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 Views
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