Murmurings in a Field Hospital (They picked him up in the grass where he had lain two days in the rain with a piece of shrapnel in his lungs)
Come to me only with playthings now . . .A picture of a singing woman with blue eyesStanding at a fence of hollyhocks, poppies and sunflowers . . .Or an old man I remember sitting with children telling storiesOf days that never happened anywhere in the world . . .
No more iron cold and real to handle,Shaped for a drive straight ahead.Bring me only beautiful useless things.Only old home things touched at sunset in the quiet . . .And at the window one day in summerYellow of the new crock of butterStood against the red of new climbing roses . . .And the world was all playthings.
Words in this poem
- ahead adv.
- In or to the front; in advance; onward. [Pref. a- + head.]
- crock n.
- The loose black particles collected from combustion, as on pots and kettles, or in a chimney; soot; smut; also, coloring matter which rubs off from cloth. [Cf. W. croeg cover, Scot. crochit covered.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Murmurings in a Field Hospital (They picked him up in the grass where he had lain two days in the rain with a piece of shrapnel in his lungs) 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, Murmurings in a Field Hospital (They picked him up in the grass where he had lain two days in the rain with a piece of shrapnel in his lungs), in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/murmurings-in-a-field-hospital.html, id L28919.
Form and metre
Murmurings in a Field Hospital (They picked him up in the grass where he had lain two days in the rain with a piece of shrapnel in his lungs) is 13 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.
- 1 -AAA- now · eyesA · sunflowersA · storiesA · world
- 2 --A----A handle · ahead · thingsA · quiet · summer · butter · roses · playthingsA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Come to me only with playthings now . . . | 9 | ···/˘·/·· |
| A picture of a singing woman with blue eyes | 12 | ·/˘··/˘/˘··· |
| Standing at a fence of hollyhocks, poppies and sunflowers . . . | 15 | /˘····/˘·/˘·/·˘ |
| Or an old man I remember sitting with children telling stories | 17 | ·····˘/˘/˘·/˘/˘/˘ |
| Of days that never happened anywhere in the world . . . | 13 | ···/˘/˘/˘···· |
| No more iron cold and real to handle, | 10 | ··/˘····/˘ |
| Shaped for a drive straight ahead. | 7 | ·····˘/ |
| Bring me only beautiful useless things. | 10 | ··/˘/˘˘/˘· |
| Only old home things touched at sunset in the quiet . . . | 13 | /˘·····/···/˘ |
| And at the window one day in summer | 10 | ···/˘···/˘ |
| Yellow of the new crock of butter | 9 | /˘·····/˘ |
| Stood against the red of new climbing roses . . . | 11 | ·······/˘/˘ |
| And the world was all playthings. | 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.