I Hear It Was Charged Against Me
I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions,But really I am neither for nor against institutions,(What indeed have I in common with them? or what with thedestruction of them?)Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of theseStates inland and seaboard,And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or largethat dents the water,Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument,The institution of the dear love of comrades.
Words in this poem
- seaboard n.
- The seashore; seacoast. Ld. Berners. [Sea + board, F. bord side.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
I Hear It Was Charged Against Me 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, I Hear It Was Charged Against Me, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/i-hear-it-was-charged-against-me.html, id L03878.
Form and metre
I Hear It Was Charged Against Me is 10 lines in a single stanza. 80% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 13.1 syllables. 4 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 30% 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 AA-------- institutionsA · institutionsA · the · them · these · seaboard · large · water · argument · comrades
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 hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions, | 18 | ············˘/·˘/˘ |
| But really I am neither for nor against institutions, | 15 | ·/˘··/˘·····˘/˘ |
| (What indeed have I in common with them? or what with the | 14 | ·˘/···/˘······ |
| destruction of them?) | 5 | ˘/˘·· |
| Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of these | 22 | /˘··˘/˘········/˘˘/˘·· |
| States inland and seaboard, | 6 | ·/··/· |
| And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large | 17 | ·········/˘˘·/˘·· |
| that dents the water, | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument, | 17 | ··/˘˘˘····/·/˘/˘˘ |
| The institution of the dear love of comrades. | 12 | ··˘/˘·····/· |
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.