Lost
Desolate and loneAll night long on the lakeWhere fog trails and mist creeps,The whistle of a boatCalls and cries unendingly,Like some lost childIn tears and troubleHunting the harbor's breastAnd the harbor's eyes.
Words in this poem
- lone n.
- A lane. See Loanin.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Lost 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, Lost, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/lost.html, id L28853.
Form and metre
Lost is 9 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%).
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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. Read against iambic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Desolate and lone | 5 | /˘··· |
| All night long on the lake | 6 | ······ |
| Where fog trails and mist creeps, | 6 | ······ |
| The whistle of a boat | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Calls and cries unendingly, | 7 | ······· |
| Like some lost child | 4 | ···· |
| In tears and trouble | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Hunting the harbor's breast | 6 | /˘·/˘· |
| And the harbor's eyes. | 5 | ··/˘· |
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.