Analysis of Whispers of Heavenly Death
Walt Whitman 1819 (West Hills) – 1892 (Camden)
WHISPERS of heavenly death, murmur’d I hear;
Labial gossip of night—sibilant chorals;
Footsteps gently ascending—mystical breezes, wafted soft and low;
Ripples of unseen rivers—tides of a current, flowing, forever flowing;
(Or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human tears?)
I see, just see, skyward, great cloud-masses;
Mournfully, slowly they roll, silently swelling and
mixing;
With, at times, a half-dimm’d, sadden’d, far-off star,
Appearing and disappearing.
(Some parturition, rather—some solemn, immortal birth:
On the frontiers, to eyes impenetrable,
Some Soul is passing over.)
Scheme | XXXAX XXAXAXXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1011001111 11011110 1100101001010101 1010110110101001010 111011101101101 1111101110 11011100100 10 1110111111 0100010 11101100101 10011101000 1111010 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 651 |
Words | 88 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 8 |
Lines Amount | 13 |
Letters per line (avg) | 37 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 240 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 43 |
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Submitted on March 09, 2015
Modified on April 07, 2023
- 26 sec read
- 174 Views
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"Whispers of Heavenly Death" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/43773/whispers-of-heavenly-death>.
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