Emily Dickinson poem?

I have a project on Emily Dickinson and I have to write the rhyme scheme, rhythm, and literary devices for this poem.

I died for beauty but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth, the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.


I have to look for poetry terms such as sound (like alliteration), sense (like simile. metaphor, metonymy, personification, hyperbole, litotes, and synechdoche, etc.), meter ( I think it's iambic), and metric lines (I think it's tetrameter for 1st and 3rd lines and trimeter for the 2nd and 4th).


Any help would be great.

Meter. Right, just add "iambic": iambic tetrameter alternating with iambic trimeter. An iambic foot has two syllables of which the first is unstressed, the second stressed.

The first verse uses enjambment (the sentence doesn't end or break at the end of the physical line, but continues into the next line) which gives the lines a flow rather than sounding duh-DUM duh-DUM.

allegory: Death and Truth, the only characters in the poem, are personified.

personification: Truth and Death are given human characteristics: namely, they can die and speak.

simile: "And so, as kinsmen met a night"

metaphor: ' "We brethren are," he said.'

ss-alliteration: "but was scarce adjusted"
w-alliteration: "W*hen o*ne who died for truth w*as lain"
ff-alliteration: "...softly why I failed?/ "For beauty...."

Notice that the alliterations are all liquid sounds as if to keep their talking as soft as possible so as not to disturb the quiet of the grave.

I'm not sure about this, but I think there's a vowel alliteration here, which is called assonance: It's the oo-sound in 'beauty,' 'tomb,' 'who,' 'truth,' 'room':

"I died for beauty but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room."

Metonymy: Again, I'm not sure, but this may qualify:

"Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names."

It seems to me that "names" is part of the larger ability to speak their names, or to speak at all. (It sounds like you know the meanings of the terms, so use your judgment. I'm far from an expert.)

possible allusion: "Ode to a Grecian Urn" by Keats, whose last two line are:

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

Dickenson's poem is largely dialogue, and those lines of Keats are the only "spoken" lines in his Ode.

http://www.bartleby.com/101/625.html

http://ut.essortment.com/emilydickinson_...

good luck.

ha its "i died for beauty but was scarce" go figure