Cargoes" is a lyric poem with three stanzas, each with five lines. The stanzas are alike in structure. For example, the first line of each stanza identifies a type of ship at sea, and the second line—beginning with an action verb ending in -ing—identifies a locale. The third line, a prepositional phrase, begins to list items in the cargo; the fourth and fifth lines complete the list. The second and fifth lines of each stanza end in masculine rhyme. In each stanza, the first line has twelve syllables and the second line has eleven syllables. Notice also that the first line of each stanza omits the definite article a before the first word. None of the stanzas has a complete sentence. The stanzas are in chronological order.