A Tall Man
The mouth of this man is a gaunt strong mouth.The head of this man is a gaunt strong head.
The jaws of this man are bone of the Rocky Mountains, the Appalachians.The eyes of this man are chlorine of two sobbing oceans,Foam, salt, green, wind, the changing unknown.The neck of this man is pith of buffalo prairie, old longing and new beckoning of corn belt or cotton belt,Either a proud Sequoia trunk of the wildernessOr huddling lumber of a sawmill waiting to be a roof.
Brother mystery to man and mob mystery,Brother cryptic to lifted cryptic hands,He is night and abyss, he is white sky of sun, he is the head of the people.The heart of him the red drops of the people,The wish of him the steady gray-eagle crag-hunting flights of the people.
Humble dust of a wheel-worn road,Slashed sod under the iron-shining plow,These of service in him, these and many cities, many borders, many wrangles between Alaska and the Isthmus, between the Isthmus and the Horn, and east and west of Omaha, and east and west of Paris, Berlin, Petrograd.The blood in his right wrist and the blood in his left wrist run with the right wrist wisdom of the many and the left wrist wisdom of the many.It is the many he knows, the gaunt strong hunger of the many.
Words in this poem
- gaunt a.
- Attenuated, as with fasting or suffering; lean; meager; pinched and grim. [Cf. Norw. gand a thin pointed stick, a tall and thin man, and W. gwan weak.]
- sobbing n.
- A series of short, convulsive inspirations, the glottis being suddenly closed so that little or no air enters into the lungs.
- sequoia n.
- A genus of coniferous trees, consisting of two species, Sequoia Washingtoniana, syn. S. gigantea, the [NL. So called by Dr. Endlicher in honor of Sequoyah, who invented the Cherokee alphabet.]
- sawmill n.
- A mill for sawing, especially one for sawing timber or lumber.
- cryptic a.
- Hidden; secret; occult.
- slashed a.
- Marked or cut with a slash or slashes; deeply gashed; especially, having long, narrow openings, as a sleeve or other part of a garment, to show rich lining or under vesture.
- berlin n.
- A four-wheeled carriage, having a sheltered seat behind the body and separate from it, invented in the 17th century, at Berlin. [The capital of Prussia]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Tall Man is in the public domain. This text is taken from Cornhuskers, 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, A Tall Man, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/a-tall-man.html, id L29097.
Form and metre
A Tall Man is 18 lines in 4 stanzas. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
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.
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.
- 3 --AAA mystery · hands · peopleA · peopleA · peopleA
- 4 ---AA road · plow · petrograd · manyA · manyA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The mouth of this man is a gaunt strong mouth. | 10 | ·········· |
| The head of this man is a gaunt strong head. | 10 | ·········· |
| The jaws of this man are bone of the Rocky Mountains, the Appalachians. | 18 | ·········/˘/˘··˘/˘ |
| The eyes of this man are chlorine of two sobbing oceans, | 14 | ······/˘··/˘/˘ |
| Foam, salt, green, wind, the changing unknown. | 9 | ·····/˘˘/ |
| The neck of this man is pith of buffalo prairie, old longing and new beckoning of corn belt or cotton belt, | 28 | ········/˘·/˘·/˘··/˘˘····/˘· |
| Either a proud Sequoia trunk of the wilderness | 13 | /˘··˘/˘···/˘˘ |
| Or huddling lumber of a sawmill waiting to be a roof. | 16 | ·/˘˘/˘··/·/˘···· |
| Brother mystery to man and mob mystery, | 12 | /˘/˘˘····/˘˘ |
| Brother cryptic to lifted cryptic hands, | 10 | /˘/˘·/˘/˘· |
| He is night and abyss, he is white sky of sun, he is the head of the people. | 20 | ····˘/············/˘ |
| The heart of him the red drops of the people, | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| The wish of him the steady gray-eagle crag-hunting flights of the people. | 18 | ·····/˘·/˘·/˘···/˘ |
| Humble dust of a wheel-worn road, | 8 | /˘······ |
| Slashed sod under the iron-shining plow, | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| These of service in him, these and many cities, many borders, many wrangles between Alaska and the Isthmus, between the Isthmus and the Horn, and east and west of Omaha, and east and west of Paris, Berlin, Petrograd. | 57 | ··/˘····/˘/˘/˘/˘/˘/˘··˘/˘··/˘···/˘········/˘······/˘˘/··· |
| The blood in his right wrist and the blood in his left wrist run with the right wrist wisdom of the many and the left wrist wisdom of the many. | 34 | ··················/˘··/˘····/˘··/˘ |
| It is the many he knows, the gaunt strong hunger of the many. | 16 | ···/˘·····/˘··/˘ |
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.