Analysis of To The Man-of-War-Bird
Walt Whitman 1819 (West Hills) – 1892 (Camden)
THOU who hast slept all night upon the storm,
Waking renew'd on thy prodigious pinions,
(Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended'st,
And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee,)
Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating,
As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee,
(Myself a speck, a point on the world's floating vast.)
Far, far at sea,
After the night's fierce drifts have strewn the shores with wrecks,
With re-appearing day as now so happy and serene, 10
The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun,
The limpid spread of air cerulean,
Thou also re-appearest.
Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings,)
To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane,
Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails,
Days, even weeks untired and onward, through spaces, realms gyrating,
At dusk that look'st on Senegal, at morn America,
That sport'st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud,
In them, in thy experience, had'st thou my soul, 20
What joys! what joys were thine!
Scheme | XABCDCX AAEXEB AXADXXXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111110101 1001110101 101101110101 01010111111 10111101010 1101010111111 10101101101 1111 100111110111 11010111110001 010001010101 011111 11011 1111011111 111100101010 1111110111 11011010110110 11111101110100 1110101010101 0101010011111 111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,084 |
Words | 181 |
Sentences | 6 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 7, 6, 8 |
Lines Amount | 21 |
Letters per line (avg) | 37 |
Words per line (avg) | 10 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 257 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 70 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 56 sec read
- 119 Views
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