Matters of the Heart

In case you missed yesterday’s post, here’s the highlight-reel replay:

• In a review published in 1892, Poet and literary critic Thomas Bailey Aldrich predicted "oblivion" for Emily Dickinson.
• I shared one of Aldrich’s poems, “The Sisters’ Tragedy.”
• The work was, indeed, tragic – but laughably so.  It was the soppiest sapfest and sappiest sopfest I’ve encountered in quite some time!  And the ending?  In word, bizarre!
• In addition to the ridiculous premise and conclusion, the dialogue was mawkish – an old fashioned way to say “cheesy.”  The first line uttered by Muriel, one of the two sisters, was “Be still, my heart.”  I kid you not.

[Iffin you'd like to read the complete post, click HERE.]

Evidently, the phrase “my beating heart” was quite popular in 18th-century poetry and novels, so just for funsies, “Be still, my heart,” is the focus of today’s post!
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I explored the phrase and found that the earliest recorded appearance of the expanded phrase, "be still, my beating heart," is attributed to playwright William Mountfort in his 1705 play Zelmane ("Ha! hold my Brain; be still my beating Heart"); however, the shorter “be still, my heart” traces back even earlier to classical works like Homer's Odyssey ("Be still, my heart" or "Bear up, my heart,” depending upon the translation).  The earliest recorded “my beating heart” (without the imperative, “be still”) is found in Nicholas Rowe’s Tamerlane, a tragedy, 1702 (“My beating Heart Bounds with exulting motion”).  

Iffin you'd like to read Mountfort's complete play, click HERE.

I even found a blog post (HERE) that referenced a use of “my beating heart” from Gilbert & Sullivan’s operetta HMS Pinafore:

Of course, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” does not end with “be still, my beating heart,” but it comes close:

“Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! — tear up the planks! — here, here! — it is the beating of his hideous heart!”

The narrator could just have easily shouted, “be still, his beating heart!”

Poking around the interwebs for info on beating heats, I also found this:
 
Art is long and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
 
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
 
Longfellow’s lines called to mind some dialogue spoken by Scrooge’s nephew Fred’s in Charles Dickens’ classic, A Christmas Carol:

I also found this...

Skelm Island, Maine has always been known for two things: lobsters and its broken lighthouse.

But when corpses start showing up in the water, the isolated town becomes the face of a cryptic investigation.

​At the heart of which stands Lincoln Porter, a grumpy ex-SEAL whose lobstering business seems to attract more dead bodies than fish.

When homicide expert Detective Sloane is called in to assist with the case, she begins digging up skeletons; ones that Lincoln would rather stay buried.

And for you music lovers, there's this (to listen, click the pic...or click HERE):

Soooo... did Emily Dickinson ever use the phase “Be still, my heart” in any of her poems?

According to A Concordance to the Poems of Emily Dickinson, Dickinson used the word “heart” 124 times in 103 poems and the word “still” 117 times in 99 poems, and the closest she ever came to “be still, my heart” was “And still – my heart”:

​My eye is fuller than my vase –
Her Cargo – is of Dew –
And still – my Heart – my eye outweighs –
East India – for you!