Gypsy
I asked a gypsy palTo imitate an old imageAnd speak old wisdom.She drew in her chin,Made her neck and headThe top piece of a Nile obelisk and said:Snatch off the gag from thy mouth, child,And be free to keep silence.Tell no man anything for no man listens,Yet hold thy lips ready to speak.
About this text
Gypsy 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, Gypsy, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/gypsy.html, id L28995.
Form and metre
Gypsy is 10 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 ----AA---- pal · image · wisdom · chin · headA · saidA · child · silence · listens · speak
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I asked a gypsy pal | 6 | ···/˘· |
| To imitate an old image | 8 | ·/˘···/˘ |
| And speak old wisdom. | 5 | ···/˘ |
| She drew in her chin, | 5 | ····· |
| Made her neck and head | 5 | ····· |
| The top piece of a Nile obelisk and said: | 11 | ······/˘˘·· |
| Snatch off the gag from thy mouth, child, | 8 | ········ |
| And be free to keep silence. | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| Tell no man anything for no man listens, | 11 | ···/˘····/˘ |
| Yet hold thy lips ready to speak. | 8 | ····/˘·· |
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.