House
Two Swede families live downstairs and an Irish policeman upstairs, and an old soldier, Uncle Joe.Two Swede boys go upstairs and see Joe. His wife is dead, his only son is dead, and his two daughters in Missouri and Texas don't want him around.The boys and Uncle Joe crack walnuts with a hammer on the bottom of a flatiron while the January wind howls and the zero air weaves laces on the window glass.Joe tells the Swede boys all about Chickamauga and Chattanooga, how the Union soldiers crept in rain somewhere a dark night and ran forward and killed many Rebels, took flags, held a hill, and won a victory told about in the histories in school.Joe takes a piece of carpenter's chalk, draws lines on the floor and piles stove wood to show where six regiments were slaughtered climbing a slope."Here they went" and "Here they went," says Joe, and the January wind howls and the zero air weaves laces on the window glass.The two Swede boys go downstairs with a big blur of guns, men, and hills in their heads. They eat herring and potatoes and tell the family war is a wonder and soldiers are a wonder.One breaks out with a cry at supper: I wish we had a war now and I could be a soldier.
Words in this poem
- swede n.
- A native or inhabitant of Sweden. [Cf. G. Schwede.]
- downstairs adv.
- Down the stairs; to a lower floor.
- upstairs adv.
- Up the stairs; in or toward an upper story.
- january n.
- The first month of the year, containing thirty-one days. [L. Januarius, fr. Janus an old Latin deity, the god of the sun and the year, to whom the month of January was sacred; cf. janua a door, Skr. ya to go.]
- zero
- A cipher; nothing; naught. [F. zéro, from Ar. çafrun, çifrun, empty, a cipher. Cf. Cipher.]
- somewhere adv.
- In some place unknown or not specified; in one place or another.
- went n.
- Course; way; path; journey; direction.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
House 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, House, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/house.html, id L29090.
Form and metre
House is 8 lines in a single stanza. 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.
- 1 --A--A-- joe · around · glassA · school · slope · glassA · wonder · soldier
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Two Swede families live downstairs and an Irish policeman upstairs, and an old soldier, Uncle Joe. | 25 | ··/˘˘·//··/˘˘/˘˘/···/˘/˘· |
| Two Swede boys go upstairs and see Joe. His wife is dead, his only son is dead, and his two daughters in Missouri and Texas don't want him around. | 36 | ····˘/········/˘······/˘·˘/˘·/˘····· |
| The boys and Uncle Joe crack walnuts with a hammer on the bottom of a flatiron while the January wind howls and the zero air weaves laces on the window glass. | 42 | ···/˘··/···/˘··/˘··/˘··/˘·˘····/˘··/˘··/˘· |
| Joe tells the Swede boys all about Chickamauga and Chattanooga, how the Union soldiers crept in rain somewhere a dark night and ran forward and killed many Rebels, took flags, held a hill, and won a victory told about in the histories in school. | 62 | ··············˘/˘··/˘/˘···/······/˘··/˘/˘········/˘˘·····/˘˘·· |
| Joe takes a piece of carpenter's chalk, draws lines on the floor and piles stove wood to show where six regiments were slaughtered climbing a slope. | 32 | ·····/˘˘··············/˘˘·/˘/˘·· |
| "Here they went" and "Here they went," says Joe, and the January wind howls and the zero air weaves laces on the window glass. | 30 | ···········/˘·˘····/˘··/˘··/˘· |
| The two Swede boys go downstairs with a big blur of guns, men, and hills in their heads. They eat herring and potatoes and tell the family war is a wonder and soldiers are a wonder. | 45 | ·····//··············/˘·˘/˘···/˘˘···/˘·/˘··/˘ |
| One breaks out with a cry at supper: I wish we had a war now and I could be a soldier. | 23 | ·······/˘············/˘ |
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.