Happiness
I asked professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness.And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men.They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them.And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines riverAnd I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.
Words in this poem
- went n.
- Course; way; path; journey; direction.
- shook v. t.
- To pack, as staves, in a shook.
- afternoon n.
- The part of the day which follows noon, between noon and evening.
- accordion n.
- A small, portable, keyed wind instrument, whose tones are generated by play of the wind upon free metallic reeds. [See Accord.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Happiness 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, Happiness, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/happiness.html, id L28866.
Form and metre
Happiness is 5 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--A happiness · menA · them · river · accordionA
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 professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness. | 20 | ··˘/˘···/˘·······/˘˘ |
| And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men. | 19 | ····/˘˘/˘˘·····/˘·· |
| They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them. | 20 | ··············/˘···· |
| And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river | 19 | ···/··˘/·/˘·˘/···/˘ |
| And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion. | 32 | ······˘/˘˘······/˘·/˘·······˘/˘˘ |
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.