We Enter in
Now you see, brothers, here in the West, here's how it is—We stand and fall, we hesitate—It is all new to us,To kill, to take a fellow's life.Uh!—a nauseous fever takes the light away.
Now we stand up and enter in.The baseness of the deed we too embrace.We go in dumbly—into that dark place.The germ of death we take into our veins.
Do we not know that we ourselves have failed?Our valleys wide, our long green fieldsWe have bestrewn with our own dead.In shop and mart we have befouled our souls.Our corn is withered and our faces blackWith smoke of hate.
We make the gesture and we go to die.Had we been true to our own land our sweetness then had quite remade the world.We now are true to failure grim—We go in prayer to die.
To our own souls we take the killer's sin.Into the waters black our souls we fling.We take the chances of the broader dream.Not ours but all the worlds—our fields.We enter in.
Words in this poem
- dumbly adv.
- In silence; mutely.
- mart v. t.
- To buy or sell in, or as in, a mart.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
We Enter in 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, We Enter in, in Mid-American Chants (1918), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/anderson-mid-american-chants/we-enter-in.html, id L29493.
Form and metre
We Enter in is 24 lines in 5 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%).
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.
- 2 -AA- in · embraceA · placeA · veins
- 4 A--A dieA · world · grim · dieA
- 5 A---A sinA · fling · dream · fields · inA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Now you see, brothers, here in the West, here's how it is— | 13 | ···/˘········ |
| We stand and fall, we hesitate— | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| It is all new to us, | 6 | ······ |
| To kill, to take a fellow's life. | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Uh!—a nauseous fever takes the light away. | 11 | ··/˘/˘···˘/ |
| Now we stand up and enter in. | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The baseness of the deed we too embrace. | 10 | ·/˘·····˘/ |
| We go in dumbly—into that dark place. | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| The germ of death we take into our veins. | 11 | ········/˘· |
| Do we not know that we ourselves have failed? | 11 | ······˘˘/·· |
| Our valleys wide, our long green fields | 10 | /˘/˘·/˘··· |
| We have bestrewn with our own dead. | 9 | ·····/˘·· |
| In shop and mart we have befouled our souls. | 11 | ········/˘· |
| Our corn is withered and our faces black | 12 | /˘··/˘·/˘/˘· |
| With smoke of hate. | 4 | ···· |
| We make the gesture and we go to die. | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Had we been true to our own land our sweetness then had quite remade the world. | 20 | ·····/˘··/˘/˘···˘/·· |
| We now are true to failure grim— | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| We go in prayer to die. | 6 | ······ |
| To our own souls we take the killer's sin. | 11 | ·/˘·····/˘· |
| Into the waters black our souls we fling. | 11 | ···/˘·/˘··· |
| We take the chances of the broader dream. | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Not ours but all the worlds—our fields. | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| We enter in. | 4 | ·/˘· |
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.