When I forget to tease—
They'll recollect how cold I looked
And how I just said "Please."
Then They will hasten to the Door
To call the little Girl
Who cannot thank Them for the Ice
That filled the lisping full.
-F923, J874, sheet 13, 1865
This poem is slippery. The trick is to reconcile the ice in the second stanza with the cold in the first. Let's plunge into some possible meanings.
My initial reading of this poem was about a little girl in trouble who is imagining how much she’ll be missed when she’s dead. The key to this interpretation is the line, “They'll recollect how cold I looked.” How can you not think of a corpse when you read this line, especially knowing Emily's penchant for having the narrator of the poem speak from beyond the grave? In this narrative the girl can no longer say thank you because she’s dead. The ice at the end that filled her lisping full was given to her by her parents as she was dying to wet her parched lips and give her final comfort, which all comes a little too late. In this interpretation the point of the poem is to be kinder because some day the little girl who is annoying to you because of her teasing will be dead. Or something like that.
It's a viable reading of the poem, but there is another way to read this narrative, in which the ice filling the mouth has a different meaning. The second interpretation is about a little girl who is angry for being violently punished for teasing and runs away. This little girl has been teasing her sister and brother, (or maybe her parents), making fun of them by lisping and mocking them. Her siblings (or her parents) out of anger punish the little girl by filling up her mouth with ice.
The little girl asks them to stop because the ice is cold. "They'll recollect how cold I looked." She says “please.” (In both readings that "please" has real pathos, hanging there like it does.) You have to imagine how painful this punishment would be to a little girl, the sting of the ice. But, alas, the "please" is not heeded, so she runs away. The siblings/parents call out the door to her, but its too late.
The siblings/parents are no longer frowning at the little girl's teasing, now they are smiling, happy the girl is gone on this "sweet" day.
They won't frown always—some sweet Day
Or is the day "sweet" for the girl because she has gotten away from her tormentors? I think it is likely meant to be the latter. It's not happy for the siblings/parents, we know, because they are hurrying to the door to call the girl back.
Then They will hasten to the Door
To call the little Girl
Who cannot thank Them for the Ice
That filled the lisping full.
In this reading of the poem, "Who cannot thank them" is meant to be sarcastic. The girl does not stick around to "thank" the siblings/parents for this violent act.
Then They will hasten to the Door
To call the little Girl
But the girl is gone, and therefore cannot "thank them" for the ice they stuffed into her mouth.
Who cannot thank Them for the Ice
That filled the lisping full.
In this reading of the poem, "Who cannot thank them" is meant to be sarcastic. The girl does not stick around to "thank" the siblings/parents for this violent act.
There is a possibility that the gratitude is meant to be sincere rather than sarcastic, that the chastened girl has learned her lesson about teasing others, and is grateful for the lesson. But I don't think so. I think Dickinson is baring her teeth.
This poem was a real head-scratcher. I had to do a double-take.
Reading it again I see a little girl who is saying one day I'll be dead and they'll be sorry they stuffed my mouth with ice to stop my teasing. They'll wish they had their teasing girl back again. As a HS teacher I can relate. I often find myself frustrated with students who are teasing each other, but when they graduate, these are often the kids I miss the most.
Do you have a different interpretation? If so, I'd love to hear it.
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
P.S. This poem reminds me of one by Ron Padgett. I looked everywhere for this poem and couldn't find it, so I reached out to the poet himself, who generously sent it along to me. You can find it in Very Collected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2025). Here it is.
The Value of Discipline
I am very disappointed in you Myron.
You are a very smart boy,
and we had high hopes for you.
And now this.
I don't know.
Go to your room.
Myron heads toward his room,
but does his head hang low?
No way!
He is looking straight ahead
and feeling a hot black liquid
trickle through his heart.
Great galleons
bound through the rough seas
and on them bearded men
are shouting sailor things
as if to the wind.
Back in his room
the objects look older.
What joy to make them walk the plank!
Avast! Avaunt! Splash! Garrr!
I am reminded of F658 "'Tis true—They shut me in the Cold—". No wonder her mouth is full of ice. As I read F921 "Snow beneath whose chilly softness" I wondered whether the "acclimated Creature" is Emily herself. She knows snow's austerity firsthand, and so she is worried for the newly bestowed neighbor. In F860 "No Notice gave She, but a Change—" we read, "She was not warm, though Summer shone / Nor scrupulous of cold / Though Rime by Rime, the steady Frost / Upon Her Bosom piled—".
ReplyDelete“They,” I think, are the beloved dead: the people she cherished who are no longer alive, or the poets she loved, like Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She wishes to join them "Through easy Miracle of Death—" (F369). They frown at her request because it is too early for her. But some sweet day, when she least expects it, they will take pity on her, and she too will be "admitted Home" (F369).
Until then, though, she must, to use Hamlet's words, absent herself from felicity and in this harsh world draw her breath in pain to tell her story.
Thank you for this. It helps put the poem in context. Yes, I did think of all the icy imagery from poems past too, including F921. I hadn't thought of Dickinson as the "acclimated creature" in that poem, but pairing that one with this and F658, it becomes ice-clear. "As freezing persons recollect the snow" from F372 comes to mind too.
ReplyDeleteI thought of another explanation for this specific poem. I thought that Emily is talking about a mischievous little girl whose parents are trying to teach her good manners—to stop teasing others, to say 'please' when asking for something, etc. And they actually succeed at some point; the little girl loses her cheerful, playful behavior and starts acting according to the rules of etiquette. However, the parents then regret it. They miss their old, cute, mischievous little girl, who has now become a proper lady acting with cold politeness. Her words are full of propriety and cold courtesy—she has ice in her mouth! I don't know if this interpretation is correct, and the others are probably more accurate, but I find it to be a cute, playful interpretation!
ReplyDelete