Theme in Yellow
I spot the hillsWith yellow balls in autumn.I light the prairie cornfieldsOrange and tawny gold clustersAnd I am called pumpkins.On the last of OctoberWhen dusk is fallenChildren join handsAnd circle round meSinging ghost songsAnd love to the harvest moon;I am a jack-o'-lanternWith terrible teethAnd the children knowI am fooling.
Words in this poem
- ghost n.
- The spirit; the soul of man. [OE. gast, gost, soul, spirit, AS. gast breath, spirit, soul; akin to OS. g spirit, soul, D. geest, G. geist, and prob. to E. gaze, ghastly.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Theme in Yellow 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, Theme in Yellow, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/theme-in-yellow.html, id L28955.
Form and metre
Theme in Yellow is 15 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 77%).
See other poems in trochaic trimeter.
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---AA--- hills · autumn · cornfields · clusters · pumpkins · october · fallenA · hands · me · songs · moonA · lanternA · teeth · know · fooling
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 trochaic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I spot the hills | 4 | ···· |
| With yellow balls in autumn. | 7 | ·/˘··/˘ |
| I light the prairie cornfields | 7 | ···/˘// |
| Orange and tawny gold clusters | 8 | /˘·/˘·/˘ |
| And I am called pumpkins. | 6 | ····/˘ |
| On the last of October | 7 | ····˘/˘ |
| When dusk is fallen | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Children join hands | 4 | /˘·· |
| And circle round me | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| Singing ghost songs | 4 | /˘·· |
| And love to the harvest moon; | 7 | ····/˘· |
| I am a jack-o'-lantern | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| With terrible teeth | 5 | ·/˘˘· |
| And the children know | 5 | ··/˘· |
| I am fooling. | 4 | ··/˘ |
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.