Soiled Dove
Let us be honest; the lady was not a harlot until she married a corporation lawyer who picked her from a Ziegfeld chorus.Before then she never took anybody’s money and paid for her silk stockings out of what she earned singing and dancing.She loved one man and he loved six women and the game was changing her looks, calling for more and more massage money and high coin for the beauty doctors.Now she drives a long, underslung motor car all by herself, reads in the day’s papers what her husband is doing to the inter-state commerce commission, requires a larger corsage from year to year, and wonders sometimes how one man is coming along with six women.
Words in this poem
- massage n.
- A rubbing or kneading of the body, especially when performed as a hygienic or remedial measure. [F.]
- underslung a.
- Of an automobile body, suspended from the springs in such a manner that the frame of the chassis is below the axles, the object being to lower the center of gravity of the car.
- corsage n.
- The waist or bodice of a lady's dress; as. a low corsage. [F. See Corset.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Soiled Dove 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, Soiled Dove, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/soiled-dove.html, id L28970.
Form and metre
Soiled Dove is 4 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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Let us be honest; the lady was not a harlot until she married a corporation lawyer who picked her from a Ziegfeld chorus. | 34 | ···/˘·/˘···/˘···/˘··˘/˘/˘·····/˘/˘ |
| Before then she never took anybody’s money and paid for her silk stockings out of what she earned singing and dancing. | 30 | ····/˘·/˘˘˘/˘·····/˘·····/˘·/˘ |
| She loved one man and he loved six women and the game was changing her looks, calling for more and more massage money and high coin for the beauty doctors. | 37 | ········/˘····/˘··/˘····˘//˘·····/˘/˘ |
| Now she drives a long, underslung motor car all by herself, reads in the day’s papers what her husband is doing to the inter-state commerce commission, requires a larger corsage from year to year, and wonders sometimes how one man is coming along with six women. | 67 | ········/˘···˘/····/˘··/˘·/˘··˘/·/˘˘/˘˘/˘·/˘˘/·····/˘˘/····/˘˘/··/˘ |
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.