Analysis of Child of the Romans

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



The dago shovelman sits by the railroad track
Eating a noon meal of bread and bologna.
A train whirls by, and men and women at tables
Alive with red roses and yellow jonquils,
Eat steaks running with brown gravy,
Strawberries and cream, eclaires and coffee.
The dago shovelman finishes the dry bread and bologna,
Washes it down with a dipper from the water-boy,
And goes back to the second half of a ten-hour day’s work
Keeping the road-bed so the roses and jonquils
Shake hardly at all in the cut glass vases
Standing slender on the tables in the dining cars.


Scheme ABCCBBBDECFG
Poetic Form
Metre 01111011 10011110010 011101010110 0111100101 11101110 10011010 0111000110010 1011101010101 011101011011011 10011101001 11011001110 1010101000101
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 568
Words 103
Sentences 4
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 12
Lines Amount 12
Letters per line (avg) 37
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 447
Words per stanza (avg) 101
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

30 sec read
71

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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