1.) Speaker is a boy. He is on a seashore, watching two birds quietly out of curiosity and translating in his mind what their chirps and whistles mean. The bird is also a speaker. The boy is reflecting, reminiscing, and telling it to his brother. The boy’s soul is another speaker.
2.) Poem is structured more like prose. No rhyme pattern, merely broken up and divided by ideas. Many commas and periods mark end of completely thought much like prose. Divided too by speaker.
3.) Grammar: Clew is used in place of Clue.
4.) Theme: “The messenger there arous’d, the fire, the sweet hell within, the unknown want, the destiny of me.” All the knowledge the speaker gained was through listening to some part of nature, wether it be a bird, grass, or the sea. Perhaps, this lends itself to the theme.
5.) Imagery and Figures of Speech: “From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears.
6.) Single words: Death is a single word that is greatly repeated
7.) Tone: Reflective.
8.) Literary Techniques: Personification is used in giving the bird speech and imagining what the bird is saying in his songs and calls. It is also used to give a lot of imagery, for example, “The yellow half-moon enlarged, sagging down, drooping, the face of the sea almost touching.”
Anaphora is also used; Whitman constantly repeats “O” in the beginning of many lines in stanzas repeating it throughout the stanza.
9.) Procity:
