Localities
Wagon Wheel Gap is a place I never sawAnd Red Horse Gulch and the chutes of Cripple Creek.
Red-shirted miners picking in the sluices,Gamblers with red neckties in the night streets,The fly-by-night towns of Bull Frog and Skiddoo,The night-cool limestone white of Death Valley,The straight drop of eight hundred feetFrom a shelf road in the Hasiampa Valley:Men and places they are I never saw.
I have seen three White Horse taverns,One in Illinois, one in Pennsylvania,One in a timber-hid road of Wisconsin.
I bought cheese and crackersBetween sun showers in a place called White PigeonNestling with a blacksmith shop, a post-office,And a berry-crate factory, where four roads cross.
On the Pecatonica River near FreeportI have seen boys run barefoot in the leavesThrowing clubs at the walnut treesIn the yellow-and-gold of autumn,And there was a brown mash dry on the inside of their hands.
On the Cedar Fork Creek of Knox CountyI know how the fingers of late OctoberLoosen the hazel nuts.I know the brown eyes of half-open hulls.I know boys named Lindquist, Swanson, Hildebrand.I remember their cries when the nuts were ripe.And some are in machine shops; some are in the navy;And some are not on payrolls anywhere.Their mothers are through waiting for them to come home.
Words in this poem
- gulch n.
- Act of gulching or gulping.
- cripple n.
- One who creeps, halts, or limps; one who has lost, or never had, the use of a limb or limbs; a lame person; hence, one who is partially disabled. [OE. cripel, crepel, crupel, AS. crypel (akin to D. kreuple, G. kr, Dan. kr, Icel. kryppill), prop., one that can not walk, but must creep, fr. AS. cre to creep.]
- illinois n.
- A tribe of North American Indians, which formerly occupied the region between the Wabash and Mississippi rivers.
- nestling n.
- A young bird which has not abandoned the nest. Piers Plowman.
- blacksmith n.
- A smith who works in iron with a forge, and makes iron utensils, horseshoes, etc. [Black (in allusion to the color of the metal) + smith. Cf. Whitesmith.]
- barefoot a.
- With the feet bare; without shoes or stockings.
- county n.
- An earldom; the domain of a count or earl. [F. comt, fr. LL. comitatus. See Count.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Localities 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, Localities, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/localities.html, id L29011.
Form and metre
Localities is 30 lines in 6 stanzas. The metre is trochaic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 70%).
See other poems in trochaic pentameter.
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-A- sluices · streets · skiddoo · valleyA · feet · valleyA · saw
- 4 --AA crackers · pigeon · officeA · crossA
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 trochaic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Wagon Wheel Gap is a place I never saw | 11 | /˘······/˘· |
| And Red Horse Gulch and the chutes of Cripple Creek. | 11 | ········/˘· |
| Red-shirted miners picking in the sluices, | 11 | ·/˘/˘/˘··/˘ |
| Gamblers with red neckties in the night streets, | 10 | /˘··/····· |
| The fly-by-night towns of Bull Frog and Skiddoo, | 11 | ··········· |
| The night-cool limestone white of Death Valley, | 10 | ···/····/˘ |
| The straight drop of eight hundred feet | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| From a shelf road in the Hasiampa Valley: | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| Men and places they are I never saw. | 10 | ··/˘···/˘· |
| I have seen three White Horse taverns, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| One in Illinois, one in Pennsylvania, | 11 | ···˘/···˘/˘ |
| One in a timber-hid road of Wisconsin. | 11 | ···/˘···˘/˘ |
| I bought cheese and crackers | 6 | ····/˘ |
| Between sun showers in a place called White Pigeon | 12 | ···/˘·····/˘ |
| Nestling with a blacksmith shop, a post-office, | 11 | /˘··/····/˘ |
| And a berry-crate factory, where four roads cross. | 12 | ··/˘·/˘˘···· |
| On the Pecatonica River near Freeport | 12 | ·······/˘·/· |
| I have seen boys run barefoot in the leaves | 10 | ·····/···· |
| Throwing clubs at the walnut trees | 8 | /˘···/·· |
| In the yellow-and-gold of autumn, | 9 | ··/˘···/˘ |
| And there was a brown mash dry on the inside of their hands. | 14 | ·········˘/··· |
| On the Cedar Fork Creek of Knox County | 10 | ··/˘····/˘ |
| I know how the fingers of late October | 11 | ····/˘··˘/˘ |
| Loosen the hazel nuts. | 6 | /˘·/˘· |
| I know the brown eyes of half-open hulls. | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| I know boys named Lindquist, Swanson, Hildebrand. | 11 | ····/·/˘/˘· |
| I remember their cries when the nuts were ripe. | 11 | ·˘/˘······· |
| And some are in machine shops; some are in the navy; | 13 | ····˘/·····/˘ |
| And some are not on payrolls anywhere. | 10 | ·····/·/˘· |
| Their mothers are through waiting for them to come home. | 12 | ·/˘··/˘····· |
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