Clocks
Here is a face that says half-past seven the same way whether a murder or a wedding goes on, whether a funeral or a picnic crowd passes.A tall one I know at the end of a hallway broods in shadows and is watching booze eat out the insides of the man of the house; it has seen five hopes go in five years: one woman, one child, and three dreams.A little one carried in a leather box by an actress rides with her to hotels and is under her pillow in a sleeping-car between one-night stands.One hoists a phiz over a railroad station; it points numbers to people a quarter-mile away who believe it when other clocks fail.And of course...there are wrist watches over the pulses of airmen eager to go to France...
Words in this poem
- actress n.
- A female actor or doer. Cockeram. [Cf. F. actrice.]
- phiz n.
- The face or visage. [Contr. fr. physiognomy.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Clocks 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, Clocks, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/clocks.html, id L29041.
Form and metre
Clocks is 5 lines in a single stanza. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Here is a face that says half-past seven the same way whether a murder or a wedding goes on, whether a funeral or a picnic crowd passes. | 37 | ········/˘······/˘··/˘·····/˘˘··/··/˘ |
| A tall one I know at the end of a hallway broods in shadows and is watching booze eat out the insides of the man of the house; it has seen five hopes go in five years: one woman, one child, and three dreams. | 49 | ··········/···/···/˘····˘/················/˘····· |
| A little one carried in a leather box by an actress rides with her to hotels and is under her pillow in a sleeping-car between one-night stands. | 38 | ·/˘·/˘··/˘···/˘····˘/·····/˘··/˘······ |
| One hoists a phiz over a railroad station; it points numbers to people a quarter-mile away who believe it when other clocks fail. | 33 | ·······/·/˘··/˘·/˘·/˘·˘/·˘/··/˘·· |
| And of course...there are wrist watches over the pulses of airmen eager to go to France... | 22 | ······/˘···/˘·/·/˘···· |
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.