Song of the Drunken Business Man
Don't try, little one, to keep hold of me,Go home. There's a place for you by the fire.Age is waiting to welcome you there.Go home and sit by the fire.
Into the naked street I ran,Roaring and bellowing like a cow,Shaking the walls of the houses down,Proclaiming my dream of black desire.
If there's a thing in this world that's good it's guts.I'm a blackbird hovering over the land.Go on home! Let me alone.
Do you know, little dove, I admire your lips—They're so red.What are you doing out in the street?Take my arm! Look at me!
Ah, you be gone. I'm sixty-five years old to-night.Now what's the use of beginning again?
Words in this poem
- admire v. t.
- To regard with wonder or astonishment; to view with surprise; to marvel at. [F. admirer, fr. L. admirari; ad + mirari to wonder, for smirari, akin to Gr. smi, and E. smile.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Song of the Drunken Business Man is in the public domain. This text is taken from Mid-American Chants (New York: John Lane Company; London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1918), Internet Archive; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Sherwood Anderson, Song of the Drunken Business Man, in Mid-American Chants (1918), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/anderson-mid-american-chants/song-of-the-drunken-business-man.html, id L29488.
Form and metre
Song of the Drunken Business Man is 17 lines in 5 stanzas. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 -A-A me · fireA · there · fireA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Don't try, little one, to keep hold of me, | 10 | ··/˘······ |
| Go home. There's a place for you by the fire. | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| Age is waiting to welcome you there. | 9 | ··/˘·/˘·· |
| Go home and sit by the fire. | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Into the naked street I ran, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Roaring and bellowing like a cow, | 9 | /˘·/˘˘··· |
| Shaking the walls of the houses down, | 9 | /˘····/˘· |
| Proclaiming my dream of black desire. | 10 | ˘/˘····˘/˘ |
| If there's a thing in this world that's good it's guts. | 11 | ··········· |
| I'm a blackbird hovering over the land. | 11 | ··/˘/˘˘···· |
| Go on home! Let me alone. | 7 | ·····˘/ |
| Do you know, little dove, I admire your lips— | 11 | ···/˘··˘/·· |
| They're so red. | 3 | ··· |
| What are you doing out in the street? | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| Take my arm! Look at me! | 6 | ······ |
| Ah, you be gone. I'm sixty-five years old to-night. | 12 | ·····/˘····· |
| Now what's the use of beginning again? | 10 | ·····˘/˘˘/ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.