Child
The young child, Christ, is straight and wiseAnd asks questions of the old men, questionsFound under running water for all childrenAnd found under shadows thrown on still watersBy tall trees looking downward, old and gnarled.Found to the eyes of children alone, untold,Singing a low song in the loneliness.And the young child, Christ, goes on askingAnd the old men answer nothing and only know loveFor the young child. Christ, straight and wise.
Words in this poem
- gnarled a.
- Knotty; full of knots or gnarls; twisted; crossgrained.
- untold a.
- Not told; not related; not revealed; as, untold secrets.
- loneliness n.
- The condition of being lonely; solitude; seclusion.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Child 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, Child, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/child.html, id L28962.
Form and metre
Child is 10 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 74%).
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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-----A wiseA · questions · children · watersA · gnarled · untold · loneliness · asking · love · wiseA
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The young child, Christ, is straight and wise | 8 | ········ |
| And asks questions of the old men, questions | 10 | ··/˘····/˘ |
| Found under running water for all children | 11 | ···/˘/˘··/˘ |
| And found under shadows thrown on still waters | 11 | ····/····/˘ |
| By tall trees looking downward, old and gnarled. | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Found to the eyes of children alone, untold, | 11 | ·····/˘˘/˘/ |
| Singing a low song in the loneliness. | 10 | /˘·····/˘˘ |
| And the young child, Christ, goes on asking | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| And the old men answer nothing and only know love | 13 | ····/˘/˘·/˘·· |
| For the young child. Christ, straight and wise. | 8 | ········ |
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.