A Clock stopped—

“A Clock Stopped—” is a discussion on the hubris of a human’s belief that their life is in their own hands. Control over death through either science, religion, or circumstance is not possible, the speaker here implies. Rather, the Supreme Being—the “Him” (Line 18) of the last line—will always choose when the clock will stop and whether it will be revived.

To begin the poem, the speaker notes “A clock stopped—” (Line 1) but specifies this is not the clock in the home, clarifying it is “Not the Mantel’s” (Line 2). The location of the clock is unspecified, but the idea of the contrast put forth is that the timepiece is a larger, more epic clock. Since clocks have long been symbolic of the passage of time and the ambiguity of fate, this becomes metaphorically indicative of the human lifespan. The stoppage indicates a sense that a death has occurred, a cessation that cannot be undone.

This is shown by the fact that the clock the speaker references cannot be fixed. Even “Geneva’s farthest skill / Can’t put the puppet bowing / That just now dangled still—” (Lines 3-5). Most clocks at the time were made in Switzerland, but not even the best Swiss clockmaker with the utmost “skill” (Line 3) can fix the broken mechanism of the speaker’s clock.