Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The speaker writes from a first-person perspective and is implied to be a stand-in for Dickinson based on the poem's thematic concerns and stylistic idiosyncrasies.
Form and Meter
The poem's eight lines alternate between iambic tetrameter and trimeter. It has an ABCB rhyme scheme.
Metaphors and Similes
The "letter to the world" described by the speaker is a metaphor for her loneliness; it is a one-sided correspondence, in her words.
Alliteration and Assonance
Alliteration is present in the N sounds of the line "The simple News that Nature told."
Irony
N/A
Genre
Lyric poetry
Setting
The setting is not specified, although the speaker distinguishes between Nature, where seems to be comfortable, and the World (i.e., society), in which she is unwelcome.
Tone
The tone of the poem is pensive and uncertain.
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist is the speaker. The antagonist is the social "World" which seems to ignore or misunderstand her.
Major Conflict
The major conflict of the poem is the speaker struggling to be understood by the social world that surrounds her.
Climax
The poem's climax occurs when the speaker asks her "sweet countrymen" to "judge" her "tenderly," as they bear in mind their love and appreciation for nature.
Foreshadowing
N/A
Understatement
N/A
Allusions
N/A
Metonymy and Synecdoche
The speaker's "sweet countrymen" are a metonymy for the social community that surrounds her.
Personification
Nature is personified when the speaker uses the feminine pronoun "Her" to refer to it.
Hyperbole
N/A
Onomatopoeia
N/A
