Shenandoah
In the Shenandoah Valley, one rider gray and one rider blue, and the sun on the riders wondering.
Piled in the Shenandoah, riders blue and riders gray, piled with shovels, one and another, dust in the Shenandoah taking them quicker than mothers take children done with play.
The blue nobody remembers, the gray nobody remembers, it's all old and old nowadays in the Shenandoah.
And all is young, a butter of dandelions slung on the turf, climbing blue flowers of the wishing woodlands wondering: a midnight purple violet claims the sun among old heads, among old dreams of repeating heads of a rider blue and a rider gray in the Shenandoah.
Words in this poem
- piled a.
- Having a pile or point; pointed. [From 2d Pile.]
- nobody n.
- No person; no one; not anybody. [No, a. + body.]
- nowadays adv.
- In these days; at the present time. [For now on (OE. an) days. See A-, 1.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Shenandoah 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, Shenandoah, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/shenandoah.html, id L29083.
Form and metre
Shenandoah is 4 lines in 4 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 |
|---|---|---|
| In the Shenandoah Valley, one rider gray and one rider blue, and the sun on the riders wondering. | 27 | ···˘/˘/˘·/˘···/˘······/˘/˘˘ |
| Piled in the Shenandoah, riders blue and riders gray, piled with shovels, one and another, dust in the Shenandoah taking them quicker than mothers take children done with play. | 44 | ····˘/˘/˘··/˘···/˘··˘/˘····˘/˘/˘·/˘·/˘·/˘··· |
| The blue nobody remembers, the gray nobody remembers, it's all old and old nowadays in the Shenandoah. | 30 | ··/··˘/˘··/··˘/˘·····/˘····˘/˘ |
| And all is young, a butter of dandelions slung on the turf, climbing blue flowers of the wishing woodlands wondering: a midnight purple violet claims the sun among old heads, among old dreams of repeating heads of a rider blue and a rider gray in the Shenandoah. | 70 | ·····/˘·/˘·˘····/˘·/˘··/˘/·/˘˘·/·/˘/˘˘············˘/˘···/˘···/˘····˘/˘ |
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.