I’ve been looking through the Oxford English Dictionary . . . picking words from our reading and thumbing through . . . so to speak . . . entries.
Even given my line of work I do not slow down my reading process often enough to go word-by-word. Looking up words I was sure I knew still resulted in new and deeper understanding.
I hope you are (or will be soon) experiencing something similar: the deep satisfaction of stopping to smell a word–really drink it in–in order to help you capture the fragrance of a poem.
If you want to check out the OED, go to the library’s website and click on the link “Reference Shelf:” http://intraweb.stockton.edu/eyos/page.cfm?siteID=86&pageID=25.
Find the OED’s hotlink under dictionaries.