A Fence
Now the stone house on the lake front is finished and the workmen are beginning the fence.The palings are made of iron bars with steel points that can stab the life out of any man who falls on them.As a fence, it is a masterpiece, and will shut off the rabble and all vagabonds and hungry men and all wandering children looking for a place to play.Passing through the bars and over the steel points will go nothing except Death and the Rain and To-morrow.
Words in this poem
- masterpiece n.
- Anything done or made with extraordinary skill; a capital performance; a chef-d'oeuvre; a supreme achievement.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Fence 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 Fence, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/a-fence.html, id L28876.
Form and metre
A Fence is 4 lines in a single stanza.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Now the stone house on the lake front is finished and the workmen are beginning the fence. | 21 | ·········/˘··/˘·˘/˘·· |
| The palings are made of iron bars with steel points that can stab the life out of any man who falls on them. | 26 | ······/˘···········/˘····· |
| As a fence, it is a masterpiece, and will shut off the rabble and all vagabonds and hungry men and all wandering children looking for a place to play. | 39 | ······/˘······/˘··/˘˘·/˘···/˘˘/˘/˘····· |
| Passing through the bars and over the steel points will go nothing except Death and the Rain and To-morrow. | 25 | /˘···········/˘········/˘ |
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.