Consecration

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) · 1890–1896

Common measure: quatrains alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter · 4 lines · from Poems

Proud of my broken heart since thou didst break it,Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee,Proud of my night since thou with moons dost slake it,Not to partake thy passion, my humility.

Words in this poem

didst
, the 2d pers. sing. imp. of Do.

Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.

About this text

Consecration 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, Consecration, in Poems (1890–1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12242, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/dickinson-poems/consecration.html, id L03769.

Form and metre

Consecration is 4 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 10.8 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.

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. 1 A-A- itA · thee · itA · humility
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. How this is done.

LineSyl.Stress
Proud of my broken heart since thou didst break it,11···/˘······
Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee,10··········
Proud of my night since thou with moons dost slake it,11···········
Not to partake thy passion, my humility.12··˘/·/˘·˘/˘˘

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.

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