Among the Red Guns (After waking at dawn one morning when the wind sang low among dry leaves in an elm)
Among the red guns,In the hearts of soldiersRunning free bloodIn the long, long campaign:Dreams go on.
Among the leather saddles,In the heads of soldiersHeavy in the wracks and killsOf all straight fighting:Dreams go on.
Among the hot muzzles,In the hands of soldiersBrought from flesh-folds of women—Soft amid the blood and crying—In all your hearts and headsAmong the guns and saddles and muzzles:
Dreams,Dreams go on,Out of the dead on their backs,Broken and no use any more:Dreams of the way and the end go on.
Words in this poem
- campaign n.
- An open field; a large, open plain without considerable hills. [F. campagne, It. campagna, fr. L. Campania the level country about Naples, fr. campus field. See Camp, and cf. Champaign, Champagne.]
- amid prep.
- In the midst or middle of; surrounded or encompassed by; among. [OE. amidde, amiddes, on midden, AS. on middan, in the middle, fr. midde the middle. The s is an adverbial ending, originally marking the genitive; the t is a la]
- backs n.
- Among leather dealers, the thickest and stoutest tanned hides.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Among the Red Guns (After waking at dawn one morning when the wind sang low among dry leaves in an elm) 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, Among the Red Guns (After waking at dawn one morning when the wind sang low among dry leaves in an elm), in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/among-the-red-guns.html, id L28917.
Form and metre
Among the Red Guns (After waking at dawn one morning when the wind sang low among dry leaves in an elm) is 21 lines in 4 stanzas. The metre is trochaic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 81%).
See other poems in trochaic trimeter.
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.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 2 A-A-- saddlesA · soldiers · killsA · fighting · on
- 3 A----A muzzlesA · soldiers · women · crying · heads · muzzlesA
- 4 -A--A dreams · onA · backs · more · onA
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. Read against trochaic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Among the red guns, | 5 | ····· |
| In the hearts of soldiers | 6 | ····/˘ |
| Running free blood | 4 | /˘·· |
| In the long, long campaign: | 6 | ····˘/ |
| Dreams go on. | 3 | ··· |
| Among the leather saddles, | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| In the heads of soldiers | 6 | ····/˘ |
| Heavy in the wracks and kills | 7 | /˘····· |
| Of all straight fighting: | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Dreams go on. | 3 | ··· |
| Among the hot muzzles, | 6 | ····/˘ |
| In the hands of soldiers | 6 | ····/˘ |
| Brought from flesh-folds of women— | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| Soft amid the blood and crying— | 8 | ·˘/···/˘ |
| In all your hearts and heads | 6 | ······ |
| Among the guns and saddles and muzzles: | 10 | ·····/˘·/˘ |
| Dreams, | 1 | · |
| Dreams go on, | 3 | ··· |
| Out of the dead on their backs, | 7 | ······· |
| Broken and no use any more: | 8 | /˘···/˘· |
| Dreams of the way and the end go on. | 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.