Limited
I am riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains of the nation.Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people.(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men and women laughing in the diners and sleepers shall pass to ashes.)I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he answers: "Omaha."
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,]
- scrap n.
- Something scraped off; hence, a small piece; a bit; a fragment; a detached, incomplete portion. [OE. scrappe, fr. Icel. skrap trifle, cracking. See Scrape, v. t.]
- smoker n.
- One who dries or preserves by smoke.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Limited 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, Limited, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/limited.html, id L28884.
Form and metre
Limited is 4 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.
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 am riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains of the nation. | 20 | ··/˘··/˘˘˘/·······/˘ |
| Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people. | 28 | /˘˘/·/˘········˘/··/˘/˘·/˘/˘ |
| (All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men and women laughing in the diners and sleepers shall pass to ashes.) | 30 | ··/˘··········/˘/˘··/˘·/˘···/˘ |
| I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he answers: "Omaha." | 20 | ······/˘···/˘··/˘/˘· |
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.