Emily Dickinson

A fuzzy fellow without feet

A FUZZY fellow without feet
Yet doth exceeding run!

velvet, dun, plush

Dickinson piles up fabric words for the caterpillar's fuzzy body. **Dun** means dull grayish-brown—the exact color of many caterpillar species.

Of velvet is his countenance
And his complexion dun.
Sometimes he dwelleth in the grass,
Sometimes upon a bough
From which he doth descend in plush

descend in plush

Caterpillars drop from trees on silk threads when disturbed. She describes the thread-dropping as a gentleman descending in fancy fabric.

Upon the passer-by.
All this in summer—
But when winds alarm the forest folk,

damask residence

**Damask** is woven patterned silk. The chrysalis isn't actually silk (moths make silk cocoons, butterflies make hard chrysalises), but Dickinson treats the entire transformation as fabric work.

He taketh damask residence
And struts in sewing silk.
Then, finer than a lady,
Emerges in the spring,
A feather on each shoulder—

A feather on each shoulder

She's describing butterfly wings as fashion accessories—shoulder ornaments like military epaulettes or decorative plumes.

You'd scarce accredit him.

yelept

Archaic past participle of 'clepe' (to call or name). Deliberately old-fashioned diction—she's being playfully formal about scientific naming.

By men yelept a caterpillar—
By me—but who am I
To tell the pretty secret
Of the Butterfly!
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Fabric Metaphor

Dickinson describes metamorphosis entirely in textile terms: velvet, plush, damask, sewing silk. This isn't decorative language—it's a sustained technical metaphor. She's comparing biological transformation to the work done in her own household.

CONTEXT In 1850s Amherst, fabric work was constant. Women sewed, embroidered, worked silk, maintained wardrobes. Dickinson would have handled these exact materials daily. The damask (patterned silk) and sewing silk (thread) weren't exotic—they were tools.

The metaphor does specific work: it makes metamorphosis comprehensible by comparing it to skilled labor. The caterpillar doesn't just change—it takes residence in fabric, struts in silk, emerges dressed finer than a lady. Each stage is deliberate construction, not magic. She's describing natural history in the language of women's work, which her culture considered trivial but which she treats as the vocabulary for understanding transformation.

The Reveal Structure

Dickinson withholds the word butterfly until the final line—and even then barely speaks it. The entire poem is a riddle that delays its answer. Notice she says "the pretty secret / Of the Butterfly!" not "the caterpillar becomes a butterfly." The transformation itself stays unspoken.

The archaic yelept (called/named) in line 17 sets up the contrast. Men use technical terms—caterpillar—to label and categorize. But she asks "who am I / To tell the pretty secret"? The question is mock-modest but actually serious. Scientific naming captures the thing but misses the secret: the fact of transformation itself, which remains mysterious even after you name the stages.

You'd scarce accredit him is the key line. Even seeing it happen, you'd barely believe the fuzzy crawler becomes the winged creature. Dickinson keeps returning to that fundamental strangeness—not explaining it away with fabric metaphors, but using those metaphors to make you notice how impossible the transformation is. The poem teaches you to see metamorphosis as miraculous while describing it in the most domestic terms possible.