Friends
Are friends delight or pain?Could bounty but remainRiches were good.
But if they only stayBolder to fly away,Riches are sad.
Words in this poem
- bounty n.
- Goodness, kindness; virtue; worth. [OE. bounte goodness, kindness, F. bonté, fr. L. bonitas, fr. bonus good, for older duonus; cf. Skr. duvas honor, respect.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Friends 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, Friends, in Poems (1890–1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12242, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/dickinson-poems/friends.html, id L03751.
Form and metre
Friends is 6 lines in 2 stanzas of 3 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%). 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 5.3 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets, 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 AA- painA · remainA · good
- 2 AA- stayA · awayA · sad
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Are friends delight or pain? | 6 | ··˘/·· |
| Could bounty but remain | 6 | ·/˘·˘/ |
| Riches were good. | 4 | /˘·· |
| But if they only stay | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Bolder to fly away, | 6 | /˘··˘/ |
| Riches are sad. | 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.