Flanders
Flanders, the name of a place, a country of people,Spells itself with letters, is written in books.
"Where is Flanders?" was asked one time,Flanders known only to those who lived thereAnd milked cows and made cheese and spoke the home language.
"Where is Flanders?" was asked.And the slang adepts shot the reply: Search me.
A few thousand people milking cows, raising radishes,On a land of salt grass and dunes, sand-swept with a sea-breath on it:This was Flanders, the unknown, the quiet,The place where cows hunted lush cuds of green on lowlands,And the raw-boned plowmen took horses with long shanksOut in the dawn to the sea-breath.
Flanders sat slow-spoken amid slow-swung windmills,Slow-circling windmill arms turning north or west,Turning to talk to the swaggering winds, the childish winds,So Flanders sat with the heart of a kitchen girlWashing wooden bowls in the winter sun by a window.
Words in this poem
- spoke n.
- The radius or ray of a wheel; one of the small bars which are inserted in the hub, or nave, and which serve to support the rim or felly. [OE. spoke, spake, AS, spaca; akin to D. speek, LG. speke, OHG. speihha, G. speiche. sq. root170. Cf. Spike a nail.]
- lush a.
- Full of juice or succulence. [Prob. an abbrev. of lushious, fr. luscious.]
- amid prep.
- In the midst or middle of; surrounded or encompassed by; among. [OE. amidde, amiddes, on midden, AS. on middan, in the middle, fr. midde the middle. The s is an adverbial ending, originally marking the genitive; the t is a la]
- windmill n.
- A mill operated by the power of the wind, usually by the action of the wind upon oblique vanes or sails which radiate from a horizontal shaft.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Flanders 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, Flanders, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/flanders.html, id L29087.
Form and metre
Flanders is 18 lines in 5 stanzas. 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.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 4 -AA--- radishes · itA · quietA · lowlands · shanks · breath
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Flanders, the name of a place, a country of people, | 13 | /˘······/˘·/˘ |
| Spells itself with letters, is written in books. | 11 | ·˘/·/˘·/˘·· |
| "Where is Flanders?" was asked one time, | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| Flanders known only to those who lived there | 10 | /˘·/˘····· |
| And milked cows and made cheese and spoke the home language. | 12 | ··········/˘ |
| "Where is Flanders?" was asked. | 6 | ··/˘·· |
| And the slang adepts shot the reply: Search me. | 11 | ···˘/··˘/·· |
| A few thousand people milking cows, raising radishes, | 14 | ··/˘/˘/˘·/˘/˘˘ |
| On a land of salt grass and dunes, sand-swept with a sea-breath on it: | 16 | ················ |
| This was Flanders, the unknown, the quiet, | 10 | ··/˘·˘/·/˘ |
| The place where cows hunted lush cuds of green on lowlands, | 13 | ····/˘·····/· |
| And the raw-boned plowmen took horses with long shanks | 12 | ·······/˘··· |
| Out in the dawn to the sea-breath. | 8 | ········ |
| Flanders sat slow-spoken amid slow-swung windmills, | 12 | /˘··/˘˘/··/· |
| Slow-circling windmill arms turning north or west, | 12 | ·/˘˘/··/˘··· |
| Turning to talk to the swaggering winds, the childish winds, | 14 | /˘····/˘˘··/˘· |
| So Flanders sat with the heart of a kitchen girl | 12 | ·/˘······/˘· |
| Washing wooden bowls in the winter sun by a window. | 14 | /˘/˘···/˘···/˘ |
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.