The Harbor
Passing through huddled and ugly wallsBy doorways where womenLooked from their hunger-deep eyes,Haunted with shadows of hunger-hands,Out from the huddled and ugly walls,I came sudden, at the city's edge,On a blue burst of lake,Long lake waves breaking under the sunOn a spray-flung curve of shore;And a fluttering storm of gulls,Masses of great gray wingsAnd flying white belliesVeering and wheeling free in the open.
Words in this poem
- haunted a.
- Inhabited by, or subject to the visits of, apparitions; frequented by a ghost.
- wheeling n.
- The act of conveying anything, or traveling, on wheels, or in a wheeled vehicle.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Harbor 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, The Harbor, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/the-harbor.html, id L28854.
Form and metre
The Harbor is 13 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 A---A-------- wallsA · women · eyes · hands · wallsA · edge · lake · sun · shore · gulls · wings · bellies · open
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Passing through huddled and ugly walls | 9 | /˘·/˘·/˘· |
| By doorways where women | 6 | ·/··/˘ |
| Looked from their hunger-deep eyes, | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| Haunted with shadows of hunger-hands, | 9 | /˘·/··/˘· |
| Out from the huddled and ugly walls, | 9 | ···/˘·/˘· |
| I came sudden, at the city's edge, | 9 | ··/˘··/˘· |
| On a blue burst of lake, | 6 | ······ |
| Long lake waves breaking under the sun | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| On a spray-flung curve of shore; | 7 | ······· |
| And a fluttering storm of gulls, | 8 | ··/˘˘··· |
| Masses of great gray wings | 6 | /˘···· |
| And flying white bellies | 6 | ·/˘·/˘ |
| Veering and wheeling free in the open. | 10 | /˘·/˘···/˘ |
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.