Buttons
I have been watching the war map slammed up for advertising in front of the newspaper office.Buttons—red and yellow buttons — blue and black buttons — are shoved back and forth across the map.
A laughing young man, sunny with freckles,Climbs a ladder, yells a joke to somebody in the crowd,And then fixes a yellow button one inch westAnd follows the yellow button with a black button one inch west.
(Ten thousand men and boys twist on their bodies in a red soak along a river edge,Gasping of wounds, calling for water, some rattling death in their throats.)Who would guess what it cost to move two buttons one inch on the war map here in front of the newspaper office where the freckle-faced young man is laughing to us?
Words in this poem
- sunny a.
- Of or pertaining to the sun; proceeding from, or resembling the sun; hence, shining; bright; brilliant; radiant.
- somebody n.
- A person unknown or uncertain; a person indeterminate; some person.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Buttons 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, Buttons, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/buttons.html, id L28922.
Form and metre
Buttons is 9 lines in 3 stanzas.
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 --AA freckles · crowd · westA · westA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I have been watching the war map slammed up for advertising in front of the newspaper office. | 24 | ···/˘······/˘·˘····/·˘/˘ |
| Buttons—red and yellow buttons — blue and black buttons — are shoved back and forth across the map. | 22 | /˘··/˘/˘···/˘·····˘/·· |
| A laughing young man, sunny with freckles, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘·/˘ |
| Climbs a ladder, yells a joke to somebody in the crowd, | 14 | ··/˘····/·˘··· |
| And then fixes a yellow button one inch west | 12 | ··/˘·/˘/˘··· |
| And follows the yellow button with a black button one inch west. | 16 | ·/˘·/˘/˘···/˘··· |
| (Ten thousand men and boys twist on their bodies in a red soak along a river edge, | 21 | ·/˘······/˘····˘/·/˘· |
| Gasping of wounds, calling for water, some rattling death in their throats.) | 16 | /˘··/˘·/˘·/˘···· |
| Who would guess what it cost to move two buttons one inch on the war map here in front of the newspaper office where the freckle-faced young man is laughing to us? | 39 | ·········/˘···········/·˘/˘··/˘····/˘·· |
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.