Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.

The sentence distinguishes between particular hopes (specific expectations that can fail) and hope as an ethical or existential stance that must be sustained even after disappointment. Heaney suggests that setbacks do not invalidate the necessity of hope; rather, they test it. The line implies resilience: when initial plans or political/ personal expectations are “dashed,” one must continue to hold open the possibility of renewal and meaning. In a Heaney-shaped moral universe, hope is not naïve optimism but a disciplined commitment to keep imagining alternatives—an inner resource that enables endurance, creative work, and the capacity to act again after loss.