The Mist
I am the mist, the impalpable mist,Back of the thing you seek.My arms are long,Long as the reach of time and space.
Some toil and toil, believing,Looking now and again on my face,Catching a vital, olden glory.
But no one passes me,I tangle and snare them all.I am the cause of the Sphinx,The voiceless, baffled, patient Sphinx.
I was at the first of things,I will be at the last.I am the primal mistAnd no man passes me;My long impalpable armsBar them all.
Words in this poem
- olden a.
- Old; ancient; as, the olden time.
- tangle v. t.
- To unite or knit together confusedly; to interweave or interlock, as threads, so as to make it difficult to unravel the knot; to entangle; to ravel. [A frequentative fr. tang seaweed; hence, to twist like seaweed. See Tang seaweed, and cf. Tangle, n.]
- voiceless a.
- Having no voice, utterance, or vote; silent; mute; dumb.
- primal a.
- First; primary; original; chief. [LL. primalis, fr. L. primus the first. See Prime, a.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Mist 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 Mist, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/the-mist.html, id L28992.
Form and metre
The Mist is 17 lines in 4 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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.
- 3 --AA me · all · sphinxA · sphinxA
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. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I am the mist, the impalpable mist, | 10 | ·····˘/˘˘· |
| Back of the thing you seek. | 6 | ······ |
| My arms are long, | 4 | ···· |
| Long as the reach of time and space. | 8 | ········ |
| Some toil and toil, believing, | 7 | ····˘/˘ |
| Looking now and again on my face, | 9 | /˘··˘/··· |
| Catching a vital, olden glory. | 9 | /˘·/˘/˘/˘ |
| But no one passes me, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| I tangle and snare them all. | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| I am the cause of the Sphinx, | 7 | ······· |
| The voiceless, baffled, patient Sphinx. | 8 | ·/˘/˘/˘· |
| I was at the first of things, | 7 | ······· |
| I will be at the last. | 6 | ······ |
| I am the primal mist | 6 | ···/˘· |
| And no man passes me; | 6 | ···/˘· |
| My long impalpable arms | 7 | ··˘/˘˘· |
| Bar them all. | 3 | ··· |
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.