Street Window
The pawn-shop man knows hunger,And how far hunger has eaten the heartOf one who comes with an old keepsake.Here are wedding rings and baby bracelets,Scarf pins and shoe buckles, jeweled garters,Old-fashioned knives with inlaid handles,Watches of old gold and silver,Old coins worn with finger-marks.They tell stories.
Words in this poem
- keepsake n.
- Anything kept, or given to be kept, for the sake of the giver; a token of friendship.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Street Window 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, Street Window, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/street-window.html, id L29039.
Form and metre
Street Window is 9 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 80%).
See other poems in trochaic pentameter.
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 trochaic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The pawn-shop man knows hunger, | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| And how far hunger has eaten the heart | 10 | ···/˘·/˘·· |
| Of one who comes with an old keepsake. | 9 | ·······/· |
| Here are wedding rings and baby bracelets, | 10 | ··/˘··/˘/˘ |
| Scarf pins and shoe buckles, jeweled garters, | 10 | ····/˘/˘/˘ |
| Old-fashioned knives with inlaid handles, | 9 | ·/˘··/·/˘ |
| Watches of old gold and silver, | 8 | /˘····/˘ |
| Old coins worn with finger-marks. | 7 | ····/˘· |
| They tell stories. | 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.