Uplands in May
Wonder as of old thingsFresh and fair come backHangs over pasture and road.Lush in the lowland grasses riseAnd upland beckons to upland.The great strong hills are humble.
Words in this poem
- lush a.
- Full of juice or succulence. [Prob. an abbrev. of lushious, fr. luscious.]
- lowland n.
- Land which is low with respect to the neighboring country; a low or level country; -- opposed to highland. The Lowlands, Belgium and Holland; the Netherlands; also, the southern part of Scotland.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Uplands in May 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, Uplands in May, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/uplands-in-may.html, id L28978.
Form and metre
Uplands in May is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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 iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Wonder as of old things | 6 | /˘···· |
| Fresh and fair come back | 5 | ····· |
| Hangs over pasture and road. | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| Lush in the lowland grasses rise | 8 | ···/·/˘· |
| And upland beckons to upland. | 8 | ·/˘/˘·/˘ |
| The great strong hills are humble. | 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.