Analysis of Interior

Carl Sandburg 1878 (Galesburg) – 1967 (Flat Rock)



In the cool of the night time
The clocks pick off the points
And the mainsprings loosen.
They will need winding.
One of these days
they will need winding.

Rabelais in red boards,
Walt Whitman in green,
Hugo in ten-cent paper covers,
Here they stand on shelves
In the cool of the night time
And there is nothing . . . .
To be said against them . . . .
Or for them . . . .
In the cool of the night time
And the docks.

A man in pigeon-gray pyjamas.
The open window begins at his feet
And goes taller than his head.
Eight feet high is the pattern.

Moon and mist make an oblong layout.
Silver at the man's bare feet.
He swings one foot in a moon silver.
And it costs nothing.

(One more day of bread and work.
One more day . . . .so much rags .

The man barefoot in moon silver
Mutters "You" and "You"
To things hidden
In the cool of the night time,
In Rabelais, Whitman, Hugo,
In an oblong of moon mist.

Out from the window . . . . prairielands.
Moon mist whitens a golf ground.
Whiter yet is a limestone quarry.
The crickets keep on chirring.

Switch engines of the Great Western
Sidetrack box cars, make up trains
For Weehawken, Oskaloosa, Saskatchewan;
The cattle, the coal, the corn, must go
In the night . . . . on the prairielands.

Chuff-chuff go the pulses.
They beat in the cool of the night time.
Chuff-chuff and chuff-chuff . . . .
These heartbeats travel the night a mile
And touch the moon silver at the window
And the hones of the man.
It costs nothing.

Rabelais in red boards,
Whitman in green,
Hugo in ten-cent paper covers,
Here they stand on shelves
In the cool of the night time
And the clocks.


Scheme AbcDxD EfGHAdiiAj bkxl xkmd xx mxcAnx bxxd lxxnb xaxxnxd EfGHAj
Poetic Form
Metre 0011011 011101 00110 11110 1111 11110 1011 11001 100111010 11111 0011011 01110 111011 111 0011011 001 0101011 0101001111 0110111 1111010 10111101 1010111 111100110 01110 1111101 111111 0110110 10101 1110 0011011 011010 0110111 110101 111011 10110110 010111 11010110 111111 1101010 010010111 001101 111010 110011011 11011 11100101 0101101010 001101 1110 1011 1001 100111010 11111 0011011 001
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 1,613
Words 289
Sentences 53
Stanzas 10
Stanza Lengths 6, 10, 4, 4, 2, 6, 4, 5, 7, 6
Lines Amount 54
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 121
Words per stanza (avg) 32
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:27 min read
97

Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg was an American writer and editor best known for poetry. more…

All Carl Sandburg poems | Carl Sandburg Books

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