A Portrait
A face devoid of love or grace,A hateful, hard, successful face,A face with which a stoneWould feel as thoroughly at easeAs were they old acquaintances, --First time together thrown.
Words in this poem
- hateful a.
- Manifesting hate or hatred; malignant; malevolent.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Portrait 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 Portrait, in Poems (1890–1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12242, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/dickinson-poems/a-portrait.html, id L03744.
Form and metre
A Portrait is 6 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes AABCCB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.0 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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 AABCCB graceA · faceA · stoneB · easeC · acquaintancesC · thrownB
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 iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| A face devoid of love or grace, | 8 | ··˘/···· |
| A hateful, hard, successful face, | 8 | ·/˘·˘/˘· |
| A face with which a stone | 6 | ······ |
| Would feel as thoroughly at ease | 8 | ···/˘˘·· |
| As were they old acquaintances, -- | 8 | ····˘/˘˘ |
| First time together thrown. | 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.