I Like to See It Lap the Miles

Similar to the train’s subversion of categories and transgression of spaces, the form and meter of the poem deviates from expected norms. Instead of writing four quatrains (stanzas with four lines), Dickinson disrupts the uniformity by turning Stanza 3 into a quintet (a stanza with five lives). 

The train receives “a Quarry pare // To fit its sides” (Lines 8-9), but Dickinson doesn’t “fit” the action into one line. By breaking it up and using enjambment—a line that continued without grammatical pause onto the next—she highlights the fragmented quality of technology. As with the form, the train is resourcefully adaptable and moves in unforeseen ways. Eight lines qualify as enjambments, which advances this sense of unpredictable and onrushing movement. The enjambments sweep up the reader and mimic the momentum of the train. More so, the enjambments reflect the fast pace of technology. 

The meter alternates between iambic tetrameter (four iambs, or pairs of syllables, one stressed and one unstressed) and trimeter (three iambs). For instance, Line 1 scans, “I like to see it lap the Miles.” The meter matches the form when Dickinson reduces it to four iambs in Lines 9-10.