O You Whom I Often and Silently Come
O you whom I often and silently come where you are that I may be with you,As I walk by your side or sit near, or remain in the same room with you,Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake isplaying within me.
About this text
O You Whom I Often and Silently Come 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 You Whom I Often and Silently Come, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/o-you-whom-i-often-and-silently-come.html, id L03892.
Form and metre
O You Whom I Often and Silently Come is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines. The lines average 15.0 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets.
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-- youA · youA · is · me
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 you whom I often and silently come where you are that I may be with you, | 20 | ····/˘·/˘˘·········· |
| As I walk by your side or sit near, or remain in the same room with you, | 18 | ··········˘/······ |
| Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is | 17 | /˘···/˘˘/˘/˘····· |
| playing within me. | 5 | /˘··· |
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.