Clark Street Bridge
Dust of the feetAnd dust of the wheels,Wagons and people going,All day feet and wheels.
Now. . .. . Only stars and mistA lonely policeman,Two cabaret dancers,Stars and mist again,No more feet or wheels,No more dust and wagons.
Voices of dollarsAnd drops of blood
. . . . .
Voices of broken hearts,. . Voices singing, singing,
. . Silver voices, singing,Softer than the stars,Softer than the mist.
Words in this poem
- cabaret n.
- A tavern; a house where liquors are retailed. [Obs. as an English word.] [F.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Clark Street Bridge 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, Clark Street Bridge, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/clark-street-bridge.html, id L28858.
Form and metre
Clark Street Bridge is 19 lines in 6 stanzas. The metre is trochaic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
See other poems in trochaic trimeter.
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 feet · wheelsA · going · wheelsA
- 2 --A-A-- now · mist · policemanA · dancers · againA · wheels · wagons
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Dust of the feet | 4 | ···· |
| And dust of the wheels, | 5 | ····· |
| Wagons and people going, | 6 | /˘·/˘/ |
| All day feet and wheels. | 5 | ····· |
| Now. . . | 1 | · |
| . . Only stars and mist | 5 | /˘··· |
| A lonely policeman, | 6 | ·/˘˘/˘ |
| Two cabaret dancers, | 6 | ··˘//˘ |
| Stars and mist again, | 5 | ···˘/ |
| No more feet or wheels, | 5 | ····· |
| No more dust and wagons. | 6 | ····/˘ |
| Voices of dollars | 5 | /˘·/˘ |
| And drops of blood | 4 | ···· |
| . . . . . | 0 | |
| Voices of broken hearts, | 6 | /˘·/˘· |
| . . Voices singing, singing, | 6 | /˘/˘/˘ |
| . . Silver voices, singing, | 6 | /˘/˘/˘ |
| Softer than the stars, | 5 | /˘··· |
| Softer than the mist. | 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.