Joy
Let a joy keep you.Reach out your handsAnd take it when it runs by,As the Apache dancerClutches his woman.I have seen themLive long and laugh loud,Sent on singing, singing,Smashed to the heartUnder the ribsWith a terrible love.Joy always,Joy everywhere—Let joy kill you!Keep away from the little deaths.
About this text
Joy 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, Joy, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/joy.html, id L28942.
Form and metre
Joy is 15 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic dimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 80%).
See other poems in trochaic dimeter.
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- youA · hands · by · dancer · woman · them · loud · singing · heart · ribs · love · always · everywhere · youA · deaths
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. Read against trochaic dimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Let a joy keep you. | 5 | ····· |
| Reach out your hands | 4 | ···· |
| And take it when it runs by, | 7 | ······· |
| As the Apache dancer | 7 | ··˘/˘/˘ |
| Clutches his woman. | 5 | /˘·/˘ |
| I have seen them | 4 | ···· |
| Live long and laugh loud, | 5 | ····· |
| Sent on singing, singing, | 6 | ··/˘/˘ |
| Smashed to the heart | 4 | ···· |
| Under the ribs | 4 | ···· |
| With a terrible love. | 5 | ··/˘· |
| Joy always, | 3 | ·/· |
| Joy everywhere— | 4 | ·/˘· |
| Let joy kill you! | 4 | ···· |
| Keep away from the little deaths. | 8 | ·˘/··/˘· |
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.