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Use of varying
line lengths with varying numbers of syllables per line. Critic Gay Wilson
Allen identified the Whitman "envelope": a short beginning line,
long middle lines, and a short ending line.
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Where the
mockingbird sounds his delicious gurgles, and cackles and screams and weeps,
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Where the hay-rick stands in the barnyard,
and the dry-stalks are scattered, and the
brood cow waits in the hovel,
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Where the bull advances to do his masculine
work, and the stud to the mare, and the
cock is treading the hen,
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Where the heifers browse, and the geese
nip their food with short jerks;
Where the sundown shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome
prairie,
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Where the herds of buffalo make a crawling
spread of the square miles far and
near;
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Where the hummingbird shimmers . . . . where
the neck of the longlived swan is
curving and winding
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Where the
laughing-gull scoots by the slappy shore and laughs her near-human
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laugh;
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