An Army Corps on the March
With its cloud of skirmishers in advance,With now the sound of a single shot snapping like a whip, and now anirregular volley,The swarming ranks press on and on, the dense brigades press on,Glittering dimly, toiling under the sun--the dust-cover’d men,In columns rise and fall to the undulations of the ground,With artillery interspers’d--the wheels rumble, the horses sweat,As the army corps advances.
Words in this poem
- snapping
- a. & n. from Snap, v. Snapping beetle. (Zoöl.) See Snap beetle, under Snap.
- dimly adv.
- In a dim or obscure manner; not brightly or clearly; with imperfect sight.
- artillery n.
- Munitions of war; implements for warfare, as slings, bows, and arrows. [OE. artilrie, OF. artillerie, arteillerie, fr. LL. artillaria, artilleria, machines and apparatus of all kinds used in war, vans laden with arms of any kind whi]
- corps n.
- The human body, whether living or dead. See Corpse, 1. [F., fr. L. corpus body. See Corpse.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
An Army Corps on the March 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, An Army Corps on the March, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/an-army-corps-on-the-march.html, id L03947.
Form and metre
An Army Corps on the March is 8 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. 78% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 12.8 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 12% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| With its cloud of skirmishers in advance, | 10 | ········˘/ |
| With now the sound of a single shot snapping like a whip, and now an | 17 | ······/˘·/˘······ |
| irregular volley, | 6 | ˘/˘˘/˘ |
| The swarming ranks press on and on, the dense brigades press on, | 14 | ·/˘·······˘/·· |
| Glittering dimly, toiling under the sun--the dust-cover’d men, | 16 | /˘˘/˘/˘······/˘· |
| In columns rise and fall to the undulations of the ground, | 15 | ·/˘············ |
| With artillery interspers’d--the wheels rumble, the horses sweat, | 16 | ·˘/˘˘·˘/··/˘·/˘· |
| As the army corps advances. | 8 | ··/˘·˘/˘ |
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