Bones
Sling me under the sea.Pack me down in the salt and wet.No farmer's plow shall touch my bones.No Hamlet hold my jaws and speakHow jokes are gone and empty is my mouth.Long, green-eyed scavengers shall pick my eyes,Purple fish play hide-and-seek,And I shall be song of thunder, crash of sea,Down on the floors of salt and wet.Sling me . . . under the sea.
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Bones 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, Bones, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/bones.html, id L28960.
Form and metre
Bones is 10 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%).
See other poems in iambic 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 AB-C--CABA seaA · wetB · bones · speakC · mouth · eyes · seekC · seaA · wetB · seaA
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 iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Sling me under the sea. | 6 | ······ |
| Pack me down in the salt and wet. | 8 | ········ |
| No farmer's plow shall touch my bones. | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| No Hamlet hold my jaws and speak | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| How jokes are gone and empty is my mouth. | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Long, green-eyed scavengers shall pick my eyes, | 10 | ···/˘˘···· |
| Purple fish play hide-and-seek, | 7 | /˘····· |
| And I shall be song of thunder, crash of sea, | 11 | ······/˘··· |
| Down on the floors of salt and wet. | 8 | ········ |
| Sling me . . . under the sea. | 6 | ······ |
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.