Analysis of I Was Looking A Long While
Walt Whitman 1819 (West Hills) – 1892 (Camden)
I WAS looking a long while for a clue to the history of the past for
myself, and for these chants--and now I have found it;
It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither
accept nor reject;)
It is no more in the legends than in all else;
It is in the present--it is this earth to-day;
It is in Democracy--(the purport and aim of all the past;)
It is the life of one man or one woman to-day--the average man of
to-day;
It is in languages, social customs, literatures, arts;
It is in the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery,
politics, creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of
nations,
All for the average man of to-day.
Scheme | ABCDEFGHFIJHKF |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1110011101101001011 10111011111 1110111000101110 01101 111100101011 110010111111 110010001011101 1101111111011010011 11 110100101011 1100111010110100 1011001000011 10 1101001111 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 728 |
Words | 127 |
Sentences | 2 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 14 |
Lines Amount | 14 |
Letters per line (avg) | 36 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 503 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 123 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 22, 2023
- 38 sec read
- 168 Views
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"I Was Looking A Long While" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/38040/i-was-looking-a-long-while>.
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