Near Keokuk
Thirty-two Greeks are dipping their feet in a creek.Sloshing their bare feet in a cool flow of clear water.All one midsummer day ten hours the Greeksstand in leather shoes shoveling gravel.Now they hold their toes and anklesto the drift of running water.Then they go to the bunk carsand eat mulligan and prune sauce.Smoke one or two pipefuls, look at the stars,tell smutty storiesAbout men and women they have known,countries they have seen,Railroads they have built—and then the deep sleep of children.
Words in this poem
- midsummer n.
- The middle of summer. Shak. Midsummer daisy (Bot.), the oxeye daisy. [AS. midsumor.]
- bunk n.
- A wooden case or box, which serves for a seat in the daytime and for a bed at night. [U.S.] [Cf. OSw. bunke heap, also boaring, flooring. Cf. Bunch.]
- smutty a.
- Soiled with smut; smutted.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Near Keokuk 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, Near Keokuk, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/near-keokuk.html, id L29046.
Form and metre
Near Keokuk is 14 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 72%).
See other poems in trochaic 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---AB-B-CC-C creek · waterA · greeks · gravel · ankles · waterA · carsB · sauce · starsB · stories · knownC · seenC · built · childrenC
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Thirty-two Greeks are dipping their feet in a creek. | 12 | /˘···/˘····· |
| Sloshing their bare feet in a cool flow of clear water. | 13 | /˘·········/˘ |
| All one midsummer day ten hours the Greeks | 11 | ··//˘··/˘·· |
| stand in leather shoes shoveling gravel. | 9 | ··/˘·/˘/˘ |
| Now they hold their toes and ankles | 8 | ······/˘ |
| to the drift of running water. | 8 | ····/˘/˘ |
| Then they go to the bunk cars | 7 | ······· |
| and eat mulligan and prune sauce. | 8 | ··/˘˘··· |
| Smoke one or two pipefuls, look at the stars, | 11 | ··········· |
| tell smutty stories | 5 | ·/˘/˘ |
| About men and women they have known, | 9 | ····/˘··· |
| countries they have seen, | 5 | /˘··· |
| Railroads they have built— | 5 | /···· |
| and then the deep sleep of children. | 8 | ······/˘ |
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.