The Shovel Man
On the streetSlung on his shoulder is a handle half way across,Tied in a big knot on the scoop of cast ironAre the overalls faded from sun and rain in the ditches;Spatter of dry clay sticking yellow on his left sleeveAnd a flimsy shirt open at the throat,I know him for a shovel man,A dago working for a dollar six bits a dayAnd a dark-eyed woman in the old country dreams of him for one of the world's ready men with a pair of fresh lips and a kiss better than all the wild grapes that ever grew in Tuscany.
Words in this poem
- overalls n.
- A kind of loose trousers worn over others to protect them from soiling.
- dago n.
- A nickname given to a person of Spanish (or, by extension, Portuguese or Italian) descent. [U. S.] [Cf. Sp. Diego, E. James.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Shovel Man 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 Shovel Man, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/the-shovel-man.html, id L28862.
Form and metre
The Shovel Man is 9 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-- street · across · ironA · ditches · sleeve · throat · manA · day · tuscany
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 |
|---|---|---|
| On the street | 3 | ··· |
| Slung on his shoulder is a handle half way across, | 13 | ···/˘··/˘··˘/ |
| Tied in a big knot on the scoop of cast iron | 12 | ··········/˘ |
| Are the overalls faded from sun and rain in the ditches; | 15 | ··/˘·/˘······/˘ |
| Spatter of dry clay sticking yellow on his left sleeve | 13 | /˘···/˘/˘···· |
| And a flimsy shirt open at the throat, | 10 | ··/˘·/˘··· |
| I know him for a shovel man, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| A dago working for a dollar six bits a day | 13 | ·/˘/˘··/˘···· |
| And a dark-eyed woman in the old country dreams of him for one of the world's ready men with a pair of fresh lips and a kiss better than all the wild grapes that ever grew in Tuscany. | 46 | ····/˘···/˘········/˘··········/˘······/˘··/˘˘ |
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.