Analysis of When I Read The Book
Walt Whitman 1819 (West Hills) – 1892 (Camden)
WHEN I read the book, the biography famous,
And is this, then, (said I,) what the author calls a man's life?
And so will some one, when I am dead and gone, write my life?
(As if any man really knew aught of my life;
Why, even I myself, I often think, know little or nothing of my real
life;
Only a few hints--a few diffused, faint clues and indirections,
I seek, for my own use, to trace out here.)
| Scheme | ABBBCBAD |
|---|---|
| Poetic Form | |
| Metre | 111010010010 01111110101011 01111111101111 111011011111 110111101110110111 1 1001101011101 1111111111 |
| Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
| Characters | 429 |
| Words | 84 |
| Sentences | 4 |
| Stanzas | 1 |
| Stanza Lengths | 8 |
| Lines Amount | 8 |
| Letters per line (avg) | 37 |
| Words per line (avg) | 10 |
| Letters per stanza (avg) | 293 |
| Words per stanza (avg) | 80 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 07, 2023
- 25 sec read
- 444 Views
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"When I Read The Book" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/38251/when-i-read-the-book>.
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