Have You Got a Brook in Your Little Heart
poem 136
Have You Got a Brook in Your Little Heart - meaning Summary
Inner Spring of Feeling
Dickinson compares a private, tender inner life to a small hidden brook. The poem evokes quiet nourishment—flowers, birds, trembling shadows—and notes that this source of daily refreshment often goes unnoticed. She then warns that external seasons can overwhelm or exhaust it: spring floods or summer droughts threaten the brook. The overall meaning urges care for fragile personal feelings and the hidden places that sustain a person.
Read Complete AnalysesHave you got a Brook in your little heart, Where bashful flowers blow, And blushing birds go down to drink, And shadows tremble so And nobody knows, so still it flows, That any brook is there, And yet your little draught of life Is daily drunken there Why, look out for the little brook in March, When the rivers overflow, And the snows come hurrying from the fills, And the bridges often go And later, in August it may be When the meadows parching lie, Beware, lest this little brook of life, Some burning noon go dry!
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