Three Balls
Jabowsky's place is on a side street and only the rain washes the dusty three balls.When I passed the window a month ago, there rested in proud isolation:A family bible with hasps of brass twisted off, a wooden clock with pendulum gone,And a porcelain crucifix with the glaze nicked where the left elbow of Jesus is represented.I passed to-day and they were all there, resting in proud isolation, the clock and the crucifix saying no more and no less than before, and a yellow cat sleeping in a patch of sun alongside the family bible with the hasps off.Only the rain washes the dusty three balls in front of Jabowsky's place on a side street.
Words in this poem
- isolation n.
- The act of isolating, or the state of being isolated; insulation; separation; loneliness. Milman. [Cf. F. isolation.]
- crucifix n.
- A representation in art of the figure of Christ upon the cross; esp., the sculptured figure affixed to a real cross of wood, ivory, metal, or the like, used by the Roman Catholics in their devotions. [F. crucifix or LL. crucifixum, fr. L. crux, crucis, cross + figere, fixum, to fix. See Cross, and Fix, and cf. Crucify.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Three Balls 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, Three Balls, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/three-balls.html, id L29050.
Form and metre
Three Balls is 6 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 -AA--- balls · isolationA · goneA · represented · off · street
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Jabowsky's place is on a side street and only the rain washes the dusty three balls. | 21 | ··········/˘··/˘·/˘·· |
| When I passed the window a month ago, there rested in proud isolation: | 19 | ····/˘··˘/·/˘···˘/˘ |
| A family bible with hasps of brass twisted off, a wooden clock with pendulum gone, | 22 | ·/˘˘/˘····/˘··/˘··/˘˘· |
| And a porcelain crucifix with the glaze nicked where the left elbow of Jesus is represented. | 25 | ··/˘˘/˘········/··/˘··˘/˘ |
| I passed to-day and they were all there, resting in proud isolation, the clock and the crucifix saying no more and no less than before, and a yellow cat sleeping in a patch of sun alongside the family bible with the hasps off. | 59 | ·········/˘···˘/˘····/˘·/˘··········/˘·/˘·····˘//·/˘˘/˘···· |
| Only the rain washes the dusty three balls in front of Jabowsky's place on a side street. | 22 | /˘··/˘·/˘············· |
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.