A Dream Girl
You will come one day in a waver of love,Tender as dew, impetuous as rain,The tan of the sun will be on your skin,The purr of the breeze in your murmuring speech,You will pose with a hill-flower grace.
You will come, with your slim, expressive arms,A poise of the head no sculptor has caughtAnd nuances spoken with shoulder and neck,Your face in a pass-and-repass of moodsAs many as skies in delicate changeOf cloud and blue and flimmering sun.
Yet,You may not come, O girl of a dream,We may but pass as the world goes byAnd take from a look of eyes into eyes,A film of hope and a memoried day.
Words in this poem
- waver v. i.
- To play or move to and fro; to move one way and the other; hence, to totter; to reel; to swing; to flutter. [OE. waveren, from AS. wæfre wavering, restless. See Wave, v. i.]
- purr v. i.
- To murmur as a cat. See Pur.
- sculptor n.
- One who sculptures; one whose occupation is to carve statues, or works of sculpture. [L. sculptor, fr. sculpere, sculptum, to carve; cf. scalpere to cut, carve, scratch, and Gr. sculpteur.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Dream Girl 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 Dream Girl, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/a-dream-girl.html, id L28979.
Form and metre
A Dream Girl is 16 lines in 3 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 |
|---|---|---|
| You will come one day in a waver of love, | 11 | ·······/˘·· |
| Tender as dew, impetuous as rain, | 9 | /˘··˘/˘·· |
| The tan of the sun will be on your skin, | 10 | ·········· |
| The purr of the breeze in your murmuring speech, | 11 | ·······/˘˘· |
| You will pose with a hill-flower grace. | 9 | ······/˘· |
| You will come, with your slim, expressive arms, | 10 | ······˘/˘· |
| A poise of the head no sculptor has caught | 10 | ······/˘·· |
| And nuances spoken with shoulder and neck, | 11 | ·/˘˘/˘·/˘·· |
| Your face in a pass-and-repass of moods | 10 | ······˘/·· |
| As many as skies in delicate change | 10 | ·/˘···/˘˘· |
| Of cloud and blue and flimmering sun. | 9 | ········· |
| Yet, | 1 | · |
| You may not come, O girl of a dream, | 9 | ········· |
| We may but pass as the world goes by | 9 | ········· |
| And take from a look of eyes into eyes, | 10 | ·········· |
| A film of hope and a memoried day. | 9 | ········· |
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.