White Shoulders
Your white shouldersI rememberAnd your shrug of laughter.
Low laughterShaken slowFrom your white shoulders.
Words in this poem
- shrug v. t.
- To draw up or contract (the shoulders), especially by way of expressing dislike, dread, doubt, or the like. [Probably akin to shrink, p. p. shrunk; cf. Dan. skrugge, skrukke, to stoop, dial. Sw. skrukka, skruga, to crouch.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
White Shoulders 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, White Shoulders, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/white-shoulders.html, id L28913.
Form and metre
White Shoulders is 6 lines in 2 stanzas of 3 lines each. The metre is trochaic dimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
See other poems in trochaic dimeter.
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 trochaic dimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Your white shoulders | 4 | ··/˘ |
| I remember | 4 | ·˘/˘ |
| And your shrug of laughter. | 6 | ····/˘ |
| Low laughter | 3 | ·/˘ |
| Shaken slow | 3 | /˘· |
| From your white shoulders. | 5 | ···/˘ |
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.