Sparkles From The Wheel

275 Words2 Pages
In “Sparkles From The Wheel” Walt Whitman includes three stanzas to switch scenes, and within them he wishes to entertain his audience be describing the fascination his surroundings give him. In the first stanza, Whitman is so awestruck that he drops everything just to watch the cities crowd moving along. He inserts a comma before the words “I pause”, creating an actual pause in the readers mind. This reveals how intrigued he is by his sights. Whitman elaborately describes the scene in the second stanza. The way that he notices the smallest details elucidates his amazement at the scene. He vibrantly depicts “a knife grinder [working] at his wheel sharpening a great knife,” as he “carefully holds the stone, by foot and knee, with measur’d thread he turns rapidly”. He also presents the paradox a “light but firm hand” to all the more emphasize his close attention. Stanza three was about the affect the scene had, drawing Whitman in. He describes how it “absorbed and arrested” him which proves how it takes him away from what he is doing just to watch and learn. He calls the sparks from the wheel “sparkles” to connote the divine feeling it gives him. He repeats sparkles from the wheel because they are the result of the knife-grinders ability to mesmerize his audience with his hard work. Thus, while setting the scene in the first stanza, describing the scene in the second stanza, and conveying the affect the scene had on him in stanza three, Whitman made it clear that he was fascinated by the life that the knife-grinder gave to the city’s
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