The Ship Starting
Lo, the unbounded sea,On its breast a ship starting, spreading all sails, carrying evenher moonsails.The pennant is flying aloft as she speeds she speeds so stately--below emulous waves press forward,They surround the ship with shining curving motions and foam.
About this text
The Ship Starting 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 Ship Starting, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/the-ship-starting.html, id L03839.
Form and metre
The Ship Starting is 6 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. The lines average 10.7 syllables. 3 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Lo, the unbounded sea, | 6 | ··˘/˘· |
| On its breast a ship starting, spreading all sails, carrying even | 16 | ·····/˘/˘··/˘˘/˘ |
| her moonsails. | 3 | ··· |
| The pennant is flying aloft as she speeds she speeds so stately-- | 16 | ·/˘·/˘˘/······/˘ |
| below emulous waves press forward, | 9 | ··/˘˘··/˘ |
| They surround the ship with shining curving motions and foam. | 14 | ·˘/···/˘/˘/˘·· |
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.