Poor little Heart!
Did they forget thee?
Then dinna care! Then dinna care!
Proud little Heart!
Did they forsake thee?
Be debonnaire! Be debonnaire!
Frail little Heart!
I would not break thee—
Could'st credit me? Could'st credit me?
Gay little Heart—
Like Morning Glory!
Wind and Sun – wilt thee array!
F214
(1861) 192
Without any evidence whatsoever I suggest that the poet addresses a
child or beloved pet – perhaps her big Newfoundland dog, Carlo or else perhaps
her nephew Ned, Sue and Austin’s first-born. Dickinson and Ned became quite
close, but when this poem was written he would have been just a baby.
 |
| Oil painting, Frances Hodgkins |
The
poem has the simple structure of a nursery song: each stanza begins with an
adjective for the “little Heart”: Poor, Proud, Frail, and Gay. The last lines,
except for that of the last stanza, have repeating phrases. The poet speaks
with the familiar “thee” – as one would to a child or pet. And while the first
three stanzas sympathize with the “wrongs” done (being forgotten, forsaken, and
heartbroken), the final one reassures that all will be well. “Let’s go outside
where we can enjoy some sunshine and the lovely breeze!”
I
picture the narrator in a babysitting role, rocking a crying infant or child
and comforting it.
What do you think the exhortations of "Then dinna care! Then dinna care!" refers to?
ReplyDeleteI'd paraphrase to say, "Have you been forgottin? Well, don't care!"
DeleteThanks. I wonder if Then dinna care was chosen after Be debonnaire!, or the other way around?
ReplyDelete‘Dinna’ is north east Scotland dialect. I’m from Aberdeen and it’s a word I’ve used my entire life to mean ‘don’t’ - I’m curious how Emily knows about this word and if she has connections to Scotland or just a general interest in the linguistics. She’s also used the word ‘hame’ for ‘home’ in another poem - also a NE Scottish dialect.
ReplyDeleteIt's from her reading of Robert Burns. "Dinna care" is a phrase from one of his poems. Same with "hame".
ReplyDeleteI'm curious about the versions of this poem. In "As She Preserved Them" it doesn't mention another version of this poem, but online I find
ReplyDeletePoor little heart!
Did they forget thee?
Then dinna care! Then dinna care!
Proud little heart!
Did they forsake thee?
Be debonair! Be debonair!
Frail little heart!
I would not break thee:
Could'st credit me? Could'st credit me?
Gay little heart!
Like morning glory
Thou'll wilted be; thou'll wilted be!
Are there two versions? Which came first? If this one came second, which I strongly believe, then does the meaning of "wilt" change here from a wilt to "will't"? As in "Will it array?" This is a much more positive ending to the poem. (And playing off the sound of "wilt it away")
It's almost as if Emily IS breaking the heart in the first poem and then taking the "I would not break thee" to heart, she then changes the poem to note the array instead of the away.
I just went back and looked at the manuscript though and it is pretty hard to tell whether that last word is away or array. I'd guess it is away. Though I love array!
Regardless, that last line is stronger if the wind and sun is the thing that wilts the heart away, since it is something beautiful, at least, that causes the death.
see the manuscript and make your call as to array or away.
https://www.edickinson.org/editions/5/image_sets/85566
What do you think?
Thanks for the challenge! I'm on the 'array' side. I agree that the handwritten 'w' and 'r' look pretty similar. But I checked 'wilt' in the Lexicon and it gives 'willing' for a counter meaning to 'droop'. It cites quite a few poems where 'wilt' pretty clearly indicates 'will', several indicate 'droop' and none suggest 'willing':
Deleteexamples:
Fr89/J139 Wilt thou toss again? / By just
Fr219/J162 runs to thee – / Blue Sea! Wilt welcome me? Fr312/J252 to Giants – / And they'll wilt, like Men – / Give Himmaleh
Fr911/J951 as the Days resume / The wilted countenance / Cannot correct
But the editors seem to agree on 'array' anyway -- and I think it makes more sense in the poem: the Gay little Heart is likened to a Morning Glory -- a vine that thrives out in the wind and sun. The Lexicon gives 'array' the following meaning: renew; revive; restore; resurrect.
As for the alternate poem with 'wilted' I could only find one reference that indicated date and the date was 1924 -- so before the scholarship of Johnson, Franklin, and Miller.
https://www.shmoop.com/american-romanticism/emotion-characteristic-poor-little-heart-example.html
So I'd go with Franklin and Miller on the version and stick with the 'array'.
However, the line makes most sense to me if 'wilt' is read as 'will'
(My 12 year old daughter Sofia came in as I was writing the last bit. She votes for "array" in the MS. If it IS array, then Emily is playing wit the similarity of not just the rhyme of away and array, but even the way the w looks like rr in the written word. Now that's the height of subtlety! BTW, over on the margin of this page my daughter saw "The Skies can't keep their secret" and immediately wrote in her own notebook, "The clouds can't keep the secret of the sky", which struck me as a surpassingly beautiful thought. : )
ReplyDeleteWhat a treasure! Beautiful and evocative and provocative.
DeleteThe earlier comment about the last line of this poem “Thou’ll wilted be” I believe was the editing done by Mabel Todd or her daughter Millicent before it was returned back to the original verse that Emily Dickinson wrote.
ReplyDeleteJohnson’s “Work Metadata” lets us know that Mabel Loomis Todd, editor of the 1896, ‘Poems / Emily Dickinson’ took misleading editorial liberties by replacing ED’s Line 12, with “Thou’ll wilted be; thou’ll wilted be!”. Don’t fault Todd though, she was the one who faithfully published ED’s poems, generally accurately, in several volumes after Susan Dickinson procrastinated for two years (1886-1887) with nothing published. Vinnie’s reassignment of editorial duties is an interesting story in itself.
ReplyDeleteFranklin himself altered ED’s last line by leaving out a dash. Kornfeld (above) copies Franklin (and Johnson?). Line 12 in ED’s handwriting actually reads “Wind and Sun – will – thee array!”, which sounds (looks) better to my ear (eye) than either Todd's or Franklin/Kornfeld's versions.
Susan K’s guess that this poem is for newborn Ned makes sense to me and helps explain puzzling Line 9, “Could'st credit me? Could'st credit me?”. “At first I thought ED was asking to be “Acknowledged”, but that made no sense in a poem to a baby. However, the first definition of “credit”in the ED Lexicon is “Trust; believe; have confidence in”, which does make sense in this context.
ReplyDeleteIf Ned is a few weeks or months old, ED may be trying to establish a relationship of trust, but she has never done that before with other babies and isn’t sure what will work. So she tries her favorite way of communicating, writing a poem, in this case, a sing-song poem she can say to him like a lullaby. Stanza 3 is her reassurance to Ned:
Frail little heart!
I would not break thee:
Would you trust me? Would you trust me?
Wouldn’t you like an original Emily Dickinson poem lulling you to sleep?
I agree 100% that Mabel Loomis Todd did an incredible job in getting Emily’s poetry published. A good read is “After Emily” by Julie Dobrow, as she provides a thorough account on all the work Mabel and eventually her daughter Millicent Todd Bingham did to help preserve the legacy of Emily Dickinson. So much great information in this book.
ReplyDeleteFor the details of why Todd was so willing to publish ED's poetry, see 'Austin and Mabel: The Amherst Affair and Love Letters of Austin Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd'. A spoiler, rumor mongers in Amherst made MLT's life miserable, so she left town for several months, but came back determined to show 'em who was who, much to our benefit, with a few caveats,
ReplyDelete