Whose cheek is this?

“Whose cheek is this?” consists of two stanzas, each five lines long. Each stanza contains one pair of alternating rhyme, though the first line of this pair differs between both stanzas. For the first stanza, the rhyme scheme is abcdc; the third and the fifth lines rhyme “today” with “away.” However, in the second stanza, the second and the fifth lines rhyme “leaves” (Line 7) and “deceives” (Line 10). Both of these rhyming sets are categorized as masculine rhyme, meaning that they rhyme on the final stressed syllable (“ay” and “eaves”/”eives”).

Most of the lines in Dickinson’s poem are iambs. An iamb is a metrical foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The lines gradually build in the first stanza, with each subsequent line containing the same number of iambs or more until the fourth line. Lines 1 and 2 contain two iambic feet, known as iambic dimeter. Line 3 contains three units, making it iambic trimeter, and Line 4 features iambic tetrameter. Line 5 then shifts back to iambic trimeter. The gradual build with the continual addition of iambic feet emphasizes the point in the action where the speaker physically happens upon the girl/flower and feels a need to protect her; this