At a Window
Give me hunger,O you gods that sit and giveThe world its orders.Give me hunger, pain and want,Shut me out with shame and failureFrom your doors of gold and fame,Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!
But leave me a little love,A voice to speak to me in the day end,A hand to touch me in the dark roomBreaking the long loneliness.In the dusk of day-shapesBlurring the sunset,One little wandering, western starThrust out from the changing shores of shadow.Let me go to the window,Watch there the day-shapes of duskAnd wait and know the comingOf a little love.
Words in this poem
- loneliness n.
- The condition of being lonely; solitude; seclusion.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
At a Window 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, At a Window, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/at-a-window.html, id L28938.
Form and metre
At a Window is 19 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 81%).
See other poems in trochaic tetrameter.
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 A-----A hungerA · give · orders · want · failure · fame · hungerA
- 2 A----------A loveA · end · room · loneliness · shapes · sunset · star · shadow · window · dusk · coming · loveA
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Give me hunger, | 4 | ··/˘ |
| O you gods that sit and give | 7 | ······· |
| The world its orders. | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Give me hunger, pain and want, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Shut me out with shame and failure | 8 | ······/˘ |
| From your doors of gold and fame, | 7 | ······· |
| Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger! | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| But leave me a little love, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| A voice to speak to me in the day end, | 10 | ·········· |
| A hand to touch me in the dark room | 9 | ········· |
| Breaking the long loneliness. | 7 | /˘··/˘˘ |
| In the dusk of day-shapes | 6 | ······ |
| Blurring the sunset, | 5 | /˘·/· |
| One little wandering, western star | 9 | ·/˘/˘˘/˘· |
| Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow. | 10 | ····/˘··/· |
| Let me go to the window, | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| Watch there the day-shapes of dusk | 7 | ······· |
| And wait and know the coming | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| Of a little love. | 5 | ··/˘· |
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.