Hush’d Be the Camps To-Day

In the poem, Hush’d Be the Camps To-Day, written by Walter Whiteman on May 4^th, 1865, he describes the life of a military soldier and their purpose of being in the army. He portrays the soldiers as people who cant win and cant lose but instead the outcome of their situation is always death. Walter Whitman says claims that the “stormy conflicts,” between the soldiers is not even their fight but is required to fight for something that they may or may not believe in. Walter uses an exquisite quote to describe a soldier in battle, when he says, “Nor Victory, nor defeat—no more time’s dark events, Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky.” When Whitman calls the soldiers, clouds going across the sky, he was referring to the fact that when they die fighting for their nation of belief that the soldier will go to heaven. In the poem there is no rhyme at the end of each line because he is showing that no two soldiers on the battle are the same and they all have their own identity. There is also no rhythm in the poem and a very dark tone to the way Walter wrote. He ends the poem talking about a soldier being buried in a coffin with the sounds of singing in the background and the doors of the coffin being shut. In the poem, Hush’d Be the Camps To-Day, Walter Whitman used a dark tone to describe the life and the outcome of a soldiers life.

An Army Corps on the March –Trevor Krupp

This is a very deep poem about the bodies of the army men decaying men. In the middle of the poem, he repeats, “On and on, the dense bridges press on”. He also does not have any Rhyme or Rhythm. The first Line reads “With its cloud of skirmishers in advance.” I think this means then cloud of gunpowder that  is about the dead men.  The 6^th line reads, “Glittering dimly toiling under the sun- the dust cover’d men”. He bodies her are getting covered by just and are getting burned by the sun. I think this also means that the men are getting forgotten about, which is a part of life. The last line is very important, “As the army corps advance.” I think this means the army body advances to get forgotten and decomposed.

O Captain! My Captain!

O Captain! My Captain!

            The message being portrayed through this poem is that tragedy can strike even in the greatest of moments. The ship made it to its destination, even though it got scratched and weathered. I think the ship may also represent life because during its journey it took some weathering, just like in life, and then after it had reached its destination the captain died. This ship reaching its destination can also represent a life reaching heaven. Since the captain died as the ship reached where it needed to go, they both have given all they have and have passed.

            There are many poetic devices displayed through this poem. Rhyme is one of the devices used. Examples of rhyme are done and won, red and dead, bells and trills, and head and dead. Each stanza contains rhymes and is four sentences long. The mood of this poem is grieving the death of his captain but also remembering his captain for being a role model to him. It is stated in the poem that his captain was like a father to him, which is why his death is so tragic. Another literary device used is repetition. Examples of repetition are O captain! My Captain! And O heart! Heart! Heart! These are used to show the happiest moment is the poem and the saddest. O captain is said when they reach their destination and O heart is said when he finds the captain dead. 

Song of Myself

Song of Myself

In the “Song of Myself” by Walter Whitman there is no rhyme scheme or rhythm throughout the entire poem. This was done purposely because Whitman is trying to make his poem like life itself. This poem is just like life because nothing is guaranteed. Life has no rhyme or rhythm, which is why Whitman uses free verse. In order to make his poem flow, Whitman uses repetition of key words in order to get his point across. An example of repetition is in the first two lines where it says, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself, /And what I assume you shall assume.” There is no rhythm between these lines but Whitman uses repetition of the words myself and assume to make the poem flow. Not only does repetition create flow throughout the poem but it also supports the points that Whitman is trying to make. It supports Whitman’s ideas because repetition is just like the cycle of life. In this poem, Whitman is trying to say that humans are made from past things that have died out and that atoms have been recycled to create yourself. These atoms have been recycled and repeatedly used to create life, which supports the use of repetition in this poem. I also believe that Whitman displays imagery through his poems because life is visually appealing.

            Later on in Whitman’s poem, he begins to talk about the Alamo and the tragedies that happened during that war. I think that Whitman talks about war in his poem because bad things happen in life no matter what, and war is a specific example. However, Whitman believed that tragedy is a beautiful thing and that death needs to happen in order to ensure life. Lastly, Whitman supports pantheism and that god is everything. I am god, you are god, and everything is god. This is why death isn’t a tragedy to Whitman because he thinks that god is everything. If one part of god dies, then he is still here in everything else.

O captain my Captain

Spencer Altman

Oh captain. My captain

This is a poem about a captain who recently died, and they are celebrating that the ship returned home. The speaker talks about how happy he is that the ship crew is safe.  However, I find it quite chilling that the captains dead body is still laying on the deck of the boat.  This poem has a lot of rhyme and rhythm which makes the poem flow very well.  The rhyme scheme is not perfect rhymes but there are a couple.  There is no fixed meter of rhythm.  The repetition of heart in line 5 emphasizes the poets sorrow.  After doing some research on this poem I found that the captain was Abe Lincoln.  The speaker of the poem is a little fanboy of the captain and he loves the captain very much.  the author uses a lot of repetition.  This poem focuses on mourning the loss of the resident and the sorrow that comes with losing a great leader.  The speaker seems to have a bond with the captain in the second calling of “my captain”.  A big note in this poem is that there are exclamation  points that are meant to add despitation.  This poem was misleading at first but after a couple times reading it and looking it up its history online it was quite easy to understand.

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd

Whitman uses a lot of imagery in "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." I found this prevalent throughout the whole poem, from the "loud in the pines and cedars dim, clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume" to "And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them." From what I can tell, Whitman wrote this poem to describe the memories and aftermath of a bloody war. The poem also begins and ends with the description of a gray-brown bird. I think this most likely represents the peacefulness currently, which is why he sticks in the dark war memories in between the two instances of the bird. I see some sort of a rhyme scheme from lines 172 to 184, with repeated words at the ends of lines and words like "though" and "not" which sound similar. Besides imagery, there are examples of metaphors as well. For example, the "death's outlet song." 

Walt Whitman: The Dalliance of the Eagles

This poem has a much deeper meaning than just the words on the page. In the opening lines of the poem, he/she sees two eagles flying around in the air. He describes how they a mating in the air by saying "a swirling mass tight grappling" and "a living, fierce, gyrating wheel". Then the eagles suddenly fall downward and then the female rises again with the male following behind it. There is no rhythm in this poem nor is there rhyming. He uses imagery to describe the eagles as they fly around in the air and he uses the five senses to help as well. The meaning begins this poem is that it is a call for women to stand up for themselves and do what they know they can do. Also, in the middle of the poem, the eagles fly downward and this is a symbol of how things in life can drag people down and they have to get back up again and keep moving on in life. The mood of this poem is assertive and demanding because as a women, I feel that I am given hope and freedom especially with the bald eagle. The tone is hard to tell from the text written because it shows determination and yet a bit of defeat especially for him being a male.

Analysis of O Captain! My Captain!

English 4

Mr. Merrill

Jeffrey Baker

Analysis of O Captain! My Captain!

Literary Devices:

- Repetition: O heart! heart! heart!; The mention of the captain pops up multiple times; the letter “o”

Rhyme/Rhythm:

- Head and dead, tread and dead, red and dead, still and will, done and won,

Structure:  Four sentence stanzas, short and concise

Tone/Mood: Calling out to his captain, who acted like a father to him, his own sacrifices that he had to make have affected him in serious ways

The Message: Everyone around you that you love dearly can never return and you have to savor the moments that you spend together, again another form of appreciating life and taking it in.

Analysis of Poem

To the Garden the World

As in the poem “Song of Myself”, Walt Whitman doesn’t use any rhythm and hardly any rhyme except the first two line he used ascending and preluding. For literary devices he uses repetition with the word “wondrous” in the section “Amorous, mature, all beautiful to me, all wondrous, My limbs and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for reasons, most wondrous.” Also, Whitman uses imagery throughout the poem by using adjectives. For tone, the poem is positive because of the words that are used like “love” and “beautiful”. The mood is happy because of the message in the poem and reminds the reader of what they have. The message shows is in the last three lines “Content with the present, content with the past, by my side or back of me Eve following, or in front, and I following her just the same.” Meaning that in our world there are people all around us and we will never be alone because there are people that are following us and people that we follow. 

Song of Myself

Famous poet, Walter Whitman wrote a poem called, “Song of Myself,” that features many different aspects that relate to the cycle of life. The cycle of life strongly is influenced in the way Walter Whitman writes because when he writes his poetry he will repeat words or phrases over and over again to symbolize that life goes in a circle. An example in his poetry where he uses repeated words or phrases is when he writes, “For me those that have been…For me the man that…For me the sweet-heart…For me lips that have smiled…For me children.”(P.69-70. 140-146) Walter Whitman does not incorporate many examples of rhyme the way he writes poetry and especially in the poem, “Song of Myself.” When Walter wrote “Song by myself,” he included many questions about life and symbols and then he would answer his questions by exclaiming them in the next few lines. Walter plays this question and answer game with himself when he writes his poetry. The mood and tone of the poem staggers from light to dark. When he talks in a dark mood I think that he is hinting more towards death. When he is talking in a more lighter tone I think he is talking about life and being born. Walter Whitman’s message in his poem is too not take for granted the life that one is living. There is a lot of surrounding distractions and many people go through life and ignore the surrounding noise but Walter Whitman is trying to get the reader to understand that that person should embrace the surrounded noise and enjoy the privilege of life.

Song of Myself

In this section of Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself”, he doesn’t use rhythm and hardly any rhyme. The only rhyming that he does, is with the word that he is rhyming with. For example the first two lines of the poem, “ I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume, you shall assume.” Also, Whitman does this again in the beginning of the fifth stanza, “Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes, I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it, the distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.” He repeated the words “Perfumes” and “It”. For literary devices, Whitman had imagery. He was very descriptive throughout the entire poem. Also, he had a simile on page 65, line 50, “Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical, I and this mystery here we stand.”, comparing himself and the mystery to the stout of a horse. The structure of the poem revolves around life and nature. Also, the structure seems to be made up of characters own stories and how they relate to nature. The tone and mood of the story are the same in this poem because they are both positive feelings about life and why it’s so great to be alive. Often times the narrator implies that the earth is great. However, at other times in the story, closer to the end the mood and tone change to being negative and sad because the baby died or the dead bodies of soldiers. Ultimately, i think that Walt Whitman is trying to show that life is too short and can be taken at any moment, so quickly and that they’re positive and negatives to life and there’s no way to control it, and that people should live their lives to the fullest because eventually everyone will die. 

"Song of Myself"

Literary Features:

-Repetition: in many of the beginning of the lines, the first few words are repeated.

EX. “Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?” (30).

-Imagery: in the poem, Whitman uses the five senses a lot, providing a lot of imagery

            EX. “The sniff of the green leaves…/The sound of the belch’d words…” (24-25).

-Metaphors: at around line 100, Whitman starts to compare grass to many different things.

            EX. “…the grass is itself a child…/Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic” (105-106).

 

Rhyme/Rhythm

-There is no rhyme scheme

-There is no specific rhythm

 

Structure

-Whitman seems to group together lines that are all about a certain topic

            EX. When he is talking about the grass, it is al grouped together

-Very long and lengthy

 

Tone/Mood

-The tone is motivation—he is motivating people to believe in themselves, and be okay with who they are

-The mood is encouraging—the audience feels encouraged to not listen to what society thinks of them, but to believe in who they think they are.

 

The message Whitman is trying to portray is the message that people should be the person that they truly are, and not to listen to anybody else. It is also about trying to find the person that you truly are. One part of the poem talks about different effects that happened throughout the person in the poem’s life. At the end of that, it talks about how you shouldn’t let the effects effect the person you are, but just effect your life. There is also another part that talks about not knowing what grass is. This is a symbol of people trying to figure out exactly who they are, and the journey that they take to get there.

Song of Myself

Rhyme: There is no rhyming to this poem. This poem could very well be written as a story.
Rhythm: The rhythm of this poem is the way it is because of the commas used and the repetition of certain words like clear and phrases like you shall. I think the author is trying to tell us, the readers, something when she uses the word "you". The structure of this poem is long and lengthy. The words used are very descriptive and have heavy meanings like equanimity. I had a hard time reading this poem and often had to reread certain spots because of the vernacular and language that was used. The author uses a set of parentheses on lines 36 and 37 saying "there are millions of suns left". She says this because she stresses the importance of life and also the coming of death upon oneself.

The author uses different ideas and pictures to describe his mood and emotions. When doing so, he turns to nature for a spin on life. He often refers to the sun, the earth, leaves, and vines. This poem is the ultimate description of life and finding out who the 'myself ' truly is. It starts off by having a kid ask about nature and the guy having to use symbolism to explain life. He explains how one day he will die eventually because that is a common aspect to every human. Then the poem shifts and goes to a new picture of men with a women watching over them. She sees light and happiness in them yet she feels like she knows everything about all of them. The author was trying to say that by living on this earth and being in the moment, you live through a lot of events and there's nothing better than that. Whitman does this by using his five senses and imagery. He tends to use anaphora's every so often which are the repetition of certain words. Overall, Whitman was trying to explain the two biggest events in life, life and death.

Analysis of "Song of Myself"

English 4

Mr. Merrill

Jeffrey Baker

Literary Features:

- Repetition with the words, “see, O, and, and other simple words, Haste, haste, haste (first page) Urge and urge and urge; Repeated phrases (pg. 65 line 38) same endings (pg. 65 40-44)

- Personification: locomotive panting,

- Parentheses are used

Rhyme/rhythm: No real rhymes; not even slanged rhymes

Structure:

- 2/3 commas with 3 clauses

- Mostly not structured

- He almost narrates his life

Tone/mood: He does not give in to the pressure that society puts on him such as the common social norms of the world.

Mood: Somewhat passionate yet dreadful of what he is telling the reader or the listener

What is Whitman’s message and how does he go about pursuing it?

Throughout the reading of this poem that is spilt up into different sections, I observed that Whitman gives his best effort when trying to convey a message. This message is society is forcing social norms into the minds of everyone and sets the mentality to follow them. The line, “ You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self,” (pg. 65 L. 37) speaks to this so clearly. The meaning behind this line is that you can certainly listen to all these people who are forcing the social norms, but you can let it go one ear and out the other and they will not know the difference. Another line, “I have no mocking or arguments, I witness and wait, “ (pg. 67 L. 82) is explaining that he does not have anything derisive to say, so he will just sit back and observe. Given these two lines and many others, identifying and essentially doing the same thing, a reader of the poem can assume that Walt Whitman’s message is not only to sit on the sidelines every once in a while, but additionally to listen while there because the best way to succeed is to listen to other’s ideas and understand what they are trying to say.