A little road not made of man
A little road not made of man,Enabled of the eye,Accessible to thill of bee,Or cart of butterfly.
If town it have, beyond itself,'T is that I cannot say;I only sigh, -- no vehicleBears me along that way.
Words in this poem
- thill n.
- One of the two long pieces of wood, extending before a vehicle, between which a horse is hitched; a shaft. [OE. thille, AS. a board, plank, beam, thill; akin to a plank, D. deel a plank, floor, G. diele, OHG. dili, dilla, Icel. a plank, planking, a thwart, a wainscot,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A little road not made of man is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete, Project Gutenberg ebook #12242; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Emily Dickinson, A little road not made of man, in Poems (1890–1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12242, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/dickinson-poems/a-little-road-not-made-of-man.html, id L18902.
Form and metre
A little road not made of man is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%).
See other poems in common measure.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 -AAA man · eyeA · beeA · butterflyA
- 2 -A-A itself · sayA · vehicle · wayA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| A little road not made of man, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Enabled of the eye, | 7 | ˘/˘˘··· |
| Accessible to thill of bee, | 8 | ˘/˘˘···· |
| Or cart of butterfly. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| If town it have, beyond itself, | 8 | ······˘/ |
| 'T is that I cannot say; | 7 | ····/˘· |
| I only sigh, -- no vehicle | 8 | ·/˘··/˘˘ |
| Bears me along that way. | 6 | ··˘/·· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.