the speaker declares, and you won't have lived "in vain." Like most of Dickinson's work, this poem wasn't published until after her death; it first appeared in her posthumous collection Poems (1890).

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