A Coin
Your western heads here cast on money,You are the two that fade away together,Partners in the mist.
Lunging buffalo shoulder,Lean Indian face,We who come after where you are goneSalute your forms on the new nickel.
You areTo us:The past.
RunnersOn the prairie:Good-by.
About this text
A Coin is in the public domain. This text is taken from Chicago Poems, Wikisource; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Carl Sandburg, A Coin, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/a-coin.html, id L28887.
Form and metre
A Coin is 13 lines in 4 stanzas.
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.
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Your western heads here cast on money, | 9 | ·/˘····/˘ |
| You are the two that fade away together, | 11 | ······˘/˘/˘ |
| Partners in the mist. | 5 | /˘··· |
| Lunging buffalo shoulder, | 7 | /˘/˘·/˘ |
| Lean Indian face, | 5 | ·/˘˘· |
| We who come after where you are gone | 9 | ········· |
| Salute your forms on the new nickel. | 9 | ˘/·····/˘ |
| You are | 2 | ·· |
| To us: | 2 | ·· |
| The past. | 2 | ·· |
| Runners | 2 | /˘ |
| On the prairie: | 4 | ··/˘ |
| Good-by. | 2 | ·· |
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.