Adelaide Crapsey
Among the bumble-bees in red-top hay, a freckled field of brown-eyed Susans dripping yellow leaves in July,I read your heart in a book.
And your mouth of blue pansy—I know somewhere I have seen it rain-shattered.
And I have seen a woman with her head flung between her naked knees, and her head held there listening to the sea, the great naked sea shouldering a load of salt.
And the blue pansy mouth sang to the sea:Mother of God, I'm so little a thing,Let me sing longer,Only a little longer.
And the sea shouldered its salt in long gray combers hauling new shapes on the beach sand.
Words in this poem
- freckled a.
- Marked with freckles; spotted.
- dripping n.
- A falling in drops, or the sound so made.
- somewhere adv.
- In some place unknown or not specified; in one place or another.
- shouldered a.
- Having shoulders; -- used in composition; as, a broad- shouldered man.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Adelaide Crapsey 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, Adelaide Crapsey, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/adelaide-crapsey.html, id L29021.
Form and metre
Adelaide Crapsey is 9 lines in 5 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.
- 4 --AA sea · thing · longerA · longerA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Among the bumble-bees in red-top hay, a freckled field of brown-eyed Susans dripping yellow leaves in July, | 27 | ···/˘······/˘····/˘/˘/˘···/ |
| I read your heart in a book. | 7 | ······· |
| And your mouth of blue pansy—I know somewhere I have seen it rain-shattered. | 18 | ·····/˘··/······/˘ |
| And I have seen a woman with her head flung between her naked knees, and her head held there listening to the sea, the great naked sea shouldering a load of salt. | 40 | ·····/˘·······/˘······/˘˘·····/˘·/˘˘···· |
| And the blue pansy mouth sang to the sea: | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Mother of God, I'm so little a thing, | 10 | /˘····/˘·· |
| Let me sing longer, | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Only a little longer. | 7 | /˘·/˘/˘ |
| And the sea shouldered its salt in long gray combers hauling new shapes on the beach sand. | 20 | ···/˘·····/˘/˘······ |
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.