Stephen Crane

Many Red Devils Ran from My Heart

Many Red Devils Ran from My Heart - meaning Summary

Emotions Made Messy

The poem depicts the speaker’s inner emotions spilling onto the page as a swarm of small "red devils." Writing becomes an act that both compresses and contaminates those feelings: the pen crushes them while ink traps and smudges them. The language presents composition as an uneasy, physical process in which private pain is transformed, diminished, and rendered strangely unfamiliar when fixed in written form.

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Many red devils ran from my heart And out upon the page, They were so tiny The pen could mash them. And many struggled in the ink. It was strange To write in this red muck Of things from my heart.

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