Sunset From Omaha Hotel Window
Into the blue river hillsThe red sun runners goAnd the long sand changesAnd to-day is a gonerAnd to-day is not worth haggling over.
Here in OmahaThe gloaming is bitterAs in ChicagoOr Kenosha.
The long sand changes.To-day is a goner.Time knocks in another brass nail.Another yellow plunger shoots the dark.
ConstellationsWheeling over OmahaAs in ChicagoOr Kenosha.
The long sand is goneand all the talk is stars.They circle in a dome over Nebraska.
Words in this poem
- gloaming n.
- Twilight; dusk; the fall of the evening. [Scot. & North of Eng., and in poetry.] Hogg. [See Gloom.]
- plunger n.
- One who, or that which, plunges; a diver.
- wheeling n.
- The act of conveying anything, or traveling, on wheels, or in a wheeled vehicle.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Sunset From Omaha Hotel 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, Sunset From Omaha Hotel Window, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/sunset-from-omaha-hotel-window.html, id L29007.
Form and metre
Sunset From Omaha Hotel Window is 20 lines in 5 stanzas. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%).
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Into the blue river hills | 7 | ····/˘· |
| The red sun runners go | 6 | ···/˘· |
| And the long sand changes | 6 | ····/˘ |
| And to-day is a goner | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| And to-day is not worth haggling over. | 11 | ······/˘˘·· |
| Here in Omaha | 5 | ··/˘· |
| The gloaming is bitter | 6 | ·/˘·/˘ |
| As in Chicago | 5 | ··˘/· |
| Or Kenosha. | 4 | ·˘/˘ |
| The long sand changes. | 5 | ···/˘ |
| To-day is a goner. | 6 | ····/˘ |
| Time knocks in another brass nail. | 8 | ···˘/˘·· |
| Another yellow plunger shoots the dark. | 10 | ˘/˘/˘/˘··· |
| Constellations | 4 | ·˘/˘ |
| Wheeling over Omaha | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
| As in Chicago | 5 | ··˘/· |
| Or Kenosha. | 4 | ·˘/˘ |
| The long sand is gone | 5 | ····· |
| and all the talk is stars. | 6 | ······ |
| They circle in a dome over Nebraska. | 11 | ·/˘·····˘/˘ |
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.