Reconciliation
Word over all, beautiful as the sky,Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time beutterly lost,That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softlywash again, and ever again, this solid world;For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin--I draw near,Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
Words in this poem
- carnage n.
- Flesh of slain animals or men. [F. carnage, LL. carnaticum tribute of animals, flesh of animals, fr. L. caro, carnis, flesh. See Carnal.]
- incessantly adv.
- Unceasingly; continually.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Reconciliation 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, Reconciliation, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/reconciliation.html, id L03967.
Form and metre
Reconciliation is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic octameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 72%). 74% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 13.2 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 25% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in trochaic octameter.
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------ skyA · beA · lost · softly · world · dead · near · coffin
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. Read against trochaic octameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Word over all, beautiful as the sky, | 10 | ····/˘˘··· |
| Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be | 16 | /˘˘·······/˘···· |
| utterly lost, | 4 | /˘˘· |
| That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly | 16 | ·····/˘···˘/˘˘/˘ |
| wash again, and ever again, this solid world; | 12 | ·˘/·/˘˘/·/˘· |
| For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead, | 16 | ··/˘˘····˘/··/·· |
| I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin--I draw near, | 16 | ···········/˘··· |
| Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin. | 16 | ····/˘········/˘ |
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.