A Leaf for Hand in Hand
A leaf for hand in hand;You natural persons old and young!You on the Mississippi and on all the branches and bayous ofthe Mississippi!You friendly boatmen and mechanics! you roughs!You twain! and all processions moving along the streets!I wish to infuse myself among you till I see it common for you towalk hand in hand.
Words in this poem
- twain a.
- Two;- nearly obsolete in common discourse, but used in poetry and burlesque. [OE. twein, tweien, tweyne, AS. twegen, masc. See Two.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Leaf for Hand in Hand 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 Leaf for Hand in Hand, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/a-leaf-for-hand-in-hand.html, id L03884.
Form and metre
A Leaf for Hand in Hand is 8 lines in a single stanza. 88% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.5 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 25% 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.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 A------A handA · young · of · mississippi · roughs · streets · to · handA
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 leaf for hand in hand; | 6 | ······ |
| You natural persons old and young! | 9 | ·/˘˘/˘··· |
| You on the Mississippi and on all the branches and bayous of | 17 | ····˘/˘····/˘·/˘· |
| the Mississippi! | 5 | ··˘/˘ |
| You friendly boatmen and mechanics! you roughs! | 11 | ·/˘···˘/˘·· |
| You twain! and all processions moving along the streets! | 13 | ····˘/˘/˘˘/·· |
| I wish to infuse myself among you till I see it common for you to | 19 | ···˘/·/·······/˘··· |
| walk hand in hand. | 4 | ···· |
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.