To a Western Boy
Many things to absorb I teach to help you become eleve of mine;Yet if blood like mine circle not in your veins,If you be not silently selected by lovers and do not silently select lovers,Of what use is it that you seek to become eleve of mine?
About this text
To a Western Boy 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, To a Western Boy, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/to-a-western-boy.html, id L03889.
Form and metre
To a Western Boy is 4 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 16.5 syllables. 1 line ends 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 mineA · veins · lovers · mineA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Many things to absorb I teach to help you become eleve of mine; | 17 | /˘··˘/·····˘/···· |
| Yet if blood like mine circle not in your veins, | 11 | ·····/˘···· |
| If you be not silently selected by lovers and do not silently select lovers, | 23 | ····/˘˘˘/˘·/˘···/˘˘˘//˘ |
| Of what use is it that you seek to become eleve of mine? | 15 | ·········˘/···· |
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.