As I Watch the Ploughman Ploughing
As I watch’d the ploughman ploughing,Or the sower sowing in the fields, or the harvester harvesting,I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies;(Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.)
Words in this poem
- ploughman n.
- One who plows, or who holds and guides a plow; hence, a husbandman. Chaucer.
- sower n.
- One who, or that which, sows.
- harvester n.
- One who harvests; a machine for cutting and gathering grain; a reaper.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
As I Watch the Ploughman Ploughing 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, As I Watch the Ploughman Ploughing, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/as-i-watch-the-ploughman-ploughing.html, id L04036.
Form and metre
As I Watch the Ploughman Ploughing is 4 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 13.2 syllables. 4 lines end 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 |
|---|---|---|
| As I watch’d the ploughman ploughing, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Or the sower sowing in the fields, or the harvester harvesting, | 17 | ··/˘/˘·····/˘˘/˘˘ |
| I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies; | 13 | ·········˘/˘˘ |
| (Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.) | 15 | ····/˘····/˘˘/˘ |
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.