Dunes
What do we see here in the sand dunes of the white moon alone with our thoughts, Bill,Alone with our dreams, Bill, soft as the women tying scarves around their heads dancing,Alone with a picture and a picture coming one after the other of all the dead,The dead more than all these grains of sand one by one piled here in the moon,Piled against the sky-line taking shapes like the hand of the wind wanted,What do we see here, Bill, outside of what the wise men beat their heads on,Outside of what the poets cry for and the soldiers drive on headlong and leave their skulls in the sun for—what, Bill?
Words in this poem
- piled a.
- Having a pile or point; pointed. [From 2d Pile.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Dunes 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, Dunes, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/dunes.html, id L28900.
Form and metre
Dunes is 7 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.
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-B-B-A billA · dancing · deadB · moon · wantedB · on · billA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| What do we see here in the sand dunes of the white moon alone with our thoughts, Bill, | 20 | ·············˘/·/˘·· |
| Alone with our dreams, Bill, soft as the women tying scarves around their heads dancing, | 21 | ˘/·/˘·····/˘/˘·····/˘ |
| Alone with a picture and a picture coming one after the other of all the dead, | 22 | ˘/··/˘··/˘/˘····/˘···· |
| The dead more than all these grains of sand one by one piled here in the moon, | 17 | ················· |
| Piled against the sky-line taking shapes like the hand of the wind wanted, | 17 | ······/˘·······/˘ |
| What do we see here, Bill, outside of what the wise men beat their heads on, | 17 | ······//········· |
| Outside of what the poets cry for and the soldiers drive on headlong and leave their skulls in the sun for—what, Bill? | 27 | //···/˘····/˘··/··········· |
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.