Population Drifts
New-mown hay smell and wind of the plain made her a woman whose ribs had the power of the hills in them and her hands were tough for work and there was passion for life in her womb.She and her man crossed the ocean and the years that marked their faces saw them haggling with landlords and grocers while six children played on the stones and prowled in the garbage cans.One child coughed its lungs away, two more have adenoids and can neither talk nor run like their mother, one is in jail, two have jobs in a box factoryAnd as they fold the pasteboard, they wonder what the wishing is and the wistful glory in them that flutters faintly when the glimmer of spring comes on the air or the green of summer turns brown:They do not know it is the new-mown hay smell calling and the wind of the plain praying for them to come back and take hold of life again with tough hands and with passion.
Words in this poem
- womb n.
- The belly; the abdomen. [OE. wombe, wambe, AS. wamb, womb; akin to D. wam belly, OS. & OHG. wamba, G. wamme, wampe, Icel. vömb, Sw. v&mb, Dan. vom, Goth. wamba.]
- garbage n.
- Offal, as the bowels of an animal or fish; refuse animal or vegetable matter from a kitchen; hence, anything worthless, disgusting, or loathsome. Grainger. [OE. also garbash, perh. orig., that which is purged or cleansed away; cf. OF. garber to make fine, neat, OHG. garawan to make ready, prepare, akin to E. garb dr]
- wistful a.
- Longing; wishful; desirous. [For wishful; perhaps influenced by wistly, which is probably corrupted from OE. wisly certainly (from Icel. viss certain, akin to E. wit). See Wish.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Population Drifts 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, Population Drifts, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/population-drifts.html, id L28874.
Form and metre
Population Drifts is 5 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 womb · cans · factory · brownA · passionA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| New-mown hay smell and wind of the plain made her a woman whose ribs had the power of the hills in them and her hands were tough for work and there was passion for life in her womb. | 42 | ············/˘····/˘···············/˘····· |
| She and her man crossed the ocean and the years that marked their faces saw them haggling with landlords and grocers while six children played on the stones and prowled in the garbage cans. | 42 | ······/˘······/˘··/˘˘·/··/˘··/˘········/˘· |
| One child coughed its lungs away, two more have adenoids and can neither talk nor run like their mother, one is in jail, two have jobs in a box factory | 37 | ·····˘/···/˘···/˘·····/˘··········/˘˘ |
| And as they fold the pasteboard, they wonder what the wishing is and the wistful glory in them that flutters faintly when the glimmer of spring comes on the air or the green of summer turns brown: | 46 | ·····/˘·/˘··/˘···/˘/˘···/˘/˘··/˘··········/˘·· |
| They do not know it is the new-mown hay smell calling and the wind of the plain praying for them to come back and take hold of life again with tough hands and with passion. | 40 | ···········/˘······/˘··········˘/·····/˘ |
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.