Analysis of Song of Myself, XI
Walt Whitman 1819 (West Hills) – 1892 (Camden)
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;
Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.
She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.
Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.
Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.
Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather,
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.
The beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, it ran from their long
hair,
Little streams pass'd over their bodies.
An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies,
It descended trembling from their temples and ribs.
The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the sun,
they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who puffs and declines with the pendant and bending
arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.
Scheme | XXX XX XA XX AB XXC CX XBXXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101111101 1011101110 101111101110 11011101101 111001011011010 1101111101 10111110010 11111101111 11001011111011 1001001011010110 0111101111011 011011101111111 1 101110110 101110110110 1010100111001 011111111101101 1111110111 1111110011010010 1 111111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,028 |
Words | 196 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 5 |
Lines Amount | 21 |
Letters per line (avg) | 39 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 102 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 24 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 22, 2023
- 59 sec read
- 81 Views
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