Hydrangeas
Dragoons, I tell you the white hydrangeas turn rust and go soon.Already mid September a line of brown runs over them.One sunset after another tracks the faces, the petals.Waiting, they look over the fence for what way they go.
About this text
Hydrangeas 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, Hydrangeas, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/hydrangeas.html, id L28954.
Form and metre
Hydrangeas is 4 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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Dragoons, I tell you the white hydrangeas turn rust and go soon. | 15 | ··············· |
| Already mid September a line of brown runs over them. | 15 | ˘/˘·˘/˘········ |
| One sunset after another tracks the faces, the petals. | 15 | ·/···˘/˘··/˘·/˘ |
| Waiting, they look over the fence for what way they go. | 13 | /˘··········· |
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.