Section: «Poems»
Verse (ancient Greek ὁ στίχος — row, structure), a term in versification used in several meanings:
artistic speech organized by division into rhythmically commensurate segments; poetry in the narrow sense; in particular, it implies the properties of versification of a particular tradition ("antique verse", "Akhmatova's verse", etc.);
a line of poetic text organized according to a certain rhythmic pattern ("My uncle of the most honest rules").
Still Life
COOL your heels on the rail of an observation car.Let the engineer open her up for ninety miles an hour.Take in the prairie right and left, rolling..
© Carl Sandburg
Statistics
Napoleon shifted,Restless in the old sarcophagusAnd murmured to a watchguard:"Who goes there?""Twenty-one million men,Soldiers, armies..
© Carl Sandburg
Stars, Songs, Faces
Gather the stars if you wish it so.Gather the songs and keep them.Gather the faces of women.Gather for keeping years and years.And then . . .Loosen..
© Carl Sandburg
Splinter
The voice of the last cricketacross the first frostis one kind of good-by.It is so thin a splinter of singing.
© Carl Sandburg
Spanish
FASTEN black eyes on me.I ask nothing of you under the peach trees,Fasten your black eyes in my gray with the spear of a storm.The air under the..
© Carl Sandburg
Southern Pacific
HUNTINGTON sleeps in a house six feet long.Huntington dreams of railroads he built and owned.Huntington dreams of ten thousand men saying: Yes..
© Carl Sandburg
Soiled Dove
Let us be honest; the lady was not a harlot until shemarried a corporation lawyer who picked her froma Ziegfeld chorus.Before then she never took..
© Carl Sandburg
Snow
SNOW took us away from the smoke valleys into white mountains, we saw velvetblue cows eating a vermillion grass and they gave us a pink milk.Snow..
© Carl Sandburg
Smoke Rose Gold
THE DOME of the capitol looks to the Potomac river.Out of haze over the sunset,Out of a smoke rose gold:One star shines over the sunset.Night takes..
© Carl Sandburg
Smoke And Steel
SMOKE of the fields in spring is one,Smoke of the leaves in autumn another.Smoke of a steel-mill roof or a battleship funnel,They all go up in a line..
© Carl Sandburg
Smoke
I SIT in a chair and read the newspapers.Millions of men go to war, acres of them are buried, guns and ships broken, citiesburned, villages sent up..
© Carl Sandburg
Slippery
THE SIX month childFresh from the tubWriggles in our hands.This is our fish child.Give her a nickname: Slippery.
© Carl Sandburg
Sleepyheads
SLEEP is a maker of makers. Birds sleep. Feet cling to a perch. Look at thebalance. Let the legs loosen, the backbone untwist, the head go heavy..
© Carl Sandburg
Slants At Buffalo, New York
A FOREFINGER of stone, dreamed by a sculptor, points to the sky.It says: This way! this way!Four lions snore in stone at the corner of the shaft.They..
© Carl Sandburg
Skyscraper
By day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and sun andhas a soul.Prairie and valley, streets of the city, pour people intoit and they mingle among its..
© Carl Sandburg
Sketch
The shadows of the shipsRock on the crestIn the low blue lustreOf the tardy and the soft inrolling tide.A long brown bar at the dip of the skyPuts an..
© Carl Sandburg
Sixteen Months
On the lips of the child Janet float changing dreams.It is a thin spiral of blue smoke,A morning campfire at a mountain lake.On the lips of the child..
© Carl Sandburg
Singing ****
YOUR bony head, Jazbo, O dock walloper,Those grappling hooks, those wheelbarrow handlers,The dome and the wings of you, ****,The red roof and the..
© Carl Sandburg
Silver Wind
DO you know how the dream looms? how if summer misses one of us the two ofus miss summerSummer when the lungs of the earth take a long breath for the..
© Carl Sandburg
Silver Nails
A man was crucified. He came to the city a stranger,was accused, and nailed to a cross. He lingered hanging.Laughed at the crowd. "The nails are..
© Carl Sandburg
Shirt
My shirt is a token and symbol,more than a cover for sun and rain,my shirt is a signal,and a teller of souls.I can take off my shirt and tear it,and..
© Carl Sandburg
Shenandoah
IN the Shenandoah Valley, one rider gray and one rider blue, and the sun on theriders wondering.Piled in the Shenandoah, riders blue and riders gray..
© Carl Sandburg
Sheep
Thousands of sheep, soft-footed, black-nosed sheep--one by one going up the hill and over the fence--one byone four-footed pattering up and over--one..
© Carl Sandburg
Shagbark Hickory
IN the moonlight under a shag-bark hickory treeWatching the yellow shadows melt in hoof-pools,Listening to the yes and the no of a woman's hands,I..
© Carl Sandburg
Sea-Wash
The sea-wash never ends.The sea-wash repeats, repeats.Only old songs? Is that all the sea knows?Only the old strong songs?Is that all?The sea-wash..
© Carl Sandburg