William Blake and Walt Whitman: April 2007

William Blake's "Holy Thursday"
an analysis of the poem in Songs of Experience with some reference to Songs of Innocence

Deconstructing Walt Whitman's "Patrolling Barnegat"
helping to make sense of a poem which, despite what some analysts suggest, isn't a chaotic imagery-muddle

Logic and Language in "Patrolling Barnegat"
why does Whitman use these words and structures; what do they mean?

Metre in "Patrolling Barnegat"
the Pentameter's thesis is that this poem is not in "free verse".

On this Page

William Blake: Holy Thursday

Is this a holy thing to see

In a rich and fruitful land,

Babes reduc'd to misery,

Fed with cold and usurous hand?

Is that trembling cry a song?

Can it be a song of joy?

And so many people poor?

It is a land of poverty!

And their sun does never shine,

And their fields are bleak & bare,

And their ways are fill'd with thorns:

It is eternal winter there.

For where-e'er the sun does shine,

And where-e'er the rain does fall,

Babe can never hunger there,

Nor poverty the mind appall.

Walt Whitman: Patrolling Barnegat

Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running,

Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering,

Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing,

Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing,

Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering,

On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting,

Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting,

Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing,

(That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?)

Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending,

Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting,

Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering,

A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting,

That savage trinity warily watching.

William Blake and Walt Whitman