Analysis of To The Leaven'd Soil They Trod

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




   TO the leaven'd soil they trod, calling, I sing, for the last;
   (Not cities, nor man alone, nor war, nor the dead,
   But forth from my tent emerging for good--loosing, untying the tent-
         ropes;)
   In the freshness, the forenoon air, in the far-stretching circuits
         and vistas, again to peace restored,
   To the fiery fields emanative, and the endless vistas beyond--to the
         south and the north;
   To the leaven'd soil of the general western world, to attest my
         songs,
   (To the average earth, the wordless earth, witness of war and peace,)
   To the Alleghanian hills, and the tireless Mississippi,
   To the rocks I, calling, sing, and all the trees in the woods,
   To the plain of the poems of heroes, to the prairie spreading
         wide,                                                        10
   To the far-off sea, and the unseen winds, and the same impalpable
         air;
   ... And responding, they answer all, (but not in words,)
   The average earth, the witness of war and peace, acknowledges mutely;
   The prairie draws me close, as the father, to bosom broad, the son;
   The Northern ice and rain, that began me, nourish me to the end;
   But the hot sun of the South is to ripen my songs.


Scheme ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRPSTJ
Poetic Form
Metre 10101111011101 110110111101 111110101110101 1 00100110011010 010011101 10100110010100110 1001 10101101001011011 1 1010010101101101 101100100010 10111010101001 1011010110101010 1 10111000110011 1 001011011101 01001010110101001 0101111010110101 0101011011101101 1011101111011
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 1,241
Words 201
Sentences 3
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 22
Lines Amount 22
Letters per line (avg) 38
Words per line (avg) 11
Letters per stanza (avg) 837
Words per stanza (avg) 252
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 14, 2023

1:00 min read
132

Walt Whitman

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

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