I Like to See It Leap the Miles - by Emily Dickinson

 

I like to see it leap the Miles –

And lick the Valleys up - 

And stop to feed itself at Tanks - 

And then - prodigious step

 

Around a Pile of Mountains - 

And supercilious peer

In Shanties - by the sides of Roads - 

And then a Quarry pare

 

To fit its sides

And crawl between

Complaining all the while

In horrid - hooting stanza - 

Then chase itself down Hill - 

 

And neigh like Boanerges - 

Then - prompter than a Star

Stop - docile and omnipotent

At its own stable door – 

 

Extended metaphor

A metaphor is an imaginative comparison between two things that are not basically alike at all – Madhushini is like a rose. A metaphor makes a comparison directly without using word like “like” or “as”. We use these imaginative comparisons to bring our ideas alive. Metaphors help us to see our subject in a new way. For example, when you read that a person has a heart of stone, you do not think that the person’s hear is made of rock. Instead, you use what you already know or feel about stones to realize how cold, hard, and uncaring the person is.

An extended metaphor is a metaphor that is developed, or extended, through several lines of writing or even throughout an entire poem. In “I Like to See It Leap the Miles” Dickinson uses an extended metaphor to compare a train to a horse throughout the whole poem.

1.     In the poem Dickinson never says directly what she is describing or what she is comparing that thing to. What clues in the poem tell you that she is writing about a train and comparing it to a horse?

2.     List all the adjectives Dickinson uses to describe the train. Think about these adjectives as well as the opening line of the poem. How do you think Dickinson feels about the train?