Three Pieces on the Smoke of Autumn
Smoke of autumn is on it all.The streamers loosen and travel.The red west is stopped with a gray haze.They fill the ash trees, they wrap the oaks,They make a long-tailed riderIn the pocket of the first, the earliest evening star.
Three muskrats swim west on the Desplaines River.
There is a sheet of red ember glow on the river; it is dusk; and the muskrats one by one go on patrol routes west.
Around each slippery padding rat, a fan of ripples; in the silence of dusk a faint wash of ripples, the padding of the rats going west, in a dark and shivering river gold.
(A newspaper in my pocket says the Germans pierce the Italian line; I have letters from poets and sculptors in Greenwich Village; I have letters from an ambulance man in France and an I. W. W. man in Vladivostok.)
I lean on an ash and watch the lights fall, the red ember glow, and three muskrats swim west in a fan of ripples on a sheet of river gold.
Better the blue silence and the gray west,The autumn mist on the river,And not any hate and not any love,And not anything at all of the keen and the deep:Only the peace of a dog head on a barn floor,And the new corn shoveled in bushelsAnd the pumpkins brought from the corn rows,Umber lights of the dark,Umber lanterns of the loam dark.
Here a dog head dreams.Not any hate, not any love.Not anything but dreams.Brother of dusk and umber.
Words in this poem
- ember n.
- A lighted coal, smoldering amid ashes; -- used chiefly in the plural, to signify mingled coals and ashes; the smoldering remains of a fire. [OE. emmeres, emeres, AS. ; akin to Icel. eimyrja, Dan. emmer, MHG. eimere; cf. Icel. eimr vapor, smoke.]
- patrol v. i.
- To go the rounds along a chain of sentinels; to traverse a police district or beat. [F. patrouiller, O. & Prov. F. patrouiller to paddle, paw about, patrol, fr. patte a paw; cf. D. poot paw, G. pfote, and E. pat, v.]
- padding n.
- The act or process of making a pad or of inserting stuffing.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Three Pieces on the Smoke of Autumn 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 Pieces on the Smoke of Autumn, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/three-pieces-on-the-smoke-of-autumn.html, id L29010.
Form and metre
Three Pieces on the Smoke of Autumn is 24 lines in 8 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.
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---- allA · travelA · haze · oaks · rider · star
- 7 -------AA west · river · love · deep · floor · bushels · rows · darkA · darkA
- 8 A-A- dreamsA · love · dreamsA · umber
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Smoke of autumn is on it all. | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| The streamers loosen and travel. | 8 | ·/˘/˘·/˘ |
| The red west is stopped with a gray haze. | 9 | ········· |
| They fill the ash trees, they wrap the oaks, | 9 | ········· |
| They make a long-tailed rider | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| In the pocket of the first, the earliest evening star. | 14 | ··/˘····/˘˘/˘· |
| Three muskrats swim west on the Desplaines River. | 11 | ·/·······/˘ |
| There is a sheet of red ember glow on the river; it is dusk; and the muskrats one by one go on patrol routes west. | 29 | ······/˘···/˘·····/······˘/·· |
| Around each slippery padding rat, a fan of ripples; in the silence of dusk a faint wash of ripples, the padding of the rats going west, in a dark and shivering river gold. | 45 | ···/˘˘/˘····/˘··/˘······/˘·/˘···/˘·····/˘˘/˘· |
| (A newspaper in my pocket says the Germans pierce the Italian line; I have letters from poets and sculptors in Greenwich Village; I have letters from an ambulance man in France and an I. W. W. man in Vladivostok.) | 60 | ·/·˘··/˘··/˘··˘/˘···/˘·/˘·/˘·/˘/˘··/˘··/˘˘······/˘˘/˘˘···˘/˘ |
| I lean on an ash and watch the lights fall, the red ember glow, and three muskrats swim west in a fan of ripples on a sheet of river gold. | 34 | ············/˘···/·······/˘····/˘· |
| Better the blue silence and the gray west, | 10 | /˘··/˘···· |
| The autumn mist on the river, | 8 | ·/˘···/˘ |
| And not any hate and not any love, | 10 | ··/˘···/˘· |
| And not anything at all of the keen and the deep: | 13 | ··/˘········· |
| Only the peace of a dog head on a barn floor, | 12 | /˘·········· |
| And the new corn shoveled in bushels | 9 | ····/˘·/˘ |
| And the pumpkins brought from the corn rows, | 9 | ··/˘····· |
| Umber lights of the dark, | 6 | /˘···· |
| Umber lanterns of the loam dark. | 8 | /˘/˘···· |
| Here a dog head dreams. | 5 | ····· |
| Not any hate, not any love. | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Not anything but dreams. | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Brother of dusk and umber. | 7 | /˘···/˘ |
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.