Humdrum
If I had a million lives to liveand a million deaths to diein a million humdrum worlds,I'd like to change my nameand have a new house number to go byeach and every time I diedand started life all over again.
I wouldn't want the same name every timeand the same old house number always,dying a million deaths,dying one by one a million times:—would you?or you?or you?
Words in this poem
- humdrum a.
- Monotonous; dull; commonplace.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Humdrum 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, Humdrum, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/humdrum.html, id L29052.
Form and metre
Humdrum is 14 lines in 2 stanzas of 7 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
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-- live · dieA · worlds · name · byA · died · again
- 2 ----AAA time · always · deaths · times · youA · youA · youA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| If I had a million lives to live | 9 | ····/˘··· |
| and a million deaths to die | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| in a million humdrum worlds, | 7 | ··/˘/·· |
| I'd like to change my name | 6 | ······ |
| and have a new house number to go by | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| each and every time I died | 8 | ··/˘˘··· |
| and started life all over again. | 9 | ·/˘····˘/ |
| I wouldn't want the same name every time | 11 | ·/˘····/˘˘· |
| and the same old house number always, | 9 | ·····/˘/· |
| dying a million deaths, | 6 | /˘·/˘· |
| dying one by one a million times: | 9 | /˘····/˘· |
| —would you? | 2 | ·· |
| or you? | 2 | ·· |
| or you? | 2 | ·· |
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.