Falltime
Gold of a ripe oat straw, gold of a southwest moon,Canada thistle blue and flimmering larkspur blue,Tomatoes shining in the October sun with red hearts,Shining five and six in a row on a wooden fence,Why do you keep wishes on your faces all day long,Wishes like women with half-forgotten lovers going to new cities?What is there for you in the birds, the birds, the birds, crying down on the north wind in September, acres of birds spotting the air going south?Is there something finished? And some new beginning on the way?
About this text
Falltime 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, Falltime, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/falltime.html, id L29002.
Form and metre
Falltime is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic heptameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 70%).
See other poems in trochaic heptameter.
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 trochaic heptameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Gold of a ripe oat straw, gold of a southwest moon, | 12 | ··········/· |
| Canada thistle blue and flimmering larkspur blue, | 13 | /˘˘/˘·····/·· |
| Tomatoes shining in the October sun with red hearts, | 14 | ˘/˘/˘··˘/˘···· |
| Shining five and six in a row on a wooden fence, | 13 | /˘········/˘· |
| Why do you keep wishes on your faces all day long, | 13 | ····/˘··/˘··· |
| Wishes like women with half-forgotten lovers going to new cities? | 18 | /˘·/˘··˘/˘/˘/˘··/˘ |
| What is there for you in the birds, the birds, the birds, crying down on the north wind in September, acres of birds spotting the air going south? | 34 | ············/˘······˘/˘/˘··/˘··/˘· |
| Is there something finished? And some new beginning on the way? | 15 | ··/˘/˘···˘/˘··· |
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.