Our Prayer of Thanks
For the gladness here where the sun is shining at evening on the weeds at the river,Our prayer of thanks.
For the laughter of children who tumble barefooted and bareheaded in the summer grass,Our prayer of thanks.
For the sunset and the stars, the women and the white arms that hold us,Our prayer of thanks.
God,If you are deaf and blind, if this is all lost to you,God, if the dead in their coffins amid the silver handles on the edge of town, or the reckless dead of war days thrown unknown in pits, if these dead are forever deaf and blind and lost,Our prayer of thanks.
God,The game is all your way, the secrets and the signals and the system; and so for the break of the game and the first play and the last.Our prayer of thanks.
Words in this poem
- barefooted a.
- Having the feet bare.
- bareheaded a.
- Having the head uncovered; as, a bareheaded girl.
- amid prep.
- In the midst or middle of; surrounded or encompassed by; among. [OE. amidde, amiddes, on midden, AS. on middan, in the middle, fr. midde the middle. The s is an adverbial ending, originally marking the genitive; the t is a la]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Our Prayer of Thanks 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, Our Prayer of Thanks, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/our-prayer-of-thanks.html, id L28937.
Form and metre
Our Prayer of Thanks is 13 lines in 5 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 |
|---|---|---|
| For the gladness here where the sun is shining at evening on the weeds at the river, | 21 | ··/˘·····/˘·/˘·····/˘ |
| Our prayer of thanks. | 5 | /˘··· |
| For the laughter of children who tumble barefooted and bareheaded in the summer grass, | 23 | ··/˘·/˘·/˘/·˘·······/˘· |
| Our prayer of thanks. | 5 | /˘··· |
| For the sunset and the stars, the women and the white arms that hold us, | 17 | ··/·····/˘······· |
| Our prayer of thanks. | 5 | /˘··· |
| God, | 1 | · |
| If you are deaf and blind, if this is all lost to you, | 13 | ············· |
| God, if the dead in their coffins amid the silver handles on the edge of town, or the reckless dead of war days thrown unknown in pits, if these dead are forever deaf and blind and lost, | 45 | ······/˘˘/·/˘/˘·······/˘·····˘/······˘/˘····· |
| Our prayer of thanks. | 5 | /˘··· |
| God, | 1 | · |
| The game is all your way, the secrets and the signals and the system; and so for the break of the game and the first play and the last. | 32 | ·······/˘··/˘··/˘··············· |
| Our prayer of thanks. | 5 | /˘··· |
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.