A Clock stopped—

Swiss mantel clocks in the 1800s often had carved figures of human beings or animals as part of their make-up. In Dickinson’s poem it seems that this figure is mechanized, a “puppet” (Line 4) that normally “bow[ed]” before the stoppage occurred and it “dangled still” (Line 5). Clearly this is to show the fault in the mechanism, but on a symbolic level this aligns with human fragility and death. Puppets are often shaped in human form and a common image of having one’s strings being pulled by a master of Fate or a Supreme Being is implied here. This illuminates Dickinson’s theme that an individual must accept the inevitable fate of death. This mention solidifies that the breaking down of the clock is symbolic for the ending of a life and clarifies the extended metaphor.

The “pendulum” (Line 11) of any timepiece refers to the weight that regulates the mechanism by moving backward and forward. Without this motion, the clock cannot tell time. Here, the “pendulum” (Line 11) can also indicate the tendency for someone to swing from one extreme to another, perhaps in this case the living and the dead. This pendulum is made of “snow” (Line 11), suggesting either that it is very cold and thus frozen, or very fragile and easily blown apart.