Analysis of On The Beach At Night, Alone

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




   ON the beach at night alone,
   As the old mother sways her to and fro, singing her husky song,
   As I watch the bright stars shining--I think a thought of the clef of
         the universes, and of the future.

A VAST SIMILITUDE interlocks all,
   All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
         comets, asteroids,
   All the substances of the same, and all that is spiritual upon the
         same,
   All distances of place, however wide,
   All distances of time--all inanimate forms,
   All Souls--all living bodies, though they be ever so different, or in
         different worlds,
   All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes--the fishes, the
         brutes,                                                      10
   All men and women--me also;
   All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages;
   All identities that have existed, or may exist, on this globe, or any
         globe;
   All lives and deaths--all of the past, present, future;
   This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd, and shall
         forever span them, and compactly hold them, and enclose them.


Scheme XXXA XBXCXXXXXCBXXCXAXX
Poetic Form
Metre 1011101 1011010101100101 1110111011011011 010001010 01111 1111111110 1010 1010010101111000010 1 110011101 110011101001 111101011110110010 1001 11001001001001000100 1 11010110 1101010010100 10100110101101111110 1 110111011010 11111011101 0101101110011
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 1,132
Words 162
Sentences 3
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 4, 18
Lines Amount 22
Letters per line (avg) 35
Words per line (avg) 10
Letters per stanza (avg) 383
Words per stanza (avg) 107
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 11, 2023

48 sec read
103

Walt Whitman

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

All Walt Whitman poems | Walt Whitman Books

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