Repetitions
They are crying salt tearsOver the beautiful beloved bodyOf Inez Milholland,Because they are glad she lived,Because she loved open-armed,Throwing love for a cheap thingBelonging to everybody—Cheap as sunlight,And morning air.
About this text
Repetitions 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, Repetitions, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/repetitions.html, id L29020.
Form and metre
Repetitions is 9 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.
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-- tears · bodyA · milholland · lived · armed · thing · everybodyA · sunlight · air
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 |
|---|---|---|
| They are crying salt tears | 6 | ··/˘·· |
| Over the beautiful beloved body | 10 | ···/˘˘˘//˘ |
| Of Inez Milholland, | 6 | ···/˘˘ |
| Because they are glad she lived, | 7 | ······· |
| Because she loved open-armed, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Throwing love for a cheap thing | 7 | /˘····· |
| Belonging to everybody— | 8 | ˘/˘·/˘·˘ |
| Cheap as sunlight, | 4 | ··/· |
| And morning air. | 4 | ·/˘· |
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.