Analysis of Poems Of Joys
Walt Whitman 1819 (West Hills) – 1892 (Camden)
O TO make the most jubilant poem!
Even to set off these, and merge with these, the carols of Death.
O full of music! full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Full of common employments! full of grain and trees.
O for the voices of animals! O for the swiftness and balance of
fishes!
O for the dropping of rain-drops in a poem!
O for the sunshine, and motion of waves in a poem.
O the joy of my spirit! it is uncaged! it darts like lightning!
It is not enough to have this globe, or a certain time--I will have
thousands of globes, and all time.
O the engineer's joys! 10
To go with a locomotive!
To hear the hiss of steam--the merry shriek--the steam-whistle--the
laughing locomotive!
To push with resistless way, and speed off in the distance.
O the gleesome saunter over fields and hill-sides!
The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds--the moist fresh
stillness of the woods,
The exquisite smell of the earth at day-break, and all through the
forenoon.
O the horseman's and horsewoman's joys!
The saddle--the gallop--the pressure upon the seat--the cool gurgling
by the ears and hair.
O the fireman's joys!
I hear the alarm at dead of night, 20
I hear bells--shouts!--I pass the crowd--I run!
The sight of the flames maddens me with pleasure.
O the joy of the strong-brawn'd fighter, towering in the arena, in
perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his
opponent.
O the joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human Soul
is capable of generating and emitting in steady and limitless
floods.
O the mother's joys!
The watching--the endurance--the precious love--the anguish--the
patiently yielded life.
O the joy of increase, growth, recuperation;
The joy of soothing and pacifying--the joy of concord and harmony.
O to go back to the place where I was born!
To hear the birds sing once more! 30
To ramble about the house and barn, and over the fields, once more,
And through the orchard and along the old lanes once more.
O male and female!
O the presence of women! (I swear there is nothing more exquisite to
me than the mere presence of women;)
O for the girl, my mate! O for the happiness with my mate!
O the young man as I pass! O I am sick after the friendship of him
who, I fear, is indifferent to me.
O the streets of cities!
The flitting faces--the expressions, eyes, feet, costumes! O I cannot
tell how welcome they are to me.
O to have been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the
coast!
O to continue and be employ'd there all my life! 40
O the briny and damp smell--the shore--the salt weeds exposed at low
water,
The work of fishermen--the work of the eel-fisher and clam-fisher.
O it is I!
I come with my clam-rake and spade! I come with my eel-spear;
Is the tide out? I join the group of clam-diggers on the flats,
I laugh and work with them--I joke at my work, like a mettlesome
young man.
In winter I take my eel-basket and eel-spear and travel out on foot
on the ice--I have a small axe to cut holes in the ice;
Behold me, well-clothed, going gaily, or returning in the afternoon--
my brood of tough boys accompaning me,
My brood of grown and part-grown boys, who love to be with no one
else so well as they love to be with me,
By day to work with me, and by night to sleep with me. 50
Or, another time, in warm weather, out in a boat, to lift the
lobster-pots, where they are sunk with heavy stones, (I know
the buoys;)
O the sweetness of the Fifth-month morning upon the water, as I row,
just before sunrise, toward the buoys;
I pull the wicker pots up slantingly--the dark-green lobsters are
desperate with their claws, as I take them out--I insert wooden
pegs in the joints of their pincers,
I go to all the places, one after another, and then row back to the
shore,
There, in a huge kettle of boiling water, the lobsters shall be
boil'd till their color becomes scarlet.
Or, another time, mackerel-taking,
Voracious, mad for
Scheme | AXBC XXAA DXX EFGFX XXXGH EDX EXHI HXX XXX EGJ HB HKKK XXHXXB CXB GXJLII XXXAH XXHBHBB GHCLCXHXGKBX DK |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1110110010 101111011101011 1111011110100 111001011101 110101100110100101 10 110101110010 1101010110010 101111011111110 11101111110101111 1011011 10011 1110010 110111010101100 10010 111110110010 10110101011 010101011011 10101 010011011110110 1 101011 010010010010101100 10101 10101 110011111 1111110111 0110111110 101101110100000100 01010101101111 010 1011110101001100101 1100110000100100100 1 10101 010010001010100 100101 10110110010 011100101110100 11111011111 1101111 1100101010100111 0101000101111 1101 101011011111011001 110110110 110111110100111 101111111111001011 111101011 101110 01010001011011110 11101111 111111110111010 1 1101001011111 101011010110111 10 01110001101100110 1111 11111101111111 101111011110101 11011111111101 11 010111110011010111 10111011111001 01111101010100001 1111111 111101111111111 1111111111 1111110111111 1010101101001110 1011111110111 010 101010111001010111 101101010 11010111011101 101111111110110 10011110 1111010110010011110 1 1001101101001011 111100110 1010110010 01011 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 4,358 |
Words | 712 |
Sentences | 53 |
Stanzas | 19 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 3, 5, 5, 3, 4, 3, 3, 3, 2, 4, 6, 3, 6, 5, 7, 12, 2 |
Lines Amount | 84 |
Letters per line (avg) | 36 |
Words per line (avg) | 10 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 157 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 45 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 08, 2023
- 3:36 min read
- 123 Views
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"Poems Of Joys" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 4 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/38114/poems-of-joys>.
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