Analysis of Passage To India
Walt Whitman 1819 (West Hills) – 1892 (Camden)
SINGING my days,
Singing the great achievements of the present,
Singing the strong, light works of engineers,
Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,)
In the Old World, the east, the Suez canal,
The New by its mighty railroad spann'd,
The seas inlaid with eloquent, gentle wires,
I sound, to commence, the cry, with thee, O soul,
The Past! the Past! the Past!
The Past! the dark, unfathom'd retrospect! 10
The teeming gulf! the sleepers and the shadows!
The past! the infinite greatness of the past!
For what is the present, after all, but a growth out of the past?
(As a projectile, form'd, impell'd, passing a certain line, still
keeps on,
So the present, utterly form'd, impell'd by the past.)
Passage, O soul, to India!
Eclaircise the myths Asiatic--the primitive fables.
Not you alone, proud truths of the world!
Nor you alone, ye facts of modern science!
But myths and fables of eld--Asia's, Africa's fables! 20
The far-darting beams of the spirit!--the unloos'd dreams!
The deep diving bibles and legends;
The daring plots of the poets--the elder religions;
--O you temples fairer than lilies, pour'd over by the rising sun!
O you fables, spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known,
mounting to heaven!
You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses, burnish'd
with gold!
Towers of fables immortal, fashion'd from mortal dreams!
You too I welcome, and fully, the same as the rest;
You too with joy I sing.
Passage to India! 30
Lo, soul! seest thou not God's purpose from the first?
The earth to be spann'd, connected by net-work,
The people to become brothers and sisters,
The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,
The oceans to be cross'd, the distant brought near,
The lands to be welded together.
(A worship new, I sing;
You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours!
You engineers! you architects, machinists, your!
You, not for trade or transportation only, 40
But in God's name, and for thy sake, O soul.)
Passage to India!
Lo, soul, for thee, of tableaus twain,
I see, in one, the Suez canal initiated, open'd,
I see the procession of steamships, the Empress Eugenie's leading the
van;
I mark, from on deck, the strange landscape, the pure sky, the level
sand in the distance;
I pass swiftly the picturesque groups, the workmen gather'd,
The gigantic dredging machines.
In one, again, different, (yet thine, all thine, O soul, the same,)
I see over my own continent the Pacific Railroad, surmounting every
barrier; 50
I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte, carrying
freight and passengers;
I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, and the shrill steam-
whistle,
I hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest scenery in the
world;
I cross the Laramie plains--I note the rocks in grotesque shapes--the
buttes;
I see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions--the barren, colorless,
sage-deserts;
I see in glimpses afar, or towering immediately above me, the great
mountains--I see the Wind River and the Wahsatch mountains;
I see the Monument mountain and the Eagle's Nest--I pass the
Promontory--I ascend the Nevadas;
I scan the noble Elk mountain, and wind around its base;
I see the Humboldt range--I thread the valley and cross the river,
I see the clear waters of Lake Tahoe--I see forests of majestic
pines, 60
Or, crossing the great desert, the alkaline plains, I behold
enchanting mirages of waters and meadows;
Marking through these, and after all, in duplicate slender lines,
Bridging the three or four thousand miles of land travel,
Tying the Eastern to the Western sea,
The road between Europe and Asia.
(Ah Genoese, thy dream! thy dream!
Centuries after thou art laid in thy grave,
The shore thou foundest verifies thy dream!)
Passage to India!
Struggles of many a captain--tales of many a sailor dead! 70
Over my mood, stealing and spreading they come,
Like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach'd sky.
Scheme | abxbxxcde xfeexxe gh ijhkxlmxmxnkxo gxxcxxp oxxqd Gxxgxrjxx xqpocsrgigaxxxlgaxpxtnftrqg sxs Gxxx |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1011 10010101010 1001111101 101010001100101 00110101001 01111011 01111001010 11101011111 010101 0101110 0101010001 01010010101 1110101011011101 100101011001011 11 1010100101101 10111100 101010010010 110111101 11011111010 11010111010010 011011010011 011010010 01011010010010 11101011011010101 1110100101001101 10110 1100100101111010 11 10110010101101 1111001001101 111111 101100 11111110101 01111010111 01010110010 010101100110010 01011101011 011110010 010111 1101000101 11011100101 1111101010 1011011111 101100 1111111 110101001010010 110010110101100 1 11111011011010 10010 11100100101010 00101001 010110011111101 11101110000101010100 100 110100111100101100 10100 110010100100011 10 110100100101010000 1 1101001110100110 1 11010010110010100 110 110100111000100001101 1011011000110 1101001000101110 110101 11010110010111 110111101001010 110110111011101010 1 11001100101101 01001011001 101101010100101 1001111011110 1001010101 010110010 1101111 10010111011 01111011 101100 1011001011100101 10111001011 11010011 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 4,388 |
Words | 659 |
Sentences | 41 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 9, 7, 2, 14, 7, 5, 9, 27, 3, 4 |
Lines Amount | 87 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 10 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 302 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 88 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 14, 2023
- 3:24 min read
- 132 Views
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