Long, Too Long America
Long, too long America,Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn’d from joys andprosperity only,But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing,grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,And now to conceive and show to the world what your childrenen-masse really are,(For who except myself has yet conceiv’d what your children en-massereally are?)
About this text
Long, Too Long America 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, Long, Too Long America, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/long-too-long-america.html, id L03955.
Form and metre
Long, Too Long America is 9 lines in a single stanza. 76% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.2 syllables. 4 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 33% 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 america · and · only · advancing · not · children · areA · masse · areA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Long, too long America, | 7 | ···˘/˘˘ |
| Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn’d from joys and | 15 | /˘˘··/˘·/˘····· |
| prosperity only, | 6 | ˘/˘˘/˘ |
| But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, | 15 | ·······/˘·/˘˘/˘ |
| grappling with direst fate and recoiling not, | 11 | /˘·/˘··˘/˘· |
| And now to conceive and show to the world what your children | 14 | ···˘/·······/˘ |
| en-masse really are, | 5 | ··/˘· |
| (For who except myself has yet conceiv’d what your children en-masse | 16 | ·····/··˘/··/˘·· |
| really are?) | 3 | /˘· |
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.