Crimson
Crimson is the slow smolder of the cigar end I hold,Gray is the ash that stiffens and covers all silent the fire.(A great man I know is dead and while he lies in his coffin a gone flame I sit here in cumbering shadows and smoke and watch my thoughts come and go.)
Words in this poem
- smolder v. t.
- To smother; to suffocate; to choke. Holinshed.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Crimson 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, Crimson, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/crimson.html, id L28909.
Form and metre
Crimson is 3 lines in a single stanza.
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Crimson is the slow smolder of the cigar end I hold, | 14 | /˘···/˘··˘/··· |
| Gray is the ash that stiffens and covers all silent the fire. | 16 | ·····/˘·/˘·/˘·/˘ |
| (A great man I know is dead and while he lies in his coffin a gone flame I sit here in cumbering shadows and smoke and watch my thoughts come and go.) | 36 | ·············/˘·······/˘˘/·········· |
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.