Have Me
Have me in the blue and the sun.Have me on the open sea and the mountains.
When I go into the grass of the sea floor, I will go alone.This is where I came from—the chlorine and the salt are blood and bones.It is here the nostrils rush the air to the lungs. It is here oxygen clamors to be let in.And here in the root grass of the sea floor I will go alone.
Love goes far. Here love ends.Have me in the blue and the sun.
About this text
Have Me 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, Have Me, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/have-me.html, id L29074.
Form and metre
Have Me is 8 lines in 3 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.
- 2 A-AA aloneA · bones · inA · aloneA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Have me in the blue and the sun. | 8 | ········ |
| Have me on the open sea and the mountains. | 11 | ····/˘···/˘ |
| When I go into the grass of the sea floor, I will go alone. | 16 | ··············˘/ |
| This is where I came from—the chlorine and the salt are blood and bones. | 16 | ·······/˘······· |
| It is here the nostrils rush the air to the lungs. It is here oxygen clamors to be let in. | 24 | ····/˘·········/˘˘/˘···· |
| And here in the root grass of the sea floor I will go alone. | 15 | ·············˘/ |
| Love goes far. Here love ends. | 6 | ······ |
| Have me in the blue and the sun. | 8 | ········ |
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.