Two Neighbors
Faces of two eternities keep looking at me.One is Omar Khayam and the red stuffwherein men forget yesterday and to-morrowand remember only the voices and songs,the stories, newspapers and fights of today.One is Louis Cornaro and a slim trickof slow, short meals across slow, short years,letting Death open the door only in slow, short inches.I have a neighbor who swears by Omar.I have a neighbor who swears by Cornaro.Both are happy.Faces of two eternities keep looking at me.Let them look.
About this text
Two Neighbors 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, Two Neighbors, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/two-neighbors.html, id L28893.
Form and metre
Two Neighbors 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-B------B-A- meA · stuff · morrowB · songs · today · trick · years · inches · omar · cornaroB · happy · meA · look
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Faces of two eternities keep looking at me. | 13 | /˘··˘/˘˘·/˘·· |
| One is Omar Khayam and the red stuff | 9 | ··/˘····· |
| wherein men forget yesterday and to-morrow | 12 | ···˘//˘···/˘ |
| and remember only the voices and songs, | 11 | ·˘/˘/˘·/˘·· |
| the stories, newspapers and fights of today. | 11 | ·/˘/·˘···˘/ |
| One is Louis Cornaro and a slim trick | 11 | ··/˘······· |
| of slow, short meals across slow, short years, | 9 | ····˘/··· |
| letting Death open the door only in slow, short inches. | 14 | /˘·/˘··/˘···/˘ |
| I have a neighbor who swears by Omar. | 10 | ···/˘···/˘ |
| I have a neighbor who swears by Cornaro. | 11 | ···/˘······ |
| Both are happy. | 4 | ··/˘ |
| Faces of two eternities keep looking at me. | 13 | /˘··˘/˘˘·/˘·· |
| Let them look. | 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.