A Clock stopped—

Dickinson generally offered no titles, and it is standard to refer to the first line as a title or by a number assigned to them by editors who collated them after her death. “A Clock Stopped—” is #159 in Todd (1896); #287 in Johnson (1955), and #259A (1980) in Franklin.

Dickinson most often wrote in common meter, or a line of eight syllables followed by one of six syllables. In this syllable count, there is the unstressed syllable followed by one that is stressed. Dickinson did not employ several common constructions of punctuation, often using dashes instead of commas or periods, something that Todd conventionalized and Johnson restored. Dickinson also employed her own unique capitalization, not capitalizing proper nouns only but any word that she deemed important or wanted to stress.

Slant rhyme—as in “pain” (Line 7) and “noon” (Line 9)—popular with contemporary poets, was not used commonly in Dickinson’s day. Dickinson does employ rhyme in each of her stanzas in “A Clock stopped—.” Besides the slant rhyme in stanza two, exact rhymes appear with “skill” (Line 3) and “still” (Line 5); “snow” (Line 11) and “No” (Line 13); and “slim” (Line 15) and “him” (Line 18).