SHE slept beneath a tree
Emily Dickinson
Remembered but by me.
I touched her cradle mute;
She recognized the foot,
Put on her carmine suit,–
And see!
For such a short poem–only six lines!–there are interesting things happening here.
The tulip is female. She’s also, apparently, a child, since she’s still in the cradle–but if the poet remembers her, then she’s not a newly planted bulb.
She’s brought to life by a touch from the poet. We don’t know what state the tulip was in when the poet touches her, but she’s definitely not blooming, since she’s still sleeping. Tulips are funny that way: they seem to bloom, and then die, overnight.
The poet is speaking to someone else. That last line, “And see!,” is directed. Is she talking to the reader? To someone she brought to see the flower in bloom? We don’t know, but the tulip is definitely the most important thing in the poem–at least she gets pronouns.
There are only two rhymes in the poem, but they’re split. “Mute/foot/suit” all follow one another in lines 3, 4, and 5, but the long e sound of lines 1 and 2, “tree/me,” doesn’t repeat again until line 6 with “see.”
Every line contains six syllables, except for the sixth line, which only has two. It feels almost like two poems: reverence for the tulip, and then remembering that someone else is there, and hastily addressing them, too.
The Emily Project 