This
little Hound within the Heart
All
day and night with – bark and start –
And
yet – it will not go?
Would
you untie it, were you me –
Would
it stop whining, if to Thee –
I
sent it – even now?
It
should not tease you –
by your chair –
Or,
on the mat –
Or if it dare –
To
climb your dizzy knee –
Or
sometimes – at your side to run –
When
you were willing –
May
it come –
Tell
Carlo –
He'll tell me!
F237
(1861) 186
It
seems servile and pathetic to modern readers that a poet likens the love in her
heart to a dog. Dogs are devoted to their masters (mistresses) and if they are
tied up or otherwise not free to go to him they will whimper and whine. They are not like contemporary women who
just charge ahead and never sit around whimpering (ummm… not usually, anyway).
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Who wouldn't untie this sad little hound? |
The
poet’s heart is like such a dog. When it is not near its beloved master it
carries on “All day and night” barking, whimpering, and starting – straining on
its leash. And so the poet would very much like to send it on its way. She asks
permission first. To help it find acceptance, she promises the dog will not be
a pest: won’t pester or tease for play, won’t try to climb up on Master’s lap
via the tall, “dizzy knee.” What the dog will do is to run by Master’s side –
if he is willing!
Thus
the narrator promises to be no trouble to the man she loves (assumed to be
Samuel Bowles since this poem was among the poems and letters from Dickinson
found in his estate). She softens the begging tone first by asking, “If you
were me would you let this hound/love free?” rather than pleading that he let
her free it. Then at the end she introduces the playful idea of Master telling
her dog Carlo (named after a dog in Jane Eyre). Carlo can be the
intermediary between Master the hound of the heart.
In
the first stanza she says that although the heart hound “whimpers so” it won’t
go,” and the second stanza explains that it won’t go because it is tied up. The
narrator has leashed her emotion, but like a dog, it strains against its
tether.
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