There is a voice inside of you That whispers all day long, "I feel that this is right for me, I know that this is wrong." No teacher, preacher, parent, friend Or wise man can decide What's right for you -- just listen to The voice that speaks inside. Shel Silverstein

4 line stanzas beat Rhyme scheme Ballads tell a story in the poem

A ballad stanza in a poem Has lines as long as these. In measuring the lines, we find We get both fours and threes.

God prosper long our noble king, Our liffes and saftyes all! A woefull hunting once there did In Chevy Chase befall..

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrows followed free; We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea.

The brain is deeper than the sea, For, hold them, blue to blue, The one the other will absorb As sponges, buckets do.

She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A Maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love.

O where hae you been, Lord Randal, my son? And where hae you been, my handsome young man? Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I’m found, Was blind, but now I see.

Wrote 1775 poems! Only 7 published before her death After a normal childhood, she slowly become more isolated from the world. Amherst, Massachusetts

Because I Could Not Stop For Death Much Madness I Heard A Fly Buzz – When I Died Hope Is A Thing With Feathers

"Hope" is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings the tune without the words And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I've heard it in the chillest land And on the strangest sea, Yet never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me. By: Emily Dickinson

New York Formal schooling ended at age 11 Editor of newspapers Traveled all over the United States

Collection of Whitman’s poetry “Song of Myself” Made up of 52 parts (a year) speaker for American people Introduced free verse Employs chant and ordinary speech Themes include Sacredness of self Death as part of cycle of life Equality of all beings

Free Verse P. 442: Song of Myself Cadence Run of words that rise and fall to make emphasis of thought Catalogs - long lists of related things, people, or events. P. 448: I Hear America Singing No Rhymes

One difference is the way they structured their poems. Basically, the structures of Whitman’s poems are the lack of any structure. Whitman’s poems tend to run on and on; there was no set length for his poems, stanzas, or even lines. Dickinson, on the other hand, wrote poems with a definite structure. She wrote ballad stanzas, which were four line stanzas alternating in iambic tetrameter and tri-meter.

As with structure, Whitman’s poetry has no rhyme. In this way Whitman also breaks from tradition. Whitman’s poems make use of free verse. This is poetry that is written without concern for regular rhyme schemes and meter. Dickinson’s poems, unlike Whitman’s, make use of slant rhyme. This is the use of near or approximate rhymes, and is a relatively modern idea.

One of the poetic “tools” which Whitman uses is cataloguing, or enumeration. Catalogs are long lists of related things, people, or events. One of Dickinson’s modern “tools” is her use of startling imagery. Typical of her writing are the use of dashes that break the lines, and serve to keep them open. Most of her poems are short, but they take you on an infinite trip; they look simple enough, but what you see is not what you get.

They are alike in the fact that they are not necessarily transcendentalists, but often express transcendentalist views in their poems Even though both lived during the time of realism they interpret nature through their poetry and use poetry as a vehicle to participate in nature’s beauty and transcendentalism. They both find inspiration from nature and find an expression or reflection of the soul in nature.