Fog
The fog comeson little cat feet.
It sits lookingover harbor and cityon silent haunchesand then moves on.
About this text
Fog 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, Fog, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/fog.html, id L28905.
Form and metre
Fog is 6 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is anapaestic dimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).
See other poems in anapaestic dimeter.
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. Read against anapaestic dimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The fog comes | 3 | ··· |
| on little cat feet. | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| It sits looking | 4 | ··/˘ |
| over harbor and city | 7 | ··/˘·/˘ |
| on silent haunches | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| and then moves on. | 4 | ···· |
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.