Analysis of As At Thy Portals Also Death

Walt Whitman 1819 (West Hills) – 1892 (Camden)



AS at thy portals also death,
   Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds,
   To memories of my mother, to the divine blending, maternity,
   To her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me,
   (I see again the calm benignant face fresh and beautiful still,
   I sit by the form in the coffin,
   I kiss and kiss convulsively again the sweet old lips, the cheeks,
         the closed eyes in the coffin;)
   To her, the ideal woman, practical, spiritual, of all of earth, life,
         love, to me the best,
   I grave a monumental line, before I go, amid these songs,
   And set a tombstone here.                                          10


Scheme ABCCDEFEGHIJ
Poetic Form
Metre 11110101 100110111 110011101001100100 10100111011111 11010111101001 111010010 1101101011101 0110010 1000110100100011111 11101 110010101110111 01011
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 657
Words 108
Sentences 2
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 12
Lines Amount 12
Letters per line (avg) 37
Words per line (avg) 12
Letters per stanza (avg) 440
Words per stanza (avg) 146
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 14, 2023

32 sec read
79

Walt Whitman

Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. more…

All Walt Whitman poems | Walt Whitman Books

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