They Will Say
Of my city the worst that men will ever say is this:You took little children away from the sun and the dew,And the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky,And the reckless rain; you put them between wallsTo work, broken and smothered, for bread and wages,To eat dust in their throats and die empty-heartedFor a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights.
Words in this poem
- handful n.
- As much as the hand will grasp or contain. [AS. handfull.]
- saturday n.
- The seventh or last day of the week; the day following Friday and preceding Sunday. [OE. Saterday, AS. Sæterdæg, Sæterndæg, Sæternesdæg, literally, Saturn's day, fr. L. Saturnus Saturn + AS. dæg day; cf. L. dies Saturni.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
They Will Say 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, They Will Say, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/they-will-say.html, id L28855.
Form and metre
They Will Say is 7 lines in a single stanza. The metre is anapaestic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 75%).
See other poems in anapaestic pentameter.
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. Read against anapaestic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Of my city the worst that men will ever say is this: | 14 | ··/˘·····/˘··· |
| You took little children away from the sun and the dew, | 14 | ··/˘/˘˘/······ |
| And the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky, | 14 | ··/˘·········· |
| And the reckless rain; you put them between walls | 11 | ··/˘······· |
| To work, broken and smothered, for bread and wages, | 12 | ··/˘·/˘···/˘ |
| To eat dust in their throats and die empty-hearted | 12 | ········/˘/˘ |
| For a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights. | 15 | ··/˘/······/˘˘· |
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.