O Tan-Faced Prairie-Boy
O tan-faced prairie-boy,Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift,Praises and presents came and nourishing food, till at last amongthe recruits,You came, taciturn, with nothing to give--we but look’d on each other,When lo! more than all the gifts of the world you gave me.
Words in this poem
- taciturn a.
- Habitually silent; not given to converse; not apt to talk or speak. [L. taciturnus: cf. F. taciturne. See Tacit.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
O Tan-Faced Prairie-Boy 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, O Tan-Faced Prairie-Boy, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/o-tan-faced-prairie-boy.html, id L03965.
Form and metre
O Tan-Faced Prairie-Boy is 6 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. The lines average 11.3 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 |
|---|---|---|
| O tan-faced prairie-boy, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift, | 13 | ·······/˘·/˘· |
| Praises and presents came and nourishing food, till at last among | 16 | /˘·/˘··/˘˘······ |
| the recruits, | 3 | ·˘/ |
| You came, taciturn, with nothing to give--we but look’d on each other, | 17 | ··/˘··/˘·······/˘ |
| When lo! more than all the gifts of the world you gave me. | 13 | ············· |
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.