Pensive and Faltering
Pensive and faltering,The words the Dead I write,For living are the Dead,(Haply the only living, only real,And I the apparition, I the spectre.)
Words in this poem
- faltering a.
- Hesitating; trembling.
- haply adv.
- By hap, chance, luck, or accident; perhaps; it may be.
- spectre n.
- Something preternaturally visible; an apparition; a ghost; a phantom. [F. spectre, fr. L. spectrum an appearance, image, specter, fr. specere to look. See Spy, and cf. Spectrum.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Pensive and Faltering 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, Pensive and Faltering, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/pensive-and-faltering.html, id L04037.
Form and metre
Pensive and Faltering is 5 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 7.8 syllables. 2 lines end 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Pensive and faltering, | 6 | /˘·/˘˘ |
| The words the Dead I write, | 6 | ······ |
| For living are the Dead, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| (Haply the only living, only real, | 10 | /˘·/˘/˘/˘· |
| And I the apparition, I the spectre.) | 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.