Fog
Sandburg pictures fog as a cat that creeps in on quiet feet, sits watching over the harbor and the city for a while, and then leaves.
Fog the full poem, lines numbered
Fog is six lines long, with one comparison and no rhyme. Short enough to learn at a glance, it is a clean model of how a single metaphor can carry a whole poem without ever using the word like. It appeared in Chicago Poems (1916), in a section of short pieces called Handfuls.
The poem describes fog arriving over a city by the water, and it does so by picturing the fog as a cat. In the first stanza the fog arrives on small, soundless cat’s feet. In the second, it settles and sits, looking out over the harbor and the city, resting on its haunches the way a cat crouches while it watches. Then it gets up and goes. That is the whole poem: an arrival, a pause and a departure, told in six short lines. The word cat appears only once, in the second line. After that the poem never names the animal again, yet the verbs keep the comparison going, because the fog arrives, sits, looks and moves on as a cat would. No person appears, no feeling is named and no lesson is drawn. The reader is left with a new way of seeing ordinary weather: fog as something alive, quiet and independent, that visits a busy place, watches it without a sound and leaves when it likes.
Speaker & situation
Form & sound
Line by line what each part says and does
- 1
Lines 1–2
The fog arrives
The fog creeps in, moving quietly on small cat’s feet.
How it worksThe metaphor is set up in the second line and never explained. “Little” makes the fog seem small and gentle, even though fog can cover a whole city.
- 2
Lines 3–6
Watching, then leaving
The fog sits and looks out over the harbor and the city, crouched like a resting cat, and then goes on its way.
How it worksThe poem never repeats the word cat, but “sits,” “looking” and “haunches” keep the animal in view. The last line lets the fog go as casually as it came, and the poem ends with it.
The turn
Lines 3
Line 3 begins the second stanza and turns from motion to stillness: the fog that came in now sits and watches. The last line turns once more, back to motion, as the fog leaves. The poem’s shape is arrival, pause and departure.
Literary devices with line numbers
Metaphor
In line 2 the fog is given cat feet. The poem does not say the fog is like a cat; it simply gives the fog a cat’s feet, which makes the comparison a metaphor, not a simile.
Extended metaphor
The comparison continues through lines 3–6 without the word cat. The fog sits, looks and rests on “haunches” (line 5), the hind legs a crouching animal sits on.
Imagery
The poem appeals to sight and to hearing, through its silence. The soft feet of line 2 and the word “silent” in line 5 make the fog’s quiet something the reader can almost hear.
Enjambment
Lines 3–6 are one sentence spread over four short lines. The reader moves through the fog’s long pause slowly, line by line, before it leaves in line 6.
Imagist method
The poem presents one image and nothing more: no moral and no statement of the speaker’s feelings. That is close to the method of Imagism, the movement of the 1910s that asked for the direct presentation of a thing in as few words as possible. Sandburg was not one of the Imagist group, but Fog is often taught as an example of its method.
Themes in Fog
Quiet power in nature
Fog can cover a harbor and a whole city, yet the poem makes it small and soft. The contrast suggests a force that is large without being loud.
Impermanence
The fog arrives, stays and “moves on” (line 6). Like any weather, the moment passes, and the poem ends as soon as it does.
Nature and the city
The fog looks over “harbor and city” (line 4) from above, a natural thing watching a human place. In a book full of Chicago’s noise and work, this poem gives the city a moment of stillness.
Images and symbols
The cat
Cats are known for moving silently and for coming and going as they please. Those are exactly the traits the poem gives the fog.
The harbor and the city
The busy human world the fog briefly covers. The poem shows it only from the fog’s point of view, as something looked over and then left behind.
How Fog ends, explained
The poem ends the way the fog does. After sitting and watching, the fog “moves on,” and the poem stops in the same breath. There is no final picture of the cleared harbor, no comment from the speaker and no lesson. The casual wording makes the departure sound unremarkable, the way a cat gets up and walks off without explanation. Readers take the ending in a few ways. The simplest reading is that the poem is exactly what it seems: a precise picture of fog coming and going, and the pleasure lies in how well the cat fits. A second reading hears a quiet point about time. The fog, like any weather or any moment, cannot be kept, and the short poem mirrors the short visit. A third reading notices the contrast with the rest of Chicago Poems, a book that opens with the shouting, laboring city of Chicago. Here a city of the same kind is seen from above by something silent and unconcerned, which watches for a while and then leaves the city to carry on without it. The poem does not choose among these readings. Its ending, like its fog, leaves nothing behind.
“The fog comes / on little cat feet.”
“on silent haunches”
“and then moves on.”
Common misreadings
MythFog uses a simile to compare the fog to a cat.
ActuallyThere is no “like” or “as” in the poem. The fog is given cat feet and haunches directly, so the comparison is a metaphor, and because it runs through the whole poem, an extended metaphor.
MythThe poem is a haiku.
ActuallyIt is often compared to haiku because it is short and built on one image from nature, but it is six lines of free verse with no fixed syllable count, first collected in Chicago Poems (1916).
MythThe fog is personified as a person.
ActuallyThe fog is given an animal’s traits, a cat’s feet and haunches and a cat’s way of sitting and watching, not a human’s. Some teachers still use the word personification in a broad sense, but the poem’s comparison is to a cat.
AP practice a poetry prompt in the exam's style
Read Carl Sandburg’s poem “Fog,” published in Chicago Poems (1916). Then write an essay that analyzes how Sandburg uses literary elements and techniques to convey a complex perspective on the presence of nature in the city.
What a strong response notices
- The metaphor of line 2 and how it is extended, without the word cat, through lines 3–6.
- The two-stanza shape: arrival in lines 1–2, pause and departure in lines 3–6.
- Word choice that keeps the fog small and quiet: “little” (line 2) and “silent” (line 5).
- The wide view of line 4, where the fog looks over both harbor and city.
- The casual, unexplained ending of line 6.
Practice prompt written by StoryBites, not taken from a College Board exam. See the AP Literature free-response guide for how answers are scored.
Test yourself
1. What animal does the poem compare the fog to?
Line 2 gives the fog cat feet, and lines 3–6 keep describing it as a cat.
2. What does the fog look out over?
Line 4 says the fog looks out over the harbor and the city.
3. Why is the comparison a metaphor rather than a simile?
A simile compares with like or as. The poem gives the fog a cat’s feet directly, which is a metaphor.
4. What does the fog do at the end of the poem?
Line 6 says the fog moves on.
5. How many stanzas does the poem have?
A two-line stanza for the arrival and a four-line stanza for the pause and departure.
Flashcards flip, self-grade, and the deck remembers what you know
Nice work.
This poem is about fog, the low cloud that sometimes rolls in over a city. Sandburg says the fog creeps in on small cat feet, so it arrives very quietly. Then it sits and looks out over the harbor and the city, the way a cat sits and watches. After a while it gets up and leaves. The poet never says the fog is like a cat; he just lets it act like one. It is a tiny poem that helps you see ordinary weather in a new way.
Compare & connect
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Eliot’s poem, first published in 1915, also pictures fog as a cat, rubbing against windows and curling up around a house. Eliot’s fog is yellow, smoky and uneasy; Sandburg’s is quiet and calm.
The Red Wheelbarrow
Another very short free-verse poem built on one image. Sandburg transforms the fog into a cat; Williams presents the wheelbarrow as itself and makes no comparison at all.
Chicago
The poem that opens the same book shows the city loud, crowded and laughing. Fog shows it silent, watched from above by something that does not care about it.
Discussion and essay prompts:
💬 Discussion questions
- What is the meaning of Fog by Carl Sandburg
- What is the metaphor in Fog by Carl Sandburg
- Is Fog by Carl Sandburg a simile or a metaphor
- How does Fog explore the theme of quiet power in nature?
- How does Fog explore the theme of impermanence?
- Do you agree that fog uses a simile to compare the fog to a cat? Why or why not?
✎ Essay prompts
- Analyze how Carl Sandburg develops the theme of quiet power in nature in Fog. Support your argument with specific evidence from the text.
- Examine the significance of the cat in Fog. What does it represent, and how does it deepen the work’s meaning?
- How does Carl Sandburg use metaphor to shape the reader’s experience of Fog?
- Some readers assume that fog uses a simile to compare the fog to a cat. Argue for or against this interpretation, using evidence from the text.
Key questions students ask
- What is the meaning of Fog by Carl Sandburg
- What is the metaphor in Fog by Carl Sandburg
- Is Fog by Carl Sandburg a simile or a metaphor
- Why does Sandburg compare fog to a cat
- What is the tone of Fog by Carl Sandburg
- Is Fog by Carl Sandburg an Imagist poem
Analysis is original StoryBites commentary. The poem is printed from Chicago Poems (Henry Holt, 1916), checked line by line against the page images of that printing. First published in 1916, it is in the public domain in the United States.