The Prairie States
A newer garden of creation, no primal solitude,Dense, joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms,With iron interlaced, composite, tied, many in one,By all the world contributed--freedom’s and law’s and thrift’s society,The crown and teeming paradise, so far, of time’s accumulations,To justify the past.
Words in this poem
- primal a.
- First; primary; original; chief. [LL. primalis, fr. L. primus the first. See Prime, a.]
- populous a.
- Abounding in people; full of inhabitants; containing many inhabitants in proportion to the extent of the country. [L. populosus, fr. populus people: cf. F. populeux.]
- teeming a.
- Prolific; productive.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Prairie States 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, The Prairie States, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/the-prairie-states.html, id L04015.
Form and metre
The Prairie States is 6 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. The metre is iambic heptameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 75%). 76% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 14.0 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in iambic heptameter.
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. Read against iambic heptameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| A newer garden of creation, no primal solitude, | 15 | ·/˘/˘·˘/˘·/˘/˘· |
| Dense, joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms, | 14 | ·/˘/˘/˘˘/˘/˘·· |
| With iron interlaced, composite, tied, many in one, | 14 | ·/˘·˘/˘/˘·/˘·· |
| By all the world contributed--freedom’s and law’s and thrift’s society, | 18 | ····˘/˘˘/˘····˘/˘˘ |
| The crown and teeming paradise, so far, of time’s accumulations, | 17 | ···/˘/˘·····˘·˘/˘ |
| To justify the past. | 6 | ·/˘··· |
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.