Emily Dickinson

A poor torn heart, a tattered heart

Tattered heart

Not broken—*tattered*. The heart is worn out from use, like fabric that's been through too much, not shattered in one dramatic moment.

A poor torn heart, a tattered heart,
That sat it down to rest,
Nor noticed that the ebbing day

Ebbing day / silver

Tide language for sunset. The day flows out like water, but the heart doesn't notice—too focused inward to see beauty.

Flowed silver to the west,
Nor noticed night did soft descend
Nor constellation burn,
Intent upon the vision

Latitudes unknown

Navigation term. The heart is lost, trying to find its position, staring at an internal map that makes no sense.

Of latitudes unknown.
The angels, happening that way,
This dusty heart espied;
Tenderly took it up from toil
And carried it to God.
There,—sandals for the barefoot;
There,—gathered from the gales,
Do the blue havens by the hand

Blue havens

Heaven/haven pun. The safe harbor is literally heaven—where lost sailors (souls) finally get guided home.

Lead the wandering sails.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Exhausted Soul

This is Dickinson's version of a rescue poem, but notice what gets rescued: not a person, but a heart. The poem treats the heart as separate from its owner, a worn-out thing that "sat it down to rest" like a traveler collapsing by the roadside. That strange pronoun—"it"—makes the heart an object, something you carry that can be set down.

The first stanza is all about *not noticing*. Three times: "Nor noticed." The heart misses the sunset, misses nightfall, misses the stars—the entire natural world passes by unobserved. Why? Because it's "intent upon the vision / Of latitudes unknown." Latitudes is the key word: this is navigation language. The heart is lost, trying to calculate its position, staring at coordinates that don't exist. It's the exhaustion of someone who can't stop trying to figure out where they are, even when they're too tired to move.

Dickinson wrote this around 1863, during the Civil War and her most productive period—she wrote nearly 300 poems that year. The "dusty heart" the angels find isn't destroyed; it's covered in the grime of living, still intact but filthy from the road.

What Heaven Does

The second stanza shifts to rescue, but watch what the angels do: they don't heal the heart or fix it. They just pick it up—"Tenderly took it up from toil"—and carry it somewhere else. The poem doesn't say the heart asked for help. The angels just "happened that way," like they're on their rounds.

Then Dickinson gives us her vision of heaven in two images. First: "sandals for the barefoot." Not wings, not crowns—*shoes*. Heaven is where you finally get footwear after walking too long without it. Second: "the blue havens by the hand / Lead the wandering sails." Havens/heavens is a pun—the safe harbor *is* heaven. And notice what heaven does: it doesn't anchor the sails or stop them wandering. It takes them "by the hand" and *leads* them. Heaven is a guide, not a destination where you stop moving.

The grammar of that last sentence is deliberately tangled—"Do the blue havens...Lead the wandering sails" inverts normal word order. You have to read it twice. That confusion mirrors the heart's confusion in stanza one: even the description of clarity requires effort to parse. Dickinson won't let you coast, even when she's describing rest.