Life and Death
The two old, simple problems ever intertwined,Close home, elusive, present, baffled, grappled.By each successive age insoluble, pass’d on,To ours to-day--and we pass on the same.
Words in this poem
- elusive a.
- Tending to elude; using arts or deception to escape; adroitly escaping or evading; eluding the grasp; fallacious.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Life and Death 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, Life and Death, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/life-and-death.html, id L04103.
Form and metre
Life and Death is 4 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 11.5 syllables. 1 line ends 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 |
|---|---|---|
| The two old, simple problems ever intertwined, | 12 | ···/˘/˘/˘˘˘/ |
| Close home, elusive, present, baffled, grappled. | 11 | ··˘/˘/˘/˘/˘ |
| By each successive age insoluble, pass’d on, | 12 | ··˘/˘·˘/˘˘·· |
| To ours to-day--and we pass on the same. | 11 | ·/˘········ |
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.