The World below the Brine
The world below the brine,Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves,Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thicktangle openings, and pink turf,Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold, theplay of light through the water,Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass, rushes,and the aliment of the swimmers,Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly crawlingclose to the bottom,The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or disportingwith his flukes,The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairysea-leopard, and the sting-ray,Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes, sight in those ocean-depths,breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do,The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathedby beings like us who walk this sphere,The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres.
Words in this poem
- tangle v. t.
- To unite or knit together confusedly; to interweave or interlock, as threads, so as to make it difficult to unravel the knot; to entangle; to ravel. [A frequentative fr. tang seaweed; hence, to twist like seaweed. See Tang seaweed, and cf. Tangle, n.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The World below the Brine 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 World below the Brine, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/the-world-below-the-brine.html, id L25579.
Form and metre
The World below the Brine is 19 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-------- brine · leaves · thick · turf · the · water · rushes · swimmers · crawlingA · bottom · disportingA · flukes · hairy · ray · depths · do · breathed · sphere · spheres
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The world below the brine, | 6 | ······ |
| Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves, | 14 | /˘··/˘····/˘·· |
| Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick | 13 | ·/˘·/˘·/˘···· |
| tangle openings, and pink turf, | 8 | /˘/˘˘··· |
| Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold, the | 15 | /˘˘/˘····/˘···· |
| play of light through the water, | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass, rushes, | 15 | ·/˘·····/˘/˘·/˘ |
| and the aliment of the swimmers, | 9 | ··/˘˘··/˘ |
| Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly crawling | 17 | /˘˘/˘˘/˘·˘/˘·/˘/˘ |
| close to the bottom, | 5 | ···/˘ |
| The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or disporting | 16 | ·····/˘/˘······· |
| with his flukes, | 3 | ··· |
| The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy | 14 | ·/˘···/˘·/˘·/˘ |
| sea-leopard, and the sting-ray, | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes, sight in those ocean-depths, | 13 | /˘··˘/····/˘· |
| breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do, | 12 | /˘··/˘···/˘· |
| The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed | 14 | ··········/˘·· |
| by beings like us who walk this sphere, | 9 | ·/˘······ |
| The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres. | 17 | ··/˘·/˘···/˘··/˘· |
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.