Upstairs
I too have a garret of old playthings.I have tin soldiers with broken arms upstairs.I have a wagon and the wheels gone upstairs.I have guns and a drum, a jumping-jack and a magic lantern.And dust is on them and I never look at them upstairs.I too have a garret of old playthings.
Words in this poem
- garret n.
- A turret; a watchtower. [OE. garite, garette, watchtower, place of lookout, OF. garite, also meaning, a place of refuge, F. guérite a place of refuge, donjon, sentinel box, fr. OF. gari]
- upstairs adv.
- Up the stairs; in or toward an upper story.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Upstairs 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, Upstairs, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/upstairs.html, id L29058.
Form and metre
Upstairs is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 70%).
See other poems in iambic 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.
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 ABB-BA playthingsA · upstairsB · upstairsB · lantern · upstairsB · playthingsA
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I too have a garret of old playthings. | 10 | ····/˘··/· |
| I have tin soldiers with broken arms upstairs. | 11 | ···/˘·/˘·˘/ |
| I have a wagon and the wheels gone upstairs. | 11 | ···/˘····˘/ |
| I have guns and a drum, a jumping-jack and a magic lantern. | 16 | ·······/˘···/˘/˘ |
| And dust is on them and I never look at them upstairs. | 14 | ·······/˘···˘/ |
| I too have a garret of old playthings. | 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.