A Rose
A sepal, petal, and a thornUpon a common summer's morn,A flash of dew, a bee or two,A breezeA caper in the trees, --And I'm a rose!
Words in this poem
- morn n.
- The first part of the day; the morning; -- used chiefly in poetry. [OE. morwen, morgen, AS. morgen; akin to D. morgen, OS. morgan, G. morgen, Icel. morginn, morgunn, Sw. morgon, Dan. morgen, Goth. maúrgins. Cf. Morrow, Morning.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Rose 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 Rose, in Poems (1890–1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12242, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/dickinson-poems/a-rose.html, id L03789.
Form and metre
A Rose is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 95%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.0 syllables.
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 AA-BB- thornA · mornA · two · breezeB · treesB · rose
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 sepal, petal, and a thorn | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| Upon a common summer's morn, | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| A flash of dew, a bee or two, | 8 | ········ |
| A breeze | 2 | ·· |
| A caper in the trees, -- | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| And I'm a rose! | 4 | ···· |
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.