Red Jacket (From Aloft)
Upon this scene, this show,Yielded to-day by fashion, learning, wealth,(Nor in caprice alone--some grains of deepest meaning,)Haply, aloft, (who knows?) from distant sky-clouds’ blended shapes,As some old tree, or rock or cliff, thrill’d with its soul,Product of Nature’s sun, stars, earth direct--a towering human form,In hunting-shirt of film, arm’d with the rifle, a half-ironicalsmile curving its phantom lips,Like one of Ossian’s ghosts looks down.
Words in this poem
- wealth n.
- Weal; welfare; prosperity; good. [OE. welthe, from wele; cf. D. weelde luxury. See Weal prosperity.]
- haply adv.
- By hap, chance, luck, or accident; perhaps; it may be.
- towering a.
- Very high; elevated; rising aloft; as, a towering height.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Red Jacket (From Aloft) 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, Red Jacket (From Aloft), in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/red-jacket-from-aloft.html, id L25591.
Form and metre
Red Jacket (From Aloft) is 9 lines in a single stanza.
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 ----A-A-- show · wealth · meaning · shapes · soulA · form · ironicalA · lips · down
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Upon this scene, this show, | 6 | ······ |
| Yielded to-day by fashion, learning, wealth, | 10 | /˘···/˘/˘· |
| (Nor in caprice alone--some grains of deepest meaning,) | 13 | ··˘/˘/···/˘/˘ |
| Haply, aloft, (who knows?) from distant sky-clouds’ blended shapes, | 14 | /˘˘/···/˘··/˘· |
| As some old tree, or rock or cliff, thrill’d with its soul, | 12 | ············ |
| Product of Nature’s sun, stars, earth direct--a towering human form, | 17 | /˘·/˘···˘/·/˘˘/˘· |
| In hunting-shirt of film, arm’d with the rifle, a half-ironical | 17 | ·/˘······/˘··˘/˘˘ |
| smile curving its phantom lips, | 7 | ·/˘·/˘· |
| Like one of Ossian’s ghosts looks down. | 8 | ········ |
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.