Carl Sandburg

“ Since gray winds blew gray patterns of sleet on Plymouth Rock,
Since the iron-jawed men sang "Thanks, O God,"
You and I, O Child of the West,
Remember more than ever
November and the hunter^s moon,
November and the yellow-spotted hills.
And so In the name of the iron-jawed men
I will stand up and say yes till the finish is come and gone.
God of all broken hearts, empty hands, sleeping soldiers,
God of all star-flung beaches of night sky,
I and my love-child stand up together to-day and sing: "Thanks, O God." ”

“ The right shoulder of a strong man I leaned on.
The face of the rain that drizzled on the short neck of a canal boat.
The eyes of a child who slept while death went over and under.
The petals of peony pink that fluttered in a shot of wind come and gone.
This is the song I rested with: Head, heels, and fingers rocked to the nigger mammy humming of it, to the mile-off steamboat landing whistle of it.
The murmurs run with bees' wings in a late summer sun. They go and come with white surf
slamming on a beach all day. ”

“ For this man there is no name thought of—he has broken from jungles and the old oxen and the old wagons—circled the earth with ships—belted the earth with steel—swung with wings and a drumming motor in the high blue sky—shot his words on a wireless way through shattering sea storms:—out from the night and out from the jungles his head keeps singing—there is no road for him but on and on. ”

“ I see the mare Alix led away by men in undershirts and streaked faces. Dripping Alix in foam of white on the harness and shafts. And the men in undershirts kiss her ears and rub her nose, and tie blankets on her, and take her away to have the sweat sponged.
I see the grand stand jammed with prairie people yelling themselves hoarse. Almost the grand stand and the crowd of thousands are one pair of legs and one voice standing up and yelling hurrah. ”

“ I rise out of my depths with my language. You rise out of your depths with your language.
One thing there is much of; the name men call it by is time; into this gulf our syllabic pronunciamentos empty by the way rockets of fire curve and are gone on the night sky; into this gulf the jabberings go as the shower at a scissors grinder's wheel.... ”

“ I slipped my fingers into a set of knucks, Cast-iron knucks molded in a foundry pattern,
And there came to me a set of thoughts like these:
Mister Fischman is for Abe and the "malice to none" stuff,
And the street car strikers and the strike-breakers,
And the sluggers, gunmen, detectives, policemen,
Judges, utility heads, newspapers, priests, lawyers,
They are all for Abe and the "malice to none" stuff.
I started for the door. "Maybe you want a lighter pair,"
Came Mister Fischman's voice.
I opened the door...and the voice again:
"You are a funny customer." ”

“ There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird...and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want...and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness. ”

“ I swear only reckless men, ready to throw away their lives by hunger, deprivation, desperate clinging to a single purpose imperturbable and undaunted, men with the primitive guts of rebellion, Only fighters gaunt with the red brand of labor's sorrow on their brows and labor's terrible pride in their blood, men with souls asking danger—only these will save and keep the four big brothers. ”

“ Shall seven million dead ask for their blood a little land for the living wives and children, a little land for the living brothers and sisters?
Out of white lips:—Shall they have only air that sweeps round the earth for breath of their nostrils and no footing on the dirt of the earth for their battle-drabbed, battle-soaked shoes? ”

“ There is a song deep as the falltime redhaws, long as the layer of black loam we go to, the shine of the morning star over the corn belt, the wave line of dawn up a wheat valley. ●⁠●⁠●
O prairie mother, I am one of your boys. I have loved the prairie as a man with a heart shot full of pain over love.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water. ●⁠●⁠● I speak of new cities and new people. ”

“ There was a high majestic fooling Day before yesterday in the yellow corn.
And day after to-morrow in the yellow corn There will be high majestic fooling.
The ears ripen in late summer And come on with a conquering laughter,
Come on with a high and conquering laughter.
The long-tailed blackbirds are hoarse. ”

“ A million young workmen straight and strong lay stiff on the grass and roads, And the million are now under soil and their rottening flesh will in the years feed roots of blood-red roses.
Yes, this million of young workmen slaughtered one another and never saw their red hands. ”

“ And I have seen a woman with her head flung between her naked knees, and her head held there listening to the sea, the great naked sea shouldering a load of salt.
And the blue pansy mouth sang to the sea: Mother of God, I'm so little a thing, Let me sing longer, Only a little longer. ”

“ Flowing and circling dresses, summer-white dresses. Faces, flesh tints flung like sprays of cherry blossoms. And gigglers, God knows, gigglers, rivaling the pony whinnies of the Livery Stable Blues.
Cowboy rags and nigger rags. And boys driving sorrel horses hurl a cornfield laughter at the girls in dresses, summer-white dresses. Amid the comet staccato and the tuba oompa, gigglers, God knows, gigglers daffy with life's razzle dazzle. ”

“ A thousand red men cried and went away to new places for corn and women: a million white men came and put up skyscrapers, threw out rails and wires, feelers to the salt sea: now the smokestacks bite the skyline with stub teeth. ”

“ The gray foam and the great wheels of war go by and take all—and the years give mist and ashes—and our feet stand at these, the memory places of the known and the unknown, and our hands give a flame-won poppy—our hands touch the red bar of a flag for the sake of those who gave—and gave all. ”

“ Let there be wings and yellow dust and the drone of dreams of honey—who loses and remembers?—who keeps and forgets?
In a blue sheen of moon over the bones and under the hanging honeycomb the bees come home and the bees sleep. ”

“ Flat lands on the end of town where real estate men are crying new subdivisions, The sunsets pour blood and fire over you hundreds and hundreds of nights, flat lands—blood and fire of sunsets thousands of years have been pouring over you. ”

“ The kings are grinning, the kaiser and the czar—they are alive riding in leather-seated motor cars, and they have their women and roses for ease, and they eat fresh-poached eggs for breakfast, new butter on toast, sitting in tall water-tight houses reading the news of war. ”

“ It was here we turned the coffee cups upside down.
And your eyes and the moon swept the valley.
I will see you again to-morrow. I will see you again in a million years.
I will never know your dark eyes again. ”

“ The horizon behind is a wall of dark etched with a memory, fixed with a woman's face—they fight on and on, boots in the mud and heads in the gray rain—for the women they hate and the women they love—for the women they left behind, they fight on. ”

“ Into the gulf and the pit of the dark night, the cold night, there is a man goes into the dark and the cold and when he comes back to his people he brings fire in his hands and they remember him in the years afterward as the fire bringer—they remember or forget—the man whose head kept singing to the want of his home, the want of his people. ”

“ The brass came from a long ways off: it was up against hell and high water, fire and flood, before the face was put on it.
It is the side of a head; a woman wishes; a woman waits; a woman swears behind silent lips that the sea will bring home what is gone. ”

“ For a woman's face remembered as a spot of quick light on the flat land of dark night, For this memory of one mouth and a forehead they go on in the gray rain and the mud, they go on among the boots and guns. ”

“ Mr. Untermeyer has got at the heart of Heine's puzzling complexities. He shows him, not a German, nor a "joyous Hellene," as Heine called himself, but a Jew with all the Jewish sensitiveness, bitterness, irony, and voluptuous love of the color and flavor of life.
Those who know the Buch der Lieder and who love the Schumann and Franz music for Heine's lyrics will delight in the delicacy and exactness of the translation and the blending of Mr. Untermeyer's words with the music.
Those who have not before been able to read Heine will feel that they have discovered a new poet. ”

“ There is a baboon in me...clambering-clawed...dog-faced...yawping a galoot's hunger...hairy under the armpits...here are the hawk-eyed hankering men...here are the blond and blue-eyed women...here they hide curled asleep waiting...ready to snarl and kill...ready to sing and give milk...waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so. ”

“ And the blue has gone to his wings and the red has gone to his head.
Let his red head drum and drum.
Let the dark pools hold the birds in a looking-glass.
And if the pool wishes, let it shiver to the blur of many wings, old swimmers from old places. ”

“ It is here the nostrils rush the air to the lungs. It is here oxygen clamors to be let in.
And here in the root grass of the sea floor I will go alone.
Love goes far. Here love ends. Have me in the blue and the sun. ”

“ A lawyer for the defense clears his throat and holds himself ready if the word is "Guilty" to enter motion for a new trial, speaking in a soft voice, speaking in a voice slightly colored with bitter wrongs mingled with monumental patience, speaking with mythic Atlas shoulders of many preposterous, unjust circumstances. ”

“ The fist hit the mouth over and over, again and again. The mouth bled melted iron, and laughed its laughter of nails rattling.
And I saw the more the fist pounded the more the mouth laughed. The fist is pounding and pounding, and the mouth answering. ”

“ Five circus clowns dying this year, morning newspapers told their lives, how each one horizontal in a last gesture of hands arranged by an undertaker, shook thousands into convulsions of laughter from behind rouge-red lips and powder-white face. ”

“ The death-yells of it all, the torn throats of men in ditches calling for water, the shadows and the hacking lungs in dugouts, the steel paws that clutch and squeeze a scarlet drain day by day—the storm of it is hell. ”

“ There is a wolf in me...fangs pointed for tearing gashes...a red tongue for raw meat...and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go. ”

“ I who saw ten strong young men die anonymously, I who saw ten old mothers hand over their sons to the nation anonymously, I who saw ten thousand touch the sunlit silver finalities of undistinguished human glory—why do I sneeze sardonically at a bronze drinking fountain named after one who participated in the war vicariously and bought ten farms? ”

“ Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together.
Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders.
Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper through blue nights into white stars. ”

“ The land and the people hold memories, even among the anthills and the angleworms, among the toads and woodroaches—among gravestone writings rubbed out by the rain—they keep old things that never grow old. ”

“ Lay me on an anvil, O God. Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations. ”

“ Buffalo Bill is a slanting look of the eyes, A slanting look under a hat on a horse. He sits on a horse and a passing look is fixed
On Johnny Jones, you and me, barelegged, A slanting, passing, careless look under a hat on a horse. ”

“ In the city among the walls the overland passenger train is choked and the pistons hiss and the wheels curse. On the prairie the overland flits on phantom wheels and the sky and the soil between them muffle the pistons and cheer the wheels. ”

“ The red ones and the blue, the long ones in stripes, and each of the little black and white checkered ones.
Keep them: I tell my heart: keep them another year, another ten years: they will be wanted again. ”

“ When the jury files in to deliver a verdict after weeks of direct and cross examinations, hot clashes of lawyers and cool decisions of the judge, There are points of high silence—twiddling of thumbs is at an end—bailiffs near cuspidors take fresh chews of tobacco and wait—and the clock has a chance for its ticking to be heard. ”

“ Out of it all a God who sees and pierces through, is breaking and cleaning out an old thousand years, is making ready for a new thousand years.
The four brothers shall be five and more.
Under the chimneys of the winter time the children of the world shall sing new songs. Among the rocking restless cradles the mothers of the world shall sing new sleepy-time songs. ”

“ ALWAYS THE MOB
Jesus emptied the devils of one man into forty hogs and the hogs took the edge of a high rock and dropped off and down into the sea: a mob.
The sheep on the hills of Australia, blundering four-footed in the sunset mist to the dark, they go one way, they hunt one sleep, they find one pocket of grass for all.
Karnak? Pyramids? Sphinx paws tall as a coolie? Tombs kept for kings and sacred cows? A mob.
Young roast pigs and naked dancing girls of Belshazzar, the room where a thousand sat guzzling when a hand wrote: Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin? A mob. ”

“ A barnyard and fifteen Holstein cows, dabs of white on a black wall map, never blink an eye.
A signalman in a tower, the outpost of Kansas City, keeps his place at a window with the serenity of a bronze statue on a dark night when lovers pass whispering. ”

“ And all is young, a butter of dandelions slung on the turf, climbing blue flowers of the wishing woodlands wondering: a midnight purple violet claims the sun among old heads, among old dreams of repeating heads of a rider blue and a rider gray in the Shenandoah. ”

“ Out of prairie-brown grass crossed with a streamer of wigwam smoke—out of a smoke pillar, a blue promise—out of wild ducks woven in greens and purples— Here I saw a city rise and say to the peoples round world: Listen, I am strong, I know what I want. ”

“ ●⁠●⁠● I speak of new cities and new people.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down
a sun dropped in the west. I tell you there is nothing in the world
only an ocean of to-morrows, a sky of to-morrows.
I am a brother of the cornhuskers who say
at sundown: To-morrow is a day. ”