Author: Carl Sandburg

THERE are no handles upon a language Whereby men take hold of it And mark it with signs for its […]

Momus is the name men give your face, The brag of its tone, like a long low steamboat whistle Finding […]

TODAY I will let the old boat stand Where the sweep of the harbor tide comes in To the pulse […]

GATHER the stars if you wish it so. Gather the songs and keep them. Gather the faces of women. Gather […]

CRIMSON is the slow smolder of the cigar end I hold, Gray is the ash that stiffens and covers all […]

Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands And take it when it runs by, As the Apache dancer […]

IF I should pass the tomb of Jonah I would stop there and sit for awhile; Because I was swallowed […]

LITTLE one, you have been buzzing in the books, Flittering in the newspapers and drinking beer with Lawyers And amid […]

I TOOK away three pictures. One was a white gull forming a half-mile arch from the pines toward Waukegan. One […]

FROM the time of the early radishes To the time of the standing corn Sleepy Henry Hackerman hoes. There are […]

(Handbook for Quarreling Lovers)I THOUGHT of offering you apothegms. I might have said, “Dogs bark and the wind carries it […]

NANCY HANKS dreams by the fire; Dreams, and the logs sputter, And the yellow tongues climb. Red lines lick their […]

LET the crows go by hawking their caw and caw. They have been swimming in midnights of coal mines somewhere. […]

I WAS a boy when I heard three red words A thousand Frenchmen died in the streets For: Liberty, Equality, […]

THERE was a high majestic fooling Day before yesterday in the yellow corn. And day after to-morrow in the yellow […]

DRUM on your drums, batter on your banjoes, sob on the long cool winding saxophones. Go to it, O jazzmen. […]

LONG ago I learned how to sleep, In an old apple orchard where the wind swept by counting its money […]

LEAVES of poplars pick Japanese prints against the west. Moon sand on the canal doubles the changing pictures. The moon’s […]

I HAVE lived in many half-worlds myself… and so I know you. I leaned at a deck rail watching a […]

I spot the hills With yellow balls in autumn. I light the prairie cornfields Orange and tawny gold clusters And […]