Analysis of Brother Of All, With Genesrous Hand

Walt Whitman 1819 (West Hills) – 1892 (Camden)




   BROTHER of all, with generous hand,
   Of thee, pondering on thee, as o'er thy tomb, I and my Soul,
   A thought to launch in memory of thee,
   A burial verse for thee.

What may we chant, O thou within this tomb?
   What tablets, pictures, hang for thee, O millionaire?
   --The life thou lived'st we know not,
   But that thou walk'dst thy years in barter, 'mid the haunts of
         brokers;
   Nor heroism thine, nor war, nor glory.

Yet lingering, yearning, joining soul with thine,                  10
   If not thy past we chant, we chant the future,
   Select, adorn the future.

Lo, Soul, the graves of heroes!
   The pride of lands--the gratitudes of men,
   The statues of the manifold famous dead, Old World and New,
   The kings, inventors, generals, poets, (stretch wide thy vision,
         Soul,)
   The excellent rulers of the races, great discoverers, sailors,
   Marble and brass select from them, with pictures, scenes,
   (The histories of the lands, the races, bodied there,
   In what they've built for, graced and graved,                      20
   Monuments to their heroes.)

Silent, my Soul,
   With drooping lids, as waiting, ponder'd,
   Turning from all the samples, all the monuments of heroes.

While through the interior vistas,
   Noiseless uprose, phantasmic (as, by night, Auroras of the North,)
   Lambent tableaux, prophetic, bodiless scenes,
   Spiritual projections.

In one, among the city streets, a laborer's home appear'd,
   After his day's work done, cleanly, sweet-air'd, the gaslight
         burning,                                                     30
   The carpet swept, and a fire in the cheerful stove.

In one, the sacred parturition scene,
   A happy, painless mother birth'd a perfect child.

In one, at a bounteous morning meal,
   Sat peaceful parents, with contented sons.

In one, by twos and threes, young people,
   Hundreds concentering, walk'd the paths and streets and roads,
   Toward a tall-domed school.

In one a trio, beautiful,
   Grandmother, loving daughter, loving daughter's daughter, sat,     40
   Chatting and sewing.

In one, along a suite of noble rooms,
   'Mid plenteous books and journals, paintings on the walls, fine
         statuettes,
   Were groups of friendly journeymen, mechanics, young and old,
   Reading, conversing.

All, all the shows of laboring life,
   City and country, women's, men's and children's,
   Their wants provided for, hued in the sun, and tinged for once with
         joy,
   Marriage, the street, the factory, farm, the house-room, lodging-
         room,
   Labor and toil, the bath, gymnasium, play-ground, library,
         college,                                                     50
   The student, boy or girl, led forward to be taught;
   The sick cared for, the shoeless shod--the orphan father'd and
         mother'd,
   The hungry fed, the houseless housed;
   (The intentions perfect and divine,
   The workings, details, haply human.)

O thou within this tomb,
   From thee, such scenes--thou stintless, lavish Giver,
   Tallying the gifts of Earth--large as the Earth,
   Thy name an Earth, with mountains, fields and rivers.

Nor by your streams alone, you rivers,                             60
   By you, your banks, Connecticut,
   By you, and all your teeming life, Old Thames,
   By you, Potomac, laving the ground Washington trod--by you Patapsco,
   You, Hudson--you, endless Mississippi--not by you alone,
   But to the high seas launch, my thought, his memory.

Lo, Soul, by this tomb's lambency,
   The darkness of the arrogant standards of the world,
   With all its flaunting aims, ambitions, pleasures.

(Old, commonplace, and rusty saws,
   The rich, the gay, the supercilious, smiled at long,               70
   Now, piercing to the marrow in my bones,
   Fused with each drop my heart's blood jets,
   Swim in ineffable meaning.)

Lo, Soul, the sphere requireth, portioneth,
   To each his share, his measure,
   The moderate to the moderate, the ample to the ample.

Lo, Soul, see'st thou not, plain as the sun,
   The only real wealth of wealth in generosity,
   The only life of life in goodness?


Scheme ABCC DEXXFC GHH IXXJBFKEAI BXI XXKL XXMX XX XL NXX NXM XGOXM XLXXMDCXXXAXGJ DHXF FXXMXC FXF XXXOM CHN JCX
Poetic Form
Metre 101111001 1110011110111011 0111010011 0100111 1111110111 11010111101 01111111 1111110101011 10 1100111110 11001010111 11111111010 0101010 1101110 01110111 0110101011101 010101001011110 1 01001010101110 100101111101 0100101010101 01111101 1001110 1011 110111010 101101010100110 110010010 1111111101 10101011 1000010 0101010101101 1011111011010 10 0101001000101 0101011 010101010011 01101101 1101010101 011101110 1011010101 010111 0101100 1010101010101 10010 0101011101 111010101011 01 011101010101 10010 110111001 10010101010 110101100101111 1 10010100101110 1 10010101001110 10 010111110111 0111011010100 1 0101011 001001001 01001110 110111 1111111010 10001111101 11111101010 111101110 11110100 1101110111 110101011001111 11011001011101 110111111100 111111 0101010010101 11110101010 1100101 010100100111 1101010011 11111111 10010010 110111 1111110 0100101000101010 1111111101 010111100100 010111010
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 4,116
Words 611
Sentences 23
Stanzas 19
Stanza Lengths 4, 6, 3, 10, 3, 4, 4, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5, 14, 4, 6, 3, 5, 3, 3
Lines Amount 87
Letters per line (avg) 33
Words per line (avg) 9
Letters per stanza (avg) 150
Words per stanza (avg) 42
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

3:09 min read
83

Walt Whitman

Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. more…

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