Analysis of I Saw In Louisiana A Live Oak Growing
Walt Whitman 1819 (West Hills) – 1892 (Camden)
I SAW in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it, and the moss hung down from the branches;
Without any companion it grew there, uttering joyous leaves of dark
green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself;
But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves, standing alone
there, without its friend, its lover near--for I knew I could
not;
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and
twined around it a little moss,
And brought it away--and I have placed it in sight in my room;
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them;)
Yet it remains to me a curious token--it makes me think of manly
love; 10
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana,
solitary, in a wide flat space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life, without a friend, a lover, near,
I know very well I could not.
Scheme | ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRH |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110001001110 10111001111010 011001011110010111 1 0111101011111 1110111101011001 10111110111111 1 011101101010110110 10110101 011010111101011 111101011111111 110110111101111 1101110100101111110 1 111010111100010 10000111 10010111101010101 11101111 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,060 |
Words | 178 |
Sentences | 2 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 19 |
Lines Amount | 19 |
Letters per line (avg) | 37 |
Words per line (avg) | 12 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 708 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 230 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 16, 2023
- 53 sec read
- 102 Views
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"I Saw In Louisiana A Live Oak Growing" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/38035/i-saw-in-louisiana-a-live-oak-growing>.
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