The Sea Hold
The sea is large.The sea hold on a leg of land in the Chesapeake hugs an early sunset and a last morning star over the oyster beds and the late clam boats of lonely men.Five white houses on a half-mile strip of land...five white dice rolled from a tube.
Not so long ago...the sea was large...And to-day the sea has lost nothing...it keeps all.
I am a loon about the sea.I make so many sea songs, I cry so many sea cries, I forget so many sea songs and sea cries.
I am a loon about the sea.So are five men I had a fish fry with once in a tar-paper shack trembling in a sand storm.The sea knows more about them than they know themselves.They know only how the sea hugs and will not let go.
The sea is large.The sea must know more than any of us.
Words in this poem
- shack v. t.
- To shed or fall, as corn or grain at harvest. Grose. [Prov. E., to shake, to shed. See Shake.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Sea Hold 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, The Sea Hold, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/the-sea-hold.html, id L29062.
Form and metre
The Sea Hold is 13 lines in 5 stanzas. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| The sea is large. | 4 | ···· |
| The sea hold on a leg of land in the Chesapeake hugs an early sunset and a last morning star over the oyster beds and the late clam boats of lonely men. | 40 | ··········/˘···/˘/····/˘····/˘·······/˘· |
| Five white houses on a half-mile strip of land...five white dice rolled from a tube. | 18 | ··/˘·············· |
| Not so long ago...the sea was large... | 9 | ···˘/···· |
| And to-day the sea has lost nothing...it keeps all. | 12 | ·······/˘··· |
| I am a loon about the sea. | 8 | ········ |
| I make so many sea songs, I cry so many sea cries, I forget so many sea songs and sea cries. | 25 | ···/˘·····/˘···˘/·/˘····· |
| I am a loon about the sea. | 8 | ········ |
| So are five men I had a fish fry with once in a tar-paper shack trembling in a sand storm. | 24 | ··············/˘·/˘˘···· |
| The sea knows more about them than they know themselves. | 12 | ··········˘/ |
| They know only how the sea hugs and will not let go. | 13 | ··/˘········· |
| The sea is large. | 4 | ···· |
| The sea must know more than any of us. | 10 | ······/˘·· |
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.