Last Answers
I wrote a poem on the mistAnd a woman asked me what I meant by it.I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist, how pearl and gray of it mix and reel,And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening into points of mystery quivering with color.
I answered:The whole world was mist once long ago and some day it will all go back to mist,Our skulls and lungs are more water than bone and tissueAnd all poets love dust and mist because all the last answersGo running back to dust and mist.
Words in this poem
- wrote v. i.
- To root with the snout. See 1st Root. [OE. wroten. See 1st Root.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Last Answers 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, Last Answers, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/last-answers.html, id L28957.
Form and metre
Last Answers is 9 lines in 2 stanzas.
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.
- 2 -A--A answered · mistA · tissue · answers · mistA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I wrote a poem on the mist | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And a woman asked me what I meant by it. | 11 | ··/˘······· |
| I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist, how pearl and gray of it mix and reel, | 23 | ·····/˘··/˘············ |
| And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening into points of mystery quivering with color. | 26 | ····/˘·/˘··/˘····/˘˘/˘˘·/˘ |
| I answered: | 3 | ·/˘ |
| The whole world was mist once long ago and some day it will all go back to mist, | 19 | ·······˘/·········· |
| Our skulls and lungs are more water than bone and tissue | 14 | /˘·····/˘···/· |
| And all poets love dust and mist because all the last answers | 15 | ··/˘·········/˘ |
| Go running back to dust and mist. | 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.