Girl in a Cage
Here in a cage the dollars come down.To the click of a tube the dollars tumble.And out of a mouth the dollars run.
I finger the dollars,Paper and silver,Thousands a day.
Some days it's funto finger the dollars.Some days...the dollars keep onin a sob or a whisper:A flame of rose in the hair,A flame of silk at the throat.
About this text
Girl in a Cage 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, Girl in a Cage, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/girl-in-a-cage.html, id L29028.
Form and metre
Girl in a Cage is 13 lines in 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%).
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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.
- 3 -AA---- fun · dollarsA · daysA · on · whisper · hair · throat
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Here in a cage the dollars come down. | 9 | ·····/˘·· |
| To the click of a tube the dollars tumble. | 11 | ·······/˘/˘ |
| And out of a mouth the dollars run. | 9 | ······/˘· |
| I finger the dollars, | 6 | ·/˘·/˘ |
| Paper and silver, | 5 | /˘·/˘ |
| Thousands a day. | 4 | /˘·· |
| Some days it's fun | 4 | ···· |
| to finger the dollars. | 6 | ·/˘·/˘ |
| Some days... | 2 | ·· |
| the dollars keep on | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| in a sob or a whisper: | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| A flame of rose in the hair, | 7 | ······· |
| A flame of silk at the throat. | 7 | ······· |
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.