Song to the Lost Ones
Soft thy feet on the floor of the desert,In the night—Running—Desperate and breathless.
Blood on the sands of the desert drying,Drops of blood on the hot sand drying,Blood from the veins of my belovedPouring out on the desert.
Soft in the night the rustle of corn leavesYoung men into the cities pouring,Blood from the veins of young men pouring into the cities.
Words in this poem
- desperate a.
- Without hope; given to despair; hopeless. [L. desperatus, p. p. of desperare. See Despair, and cf. Desperado.]
- breathless a.
- Spent with labor or violent action; out of breath.
- rustle v. i.
- To make a quick succession of small sounds, like the rubbing or moving of silk cloth or dry leaves. [AS. hristlan to rustle; or cf. Sw. rusta to stir, make a riot, or E. rush, v.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Song to the Lost Ones 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 to the Lost Ones, in Mid-American Chants (1918), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/anderson-mid-american-chants/song-to-the-lost-ones.html, id L29470.
Form and metre
Song to the Lost Ones is 11 lines in 3 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 AA-- desertA · nightA · running · breathless
- 2 AA-- dryingA · dryingA · beloved · desert
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Soft thy feet on the floor of the desert, | 10 | ········/˘ |
| In the night— | 3 | ··· |
| Running— | 2 | /˘ |
| Desperate and breathless. | 5 | /˘·/˘ |
| Blood on the sands of the desert drying, | 10 | ······/˘/˘ |
| Drops of blood on the hot sand drying, | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| Blood from the veins of my beloved | 8 | ······˘/ |
| Pouring out on the desert. | 7 | /˘···/˘ |
| Soft in the night the rustle of corn leaves | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Young men into the cities pouring, | 9 | ·····/˘/˘ |
| Blood from the veins of young men pouring into the cities. | 14 | ·······/˘···/˘ |
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.