Cool Tombs
When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin...in the dust, in the cool tombs.
And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes...in the dust, in the cool tombs.
Pocahontas' body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or a pawpaw in May, did she wonder? does she remember?...in the dust, in the cool tombs?
Take any streetful of people buying clothes and groceries, cheering a hero or throwing confetti and blowing tin horns...tell me if the lovers are losers...tell me if any get more than the lovers...in the dust...in the cool tombs.
Words in this poem
- confetti n.
- Bonbons; sweetmeats; confections; also, plaster or paper imitations of, or substitutes for, bonbons, often used by carnival revelers, at weddings, etc.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Cool Tombs 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, Cool Tombs, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/cool-tombs.html, id L29082.
Form and metre
Cool Tombs is 4 lines in 4 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 |
|---|---|---|
| When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin...in the dust, in the cool tombs. | 32 | ·/˘·/˘·/˘·····˘/·/˘···˘/˘······· |
| And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes...in the dust, in the cool tombs. | 30 | ·˘/˘············˘/˘˘·/˘······· |
| Pocahontas' body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or a pawpaw in May, did she wonder? does she remember?...in the dust, in the cool tombs? | 43 | ·˘/˘/˘/˘··/˘······˘/˘········/˘··˘/˘······· |
| Take any streetful of people buying clothes and groceries, cheering a hero or throwing confetti and blowing tin horns...tell me if the lovers are losers...tell me if any get more than the lovers...in the dust...in the cool tombs. | 58 | ·/˘···/˘/˘··/˘˘/˘·/˘·/˘˘/˘·/˘······/˘·/˘···/˘····/˘······· |
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.