A Teamster's Farewell (Sobs En Route to a Penitentiary)
Good-by now to the streets and the clash of wheels and locking hubs,The sun coming on the brass buckles and harness knobs,The muscles of the horses sliding under their heavy haunches,Good-by now to the traffic policeman and his whistle,The smash of the iron hoof on the stones,All the crazy wonderful slamming roar of the street—O God, there's noises I'm going to be hungry for.
Words in this poem
- smash v. t.
- To break in pieces by violence; to dash to pieces; to crush. [Cf. Sw. smisk a blow, stroke, smiska to strike, dial. Sw. smaske to kiss with a noise, and E. smack a loud kiss, a slap.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Teamster's Farewell (Sobs En Route to a Penitentiary) 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 Teamster's Farewell (Sobs En Route to a Penitentiary), in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/a-teamsters-farewell.html, id L28863.
Form and metre
A Teamster's Farewell (Sobs En Route to a Penitentiary) is 7 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Good-by now to the streets and the clash of wheels and locking hubs, | 15 | ············/˘· |
| The sun coming on the brass buckles and harness knobs, | 13 | ··/˘···/˘·/˘· |
| The muscles of the horses sliding under their heavy haunches, | 16 | ·/˘··/˘/˘···/˘·· |
| Good-by now to the traffic policeman and his whistle, | 14 | ·····/˘˘/˘··/˘ |
| The smash of the iron hoof on the stones, | 10 | ····/˘···· |
| All the crazy wonderful slamming roar of the street— | 13 | ··/˘/˘˘/˘···· |
| O God, there's noises I'm going to be hungry for. | 13 | ···/˘·/˘··/˘· |
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.