The Full Text of “Whose cheek is this?”
1Whose cheek is this?
2What rosy face
3Has lost a blush today?
4I found her—"pleiad"—in the woods
5And bore her safe away.
6Robins, in the tradition
7Did cover such with leaves,
8But which the cheek—
9And which the pall
10My scrutiny deceives.
The Full Text of “Whose cheek is this?”
1Whose cheek is this?
2What rosy face
3Has lost a blush today?
4I found her—"pleiad"—in the woods
5And bore her safe away.
6Robins, in the tradition
7Did cover such with leaves,
8But which the cheek—
9And which the pall
10My scrutiny deceives.
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“Whose cheek is this?” Introduction
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Emily Dickinson wrote "Whose cheek is this?" in the early 1850s as a meditation on the fragile beauty of life and the strangeness of death. The poem's speaker likens a dead flower in the woods to a once rosy cheek that has lost its "blush." Carrying the flower home for safekeeping, the speaker thinks of an old folk tale in which robins covered the bodies of children who died in the woods with leaves. In the end, the speaker can't decide whether the flower looks more like a "cheek" or a "pall" (the cloth laid over a coffin or tomb), perhaps suggesting that the line between life and death isn't as distinct as people might believe. Dickinson originally sent the poem to her friend and sister-in-law, Susan Dickinson, together with a small flower and an illustration of a robin.
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“Whose cheek is this?” Summary
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Whose cheek am I looking at? Whose pink face has lost its flush of color today? I found this nymph-like figure in the trees and took her home to safety.
Robins, so the story goes, would cloak the dead with leaves. But whether this is a cheek or funeral shroud... I can't figure it out.
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“Whose cheek is this?” Themes
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The Beauty and Fragility of Life
The speaker of "Whose cheek is this?" considers the quickly fading beauty of a dead flower in the woods. The speaker carries the flower "away" to protect it, yet its "rosy face" has already "lost [its] blush"—to the point that its withered petals make the speaker think of dead children and a funeral pall. The poem thus hints that life is as fragile as it is lovely: there's no keeping even the most innocent little flower safe.
The poem repeatedly emphasizes the beauty and vulnerability of the little flower. First, the speaker compares finding the flower to stumbling across a young woman's body in the woods, her "rosy face" growing cold and pale. The flower is a creature both beautiful and vulnerable, like a lost "pleaid" (a nymph-turned-star in Greek mythology). The speaker tries to keep the flower safe by taking it "away," an action suggesting that the wood is filled with danger and that the flower might be defiled or destroyed were it to be left out in the open.
The sight of the flower also prompts the speaker to think of an old folk tale known as "Babes in the Wood." In this story, two young children meet their untimely end in a forest just like the one the speaker rescues the flower from; robins cover the children's bodies with leaves. The speaker's images of the innocent young dead, as well as the lost "pleiad," suggest that life is fragile—especially, perhaps, for the most innocent and loveliest of creatures.
Yet even as the speaker tries to protect the flower, the poem also implies that there is no such thing as true safety; with life, the poem suggests, comes danger and the ever-present threat of death. Sometimes that death comes far too soon, snuffing life out at its most beautiful and unguarded. (If the speaker was the one who plucked the flower in the first place, then the desire to keep it "safe," ironically, would have been the very thing that hastened its demise.)
Ultimately, the speaker's inability to decide whether the flower looks more like a "cheek" or a "pall"—that is, a cloth spread over a coffin or tomb—suggests the proximity between life and death. The world couldn't have one without the other; death always lurks in the shadows, even in the sweetest of scenes.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Whose cheek is this?”
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Lines 1-3
Whose cheek is this?
What rosy face
Has lost a blush today?The poem begins with the speaker metaphorically describing a (presumably pink) flower that they come across in the woods as a "cheek." This flower is dead, or just about: its once "rosy face / Has lost a blush." The flower hasn't yet decayed, but it no longer glows with the same bright color that it did only recently; blood no longer rushes to this metaphorical "cheek."
The speaker talks about the flower as if it were a human being, and this personification makes the poem's imagery more striking and urgent. By using the words "cheek" and "rosy face," as opposed to, say, "petal" and "flower," the poem implies that the speaker isn't just talking about a literal plant here. This little flower becomes a symbol of vulnerable beauty in general, and perhaps of the fragility of life itself.
Note, too, how instead of saying "who is this" or "what is this," the speaker asks "Whose cheek" this flower belongs to and "what rosy face" has lost its color. Such language subtly reflects how the flower has been severed from its life source and now lies isolated and vulnerable in the woods. The enjambment between "face" and "has" mirrors the flower's separation from its roots/stem/branch.
The poem's language and form further evoke the flower's vulnerability. These lines are very short—two lines of iambic dimeter (da-DUM da-DUM) followed by one of trimeter (da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM):
Whose cheek | is this?
What ros- | y face
Has lost | a blush | today?These brief, largely monosyllabic lines also feature lots of delicate sibilance ("rosy face," "lost a blush"). Overall, the poem feels hushed, gentle, and reverent.
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Lines 4-5
I found her—"pleiad"—in the woods
And bore her safe away. -
Lines 6-10
Robins, in the tradition
Did cover such with leaves,
But which the cheek—
And which the pall
My scrutiny deceives.
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“Whose cheek is this?” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Allusion
The poem contains two allusions. First, in line 4, the speaker calls the flower a "pleiad." This alludes to the Pleiades from Greek mythology, seven nymphs sisters whom Zeus transformed into stars. The youngest sister, Merope, became estranged from the others for reasons that vary in different tellings but usually involve her marriage to the mortal Sisyphus. Because she dallied with a human man, her star became the faintest in the Pleiades cluster.
Known sometimes as the "Lost Pleiad," Merope fits right into this poem about a lost, vulnerable flower that has either fallen from a branch or been cut off from its roots. The mention of a "pleiad" also brings to mind a lovely young woman, emphasizing how the flower's delicate beauty and vulnerability stand out against the darkness and wildness of the woods. It's also possible that Dickinson attached an aster flower to this poem when she sent it to her sister-in-law: "aster" comes from the ancient Greek for "star," so Dickinson might be making a playful pun.
In the next stanza, the poem alludes to the English folk tale "Babes in the Wood." In this tale, two young children meet an untimely demise in the woods. Robins come along and cover their bodies with leaves from the forest floor, something the speaker describes in lines 6-7:
Robins, in the tradition
Did cover such with leaves,The speaker is implicitly comparing her own actions—carrying the flower "safe away"—to the robins'. Both the speaker and the birds come across innocent figures in the woods and do their best to shield their bodies from further harm.
The allusion hints that the speaker is talking about more than just flowers, and that the poem is really about the fragility of life in general as well as the futile longing to protect innocence and beauty. The flower, like the babes in the wood, was cut down in its prime. Its death seems harsh and inexplicable, but that's one of the poem's points: death comes for everyone, and a "rosy" cheek can quickly take on the pallor of a funereal cloth.
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Metaphor
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Parallelism
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Sibilance
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"Whose cheek is this?" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Blush
- Pleiad
- Bore
- Pall
- Scrutiny
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A rosy, healthy glow.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Whose cheek is this?”
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Form
"Whose cheek is this?" contains two quintains, or five-line stanzas. Its lines are short, for the most part. Though their lengths vary, they generally follow an iambic (da-DUM) rhythm. The poem sounds musical but never overly predictable or rigidly controlled. The poem focuses on a small, delicate natural object (a flower) and has a slight, delicate form to match.
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Meter
"Whose cheek is this?" uses iambic dimeter and trimeter, for the most part. An iambic foot consists of two syllables that follow an unstressed-stressed pattern (da-DUM). Dimeter lines feature two such feet, while trimeter lines have three. The poem opens with two lines of dimeter followed by one of trimeter:
Whose cheek | is this?
What ros- | y face
Has lost | a blush | today?The short lines and gentle beat make the poem sound delicately musical but not strict or rigid. There are two variations on the meter as well. Line 4 has four iambs, making it a line of iambic tetrameter:
I found | her—"ple- | iad"—in | the woods
The extra foot stretches the line out, perhaps evoking the image of a nymph sprawled in the woods. Line 5 then falls back into iambic trimeter. The poem's rhythm is thus steady even as its lines vary somewhat in length.
Line 6 is the only one that doesn't fit with this pattern at all. It opens with a trochee (stressed-unstressed), calling readers' attention to those "Robins." The rest of the line is then metrically ambiguous, perhaps reflecting the birds' twitchy movements.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Whose cheek is this?" features just two rhyming pairs. In the first stanza, lines 3 and 5 rhyme, creating the rhyme scheme of ABCDC. In the second stanza, lines 7 and 10 rhyme, creating a pattern of ABCDB. There's also some assonance between lines 7, 8, and 10 (leaves/cheek/deceives); one might argue that line 8 forms a slant rhyme with lines 7 and 10, but the effect is subtle.
The poem's loose rhymes work like its relatively loose meter, creating music without ever making the poem feel rigid or stiff. Ending stanzas with a rhyme also lends each a sense of sonic completion.
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“Whose cheek is this?” Speaker
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It's fair to assume that the speaker of "Whose cheek is this?" is Emily Dickinson herself, given that she attached a flower to the poem and sent it to her sister-in-law, Susan Dickinson. The speaker's musings certainly reflect Dickinson's own fascination with the natural world and her frequent preoccupation with death.
That said, all readers learn from the poem itself is that the speaker is someone who finds a flower in the woods and takes it home for safekeeping. This is someone who respects and admires beauty, and who also recognizes its fragility.
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“Whose cheek is this?” Setting
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"Whose cheek is this?" seems to take place indoors, or at least somewhere "safe" from the "woods" where the speaker initially found the flower that inspires the poem.
Though the flower is no longer "in the woods," most of the poem focuses on this setting. The woods often connote danger and confusion; think of all the threatening forests in fairy tales. The speaker's desire to take the flower "safe away" implies that threats lurk in the shadows among the trees. The speaker develops this association by alluding to the "Babes in the Woods" folk tale, in which two children meet an untimely end in the woods.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Whose cheek is this?”
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Literary Context
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was an important part of the American Romantic movement, alongside writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman. She was also a one-of-a-kind writer with a distinct sensibility that set her apart from her contemporaries. Some people even see her as the grandmother of modernism, the 20th-century literary movement of experimental, introspective writers like T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf.
No one else sounds quite like Dickinson. Her poems use simple, folky forms (ballad stanzas, for instance) in innovative ways, experimenting with innovative slant rhymes, idiosyncratic punctuation, and unconventional capitalization. In only a few short stanzas, these poems explored profound philosophical questions, passionate loves, and the mysteries of nature.
Dickinson wrote "Whose cheek is this?" in the 1850s, making it one of her earliest poems. Like most of her writing, it wasn't published during her lifetime. She sent it to her sister-in-law, Susan Dickinson, along with a small fragment of a flower and a drawing of a robin.
In meditating upon the transition between life and death, "Whose cheek is this?" calls to mind some of Dickinson's most famous poems, such as "Because I could not stop for Death—" and " I heard a Fly buzz—when I died." The poem also alludes to the English folk tale "Babes in the Wood," which evidently made a lasting impression on Dickinson: it crops up in her letters throughout her life.
While Dickinson sent some poems—like this one—to friends and family, she concealed most of her work. Only after she died did her sister Lavinia discover a trunk of nearly 1,800 poems squirreled away in her bedroom. Published at last, Dickinson's poetry became internationally famous and beloved. Dickinson's work and her life story still influence all kinds of artists.
Historical Context
Emily Dickinson lived in Amherst, Massachusetts all her life. She grew up in a strict Protestant environment that placed great emphasis on religious rules and social codes. Dickinson was also swept up for a time by the religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening, and her religious upbringing shows itself in the hymn-like rhythms of her poetry. Many of her poems also express wonder about the afterlife, often speculating—sometimes exuberantly—on what it's like to meet God and Jesus, if that is in fact what happens when people die (something Dickinson wasn't sure about).
Dickinson ultimately rejected organized religion and often questions the existence of God in her work—an activity that would have been scandalously at odds with her community. By all accounts, Dickinson's life was extremely unusual for the 1800s. Most women were expected to marry and have children, but Dickinson never did. In fact, towards the end of her life, she barely spoke to anyone but a small circle of close friends and family and spent much of her later years shut up in her room.
There is some debate about the precise nature of Emily's relationship with Susan Gilbert, to whom the poem was sent. Sue, like Emily, had a brilliant intellect and a wide-ranging curiosity, and the pair felt like kindred spirits in a world that didn't make much room for thinking women. Their feelings may have gone beyond friendship but, either way, Emily struggled with the change in the relationship that came with Sue's marriage to Austin, Emily's brother. Sue and Emily lived next door to each other and remained close until Emily's death. But that closeness was hard-won, marked by long silences and more often played out in the letters they still sent each other (even as neighbors) than in person.
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More “Whose cheek is this?” Resources
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External Resources
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The Original Poem — Check out "Whose is this?" in Dickinson's own hand.
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The Dickinson Museum — Find a trove of information about Dickinson's life and work at the Dickinson Museum.
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Dickinson's Legacy — Learn how Dickinson's secret poetry was discovered and preserved.
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Dickinson and Susan Gilbert — Learn more about the intense relationship between Dickinson and Susan Gilbert, the woman for whom this poem was written.
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Babes in the Wood — Check out an illustrated version of the old folk tale the poem alludes to in lines 6 and 7.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Emily Dickinson
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