On the Breakwater
On the breakwater in the summer dark, a man and a girl are sitting,She across his knee and they are looking face into faceTalking to each other without words, singing rythms in silence to each other.
A funnel of white ranges the blue dusk from an out-going boat,Playing its searchlight, puzzled, abrupt, over a streak of green,And two on the breakwater keep their silence, she on his knee.
Words in this poem
- breakwater n.
- Any structure or contrivance, as a mole, or a wall at the mouth of a harbor, to break the force of waves, and afford protection from their violence.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
On the Breakwater 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, On the Breakwater, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/on-the-breakwater.html, id L28947.
Form and metre
On the Breakwater is 6 lines in 2 stanzas of 3 lines each. The metre is iambic heptameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 70%).
See other poems in iambic heptameter.
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 heptameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| On the breakwater in the summer dark, a man and a girl are sitting, | 18 | ··/·˘··/˘·······/˘ |
| She across his knee and they are looking face into face | 14 | ·˘/·····/˘···· |
| Talking to each other without words, singing rythms in silence to each other. | 19 | /˘··/˘···/˘··/˘··/˘ |
| A funnel of white ranges the blue dusk from an out-going boat, | 16 | ·/˘··/˘······/˘· |
| Playing its searchlight, puzzled, abrupt, over a streak of green, | 15 | /˘·/·/˘˘/······ |
| And two on the breakwater keep their silence, she on his knee. | 15 | ····/·˘··/˘···· |
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.