A Sphinx
Close-mouthed you sat five thousand years and never let out a whisper.Processions came by, marchers, asking questions you answered with grey eyes never blinking, shut lips never talking.Not one croak of anything you know has come from your cat crouch of ages.I am one of those who know all you know and I keep my questions: I know the answers you hold.
Words in this poem
- croak v. i.
- To make a low, hoarse noise in the throat, as a frog, a raven, or a crow; hence, to make any hoarse, dismal sound. [From the primitive of AS. cracettan to croak as a raven; akin to G. kr to croak, and to E. creak, crake.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Sphinx 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 Sphinx, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/a-sphinx.html, id L28935.
Form and metre
A Sphinx 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Close-mouthed you sat five thousand years and never let out a whisper. | 16 | ·····/˘··/˘···/˘ |
| Processions came by, marchers, asking questions you answered with grey eyes never blinking, shut lips never talking. | 27 | ˘/˘··/˘/˘/˘·/˘···/˘/˘··/˘/˘ |
| Not one croak of anything you know has come from your cat crouch of ages. | 18 | ····/˘··········/˘ |
| I am one of those who know all you know and I keep my questions: I know the answers you hold. | 23 | ··············/˘···/˘·· |
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.