Dreams in the Dusk
Dreams in the dusk,Only dreams closing the dayAnd with the day’s close going backTo the gray things, the dark things,The far, deep things of dreamland.
Dreams, only dreams in the dusk,Only the old remembered picturesOf lost days when the day’s lossWrote in tears the heart’s loss.
Tears and loss and broken dreamsMay find your heart at dusk.
Words in this poem
- dreamland n.
- An unreal, delightful country such as in sometimes pictured in dreams; region of fancies; fairyland.
- wrote v. i.
- To root with the snout. See 1st Root. [OE. wroten. See 1st Root.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Dreams in the Dusk 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, Dreams in the Dusk, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/dreams-in-the-dusk.html, id L28973.
Form and metre
Dreams in the Dusk is 11 lines in 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
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.
- 2 --AA dusk · pictures · lossA · lossA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Dreams in the dusk, | 4 | ···· |
| Only dreams closing the day | 7 | /˘·/˘·· |
| And with the day’s close going back | 7 | ·····/· |
| To the gray things, the dark things, | 7 | ······· |
| The far, deep things of dreamland. | 7 | ·····/· |
| Dreams, only dreams in the dusk, | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| Only the old remembered pictures | 9 | /˘··˘/˘/˘ |
| Of lost days when the day’s loss | 7 | ······· |
| Wrote in tears the heart’s loss. | 6 | ······ |
| Tears and loss and broken dreams | 7 | ····/˘· |
| May find your heart at dusk. | 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.