Valley Song
Your eyes and the valley are memories.Your eyes fire and the valley a bowl.It was here a moonrise crept over the timberline.It was here we turned the coffee cups upside down.And your eyes and the moon swept the valley.
I will see you again to-morrow.I will see you again in a million years.I will never know your dark eyes again.These are three ghosts I keep.These are three sumach-red dogs I run with.
All of it wraps and knots to a riddle:I have the moon, the timberline, and you.All three are gone—and I keep all three.
Words in this poem
- moonrise n.
- The rising of the moon above the horizon; also, the time of its rising.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Valley Song 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, Valley Song, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/valley-song.html, id L29056.
Form and metre
Valley Song is 13 lines in 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 71%).
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Your eyes and the valley are memories. | 10 | ····/˘·/˘˘ |
| Your eyes fire and the valley a bowl. | 10 | ··/˘··/˘·· |
| It was here a moonrise crept over the timberline. | 12 | ····/˘···/˘· |
| It was here we turned the coffee cups upside down. | 12 | ······/˘·//· |
| And your eyes and the moon swept the valley. | 10 | ········/˘ |
| I will see you again to-morrow. | 9 | ····˘/·/˘ |
| I will see you again in a million years. | 11 | ····˘/··/˘· |
| I will never know your dark eyes again. | 10 | ··/˘····˘/ |
| These are three ghosts I keep. | 6 | ······ |
| These are three sumach-red dogs I run with. | 10 | ·········· |
| All of it wraps and knots to a riddle: | 10 | ········/˘ |
| I have the moon, the timberline, and you. | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| All three are gone—and I keep all three. | 9 | ········· |
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.