Bivouac on a Mountain Side
I see before me now a traveling army halting,Below a fertile valley spread, with barns and the orchards of summer,Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt, in places rising high,Broken, with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes dingily seen,The numerous camp-fires scatter’d near and far, some away up on themountain,The shadowy forms of men and horses, looming, large-sized, flickering,And over all the sky--the sky! far, far out of reach, studded,breaking out, the eternal stars.
Words in this poem
- dingily adv.
- In a dingy manner.
- looming n.
- The indistinct and magnified appearance of objects seen in particular states of the atmosphere. See Mirage.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Bivouac on a Mountain Side 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, Bivouac on a Mountain Side, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/bivouac-on-a-mountain-side.html, id L03946.
Form and metre
Bivouac on a Mountain Side is 9 lines in a single stanza. 75% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 13.9 syllables. 5 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 11% 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--- halting · summer · high · seenA · the · mountainA · flickering · studded · stars
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I see before me now a traveling army halting, | 14 | ·······/˘˘/˘/˘ |
| Below a fertile valley spread, with barns and the orchards of summer, | 17 | ···/˘/˘·····/˘·/˘ |
| Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt, in places rising high, | 18 | ···/˘···/˘˘/·/˘/˘· |
| Broken, with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes dingily seen, | 16 | /˘···/˘/˘···/˘˘· |
| The numerous camp-fires scatter’d near and far, some away up on the | 18 | ·/˘˘·/˘/˘····˘/··· |
| mountain, | 2 | /˘ |
| The shadowy forms of men and horses, looming, large-sized, flickering, | 17 | ·/˘˘····/˘/˘··/˘˘ |
| And over all the sky--the sky! far, far out of reach, studded, | 15 | ·············/˘ |
| breaking out, the eternal stars. | 8 | /˘··˘/˘· |
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.