Questionnaire
Have I told any man to be a liar for my sake?Have I sold ice to the poor in summer and coal to the poor in winter for the sake of daughters who nursed brindle bull terriers and led with a leash their dogs clothed in plaid wool jackets?Have I given any man an earful too much of my talk—or asked any man to take a snootful of booze on my account?Have I put wool in my own ears when men tried to tell me what was good for me? Have I been a bum listener?Have I taken dollars from the living and the unborn while I made speeches on the retributions that shadow the heels of the dishonest?Have I done any good under cover? Or have I always put it in the show windows and the newspapers?
Words in this poem
- liar n.
- A person who knowingly utters falsehood; one who lies. [OE. liere. See Lie to falsify.]
- brindle n.
- The state of being brindled. [See Brindled.]
- unborn a.
- Not born; no yet brought into life; being still to appear; future.
- dishonest a.
- Dishonorable; shameful; indecent; unchaste; lewd. [Pref. dis- + honest: cf. F. déshonnête, OF. deshoneste.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Questionnaire 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, Questionnaire, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/questionnaire.html, id L29045.
Form and metre
Questionnaire is 6 lines in a single stanza. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Have I told any man to be a liar for my sake? | 14 | ···/˘····/˘··· |
| Have I sold ice to the poor in summer and coal to the poor in winter for the sake of daughters who nursed brindle bull terriers and led with a leash their dogs clothed in plaid wool jackets? | 45 | ········/˘······/˘····/˘··/˘·/˘˘···········/˘ |
| Have I given any man an earful too much of my talk—or asked any man to take a snootful of booze on my account? | 31 | ··/˘/˘···········/˘··········˘/ |
| Have I put wool in my own ears when men tried to tell me what was good for me? Have I been a bum listener? | 27 | ························/˘˘ |
| Have I taken dollars from the living and the unborn while I made speeches on the retributions that shadow the heels of the dishonest? | 35 | ··/˘/˘··/˘··//···/˘···˘/˘·/·····˘/˘ |
| Have I done any good under cover? Or have I always put it in the show windows and the newspapers? | 27 | ···/˘···/˘···/······/˘··/·˘ |
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.