What Place Is Besieged?
What place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege?Lo, I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal,And with him horse and foot, and parks of artillery,And artillery-men, the deadliest that ever fired gun.
Words in this poem
- artillery n.
- Munitions of war; implements for warfare, as slings, bows, and arrows. [OE. artilrie, OF. artillerie, arteillerie, fr. LL. artillaria, artilleria, machines and apparatus of all kinds used in war, vans laden with arms of any kind whi]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
What Place Is Besieged? 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, What Place Is Besieged?, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/what-place-is-besieged.html, id L03841.
Form and metre
What Place Is Besieged? is 4 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 14.2 syllables. 2 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 |
|---|---|---|
| What place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege? | 13 | ···˘/·/˘····· |
| Lo, I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal, | 15 | ·······˘/˘··˘/˘ |
| And with him horse and foot, and parks of artillery, | 13 | ·········˘/˘˘ |
| And artillery-men, the deadliest that ever fired gun. | 16 | ·˘/˘˘··/˘˘·/˘/˘· |
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.