A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine
A carol closing sixty-nine--a resume--a repetition,My lines in joy and hope continuing on the same,Of ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom, Poetry;Of you, my Land--your rivers, prairies, States--you, mottled Flag I love,Your aggregate retain’d entire--Of north, south, east and west, youritems all;Of me myself--the jocund heart yet beating in my breast,The body wreck’d, old, poor and paralyzed--the strange inertiafalling pall-like round me,The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct,The undiminish’d faith--the groups of loving friends.
Words in this poem
- carol v. t.
- To praise or celebrate in song.
- resume n.
- A summing up; a condensed statement; an abridgment or brief recapitulation. [F. See Resume.]
- jocund
- Merry; cheerful; gay; airy; lively; sportive. [L. jocundus, jucundus, orig., helpful, fr. juvare to help. See Aid.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine is in the public domain. This text is taken from Leaves of Grass, Project Gutenberg ebook #1322; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Walt Whitman, A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/a-carol-closing-sixty-nine.html, id L04076.
Form and metre
A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine is 11 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. 87% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 12.6 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 18% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| A carol closing sixty-nine--a resume--a repetition, | 16 | ·/˘/˘/˘··˘/··˘/˘ |
| My lines in joy and hope continuing on the same, | 13 | ······˘/˘˘··· |
| Of ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom, Poetry; | 12 | ·····/˘/˘/˘˘ |
| Of you, my Land--your rivers, prairies, States--you, mottled Flag I love, | 16 | ·····/˘/˘··/˘··· |
| Your aggregate retain’d entire--Of north, south, east and west, your | 16 | ·/˘˘˘/˘/˘······· |
| items all; | 3 | /˘· |
| Of me myself--the jocund heart yet beating in my breast, | 14 | ···/·/˘··/˘··· |
| The body wreck’d, old, poor and paralyzed--the strange inertia | 15 | ·/˘····/˘···˘/˘ |
| falling pall-like round me, | 6 | /˘···· |
| The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct, | 15 | ·/˘/˘···/˘···˘/ |
| The undiminish’d faith--the groups of loving friends. | 12 | ··˘/˘····/˘· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.