Kreisler
Sell me a violin, mister, of old mysterious wood.Sell me a fiddle that has kissed dark nights on the forehead where men kiss sisters they love.Sell me dried wood that has ached with passion clutching the knees and arms of a storm.Sell me horsehair and rosin that has sucked at the breasts of the morning sun for milk.Sell me something crushed in the heartsblood of pain readier than ever for one more song.
Words in this poem
- mister n.
- A trade, art, or occupation. [OF. mistier trade, office, ministry, need, F. métier trade, fr. L. ministerium service, office, ministry. See Ministry, Mystery trade.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Kreisler 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, Kreisler, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/kreisler.html, id L29061.
Form and metre
Kreisler is 5 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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Sell me a violin, mister, of old mysterious wood. | 15 | ···˘˘//˘··˘/˘˘· |
| Sell me a fiddle that has kissed dark nights on the forehead where men kiss sisters they love. | 21 | ···/˘·······/˘···/˘·· |
| Sell me dried wood that has ached with passion clutching the knees and arms of a storm. | 19 | ········/˘/˘······· |
| Sell me horsehair and rosin that has sucked at the breasts of the morning sun for milk. | 20 | ··/˘·/˘········/˘··· |
| Sell me something crushed in the heartsblood of pain readier than ever for one more song. | 21 | ··/˘·······/˘˘·/˘···· |
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.