Father—I bring thee not myself—

Father—I bring thee not myself—       

That were the little load—

I bring thee the imperial Heart       

I had not strength to hold—

The heart I cherished in my own       

Till mine—too heavy grew—

Yet—strangest—heavier—since it went—       

Is it too large for you?

                                                            F295 (1862)   217 [Savior! I’ve no one else to tell]

This is the heartache of a failed love affair. Here the poet turns to God asking him to take “the imperial Heart” that has grown too big. Dickinson writes of this heart as if it were a tumor, something that grew in her own healthy heart until it became “too heavy” and she didn’t have enough strength to bear it any longer.

            She is not offering her life to God, though. Only this tumorous growth. The tumor heart is “imperial”—it has come to rule her life. David Preest notices that she “described this heart in her second letter (L233) to her Master by saying, ‘God built the heart in me—Bye and bye it outgrew me—and like the little mother—with the big child—I got tired holding him.’”

            Her love for “Master” has become a swollen burden. She cannot keep it up. When she asks to surrender it to God she is either trying to give up the relationship that is draining her of strength or else Master has ended the relationship and she is hoping God can relieve her of the swollen heart’s weight.

            In the last two lines we see an assumption that God has indeed taken the burden from her. The imperial Heart has gone, but strangely, her own remaining heart is even heavier without it. And isn’t that the way with such heartache? We live with it and even nurse it until it becomes a part of our lives. When it is finally gone the absence is almost harder to bear. We’ve forgotten how to live without the pain.

            The final question, “Is it too large for you?” is another way of emphasizing the great weight of her grief. Perhaps it is even too heavy for God to bear.

Dickinson wrote another version of this poem that is directed not to God the Father but to his son the Savior. In this version she confesses that she has strayed so far from Christianity as to have forgotten him. “Dost thou remember me?” she asks hopefully.

This version follows:

Savior! I've no one else to tell—

And so I trouble thee.

I am the one forgot thee so—

Dost thou remember me?

Nor, for myself, I came so far—

That were the little load—

I brought thee the imperial Heart

I had not strength to hold—

The Heart I carried in my own—

Till mine too heavy grew—

Yet—strangest—heavier since it went—

Is it too large for you?