Bricklayer Love
I thought of killing myself because I am only a bricklayer and you a woman who loves the man who runs a drug store.
I don't care like I used to; I lay bricks straighter than I used to and I sing slower handling the trowel afternoons.
When the sun is in my eyes and the ladders are shaky and the mortar boards go wrong, I think of you.
Words in this poem
- bricklayer n.
- One whose pccupation is to build with bricks. Bricklayer's itch. See under Itch. [Brick + lay.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Bricklayer Love 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, Bricklayer Love, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/bricklayer-love.html, id L29068.
Form and metre
Bricklayer Love is 3 lines in 3 stanzas of 1 lines each. 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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I thought of killing myself because I am only a bricklayer and you a woman who loves the man who runs a drug store. | 31 | ···/˘·/····/˘·/·˘···/˘········· |
| I don't care like I used to; I lay bricks straighter than I used to and I sing slower handling the trowel afternoons. | 29 | ··········/˘·······/˘/˘·/˘·˘/ |
| When the sun is in my eyes and the ladders are shaky and the mortar boards go wrong, I think of you. | 25 | ·········/˘·/˘··/˘······· |
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.