A Clear Midnight
This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thoulovest best,Night, sleep, death and the stars.
Words in this poem
- wordless a.
- Not using words; not speaking; silent; speechless.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Clear Midnight 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 Clear Midnight, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/a-clear-midnight.html, id L04057.
Form and metre
A Clear Midnight is 5 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 11.4 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless, | 15 | ···/˘········/˘ |
| Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, | 16 | ˘/··˘/····˘/·/˘· |
| Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou | 17 | ·/˘·˘/˘/˘/˘/˘˘··· |
| lovest best, | 3 | ··· |
| Night, sleep, death and the stars. | 6 | ······ |
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.