Almost!
Within my reach!I could have touched!I might have chanced that way!Soft sauntered through the village,Sauntered as soft away!So unsuspected violetsWithin the fields lie low,Too late for striving fingersThat passed, an hour ago.
About this text
Almost! 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, Almost!, in Poems (1890–1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12242, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/dickinson-poems/almost.html, id L03574.
Form and metre
Almost! is 9 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.0 syllables. 4 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 22% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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 --A-A-B-B reach · touched · wayA · village · awayA · violets · lowB · fingers · agoB
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Within my reach! | 4 | ···· |
| I could have touched! | 4 | ···· |
| I might have chanced that way! | 6 | ······ |
| Soft sauntered through the village, | 7 | ·/˘··/˘ |
| Sauntered as soft away! | 6 | /˘··˘/ |
| So unsuspected violets | 8 | ··˘/˘/˘˘ |
| Within the fields lie low, | 6 | ······ |
| Too late for striving fingers | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| That passed, an hour ago. | 7 | ···/˘˘/ |
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.