Mag
I wish to God I never saw you, Mag.I wish you never quit your job and came along with me.I wish we never bought a license and a white dressFor you to get married in the day we ran off to a ministerAnd told him we would love each other and take care of each otherAlways and always long as the sun and the rain lasts anywhere.Yes, I'm wishing now you lived somewhere away from hereAnd I was a bum on the bumpers a thousand miles away dead broke.I wish the kids had never comeAnd rent and coal and clothes to pay forAnd a grocery man calling for cash,Every day cash for beans and prunes.I wish to God I never saw you, Mag.I wish to God the kids had never come.
Words in this poem
- somewhere adv.
- In some place unknown or not specified; in one place or another.
- broke v. i.
- To transact business for another. Brome. [See Broker, and cf. Brook.]
- grocery n.
- The commodities sold by grocers, as tea, coffee, spices, etc.; -- in the United States almost always in the plural form, in this sense. [F. grosserie wholesale. See Grocer.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Mag 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, Mag, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/mag.html, id L28872.
Form and metre
Mag is 14 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.
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----BB-C---AC magA · me · dress · minister · other · anywhereB · hereB · broke · comeC · for · cash · prunes · magA · comeC
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 wish to God I never saw you, Mag. | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| I wish you never quit your job and came along with me. | 14 | ···/˘·····˘/·· |
| I wish we never bought a license and a white dress | 13 | ···/˘··/˘···· |
| For you to get married in the day we ran off to a minister | 17 | ····/˘········/˘˘ |
| And told him we would love each other and take care of each other | 16 | ·······/˘·····/˘ |
| Always and always long as the sun and the rain lasts anywhere. | 16 | /··/·········/˘· |
| Yes, I'm wishing now you lived somewhere away from here | 13 | ··/˘···/·˘/·· |
| And I was a bum on the bumpers a thousand miles away dead broke. | 17 | ·······/˘·/˘·˘/·· |
| I wish the kids had never come | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And rent and coal and clothes to pay for | 9 | ········· |
| And a grocery man calling for cash, | 10 | ··/˘˘·/˘·· |
| Every day cash for beans and prunes. | 9 | /˘˘······ |
| I wish to God I never saw you, Mag. | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| I wish to God the kids had never come. | 10 | ·······/˘· |
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.