Loin Cloth
Body of Jesus taken down from the crossCarved in ivory by a lover of Christ,It is a child's handful you are here,The breadth of a man's finger,And this ivory loin clothSpeaks an interspersal in the day's work,The carver's prayer and whimAnd Christ-love.
Words in this poem
- handful n.
- As much as the hand will grasp or contain. [AS. handfull.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Loin Cloth 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, Loin Cloth, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/loin-cloth.html, id L29064.
Form and metre
Loin Cloth is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 75%).
See other poems in iambic 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.
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Body of Jesus taken down from the cross | 11 | /˘·/˘/˘···· |
| Carved in ivory by a lover of Christ, | 11 | ··/˘˘··/˘·· |
| It is a child's handful you are here, | 9 | ····/···· |
| The breadth of a man's finger, | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| And this ivory loin cloth | 7 | ··/˘˘·· |
| Speaks an interspersal in the day's work, | 10 | ·········· |
| The carver's prayer and whim | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| And Christ-love. | 3 | ··· |
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.