Look Down Fair Moon
Look down fair moon and bathe this scene,Pour softly down night’s nimbus floods on faces ghastly, swollen, purple,On the dead on their backs with arms toss’d wide,Pour down your unstinted nimbus sacred moon.
Words in this poem
- nimbus n.
- A circle, or disk, or any indication of radiant light around the heads of divinities, saints, and sovereigns, upon medals, pictures, etc.; a halo. See Aureola, and Glory, n., 5. [L., a rain storm, a rain cloud, the cloudshaped which enveloped the gods when they appeared on earth.]
- backs n.
- Among leather dealers, the thickest and stoutest tanned hides.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Look Down Fair Moon 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, Look Down Fair Moon, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/look-down-fair-moon.html, id L03966.
Form and metre
Look Down Fair Moon 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Look down fair moon and bathe this scene, | 8 | ········ |
| Pour softly down night’s nimbus floods on faces ghastly, swollen, purple, | 17 | ·/˘··/˘··/˘/˘/˘/˘ |
| On the dead on their backs with arms toss’d wide, | 10 | ·········· |
| Pour down your unstinted nimbus sacred moon. | 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.