The Unexpress’d
How dare one say it?After the cycles, poems, singers, plays,Vaunted Ionia’s, India’s--Homer, Shakspere--the long, long times’thick dotted roads, areas,The shining clusters and the Milky Ways of stars--Nature’s pulses reap’d,All retrospective passions, heroes, war, love, adoration,All ages’ plummets dropt to their utmost depths,All human lives, throats, wishes, brains--all experiences’ utterance;After the countless songs, or long or short, all tongues, all lands,Still something not yet told in poesy’s voice or print--something lacking,(Who knows? the best yet unexpress’d and lacking.)
Words in this poem
- countless a.
- Incapable of being counted; not ascertainable; innumerable.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Unexpress’d 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 Unexpress’d, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/the-unexpress-d.html, id L04144.
Form and metre
The Unexpress’d is 11 lines in a single stanza. 80% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 12.6 syllables. 5 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.
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-----BB it · playsA · times · areasA · reap'd · adoration · depths · utterance · lands · lackingB · lackingB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| How dare one say it? | 5 | ····· |
| After the cycles, poems, singers, plays, | 10 | ···/˘/˘/˘· |
| Vaunted Ionia’s, India’s--Homer, Shakspere--the long, long times’ | 15 | /˘··/˘˘/˘······ |
| thick dotted roads, areas, | 7 | ·/˘·/˘˘ |
| The shining clusters and the Milky Ways of stars--Nature’s pulses reap’d, | 17 | ·/˘/˘··/˘···/˘/˘· |
| All retrospective passions, heroes, war, love, adoration, | 15 | ··˘/˘/˘/˘···˘/˘ |
| All ages’ plummets dropt to their utmost depths, | 11 | ·/˘/˘···/·· |
| All human lives, throats, wishes, brains--all experiences’ utterance; | 17 | ·/˘··/˘··˘/˘˘˘/˘˘ |
| After the countless songs, or long or short, all tongues, all lands, | 14 | ···/˘········· |
| Still something not yet told in poesy’s voice or print--something lacking, | 16 | ·/˘·········/˘/˘ |
| (Who knows? the best yet unexpress’d and lacking.) | 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.