Dickinson presents "Love" in all its majesty and grandeur as being completely self-contained. To drive home what seems like a fairly simple point, she capitalizes the word, effectively personifying it in the process. A number of literary critics and scholars have argued that the personified figure of Love in the poem is synonymous with God, who is also self-contained and needs no one or nothing else for his continued existence. Some have argued that Love represents creativity. In either case, Love is fully self-contained.

The use of the reflexive term “reckons by itself” turns love from an abstract idea, a kind of Platonic For, if you will, into a self-referential character. Dickinson’s habitual use of dashes sets off the word "alone," making visible the quality of Love’s self-containment. Just as Love stands alone, so too does its self-reckoning in the first line of the poem.

Dickinson’s personification of Love, in much the same way that the God of traditional theism is personified, gives Love a commanding voice to which we must listen. Returning to the main theme of Love’s self-containment, Dickinson uses alliteration by way of the "l" sound—"alone," "large," "relate," "all," "blaze," and like"—creates a slow, steady rhythm of Love to itself, emphasizing once more Love’s self-contained character.