llow with him; she rejects the chance of being intimate and she rejects the softer life, the homelier option:And when at Night - Our good Day done -I guard My Master's Head -'Tis better than the Eider-Duck'sDeep Pillow - to have shared -As you can see, she prefers guarding the master to having shared his pillow, that is, to having shared intimacy with him. As a consequence, the speaker seems ironically and almost condescendingly distant from the world of life (here, of potential life-creation or love). As the poem goes on, I had a harder and harder time trying to interpret what she was implying. For example, in the lines:To foe of His - I'm deadly foe -None stir the second time -On whom I lay a Yellow Eye -Or an emphatic Thumb -I was trying to find out what a Yellow Eye was supposed to mean, and I think it has to do with the sight gauge on a gun; and an emphatic thumb represents a thumb on a trigger of a gun, ready to shoot. So I feel that shes saying a foe of his is a foe of hers, like shes watching over him and protecting him, just like in the lines before. So shes ready to jump down their throat if they rub her the wrong way, because shes a deadly foe. Maybe shes a deadly foe in a sense that she is strong with her words and intelligence and can harm someone intellectually.The speaker's purpose, power, and control are destructive and bring her the joy and satisfaction. But she also fears the thought of living without her master, and she wants him to outlive her, Though I than Hemay longer live/ He longer mustthan I. And maybe when she says For I have but the power to kill/Withoutthe power to die, I think shes implying the phrase words can kill, applying to the lines previous, like her being the deadly foe. And she will live forever through her poetry, so she cannot die in a sense that she will be forgotten. Her written thoughts, words, feelings, and emotions as a poet will live forever in the minds of her audience. She does ...
