Follies
Shaken,The blossoms of lilac,And shattered,The atoms of purple.Green dip the leaves,Darker the bark,Longer the shadows.
Sheer lines of poplarShimmer with masses of silverAnd down in a garden old with yearsAnd broken walls of ruin and story,Roses rise with red rain-memories.May!In the open worldThe sun comes and finds your face,Remembering all.
Words in this poem
- shimmer v. i.
- To shine with a tremulous or intermittent light; to shine faintly; to gleam; to glisten; to glimmer. [OE. schimeren, AS. scimerian; akin to scimian, sciman, to glitter, D. schemeren, G. schimmern, Dan. skimre, Sw. skimra, AS. scima a light, brightness, Icel. ski]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Follies 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, Follies, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/follies.html, id L28951.
Form and metre
Follies is 16 lines in 2 stanzas.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Shaken, | 2 | /˘ |
| The blossoms of lilac, | 6 | ·/˘·/· |
| And shattered, | 3 | ·/˘ |
| The atoms of purple. | 6 | ·/˘·/˘ |
| Green dip the leaves, | 4 | ···· |
| Darker the bark, | 4 | /˘·· |
| Longer the shadows. | 5 | /˘·/· |
| Sheer lines of poplar | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Shimmer with masses of silver | 8 | /˘·/˘·/˘ |
| And down in a garden old with years | 9 | ····/˘··· |
| And broken walls of ruin and story, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘·/˘ |
| Roses rise with red rain-memories. | 9 | /˘····/˘˘ |
| May! | 1 | · |
| In the open world | 5 | ··/˘· |
| The sun comes and finds your face, | 7 | ······· |
| Remembering all. | 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.