There are many similarities in Walt Whitman's `Patrolling Barnegat' and John Clare's `Sonnet'. Many similarities are obvious but some are harder to find. We will compare meaning, structure, language and poetic devices in these two poems.

There are a lot of similarities in the attitude and meaning in both poems. One similarity is that both poems are about nature and the weather as in the evidence in `Patrolling Barnegat', `Wild wild the storm' and in `Sonnet', `To summer winds'. In `Patrolling Barnegat', Whitman describes dangerous threatening weather, while Clare describes a happy, gentle summers day. The evidence in `Patrolling Barnegat' is `savage trinity savagely lashing' and in `Sonnet', the evidence is `summer beaming forth'. The two poems are very different in mood.

Both poems are very descriptive using rhymes, similes, metaphors and alliteration. There is a descriptive line in `Patrolling Barnegat', it is `There are milk white combs'...