Poor 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!

Basic set up:

The speaker of Dickinson's poem speaks about their very frail, very proud, very poor little heart.

This is a poem addressed to the heart. The heart, of course, is associated with emotion: we've probably heard the phrase, "Use your head, not your heart," or, you know, walked into any drugstore around Valentine's Day. The heart is seen as the organ that is the source of our sadness and happiness.

It's kind of weird, when you think about it. Can you imagine if drugstores around Thanksgiving were decorated with paper stomachs? Because, mmm, all that cranberry sauce goes straight into your tummy.

The heart—and the emotions of the heart—are at the center of Dickinson's poem. The poem reflects the American Romantics' emphasis on emotion. These guys and gals believed that our emotions were at the center of our experience, and we can see this idea dramatized in Dickinson's poem.

This is a small, frail little poem. It's as small and frail as the little heart it describes. It's made up of a handful of lines, and there's a lot of repetition. But there's also variation.

Dickinson's poem suggests how unstable our emotions are. We go from feeling proud to feeling frail to feeling happy. Emotions, in other words, are very turbulent: they change very quickly and they go from one extreme to the other. But, alas, Dickinson's speaker suggests that eventually, inevitably, our hearts will wilt and break. *Sob*