Jack
Jack was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun.He worked thirty years on the railroad, ten hours a day, and his hands were tougher than sole leather.He married a tough woman and they had eight children and the woman died and the children grew up and went away and wrote the old man every two years.He died in the poorhouse sitting on a bench in the sun telling reminiscences to other old men whose women were dead and children scattered.There was joy on his face when he died as there was joy on his face when he lived—he was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun.
Words in this poem
- went n.
- Course; way; path; journey; direction.
- wrote v. i.
- To root with the snout. See 1st Root. [OE. wroten. See 1st Root.]
- poorhouse n.
- A dwelling for a number of paupers maintained at public expense; an almshouse; a workhouse.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Jack 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, Jack, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/jack.html, id L28890.
Form and metre
Jack 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 gunA · leather · years · scattered · gunA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Jack was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun. | 12 | ···/˘/˘˘···· |
| He worked thirty years on the railroad, ten hours a day, and his hands were tougher than sole leather. | 24 | ··/˘···/··/˘······/˘··/˘ |
| He married a tough woman and they had eight children and the woman died and the children grew up and went away and wrote the old man every two years. | 38 | ·/˘··/˘····/˘··/˘···/˘····˘/·····/˘˘·· |
| He died in the poorhouse sitting on a bench in the sun telling reminiscences to other old men whose women were dead and children scattered. | 36 | ····/·/˘······/˘·˘/˘˘·/˘···/˘···/˘/˘ |
| There was joy on his face when he died as there was joy on his face when he lived—he was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun. | 31 | ······················/˘/˘˘···· |
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.