Who?
My friend must be a bird,Because it flies!Mortal my friend must be,Because it dies!Barbs has it, like a bee.Ah, curious friend,Thou puzzlest me!
Words in this poem
- curious a.
- Difficult to please or satisfy; solicitous to be correct; careful; scrupulous; nice; exact. [OF. curios, curius, F. curieux, L. curiosus careful, inquisitive, fr. cura care. See Cure.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Who? 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, Who?, in Poems (1890–1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12242, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/dickinson-poems/who.html, id L03778.
Form and metre
Who? is 7 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%). 91% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 5.1 syllables.
See 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 -ABAB-B bird · fliesA · beB · diesA · beeB · friend · meB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| My friend must be a bird, | 6 | ······ |
| Because it flies! | 4 | ···· |
| Mortal my friend must be, | 6 | /˘···· |
| Because it dies! | 4 | ···· |
| Barbs has it, like a bee. | 6 | ······ |
| Ah, curious friend, | 5 | ·/˘˘· |
| Thou puzzlest me! | 5 | ·/˘˘· |
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.