Prairie Waters by Night
Chatter of birds two by two raises a night song joining a litany of running water—sheer waters showing the russet of old stones remembering many rains.
And the long willows drowse on the shoulders of the running water, and sleep from much music; joined songs of day-end, feathery throats and stony waters, in a choir chanting new psalms.
It is too much for the long willows when low laughter of a red moon comes down; and the willows drowse and sleep on the shoulders of the running water.
Words in this poem
- drowse v. i.
- To sleep imperfectly or unsoundly; to slumber; to be heavy with sleepiness; to doze. [AS. dr, dr, to sink, become slow or inactive; cf. OD. droosen to be sleepy, fall asleep, LG. dr, druusken, to slumber, fall down with a noise; prob, akin to AS.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Prairie Waters by Night 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, Prairie Waters by Night, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/prairie-waters-by-night.html, id L28998.
Form and metre
Prairie Waters by Night is 3 lines in 3 stanzas of 1 lines each. 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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Chatter of birds two by two raises a night song joining a litany of running water—sheer waters showing the russet of old stones remembering many rains. | 41 | /˘·····/˘···/˘·/˘˘·/˘/˘·/˘/˘·/˘···˘/˘˘/˘· |
| And the long willows drowse on the shoulders of the running water, and sleep from much music; joined songs of day-end, feathery throats and stony waters, in a choir chanting new psalms. | 44 | ···/····/˘··/˘/˘····/˘·····/˘˘··/˘/˘··/˘/˘·· |
| It is too much for the long willows when low laughter of a red moon comes down; and the willows drowse and sleep on the shoulders of the running water. | 36 | ·······/···/˘········/······/˘··/˘/˘ |
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.