A Stylistic Analysis to Emily Dickson’s Three Selected Poems

This paper aims to present a stylistic approach to the three selected

poems of Emily Dickinson, ‘“Hope” is the thing with feathers’, ‘My life closed
twice before its close’, and ‘Success is counted sweetest’. The objective of
this analysis is to determine the poetic style of Emily Dickinson through
scrutinizing the stylistic levels of her poems.

A Stylistic Analysis of ‘“Hope” is the thing with feathers’

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chilliest land -

And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

The poem contains three (3) quatrains and has ABAB ABAB ABBB
rhyme scheme. The first letter of every line is capitalized, but there are also
words in the middle of the lines that has unusual capitalization; ‘Gale’ in the
first line and ‘Bird’ in the third line of the second stanza, ‘Sea’ in the second
line and ‘Extremity’ in the third line of the third stanza. In the appearance of

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these capitalizations, the poetess makes sure that these words are given
importance for its symbolism in the poem as the capitalized words may draw
the reader’s attention.

The first word of the poem, which is ‘Hope’, has double quotation
mark, taking note that this is the most significant message of the poem.
Also, in the entire poem, one apostrophe is used and can be seen at the first
line of the third stanza which is ‘I’ve’, a contraction of ‘I’ and ‘have’.
Additionally, the poem has dashes in almost every line of the stanzas except
for the third line in the second stanza that has nothing beside it, and in the
third and fourth line of the third stanza that have a period and a comma
instead. The poetess uses the dashes to indicate the pauses in between the
lines, breaking the flow of the poem when reading it.

There are some words in the poems that are related to nature, such as
‘Gale’, ‘storm’, ‘land’, and ‘Sea’. Furthermore, here is a table of lexical
elements present in the poem:

Nouns Pronouns Verbs Adjectives Adverbs

Hope, feathers It is, perches sweetest never, all
soul, tune I sings, stops little, warm so
words, Gale heard, must, be chilliest
sore, storm could, abash strangest
Bird, land, Sea, kept, have, heard,
crumb, Extremity asked

There are also changes in tenses of the poem. In the first stanza, the
verbs are in the simple present form: ‘perches’, ‘sings’, ‘stops’ followed by
prepositional phrases. Then, the verbs from the second and third stanzas
use the simple past tense e.g. ‘could’, ‘kept’, and ‘asked’, except in the first
line of the third stanza, which uses a present perfect tense: I + have + past

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participle ‘heard’. The use of simple present tense is to state that the action
is currently happening or state that the action is happens in general whereas
the use of simple past tense states that the action happened already before
in the present time and present perfect tense states an action that has
already happened once or many times at some point in the past. It
implicates that everything that has happened to the past, hope was present,
and will continue to be present all the time, as hope never disappoints and
never leaves, as from what can be signified from the simple present tense in
the first stanza.

The poem uses metaphor that can be seen in the first line of the first
stanza and in the third line of the second stanza. The abstract word ‘Hope’ is
compared to the concrete words ‘feathers’ and ‘Bird’ that indicates that
‘Hope’ is like a bird that can soar you up into the skies.

Personification is also found in the second, third, and fourth lines of

the first stanza. The abstract word ‘Hope’ is given human characteristics,
thus, adding a strong implication that ‘Hope’, being compared to a bird, acts
as something that lives, flies, and moves as a thing with feathers as can be
seen from these lines:

“That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –”

In this poem, the poetess brings ‘Hope’ into life despite it being an
abstract object, by giving it characteristics of a bird; it has feathers,
implying that hope can fly, that it always sings, and is always there. Hope
was heard through rough days, unyielding as its severity demands it;
through unfamiliar situations and places, hope never left, and never
demanded for anything in return.

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A Stylistic Analysis of ‘My life closed twice before its close’

My life closed twice before its close –

It yet remains to see

If Immortality unveil

A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive

As these that twice befell.

Parting is all we know of heaven,

And all we need of hell.

The poem has two (2) quatrains and has a rhyme scheme of ABCB
ABCB. There are usual capitalizations in the beginning of the first word of
every line but there is only one word in the middle of the third line in the
first stanza that has capitalization in the first letter which is ‘Immortality’.
Immortality simply means eternal life, putting an emphasis to this word after
describing the persona’s loss before death could mean that immortality
means experiencing another loss of a loved one if one continues to live.

Punctuation marks are seen in the poem and also work as

interruptions to the flow of the lines; two periods, placed at the end of the
second and fourth lines of the second stanza and a comma at the end of the
third line of the second stanza. A dash can also be seen at the end of the
first line of the first stanza.

There are some words in the poems that are related to the concept of
life and afterlife event, i.e. ‘life’, ‘immortality’, ‘heaven’, and ‘hell’. The word

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‘close’ in the end of the first stanza is used as a noun. Here is a table of
lexical elements present in the poem:

Nouns Pronouns Verbs Adjectives Adverbs

life, close It, me closed remains, third twice
Immortality these, we see, unveil huge yet
event conceive, is hopeless so, all
Parting befell, know
heaven, hell need

Paradox is used in the last two lines of the poem, as it describes the
irony of ‘parting’ how it separates happiness and despair through life, yet
everyone could experience it.

“Parting is all we know of heaven,

And all we need of hell”

The poem talks about death of loved ones and how one could suffer
encountering this life event. How it will continue to cause grief as loss is a
normal occurrence that happens through life, and death itself can cause bliss
to those who have passed away as signified in the word ‘heaven’, and death
can cause misery to those who still live as signified in the word ‘hell’.

A Stylistic Analysis of ‘Success is counted sweetest’

Success is counted sweetest

By those who ne'er succeed.

To comprehend a nectar

Requires sorest need.

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 Not one of all the purple Host

Who took the Flag today

Can tell the definition

So clear of victory

As he defeated – dying –

On whose forbidden ear

The distant strains of triumph

Burst agonized and clear!

The poem has three (3) quatrains and has ABCB ABCB rhyme scheme
in the first and the third stanzas, none at the second stanza. There are also
usual capitalizations in the beginning of the first words of every line but
there are some words that are capitalized in the first letter of the word while
being in the middle of a line, such as the words ‘Host’ in the first line and
‘Flag’ in the second line of the second stanza.

There are punctuation marks in the poem; one apostrophe in the

second line of the first stanza to contract the word ‘never’ to ‘ne'er’, and a
period is used on the end of the same line and another period in the end of
the fourth line of the same stanza. There are two dashes in the first line of
the third stanza. An exclamation mark is used at the end of the poem.

Here is a table of lexical elements present in the poem:

Nouns Pronouns Verbs Adjectives Adverbs

Success who is, counted sweetest ne’er
nectar, need one succeed sorest, all not, today
Host, Flag he comprehend purple, clear so
definition took, can, tell forbidden

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victory, strains defeated, dying distant
triumph burst agonized, clear

A paradox can be seen at the first two lines of the first stanza. The
second line contradicts the statement of the first line but the context is
comprehensible in these lines:

“Success is counted sweetest

By those who ne'er succeed.”

The poem indicates how success could be best achieved by not

experiencing at all, as those who never experience it craves for it the most.
It is implicated in the second stanza that not everyone who achieved success
knows more about victory, as victory compares to a ‘Flag’, and the color
purple is often related to power and ambition, so purple ‘Host’ are the said
victors. In the third stanza, it indicates how failure evokes the need to
succeed, as triumph is loud and clear that it causes those who fail to try
their best to achieve.

The Three Selected Poems

There are shared distinct features in the three poems; the poems have
no titles, contain quatrains and have rhyme schemes; usual capitalizations of
the first letter of the first word in each lines along with unusual capitalized
first letter in, supposedly, common nouns in the middle of the lines. The
poetess also uses a lot of punctuation marks like dashes, periods,
apostrophes, and commas are visible in the poems, while there is one
exclamation point used in one of the poems. A lot of affixes are also
recognized, especially inflectional morphemes. Additionally, there are

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changes in the tenses in the poems, and there are poetic devices seen in the
first poem and the last poem.

The use of capitalizations is visible and efficient as it indicates

importance and emphasis, making the words palpable. Likewise, punctuation
marks give direction and draw the attention of the reader to the flow of the
poems. Dashes are often used to create pauses and interruptions in a
sentence, while commas are used to create division in a sentence and
periods to signify the end of a sentence.

Affixation helps signify the use of a word. Derivational morpheme puts

affixation on the root word to create new meaning based from their bases
and “can change the grammatical category of a word” (Yule, 2010, as cited
in Nordquist, 2020). Meanwhile, inflectional morpheme is a morpheme that
has affixation on the root word to show the grammatical property of a word
(Nordquist, 2020).

Figures of speech are evident in the analysis of the three poems. The
use of figure of speech is to deviate The first poem has metaphor, in which
‘Hope’ is being compared to a bird with feathers and has personification
when an abstract word ‘Hope’ is given human characteristics. Meanwhile, the
second and the third poem use paradox, a contradicting statement, to
implicitly describe how two things can be different yet it makes sense in
reality.

Conclusion

The style of Emily Dickinson is definitely distinguishable; first, each

poem has no title, is short and only contains quatrains. Second, the
deviations she created are also credible as how she uses capitalizations to
make the words noticeable for its symbolism and how she uses punctuation

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mark to control the progressive form of each poem. Lastly, the theme of
each poem are evident to the word she choose to use, almost every noun is
related to life and nature, and that the messages in every poem pertains to
life experiences.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arikan, A. (n.d.). DOING STYLISTIC ANALYSIS: SOME FUNDAMENTAL

TECHNIQUES. http://aves.akdeniz.edu.tr/YayinGoster.aspx?
ID=2744&NO=119

Dickinson, E. (n.d.). “Hope” is the thing with feathers - (314). Poetry

Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-
thing-with-feathers-314

Dickinson, E. (n.d.). My life closed twice before its close (96). poets.org.
https://poets.org/poem/my-life-closed-twice-its-close-96

Dickinson, E. (n.d.). Success is counted sweetest (112). Poetry Foundation.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45721/success-is-counted-
sweetest-112

Emily Dickinson’s Love Life. (n.d.). Emily Dickinson Museum.

https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/emily-dickinson/biography/special-
topics/emily-dickinsons-love-life/

Nordquist, R. (2020, January 24). Meaning and Examples of Inflectional

Morphemes. ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-an-
inflectional-morpheme-1691064