Dreams
Let me not mar that perfect dreamBy an auroral stain,But so adjust my daily nightThat it will come again.
Words in this poem
- auroral a.
- Belonging to, or resembling, the aurora (the dawn or the northern lights); rosy.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Dreams 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, Dreams, in Poems (1890–1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12242, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/dickinson-poems/dreams.html, id L03779.
Form and metre
Dreams is 4 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 7.0 syllables.
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 dream · stainA · night · againA
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.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Let me not mar that perfect dream | 8 | ·····˘/· |
| By an auroral stain, | 6 | ··˘/˘· |
| But so adjust my daily night | 8 | ··˘/·/˘· |
| That it will come again. | 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.