Anna Imroth
Cross the hands over the breast here—so.Straighten the legs a little more—so.And call for the wagon to come and take her home.Her mother will cry some and so will her sisters and brothers.But all of the others got down and they are safe and this is the only one of the factory girls who wasn't lucky in making the jump when the fire broke.It is the hand of God and the lack of fire escapes.
Words in this poem
- broke v. i.
- To transact business for another. Brome. [See Broker, and cf. Brook.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Anna Imroth 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, Anna Imroth, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/anna-imroth.html, id L28877.
Form and metre
Anna Imroth is 6 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.
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.
- 1 AA---- soA · soA · home · brothers · broke · escapes
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Cross the hands over the breast here—so. | 9 | ········· |
| Straighten the legs a little more—so. | 9 | /˘···/˘·· |
| And call for the wagon to come and take her home. | 12 | ····/˘······ |
| Her mother will cry some and so will her sisters and brothers. | 15 | ·/˘·······/˘·/˘ |
| But all of the others got down and they are safe and this is the only one of the factory girls who wasn't lucky in making the jump when the fire broke. | 40 | ····/˘··········/˘···/˘˘··/˘/˘·/˘····/˘· |
| It is the hand of God and the lack of fire escapes. | 14 | ··········/˘˘/ |
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.