Mammy Hums
This is the song I rested with:The right shoulder of a strong man I leaned on.The face of the rain that drizzled on the short neck of a canal boat.The eyes of a child who slept while death went over and under.The petals of peony pink that fluttered in a shot of wind come and gone.
This is the song I rested with:Head, heels, and fingers rocked to the nigger mammy humming of it, to the mile-off steamboat landing whistle of it.
The murmurs run with bees' wingsin a late summer sun.They go and come with white surfslamming on a beach all day.
Get this.And then you may sleep with a late afternoon slumber sun.Then you may slip your head in an elbow knowing nothing—only sleep.If so you sleep in the house of our song,If so you sleep under the apple trees of our song,Then the face of sleep must be the one face you were looking for.
Words in this poem
- went n.
- Course; way; path; journey; direction.
- nigger n.
- A negro; -- in vulgar derision or depreciation.
- mammy n.
- A child's name for mamma, mother.
- afternoon n.
- The part of the day which follows noon, between noon and evening.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Mammy Hums 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, Mammy Hums, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/mammy-hums.html, id L29070.
Form and metre
Mammy Hums is 17 lines in 4 stanzas. 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 with · onA · boat · under · goneA
- 4 ---AA- this · sun · sleep · songA · songA · for
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 |
|---|---|---|
| This is the song I rested with: | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The right shoulder of a strong man I leaned on. | 11 | ··/˘······· |
| The face of the rain that drizzled on the short neck of a canal boat. | 17 | ······/˘······˘/· |
| The eyes of a child who slept while death went over and under. | 15 | ··············· |
| The petals of peony pink that fluttered in a shot of wind come and gone. | 19 | ·/˘·/˘˘··/˘········ |
| This is the song I rested with: | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Head, heels, and fingers rocked to the nigger mammy humming of it, to the mile-off steamboat landing whistle of it. | 28 | ···/˘···/˘/˘/˘······/·/˘/˘·· |
| The murmurs run with bees' wings | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| in a late summer sun. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| They go and come with white surf | 7 | ······· |
| slamming on a beach all day. | 7 | /˘····· |
| Get this. | 2 | ·· |
| And then you may sleep with a late afternoon slumber sun. | 14 | ·········˘//˘· |
| Then you may slip your head in an elbow knowing nothing—only sleep. | 17 | ········/·/˘/˘/˘· |
| If so you sleep in the house of our song, | 11 | ········/˘· |
| If so you sleep under the apple trees of our song, | 14 | ·······/˘··/˘· |
| Then the face of sleep must be the one face you were looking for. | 15 | ············/˘· |
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.