Medallion
The brass medallion profile of your face I keep always.It is not jingling with loose change in my pockets.It is not stuck up in a show place on the office wall.I carry it in a special secret pocket in the dayAnd it is under my pillow at night.The brass came from a long ways off: it was up against hell and high water, fire and flood, before the face was put on it.It is the side of a head; a woman wishes; a woman waits; a woman swears behind silent lips that the sea will bring home what is gone.
Words in this poem
- medallion n.
- A large medal or memorial coin. [F. médaillion, It. medaglione, augm. of medaglia. See Medal.]
- jingling n.
- The act or process of producing a jingle; also, the sound itself; a chink.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Medallion 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, Medallion, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/medallion.html, id L29067.
Form and metre
Medallion is 7 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic heptameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 76%).
See other poems in iambic heptameter.
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 heptameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The brass medallion profile of your face I keep always. | 14 | ··˘/˘/······/· |
| It is not jingling with loose change in my pockets. | 13 | ···/˘˘·····/˘ |
| It is not stuck up in a show place on the office wall. | 14 | ···········/˘· |
| I carry it in a special secret pocket in the day | 15 | ·/˘···/˘/˘/˘··· |
| And it is under my pillow at night. | 10 | ······/˘·· |
| The brass came from a long ways off: it was up against hell and high water, fire and flood, before the face was put on it. | 30 | ················/˘/˘·········· |
| It is the side of a head; a woman wishes; a woman waits; a woman swears behind silent lips that the sea will bring home what is gone. | 34 | ········/˘/˘·/˘··/˘···/˘·········· |
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.