of Ships", "Darest Thou now O Soul", etc. The following examples will illustrate the different forms in which it occurs: a) inanimate objects addressed as animate. "Thou orb aloft full dazzling! thou hot October noon!" b) the absent ones addressed as if present. "You who celebrate bygones." "What do you seek so pensive and silent?" "What do you need camerado?" "Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you" c) the past or future addressed as the present. "Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!" d) the dead as if living. "O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells." "Vigil final for you brave boy, I could not save you, swift was your death." e) birds as human beings. "Sing on, sing on you grey-brown bird!" Vision. This figure is characteristic of, "Whispers of Heavenly Death", "The Artilleryman's Vision”, "On the Beach at Night", "Song of the Redwood Tree", "Song of the Broad-axe", "Song of the Banner at Daybreak, "Proud Music of the Storm", "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking", etc. Examples are: "A Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect." "I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear." "Father what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long finger?" "And what does it say to me all the while?" 3. Personification. Some of the verses quoted above may be taken as examples. Others are: "Voice of a mighty dying tree in the redwood forest dense." "Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipp'd cannon." "Lo, Victress on the peaks, "Where thou with mighty brow regarding the world", "the laughing locomotive", "the ripe breath of autumn", "Fiercethroated beauty" (locomotive). 4 Interrogation. "Was anybody asking to see the soul?" "What place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege?" "And who but I should be the poet of comrades?" 5. Exclamation. The Exclamation is used most frequently in "A Song of Joys" where it characterizes almost every verse. "O the joy of a manly selfhood!" "O to make the most jubilant song!" レ 6. Metaphor. "From the walls of the powerful fortress'd house" 1) "I think this face is the face of the Christ himself." "Till with ominous hum our hive) at daybreak pour'd out its myriads.' Simile. The Simile is comparatively rare. "Love like the light silently wrapping all." "Something for you is pouring now more than Niagara pouring.' "Sure as the ship of all, the Earth itself, So thee O ship of France." a) the thing for the thing signified. "To carry buildings and streets with you afterward wherever you go." b) effect for the cause. "I'll pour the verse with the streams of blood" ... "he can make every word he speaks draw blood". c) means for the instrument. "more beautiful than words can tell." "Have the past struggles succeeded?" 9. Synecdoche. A special form of Metonymy: a part for the whole. "I sat studying at the feet of the great master." And with him horse and foot, and parks of artillery, ... "Many the hardships, few the joys". 1) Figurative of the body. Figurative of New York City. 11. Oxymoron. "death making me really undying." "Our life is closed, our life begins." "Not a mark not a record remains and yet all remains." "delicious burdens," "the sweet hell within." 12. Hyperbole. "Nor red1) from Europe's old dynastic slaughter-house, Area of murder-plots of thrones, with scent left yet of wars and scaffolds everywhere." "Or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human tears?" "it has called the dead out of the earth!" 13. Allegory. (See "I saw old General at Bay", "Song of the Open Road", under Speculative Poems.) "Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose."") 14. Hypallage: "The ripe breath of autumn", instead of: the scent (breath) of ripe fruit in autumn. "You shall scatter with lavish hand", instead of: you shall scatter lavishly with your hand. "Who spread their reach'd hands toward you", instead of: who reached toward you their spread hand. 15. Use of abstract for concrete terms. "To see no possession but you may possess it." 16. Climax. "To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face." We shall illustrate his frequent use of Imagery by the following extracts: "Soothe! soothe! soothe! Close on its wave soothes the wave behind, And again another behind embracing and lapping, every one close, But my love soothes not me, not me." "Low hangs the moon, it rose late, OI think it is heavy with love, with love." "O madly the sea pushes upon the land, With love, with love." 1) Refers to the Redwood Tree. 2) See under "Song of the Open Road." "O night! do I not see my love fluttering out among the breakers? What is that little black thing I see there in the white?" "Loud! loud! loud! Loud I call to you, my love! High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves, Surely you must know who is here, is here, You must know who I am, my love.” "Low-hanging moon! What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow? O it is the shape, the shape of my mate! O moon do not keep her from me any longer." (Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.) Verses 1 and 2: Exclamation, as also the interjection O in verses 6, 7, etc. Verses 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8: Personification. Verses 9-end: Apostrophe and Personification. Verses 9, 10, 17: Interrogation. Verses 2-4: implied Simile. Verses 10, 17: Vision (Hallucination-like). It will be observed that the above verses are not only rich in imagery but also strong in sentiment. It may be said in general that the verses strong in sentiment are rich in Imagery. "Sail, sail thy best, ship of Democracy, Of value is thy freight, 'tis not the Present only, The Past is also stored in thee, Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone, not of the Western continent alone, Earth's résumé entire floats on thy keel O ship, is steadied by thy spars, With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent nations sink or swim with thee, With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou bear'st the other continents, Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant; Venerable priestly Asia sails this day with thee, (Thou Mother with thy Equal Brood.) Here we have Apostrophe in all the verses; the Methaphor in ship of Democracy", "freight", etc.; Personification twice in all the verses except the first, where it is used only once. The Analogy. Whitman is very fond of drawing analogies. "This", he says, "is the image-making faculty, coping with material creation",1) and by means of it he often arrives at an understanding of the theoretical: "Who, out of the theory of the earth and of his or her body understands by subtle analogies all other theories." "). In "This Compost" the poet makes Democracy's rule analogous to Nature's occult power of transformation in the earth;3) so also in "Wandering at Noon", Democracy's rule is analogous to Nature's occult power of transformation in the thrush. Other good examples of the analogy are in "As I Watch'd the Ploughman Ploughing”, where Life and Death are analogous to the tillage and the harvest respectively of the farmer; "The Prairiegrass Dividing"; in "To Old Age", where old age is analogous to the estuary of a large river, etc.; in "Democratic Vistas", (p. 82), where the evolution of Democracy is analogous to the evolution of man, etc. The analogy is really another form of the Simile. Part II. Style of Leaves of Grass. Whitman, generally speaking, seeks to depart from strict conventionality and mechanism in his poetry, yet he does not seem able to do so entirely. There are quite a number of verses in his poetry in which he observes a fixed metrical scheme. Whether he introduces these because he feels it necessary to break the monotony that may eventually be produced by his long irregular verses, or because he feels such a regularity in best keeping with the substance of the verses or the feeling, it is difficult to say. The latter seems to be the more probable. It is also probable that as an in 1) Dem. Vistas p. 74. 2) Kosmos. 3) cf. Dem. Vistas p. 17. |