Lyric Poem · Nature
On the Beach at Night, Alone
by Walt Whitman
1ON the beach at night alone,
2As the old mother sways her to and fro, singing her husky song,
3As I watch the bright stars shining—I think a thought of the clef of the universes, and of
4 the future.
5A VAST SIMILITUDE interlocks all,
6All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, comets, asteroids,
7All the substances of the same, and all that is spiritual upon the same,
8All distances of place, however wide,
9All distances of time—all inanimate forms,
10All Souls—all living bodies, though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,
11All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes—the fishes, the brutes,
12All men and women—me also;
13All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages;
14All identities that have existed, or may exist, on this globe, or any globe;
15All lives and deaths—all of the past, present, future;
16This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d, and shall forever span them, and
17 compactly hold them, and enclose them.
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“On the Beach at Night, Alone” by Walt Whitman — quilloak.com/poems/on-the-beach-at-night-alone
Quick facts
- Poem
- On the Beach at Night, Alone
- Poet
- Walt Whitman
- Length
- 17 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- Nature, Peace
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 17 lines · 2 stanzas of 4–13 lines
- End rhyme
- No regular perfect end rhyme. The poem may still be using slant rhyme, assonance, or internal echo, which this check does not score.
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Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- Walt Whitman1819–1892
- Source record
- PoetryDBOn the Beach at Night, Alone by walt-whitman, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 648d98e2d952f2d4…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.