Garden Wireless
How many feet ran with sunlight, water, and air?
What little devils shaken of laughter, cramming their little ribs with chuckles,
Fixed this lone red tulip, a woman's mouth of passion kisses, a nun's mouth of sweet thinking, here topping a straight line of green, a pillar stem?
Who hurled this bomb of red caresses?—nodding balloon-film shooting its wireless every fraction of a second these June days:Love me before I die;Love me — love me now.
Words in this poem
- lone n.
- A lane. See Loanin.
- tulip n.
- Any plant of the liliaceous genus Tulipa. Many varieties are cultivated for their beautiful, often variegated flowers. Tulip tree. [F. tulipe, OF. also tulipan, It. tulipano, tulipa, from Turk. tulbend, dulbend, literally, a turban, Per. dulband; -- so called from the resemblance of the form]
- topping a.
- Rising above; surpassing.
- bomb n.
- A great noise; a hollow sound. [F. bombe bombshell, fr. L. bombus a humming or buzzing noise, Gr. .]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Garden Wireless 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, Garden Wireless, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/garden-wireless.html, id L29080.
Form and metre
Garden Wireless is 6 lines in 4 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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| How many feet ran with sunlight, water, and air? | 12 | ·/˘···/·/˘·· |
| What little devils shaken of laughter, cramming their little ribs with chuckles, | 19 | ·/˘/˘/˘·/˘/˘·/˘··/˘ |
| Fixed this lone red tulip, a woman's mouth of passion kisses, a nun's mouth of sweet thinking, here topping a straight line of green, a pillar stem? | 34 | ····/˘·/˘··/˘/˘·····/˘·/˘······/˘· |
| Who hurled this bomb of red caresses?—nodding balloon-film shooting its wireless every fraction of a second these June days: | 31 | ······˘/˘/˘˘/·/˘·/˘/˘˘/˘··/˘··· |
| Love me before I die; | 6 | ······ |
| Love me — love me now. | 5 | ····· |
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.