Carl Sandburg

“ To record the background of an event, infinitely more disgraceful than that Mexican banditry or Red Terror about which we are all so virtuously indignant, is sufficient reason for republishing these articles by Carl Sandburg. They are first hand, and they are sympathetic, and they will move those who will allow themselves to be moved. ”

“ Between the two she stays home. Sometimes she looks at her face in the looking glass and says to herself, 'I am young yet and while I am young I am going to do my own deciding.'"
Blixie Bimber fingered the end of her chin with her little finger and said, "It is a strange story. It has a stab in it. It would hurt me if I couldn't look up at the big white clouds shouldering their shoulders, rolling on the rollers of the big blue sky."
"It is a good story to tell when April is here all over again—and I am shining up the brass bickerjiggers on my accordion," said the Potato Face Blind Man. ”

“ The Skyscraper to the Moon and How the Green Rat with the Rheumatism Ran a Thousand Miles Twice
Blixie Bimber's mother was chopping hash. And the hatchet broke. So Blixie started downtown with fifteen cents to buy a new hash hatchet for chopping hash.
Downtown she peeped around the corner next nearest the postoffice where the Potato Face Blind Man sat with his accordion. And the old man had his legs crossed, one foot on the sidewalk, the other foot up in the air.
The foot up in the air had a green rat sitting on it, tying the old man's shoestrings in knots and double knots. ”

“ I cannot tell you now;
When the wind's drive and whirl
Blow me along no longer,
And the wind's a whisper at last—
Maybe I'll tell you then—
some other time.
When the rose's flash to the sunset
Reels to the rack and the twist,
And the rose is a red bygone,
When the face I love is going
And the gate to the end shall clang,
And it's no use to beckon or say, "So long"—
Maybe I'll tell you then—
some other time.
I never knew any more beautiful than you:
I have hunted you under my thoughts,
I have broken down under the wind
And into the roses looking for you.
I shall never find any ”

“ He reached his fingers down through the slush and mud and took out what was shining.
It was the gold buckskin whincher Blixie Bimber lost from the gold chain around her neck the week before when she was looking down into the cistern to see what she could see. It was exactly the same gold buckskin whincher shining and glittering like a sign of happiness.
“It’s luck,” said Jason Squiff, wiping his fingers on his greenish yellowish hair. Then he put the gold buckskin whincher in his vest pocket and spoke to himself again, “It’s luck.” ”

“ All the time the gold buckskin whincher and the power was working. It was saying, "So long as old Rags Habakuk keeps the two blue rats he shall have good luck—but if he ever sells one of the blue rats then one of his daughters shall marry a taxicab driver—and if he ever sells the other blue rat then his other daughter shall marry a moving-picture hero actor." ”

“ Edwin Meade Robinson—poet, novelist.
Born at Lima, Indiana, 1879. Not related to Edwin Arlington Robinson. Newspaper man, first on the Indianapolis Sentinel, later on the Cleveland Plain Dealer, in which he conducts a column. Besides his successful volume of verse, Piping and Panning, 1920, Mr. Robinson has published a novel which has attracted attention as an honest record of a growing boy, Enter Jerry, 1920. For reviews, see Book Review Digest, 1920, 1921.
Carl Sandburg—poet.
Born at Galesburg, Illinois, of Swedish stock. Has little schooling but wide experience of life. ”

“ And if you look deep in her eyes when her eyes are open you will see lights there exactly like the lights on the pastures and the meadows when the mist is drifting on a Wednesday evening just between the twilight and the gloaming.
"A week ago yesterday they all went away. And they won't tell why they went away. Somebody clipped their wings, cut off their flying feathers so they couldn't fly—and they won't tell why. They were six hundred miles from home—but they won't tell how they counted the six hundred miles. ”

“ The world in the making. SEE
Keyserling, Hermann Alexander,
Graf von.
SANDBURG, CARL.
The American songbag. © 17Nov27; A1013287. Carl Sandburg (A) ; 22Dec54; R141056.
Santa Fé sketches. (In the American mercury, Mar. 1927) © 25Feb27; B734181. Carl Sandburg (A) ; 22Dec54; R141057.
SANGREN, PAUL V. Sangren-Woody reading test; for
grades 4 to 8. Form A, by
Paul V. Sangren and Clifford
Woody. © 7Oct27; A1008172.
Paul V. Sangren (A) and Alice
M. Woody (W) ; 5Nov54; R138606.
SAPPER, PSEUD. SEE McNeile,
Herman Cyril. ”

“ And Spink, who is a little girl living in the same house with the man writing this story, and Skabootch, who is another little girl in the same house—both Spink and Skabootch are asking the question, "How can we tell corn fairies if we see 'em? If we meet a corn fairy how will we know it?" And this is the explanation the man gave to Spink who is older than Skabootch, and to Skabootch who is younger than Spink:—
All corn fairies wear overalls. They work hard, the corn fairies, and they are proud. The reason they are proud is because they work so hard. ”

“ They will tie around his neck the hangman’s necktie and hoist him high.”
The man with a sorry face looked more sorry 144 than ever. It made Young Leather feel reckless and it made Red Slippers feel reckless. They whispered to each other. Then Young Leather said, “Take this dollar watch. Give it to your brother. Tell him when they are leading him to the gallows he must take this dollar watch in his hand, wind it up and push on the stem winder. The rest will be easy.” ”

“ The lucid and endless wrinkles
Draw in, lapse and withdraw.
Wavelets crumble and white spent bubbles
Wash on the floor of the beach.
Rocking on the crest In the low blue lustre Are the shadows of the ships. ”

“ Then he'll be all right."
"I understand you," said Blixie. "You make it easy. You always make it easy. And before I run away will you promise me to smell of the pink and lavender peonies and the yellow jonquils all day to-day?" ”

“ ●⁠●⁠● 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. ”

“ PLOWBOY
After the last red sunset glimmer,
Black on the line of a low hill rise,
Formed into moving shadows, I saw
A plowboy and two horses lined against the gray,
Plowing in the dusk the last furrow. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the new wars long range guns and smashed walls, guns running a spit of metal and men falling in tens and twenties.
In the wars to come new silent deaths, new silent hurlers not yet dreamed out in the heads of men. ”

“ Granite shoulders heaving above the earth curves,
Careless eye-witness of the spawning tides of men and women
Swarming always in a drift of millions to the dust of toil, the salt of tears,
And blood drops of undiminishing war. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Cities and temples have fallen into decay and ruin. Where the rain washes on crumbled pillars, and sunbeams and shadows play about silent crevice and wall, once was the clamor and tumult of surging human life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As many as skies in delicate change
Of cloud and blue and flimmering sun.
Yet,
You may not come, O girl of a dream,
We may but pass as the world goes by
And take from a look of eyes into eyes,
A film of hope and a memoried day. ”

“ And even now she beats her head against the bars in the same old way and wonders if there is a bigger place the railroads run to from Chicago where maybe there is
romance and big things and real dreams that never go smash. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Lincoln in bronze stands among the white lines of snow, his bronze forehead meeting soft echoes of the newsies crying forty thousand men are dead along the Yser, his bronze ears listening to the mumbled roar of the city at his bronze feet. ”

“ 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. ”

“ God, if the dead in their coffins amid the silver handles on the edge of town, or the reckless dead of war days thrown unknown in pits, if these dead are forever deaf and blind and lost,
Our prayer of thanks. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sixteen million sleepers and pickets in the dark:
Some of them long sleepers for always,
Some of them tumbling to sleep to-morrow for always,
Fixed in the drag of the world's heartbreak,
Eating and drinking, toiling ... on a long job of killing.
Sixteen million men. ”

“ I AM THE PEOPLE, THE MOB
I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns. They die. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the hearts of soldiers
Running free blood
In the long, long campaign:
Dreams go on.
Among the leather saddles,
In the heads of soldiers
Heavy in the wracks and kills
Of all straight fighting:
Dreams go on. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Found to the eyes of children alone, untold,
Singing a low song in the loneliness.
And the young child, Christ, goes on asking
And the old men answer nothing and only know love
For the young child. Christ, straight and wise. ”

“ A man saw the whole world as a grinning skull and cross-bones. The rose flesh of life shriveled from all faces. Nothing counts. Everything is a fake. Dust to dust and ashes to ashes and then an old darkness and a useless silence. ”

“ An ambition is a little creeper that creeps and creeps in your heart night and day, singing a little song, “Come and find me, come and find me.”
The secret ambition in the heart of Eeta Peeca Pie, Meeney Miney, and Miney Mo was an ambition to go railroading, to ride on railroad cars night and day, year after year. The whistles and the wheels of railroad trains were music to them. ”

“ 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. ”