The poem is written in free verse. It does not observe any regular meter and makes no use of rhyme. Stylistically, the poem is made up of Whitman’s characteristic long lines, although the lines vary in length and rhythm. All but one of the 12 lines (Line 1) cannot be fitted typographically on the printed page as one line, so they extend to two or three printed lines, but only one line of poetry is intended. This follows the poem’s appearance in Whitman’s original manuscript: Where the poetic line continues into a second and third line of the manuscript, each continuing line has an indentation at the beginning. When a new line of poetry begins, there is no indentation.

The word “Hours” is repeated at the beginning of Lines 1 to 5 and again in Line 7. (The word also appears in Line 6, but the order is altered, with the description of the hours coming before the word itself.) Repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of a line is known as anaphora or epanaphora. In this case, the many repetitions of the word “hours” create continuity and a feeling of increasing intensity.