Young Bullfrogs
Jimmy Wimbledon listened a first week in June.Ditches along prairie roads of Northern IllinoisFilled the arch of night with young bullfrog songs.Infinite mathematical metronomic croaks rose and spoke,Rose and sang, rose in a choir of puzzles.They made his head ache with riddles of music.They rested his head with beaten cadence.Jimmy Wimbledon listened.
Words in this poem
- jimmy n.
- A short crowbar used by burglars in breaking open doors. [Cf. Jemmy.]
- illinois n.
- A tribe of North American Indians, which formerly occupied the region between the Wabash and Mississippi rivers.
- bullfrog n.
- A very large species of frog (Rana Catesbiana), found in North America; -- so named from its loud bellowing in spring.
- spoke n.
- The radius or ray of a wheel; one of the small bars which are inserted in the hub, or nave, and which serve to support the rim or felly. [OE. spoke, spake, AS, spaca; akin to D. speek, LG. speke, OHG. speihha, G. speiche. sq. root170. Cf. Spike a nail.]
- ache n.
- A name given to several species of plants; as, smallage, wild celery, parsley. Holland. [F. ache, L. apium parsley.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Young Bullfrogs 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, Young Bullfrogs, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/young-bullfrogs.html, id L29022.
Form and metre
Young Bullfrogs is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 73%).
See other poems in trochaic 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 ---A-A-- june · illinois · songs · spokeA · puzzles · musicA · cadence · listened
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 trochaic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Jimmy Wimbledon listened a first week in June. | 12 | /˘/˘˘/˘····· |
| Ditches along prairie roads of Northern Illinois | 13 | /˘˘//˘··/˘·˘/ |
| Filled the arch of night with young bullfrog songs. | 10 | ·······/·· |
| Infinite mathematical metronomic croaks rose and spoke, | 16 | /˘˘·˘/˘˘········ |
| Rose and sang, rose in a choir of puzzles. | 11 | ······/˘·/˘ |
| They made his head ache with riddles of music. | 11 | ······/˘·/˘ |
| They rested his head with beaten cadence. | 10 | ·/˘···/˘/˘ |
| Jimmy Wimbledon listened. | 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.