Forbidden Fruit I
Forbidden fruit a flavor hasThat lawful orchards mocks;How luscious lies the pea withinThe pod that Duty locks!
Words in this poem
- luscious a.
- Sweet; delicious; very grateful to the taste; toothsome; excessively sweet or rich. [Prob. for lustious, fr. lusty, or perh. a corruption of luxurious. Cf. Lush, Lusty.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Forbidden Fruit I 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, Forbidden Fruit I, in Poems (1890–1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12242, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/dickinson-poems/forbidden-fruit-i.html, id L03735.
Form and metre
Forbidden Fruit I is 4 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 6.8 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 has · mocksA · within · locksA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Forbidden fruit a flavor has | 8 | /˘˘··/˘· |
| That lawful orchards mocks; | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| How luscious lies the pea within | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| The pod that Duty locks! | 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.