Carl Sandburg – Monotone

The monotone of the rain is beautiful,And the sudden rise and slow relapseOf the long multitudinous rain.    The sun on the hills is beautiful,Or a captured sunset sea-flung,Bannered with fire and gold.    A face I know is beautiful —With fire and gold of sky...

Carl Sandburg – Knucks

In Abraham Lincoln’s city,Where they remember his lawyer’s shingle,The place where they brought himWrapped in battle flags,Wrapped in the smoke of memoriesFrom Tallahassee to the Yukon,The place now where the shaft of his tombPoints white against the blue prairie dome,In Abraham...

Carl Sandburg – Chicago

Hog Butcher for the World,   Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,   Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;   Stormy, husky, brawling,   City of the Big Shoulders:They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your...

Carl Sandburg – Harrison Street Court

I HEARD a woman's lipsSpeaking to a companionSay these words:"A woman what hustlesNever keeps nothin'For all her hustlin'.Somebody always getsWhat she goes on the street for.If it ain't a pimpIt's a bull what gets it.I been hustlin' nowTill I ain't much good any more.I got nothin'...

Carl Sandburg – The Harbor

Passing through huddled and ugly walls,By doorways where women haggardLooked from their hunger-deep eyes,Haunted with shadows of hunger-hands,Out from the huddled and ugly walls,I came sudden, at the city's edge,On a blue burst of lake,Long lake waves breaking under the sunOn a spray-flung...