Analysis of On The Beach At Night
Walt Whitman 1819 (West Hills) – 1892 (Camden)
ON the beach, at night,
Stands a child, with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.
Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower, sullen and fast, athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends, large and calm, the lord-star Jupiter;
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate brothers, the Pleiades. 10
From the beach, the child, holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower, victorious, soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.
Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,
With these kisses let me remove your tears;
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,
They shall not long possess the sky--shall devour the stars only in
apparition:
Jupiter shall emerge--be patient--watch again another night--the
Pleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal--all those stars, both silvery and golden, shall
shine out again, 20
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again--they
endure;
The vast immortal suns, and the long-enduring pensive moons, shall
again shine.
Then, dearest child, mournest thou only for Jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?
Something there is,
(With my lips soothing thee, adding, I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter, 30
Longer than sun, or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant brothers, the Pleiades.
Scheme | ABC DECXBXF BXX XEXDGXXXHXIXHX BJ XBGJIBAF |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10111 1011010 10010101 11010 11101001011010 101001010101 0100101111011001 01101011100 0111100101001 1010010010 1010110011010 110011100100110101 101001 111 11110 1110110111 01111110100 11110101101001100 010 10010111010101010 10101 1101011111000101 1101 01100101111011 01 0101010010101011 011 110111101100 11010100101 1011 11110110110 1110101001001 1011101010101 1001001001011001 1011011010110100 101111001010 1010010010 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,805 |
Words | 265 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 3, 7, 3, 14, 2, 8 |
Lines Amount | 37 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 213 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 56 |
Font size:
Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:19 min read
- 134 Views
Citation
Use the citation below to add this poem analysis to your bibliography:
Style:MLAChicagoAPA
"On The Beach At Night" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 30 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/38094/on-the-beach-at-night>.
Discuss this Walt Whitman poem analysis with the community:
Report Comment
We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.
Attachment
You need to be logged in to favorite.
Log In