Setting Sail
Exultation is the goingOf an inland soul to sea, --Past the houses, past the headlands,Into deep eternity!
Bred as we, among the mountains,Can the sailor understandThe divine intoxicationOf the first league out from land?
About this text
Setting Sail 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, Setting Sail, in Poems (1890–1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12242, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/dickinson-poems/setting-sail.html, id L03623.
Form and metre
Setting Sail is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%). 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.4 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 38% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in trochaic tetrameter.
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.
- 2 -A-A mountains · understandA · intoxication · landA
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Exultation is the going | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Of an inland soul to sea, -- | 7 | ··/···· |
| Past the houses, past the headlands, | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| Into deep eternity! | 7 | ···˘/˘˘ |
| Bred as we, among the mountains, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Can the sailor understand | 7 | ··/˘·˘/ |
| The divine intoxication | 8 | ·˘/˘·˘/˘ |
| Of the first league out from land? | 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.