Analysis of It was not death, for I stood up,
Emily Dickinson 1830 (Amherst) – 1886 (Amherst)
It was not death, for I stood up,
And all the dead lie down;
It was not night, for all the bells
Put out their tongues, for noon.
It was not frost, for on my flesh
I felt siroccos crawl,--
Nor fire, for just my marble feet
Could keep a chancel cool.
And yet it tasted like them all;
The figures I have seen
Set orderly, for burial,
Reminded me of mine,
As if my life were shaven
And fitted to a frame,
And could not breathe without a key;
And 't was like midnight, some,
When everything that ticked has stopped,
And space stares, all around,
Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns,
Repeal the beating ground.
But most like chaos,--stopless, cool,--
Without a chance or spar,--
Or even a report of land
To justify despair.
Scheme | XXAX XBXC BXXX XXXX XDAD CXXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11111111 010111 11111101 111111 11111111 1111 110111101 11011 01110111 010111 11001100 010111 1111010 010101 01110101 011111 1101111 011101 11011101 010101 1111011 010111 11000111 11001 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 704 |
Words | 142 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 91 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 23 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 14, 2023
- 42 sec read
- 132 Views
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"It was not death, for I stood up," Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/11899/it-was-not-death%2C-for-i-stood-up%2C>.
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