18 pages • 36 minutes read
Emily DickinsonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“What mystery pervades a well” is written in six stanzas of four lines each. It uses iambic tetrameter and trimeter: lines of four or three sets of iambs, or alternating unstressed and stressed syllables.
There is one notable variation in the length of the lines: “Where he is floorless” (Line 15), which stops abruptly at five syllables, ending on an unstressed syllable rather than a stressed one. The following line returns to iambic tetrameter. This deviation in rhythm causes an auditory break and draws the reader’s attention to the word “floorless” (Line 15). The drop in rhythm emulates the ocean’s vast, fathomless expanse as well as the unconquerable divide between the full breadth of nature and human knowledge.
The rhyme scheme is ABCB, with the second and fourth lines of each stanza rhyming. Many of these are perfect rhymes, such as “most” and “ghost” (Lines 18, 20). Others are near or slant rhymes, such as “glass” and “face” (Lines 6, 8). The poem uses clear, simple language, favoring monosyllabic words. There is only one word, “timidity” (Line 16) that has three syllables.
By Emily Dickinson
A Bird, came down the Walk
Emily Dickinson
A Clock stopped—
Emily Dickinson
A narrow Fellow in the Grass (1096)
Emily Dickinson
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Emily Dickinson
"Faith" is a fine invention
Emily Dickinson
Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)
Emily Dickinson
Hope is a strange invention
Emily Dickinson
"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers
Emily Dickinson
I Can Wade Grief
Emily Dickinson
I Felt a Cleaving in my Mind
Emily Dickinson
I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain
Emily Dickinson
If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking
Emily Dickinson
If I should die
Emily Dickinson
If you were coming in the fall
Emily Dickinson
I heard a Fly buzz — when I died
Emily Dickinson
I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
Emily Dickinson
Much Madness is divinest Sense—
Emily Dickinson
Success Is Counted Sweetest
Emily Dickinson
Tell all the truth but tell it slant
Emily Dickinson
The Only News I Know
Emily Dickinson