Poems Done on a Late Night Car
I am The Great White Way of the city:When you ask what is my desire, I answer:“Girls fresh as country wild flowers,With young faces tired of the cows and barns,Eager in their eyes as the dawn to find my mysteries,Slender supple girls with shapely legs,Lure in the arch of their little shouldersAnd wisdom from the prairies to cry only softly at the ashes of my mysteries.”
Roses,Red roses,CrushedIn the rain and windLike mouths of womenBeaten by the fists ofMen using them.O little rosesAnd broken leavesAnd petal wisps:You that so flung your crimsonTo the sunOnly yesterday.
Here is a thing my heart wishes the world had more of:I heard it in the air of one night when I listenedTo a mother singing softly to a child restless and angry in the darkness.
Words in this poem
- shapely a.
- Well-formed; having a regular shape; comely; symmetrical. T.
- angry a.
- Troublesome; vexatious; rigorous. [See Anger.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Poems Done on a Late Night Car 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, Poems Done on a Late Night Car, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/poems-done-on-a-late-night-car.html, id L28966.
Form and metre
Poems Done on a Late Night Car is 24 lines in 3 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 ----A--A city · answer · flowers · barns · mysteriesA · legs · shoulders · mysteriesA
- 2 AA-----A--BB- rosesA · rosesA · crushed · wind · women · of · them · rosesA · leaves · wisps · crimsonB · sunB · yesterday
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I am The Great White Way of the city: | 10 | ········/˘ |
| When you ask what is my desire, I answer: | 12 | ······˘/˘·/˘ |
| “Girls fresh as country wild flowers, | 8 | ···/˘·/˘ |
| With young faces tired of the cows and barns, | 11 | ··/˘/˘····· |
| Eager in their eyes as the dawn to find my mysteries, | 14 | /˘·········/˘˘ |
| Slender supple girls with shapely legs, | 9 | /˘/˘··/˘· |
| Lure in the arch of their little shoulders | 10 | ······/˘/˘ |
| And wisdom from the prairies to cry only softly at the ashes of my mysteries.” | 22 | ·/˘··/˘··/˘/˘··/˘··/˘˘ |
| Roses, | 2 | /˘ |
| Red roses, | 3 | ·/˘ |
| Crushed | 1 | · |
| In the rain and wind | 5 | ····· |
| Like mouths of women | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Beaten by the fists of | 6 | /˘···· |
| Men using them. | 4 | ·/˘· |
| O little roses | 5 | ·/˘/˘ |
| And broken leaves | 4 | ·/˘· |
| And petal wisps: | 4 | ·/˘· |
| You that so flung your crimson | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| To the sun | 3 | ··· |
| Only yesterday. | 5 | /˘/˘· |
| Here is a thing my heart wishes the world had more of: | 13 | ······/˘····· |
| I heard it in the air of one night when I listened | 13 | ···········/˘ |
| To a mother singing softly to a child restless and angry in the darkness. | 20 | ··/˘/˘/˘···/˘·/˘··/˘ |
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.