Halsted Street Car
Come you, cartoonists,Hang on a strap with me hereAt seven o'clock in the morningOn a Halsted street car.
Take your pencilsAnd draw these faces.
Try with your pencils for these crooked faces,That pig-sticker in one corner—his mouth—That overall factory girl—her loose cheeks.
Find for your pencilsA way to mark your memoryOf tired empty faces.
After their night's sleep,In the moist dawnAnd cool daybreak,FacesTired of wishes,Empty of dreams.
Words in this poem
- daybreak n.
- The time of the first appearance of light in the morning.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Halsted Street Car 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, Halsted Street Car, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/halsted-street-car.html, id L28857.
Form and metre
Halsted Street Car is 18 lines in 5 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Come you, cartoonists, | 5 | ··˘/˘ |
| Hang on a strap with me here | 7 | ······· |
| At seven o'clock in the morning | 9 | ·/˘˘/··/˘ |
| On a Halsted street car. | 6 | ··/˘·· |
| Take your pencils | 4 | ··/˘ |
| And draw these faces. | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Try with your pencils for these crooked faces, | 11 | ···/˘··/˘/˘ |
| That pig-sticker in one corner—his mouth— | 10 | ··/˘··/˘·· |
| That overall factory girl—her loose cheeks. | 11 | ·/˘·/˘˘···· |
| Find for your pencils | 5 | ···/˘ |
| A way to mark your memory | 8 | ·····/˘˘ |
| Of tired empty faces. | 7 | ·/˘/˘/˘ |
| After their night's sleep, | 5 | ····· |
| In the moist dawn | 4 | ···· |
| And cool daybreak, | 4 | ··/· |
| Faces | 2 | /˘ |
| Tired of wishes, | 5 | /˘·/˘ |
| Empty of dreams. | 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.