Bringers
Cover me overIn dusk and dust and dreams.
Cover me overAnd leave me alone.
Cover me over,You tireless, great.
Hear me and cover me,Bringers of dusk and dust and dreams.
About this text
Bringers 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, Bringers, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/bringers.html, id L29071.
Form and metre
Bringers is 8 lines in 4 stanzas of 2 lines each. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Cover me over | 5 | /˘··· |
| In dusk and dust and dreams. | 6 | ······ |
| Cover me over | 5 | /˘··· |
| And leave me alone. | 5 | ···˘/ |
| Cover me over, | 5 | /˘··· |
| You tireless, great. | 5 | ·/˘˘· |
| Hear me and cover me, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Bringers of dusk and dust and dreams. | 8 | ········ |
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.