To the East and to the West
To the East and to the West,To the man of the Seaside State and of Pennsylvania,To the Kanadian of the north, to the Southerner I love,These with perfect trust to depict you as myself, the germs are in all men,I believe the main purport of these States is to found a superbfriendship, exalte, previously unknown,Because I perceive it waits, and has been always waiting, latent in all men.
Words in this poem
- seaside n.
- The land bordering on, or adjacent to, the sea; the seashore.
- southerner n.
- An inhabitant or native of the south, esp. of the Southern States of North America; opposed to Northerner.
- purport n.
- Design or tendency; meaning; import; tenor. [OF. purport; pur, pour, for (L. pro) + porter to bear, carry. See Port demeanor.]
- superb a.
- Grand; magnificent; august; stately; as, a superb edifice; a superb colonnade. [F. superbe, L. superbus, fr. super over. See Super-.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
To the East and to the West 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 the East and to the West, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/to-the-east-and-to-the-west.html, id L03888.
Form and metre
To the East and to the West is 7 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 14.1 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 west · pennsylvania · love · menA · superb · unknown · menA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| To the East and to the West, | 7 | ······· |
| To the man of the Seaside State and of Pennsylvania, | 14 | ·····/·····˘/˘ |
| To the Kanadian of the north, to the Southerner I love, | 15 | ··········/˘˘·· |
| These with perfect trust to depict you as myself, the germs are in all men, | 18 | ··˘/··˘/···/······ |
| I believe the main purport of these States is to found a superb | 16 | ·˘/··/········˘/ |
| friendship, exalte, previously unknown, | 10 | /˘··/˘˘˘˘/ |
| Because I perceive it waits, and has been always waiting, latent in all men. | 19 | ···˘/·····/·/˘/˘··· |
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.