Kin
Brother, I am fireSurging under the ocean floor.I shall never meet you, brother—Not for years, anyhow;Maybe thousands of years, brother.Then I will warm you,Hold you close, wrap you in circles,Use you and change you—Maybe thousands of years, brother.
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
- anyhow adv.
- In any way or manner whatever; at any rate; in any event.
- maybe adv.
- Perhaps; possibly; peradventure. [For it may be.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Kin 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, Kin, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/kin.html, id L28912.
Form and metre
Kin is 9 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
See other poems in trochaic tetrameter.
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-AB-BA fire · floor · brotherA · anyhow · brotherA · youB · circles · youB · brotherA
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Brother, I am fire | 6 | /˘··/˘ |
| Surging under the ocean floor. | 8 | /˘···/˘· |
| I shall never meet you, brother— | 8 | ··/˘··/˘ |
| Not for years, anyhow; | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Maybe thousands of years, brother. | 8 | /˘/˘··/˘ |
| Then I will warm you, | 5 | ····· |
| Hold you close, wrap you in circles, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Use you and change you— | 5 | ····· |
| Maybe thousands of years, brother. | 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.