She Dealt Her Pretty Words Like Blades
poem 479
She Dealt Her Pretty Words Like Blades - meaning Summary
Words as Wounding Blades
The speaker depicts a woman whose polished language wounds others as if with blades. Her remarks gleam yet expose raw nerves or revel in others’ pain, while she remains unaware or indifferent. The poem contrasts social ease with private suffering, framing emotional harm as shrugged off by custom and flesh. The final image—an eye’s film and mortality’s “locking up to Die”—casts forgetting or death as the customary seal on such hurts.
Read Complete AnalysesShe dealt her pretty words like Blades How glittering they shone And every One unbared a Nerve Or wantoned with a Bone She never deemed she hurt That is not Steel’s Affair A vulgar grimace in the Flesh How ill the Creatures bear To Ache is human not polite The Film upon the eye Mortality’s old Custom Just locking up to Die.
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