Margaret
Many birds and the beating of wingsMake a flinging reckless humIn the early morning at the rocksAbove the blue poolWhere the gray shadows swim lazy.
In your blue eyes, O reckless child,I saw today many little wild wishes,Eager as the great morning.
About this text
Margaret 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, Margaret, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/margaret.html, id L28965.
Form and metre
Margaret is 8 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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Many birds and the beating of wings | 9 | /˘···/˘·· |
| Make a flinging reckless hum | 7 | ··/˘/˘· |
| In the early morning at the rocks | 9 | ··/˘/˘··· |
| Above the blue pool | 5 | ····· |
| Where the gray shadows swim lazy. | 8 | ···/··/˘ |
| In your blue eyes, O reckless child, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| I saw today many little wild wishes, | 11 | ··˘//˘/˘·/˘ |
| Eager as the great morning. | 7 | /˘···/˘ |
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.