Under a Hat Rim
While the hum and the hurryOf passing footfallsBeat in my ear like the restless surfOf a wind-blown sea,A soul came to meOut of the look on a face.
Eyes like a lakeWhere a storm-wind roamsCaught me from underThe rim of a hat.I thought of a midsea wreckand bruised fingers clingingto a broken state-room door.
About this text
Under a Hat Rim 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, Under a Hat Rim, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/under-a-hat-rim.html, id L28896.
Form and metre
Under a Hat Rim is 13 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 79%).
See other poems in iambic 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 ---AA- hurry · footfalls · surf · seaA · meA · face
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| While the hum and the hurry | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| Of passing footfalls | 5 | ·/˘/· |
| Beat in my ear like the restless surf | 9 | ······/˘· |
| Of a wind-blown sea, | 5 | ····· |
| A soul came to me | 5 | ····· |
| Out of the look on a face. | 7 | ······· |
| Eyes like a lake | 4 | ···· |
| Where a storm-wind roams | 5 | ····· |
| Caught me from under | 5 | ····· |
| The rim of a hat. | 5 | ····· |
| I thought of a midsea wreck | 7 | ······· |
| and bruised fingers clinging | 6 | ··/˘/˘ |
| to a broken state-room door. | 7 | ··/˘··· |
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.