Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard
Stuff of the moonRuns on the lapping sandOut to the longest shadows.Under the curving willows,And round the creep of the wave line,Fluxions of yellow and dusk on the watersMake a wide dreaming pansy of an old pond in the night.
About this text
Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard 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, Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/nocturne-in-a-deserted-brickyard.html, id L28953.
Form and metre
Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard is 7 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 --AA-A- moon · sand · shadowsA · willowsA · line · watersA · night
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Stuff of the moon | 4 | ···· |
| Runs on the lapping sand | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Out to the longest shadows. | 7 | ···/˘/· |
| Under the curving willows, | 7 | ···/˘/· |
| And round the creep of the wave line, | 8 | ········ |
| Fluxions of yellow and dusk on the waters | 11 | /˘·/˘····/˘ |
| Make a wide dreaming pansy of an old pond in the night. | 14 | ···/˘/˘······· |
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.