Jan Kubelik
Your bow swept over a string, and a long low note quivered to the air.(A mother of Bohemia sobs over a new child perfect learning to suck milk.)
Your bow ran fast over all the high strings fluttering and wild.(All the girls in Bohemia are laughing on a Sunday afternoon in the hills with their lovers.)
Words in this poem
- quivered a.
- Furnished with, or carrying, a quiver.
- afternoon n.
- The part of the day which follows noon, between noon and evening.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Jan Kubelik 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, Jan Kubelik, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/jan-kubelik.html, id L28907.
Form and metre
Jan Kubelik is 4 lines in 2 stanzas of 2 lines each.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Your bow swept over a string, and a long low note quivered to the air. | 17 | ············/˘··· |
| (A mother of Bohemia sobs over a new child perfect learning to suck milk.) | 21 | ·/˘·˘/˘˘······˘//˘··· |
| Your bow ran fast over all the high strings fluttering and wild. | 15 | ··········/˘˘·· |
| (All the girls in Bohemia are laughing on a Sunday afternoon in the hills with their lovers.) | 25 | ····˘/˘˘·/˘··/··˘/·····/˘ |
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.