T.S. Eliot - The Waste Land

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). The Waste Land. 1922.

The  Waste  Landhttp://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html 

"I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl of Cumae hanging in a jar, and when
 the boys said to her, Sibyl, what do you want? she replied I want to die."

 

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering	5
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,	10
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,	15
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,	20
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,	25
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.	30
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu,
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;	35
They called me the hyacinth girl.”
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,	40
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Öd’ und leer das Meer.
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,	45
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.	50
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.	55
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.
Unreal City,	60
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.	65
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying “Stetson!
You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!	70
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!	75
You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”
II. A GAME OF CHESS The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out	80
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion;	85
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended	90
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,	95
In which sad light a carvèd dolphin swam.
Above the antique mantel was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale	100
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
“Jug Jug” to dirty ears.
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms	105
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
Footsteps shuffled on the stair,
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.	110
“My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.
What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
I never know what you are thinking. Think.”
I think we are in rats’ alley	115
Where the dead men lost their bones.
“What is that noise?”
The wind under the door.
“What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”
Nothing again nothing.	120
“Do
You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
Nothing?”
I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.	125
“Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”
But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
It’s so elegant
So intelligent	130
“What shall I do now? What shall I do?
I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
What shall we ever do?”
The hot water at ten.	135
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.
When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said,
I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,	140
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,	145
He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you.
And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He’s been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said.	150
Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said,
Others can pick and choose if you can’t.
But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of telling.	155
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
(And her only thirty-one.)
I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.)	160
The chemist said it would be alright, but I’ve never been the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.
Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said,
What you get married for if you don’t want children?
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME	165
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot—
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.	170
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.
III. THE FIRE SERMON The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.	175
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;	180
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept…
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear	185
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse.	190
Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
And on the king my father’s death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.	195
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter	200
They wash their feet in soda water
Et, O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!
Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc’d.	205
Tereu
Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants	210
C. i. f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a week-end at the Metropole.
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back	215
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives	220
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at tea-time, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,	225
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
I too awaited the expected guest.	230
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house-agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,	235
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;	240
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall	245
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronizing kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit…
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;	250
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
“Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.”
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,	255
And puts a record on the gramophone.
“This music crept by me upon the waters”
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City City, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,	260
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.	265
The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails	270
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach	275
Past the Isle of Dogs.
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala
Elizabeth and Leicester
Beating oars	280
The stern was formed
A gilded shell
Red and gold
The brisk swell
Rippled both shores	285
South-west wind
Carried down stream
The peal of bells
White towers
Weialala leia	290
Wallala leialala
“Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.“	295
“My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
Under my feet. After the event
He wept. He promised ‘a new start.’
I made no comment. What should I resent?”
“On Margate Sands.	300
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken finger-nails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.”	305
la la
To Carthage then I came
Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest	310
burning
IV. DEATH BY WATER Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea	315
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,	320
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID After the torch-light red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying	325
Prison and place and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience	330
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink	335
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit	340
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mud-cracked houses                                  If there were water	345
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring	350
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock	355
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together	360
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?	365
What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only	370
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London	375
Unreal
A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings	380
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
In this decayed hole among the mountains	385
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.	390
Only a cock stood on the roof-tree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves	395
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA	400
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed	405
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA	410
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours	415
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded	420
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands
I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?	425
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon—O swallow swallow
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins	430
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih

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NOTES

Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston’s book on the Grail legend: From Ritual to Romance (Macmillan). Indeed, so deeply am I indebted, Miss Weston’s book will elucidate the difficulties of the poem much better than my notes can do; and I recommend it (apart from the great interest of the book itself) to any who think such elucidation of the poem worth the trouble. To another work of anthropology I am indebted in general, one which has influenced our generation profoundly; I mean The Golden Bough; I have used especially the two volumes Attis Adonis Osiris. Anyone who is acquainted with these works will immediately recognise in the poem certain references to vegetation ceremonies.

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

Line 20 Cf. Ezekiel II, i.

23. Cf. Ecclesiastes XII, v.

31. V. Tristan und Isolde, I, verses 5–8.

42. Id. III, verse 24.

46. I am not familiar with the exact constitution of the Tarot pack of cards, from which I have obviously departed to suit my own convenience. The Hanged Man, a member of the traditional pack, fits my purpose in two ways: because he is associated in my mind with the Hanged God of Frazer, and because I associate him with the hooded figure in the passage of the disciples to Emmaus in Part V. The Phoenician Sailor and the Merchant appear later; also the “crowds of people,” and Death by Water is executed in Part IV. The Man with Three Staves (an authentic member of the Tarot pack) I associate, quite arbitrarily, with the Fisher King himself.

60. Cf. Baudelaire:“Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rèves,Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant.”

63. Cf. Inferno, III. 55–57: “si lunga trattadi gente, ch’io non avrei mai credutoche morte tanta n’avesse disfatta.”

64. Cf. Inferno, IV. 25–27:“Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare,“non avea pianto, ma’ che di sospiri,“che l’aura eterna facevan tremare.”

68. A phenomenon which I have often noticed.

74. Cf. the Dirge in Webster’s White Devil.

76. V. Baudelaire, Preface to Fleurs du Mal.

II. A GAME OF CHESS

77. Cf. Antony and Cleopatra, II., ii. l. 190.

92. Laquearia. V. Aeneid, I, 726: dependent lychni laquearibus aureisincensi, et noctem flammis funalia vincunt.

98. Sylvan scene. V. Milton, Paradise Lost, IV. 140.

99. V. Ovid, Metamorphoses, VI, Philomela.

100. Cf. Part III, l. 204.

115. Cf. Part III, l. 195.

118. Cf. Webster: “Is the wind in that door still?”

126. Cf. Part I, l. 37, 48.

138. Cf. the game of chess in Middleton’s Women beware Women.

III. THE FIRE SERMON

176. V. Spenser, Prothalamion.

192. Cf. The Tempest, I, ii.

196. Cf. Day, Parliament of Bees:“When of the sudden, listening, you shall hear,“A noise of horns and hunting, which shall bring“Actaeon to Diana in the spring,“Where all shall see her naked skin…“

197. Cf. Marvell, To His Coy Mistress.

199. I do not know the origin of the ballad from which these lines are taken; it was reported to me from Sydney, Australia.

202. V. Verlaine, Parsifal.

210. The currants were quoted at a price “carriage and insurance free to London”; and the Bill of Lading, etc. were to be handed to the buyer upon payment of the sight draft.

218. Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a “character,” is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem. The whole passage from Ovid is of great anthropological interest:

 …Cum Iunone iocos et maior vestra profecto est

Quam, quae contingit maribus’, dixisse, ‘voluptas.’

Illa negat; placuit quae sit sententia docti

Quaerere Tiresiae: venus huic erat utraque nota.

Nam duo magnorum viridi coeuntia silva

Corpora serpentum baculi violaverat ictu

Deque viro factus, mirabile, femina septem

Egerat autumnos; octavo rursus eosdem

Vidit et ‘est vestrae si tanta potentia plagae,’

Dixit ‘ut auctoris sortem in contraria mutet,

Nunc quoque vos feriam!’ percussis anguibus isdem

Forma prior rediit genetivaque venit imago.

Arbiter hic igitur sumptus de lite iocosa

Dicta Iovis firmat; gravius Saturnia iusto

Nec pro materia fertur doluisse suique

Iudicis aeterna damnavit lumina nocte,

At pater omnipotens (neque enim licet inrita cuiquam

Facta dei fecisse deo) pro lumine adempto

Scire futura dedit poenamque levavit honore.

221. This may not appear as exact as Sappho’s lines, but I had in mind the “longshore” or “dory” fisherman, who returns at nightfall.

253. V. Goldsmith, the song in The Vicar of Wakefield.

257. V. The Tempest, as above.

264. The interior of St. Magnus Martyr is to my mind one of the finest among Wren’s interiors. See The Proposed Demolition of Nineteen City Churches: (P. S. King & Son, Ltd.).

266. The Song of the (three) Thames-daughters begins here. From line 292 to 306 inclusive they speak in turn. V. Götterdämmerung, III, i: The Rhinedaughters.

279. V. Froude, Elizabeth, Vol. I, ch. iv, letter of De Quadra to Philip of Spain:“In the afternoon we were in a barge, watching the games on the river. (The queen) was alone with Lord Robert and myself on the poop, when they began to talk nonsense, and went so far that Lord Robert at last said, as I was on the spot there was no reason why they should not be married if the queen pleased.”

293. Cf. Purgatorio, V. 133: “Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia; “Siena mi fe’, disfecemi Maremma.”

307. V. St. Augustine’s Confessions: “to Carthage then I came, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears.”

308. The complete text of the Buddha’s Fire Sermon (which corresponds in importance to the Sermon on the Mount) from which these words are taken, will be found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren’s Buddhism in Translation (Harvard Oriental Series). Mr. Warren was one of the great pioneers of Buddhist studies in the occident.

309. From St. Augustine’s Confessions again. The collocation of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism, as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident.

V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID

In the first part of Part V three themes are employed: the journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous (see Miss Weston’s book), and the present decay of eastern Europe.

357. This is Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii, the hermit-thrush which I have heard in Quebec County. Chapman says (Handbook of Birds in Eastern North America) “it is most at home in secluded woodland and thickety retreats.… Its notes are not remarkable for variety or volume, but in purity and sweetness of tone and exquisite modulation they are unequaled.” Its “water-dripping song” is justly celebrated.

360. The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton’s): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted.

366–76. Cf. Hermann Hesse, Blick ins Chaos: “Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten Europas auf dem Wege zum Chaos, fährt betrunken im heiligem Wahn am Abgrund entlang und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang. Ueber diese Lieder lacht der Bürger beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher hört sie mit Tränen.”

401. “Datta, dayadhvam, damyata” (Give, sympathise, control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found in the Brihadaranyaka—Upanishad, 5, 1. A translation is found in Deussen’s Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, p. 489.

407. Cf. Webster, The White Devil, V, vi: “…they’ll remarryEre the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spiderMake a thin curtain for your epitaphs.”

411. Cf. Inferno, XXXIII, 46:“ed io sentii chiavar l’uscio di sottoall’orribile torre.” Also F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 346.“My external sensations are no less private to myself than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it.… In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul, the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.”

424. V. Weston, From Ritual to Romance; chapter on the Fisher King.

427. V. Purgatorio, XXVI, 148.“‘Ara vos prec, per aquella valor‘que vos guida al som de l’escalina,‘sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor.’Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina.”

428. V. Pervigilium Veneris. Cf. Philomela in Parts II and III.

429. V. Gerard de Nerval, Sonnet El Desdichado.

431. V. Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy.

433. Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. “The Peace which passeth understanding” is a feeble translation of the content of this word.

 

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R.E. Slater - Fog (a poem)

  Fog

      by R.E. Slater

Fog slips in unnoticed, breathless

      veiling solitude’s cloaks of milky whites,

      brushing cheeks and brows, wetted

upon shrouded mist’s silent hush.

Wispy filaments probe the atmospherics, listless

      obscuring yellowing lamp globes in thickening haze,

      clothing woods and fields dressed in white, drifting

somber paths of vaporous stealth.

Dimly lit homes recede from view, hidden

      in greying worlds consuming sight,

      bereft tall church spires yet retreating, bowed

      like penitents enfolded spectral passage.

Be still my hurried heart, be still

      on cat’s paws comes thy biding peace,

      be not alone this covering night… rest, rest

prayer’s misty vapours ’neath the bidding lights.

R.E. Slater

October 25, 2011

Edited March 1, 2018

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

AUTHOR’S NOTES

I thought to write “Fog” in a lisping hand conveying a fading intercourse between our everyday casual worlds of the present with the tympanous¹ worlds of our own making, whether past, present or future. And I crafted it in a simple hand, not rushed, but not overplayed, so that it would drift from passage to passage, line to line, just as the fog would do as it morphs and lifts in its vapors.

I also subdued the coloration of the font with a deft brush of black-gray to project unconsciously into the poem a feeling for its subject. Though I did think to produce a more diminishing scale from a font of black to subtler grays but did not wish to break the reader's attention being given to the poem onto a periphery issue.

I also wanted to interplay the words “biding” and “bidding” between one another in the last verse just like a foggy haze would interplay between our lit worlds of perceived clarity and our shadowy worlds of unsolved tension. Biding subtends the meaning of abiding, remaining, staying somewhere, with someone, at one time or another; whereas bidding interplays the meaning of temporalness with the additional meaning of summoning or inviting someone somewhere to something at some time. In essence, the fog is a metaphor for our lives determining whether we stay in place or go forward; whether we drift along caught-up in the outplay of casual events; or, actively re-determining the stages of our conscious being, our social obligations, our future plans.

Of course, there are other elements within this poem which I wish to remain unstated so that the reader may determine themselves how to read its main constructions. Whether plainly, as can always be done with a poem, or with the subtlety fraught within its shrouded lines and shaded meanings. This I try to do with each of my poems, some with more success than others.

Lastly, because of my great respect for Carl Sandburg’s poem, Fog, which I originally read when as a young boy, I wanted to include a small homage to his poem by using the phrase “on cat’s paws” as a way of saying thank you for this delightful verse he had written. Which poem can never be improved upon, succinctly, efficiently, proficiently or otherwise, scribed as ever a poet could scribe his observations and affections....

Fog

The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

- Carl Sandburg

R.E. Slater

October 26, 2011

¹tympany (defn) - excessive pride, arrogance, pretentiousness of style,

bombastic, turgidity, swollen, inflated, pompous

A separate commentary based upon this poem can be found here:

Devising a Meaning for David Guetta's, "Titanium ft. Sia" -

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/02/meaning-of-david-guettas-titanium-ft.html

Carl Sandburg - Biography & Poems

Carl Sandburg, 1955

Carl Sandburg began to write seriously while attending Lombard College in Galesburg, Illinois. He took a variety of courses for four years that challenged him to write, to read, and to think. He was a member of The Poor Writer's Club, the captain of the men's basketball team and an editor for the Lombard Review, his college newspaper.

After nearly four years of college, he had dabbled so much in so many areas of study that he did not have enough credits in any one area to graduate with a degree. He left college in the spring semester of his senior year. The passions he had nurtured while in college, studying people and events, researching and writing, were further nurtured by his life experiences.

After eighteen years, at the age of 38, Carl Sandburg's first book by a major publishing company was published. Chicago Poems, published by Harcourt, was available worldwide in 1916. This successful book propelled Mr. Sandburg's career as a poet and an author.



A Father to his Son

A father sees his son nearing manhood.
What shall he tell that son?
'Life is hard; be steel; be a rock.'

And this might stand him for the storms
and serve him for humdrum monotony
and guide him among sudden betrayals
and tighten him for slack moments.

'Life is a soft loam; be gentle; go easy.'
And this too might serve him.
Brutes have been gentled where lashes failed.
The growth of a frail flower in a path up
has sometimes shattered and split a rock.

A tough will counts. So does desire.
So does a rich soft wanting.
Without rich wanting nothing arrives.

Tell him too much money has killed men
and left them dead years before burial:
the quest of lucre beyond a few easy needs
has twisted good enough men
sometimes into dry thwarted worms.

Tell him time as a stuff can be wasted.
Tell him to be a fool every so often
and to have no shame over having been a fool
yet learning something out of every folly
hoping to repeat none of the cheap follies
thus arriving at intimate understanding
of a world numbering many fools.

Tell him to be alone often and get at himself
and above all tell himself no lies about himself
whatever the white lies and protective fronts
he may use against other people.

Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong
and the final decisions are made in silent rooms.

Tell him to be different from other people
if it comes natural and easy being different.
Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives.
Let him seek deep for where he is born natural.

Then he may understand Shakespeare
and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov,
Michael Faraday and free imaginations
Bringing changes into a world resenting change.

He will be lonely enough
to have time for the work
he knows as his own.





Grass

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
      Shovel them under and let me work—
      I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
      Shovel them under and let me work.
      Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:

What place is this?
Where are we now?

      I am the grass.
      Let me work.





I Sang

I Sang to you and the moon
But only the moon remembers.
I sang
O reckless free-hearted
free-throated rythms,
Even the moon remembers them
And is kind to me.





Who Am I?

My head knocks against the stars.

My feet are on the hilltops.

My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of

universal life.

Down in the sounding foam of primal things I

reach my hands and play with pebbles of

destiny.

I have been to hell and back many times.

I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.

I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.

I know the passionate seizure of beauty

And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs

reading "Keep Off."

My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive

in the universe.

On the Breakwater

On the breakwater in the summer dark, a man and a

girl are sitting,

She across his knee and they are looking face into face

Talking to each other without words, singing rythms in

silence to each other.

A funnel of white ranges the blue dusk from an out-
going boat,
Playing its searchlight, puzzled, abrupt, over a streak of
green,
And two on the breakwater keep their silence, she on his
knee.





From the Shore

A lone gray bird,
Dim-dipping, far-flying,
Alone in the shadows and grandeurs and tumults
Of night and the sea
And the stars and storms.

Out over the darkness it wavers and hovers,

Out into the gloom it swings and batters,
Out into the wind and the rain and the vast,
Out into the pit of a great black world,
Where fogs are at battle, sky-driven, sea-blown,
Love of mist and rapture of flight,
Glories of chance and hazards of death
On its eager and palpitant wings.

Out into the deep of the great dark world,
Beyond the long borders where foam and drift
Of the sundering waves are lost and gone
On the tides that plunge and rear and crumble.

Fog

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.





Under the Harvest Moon

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.





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.
The turf had a gleam of brown,
And smell of soil was in the air,
And, cool and moist, a haze of April.

I shall remember you long,
Plowboy and horses against the sky in shadow.
I shall remember you and the picture
You made for me,
Turning the turf in the dusk
And haze of an April gloaming.





A Fence

Now the stone house on the lake front is finished and the
workmen are beginning the fence.
The palings are made of iron bars with steel points that
can stab the life out of any man who falls on them.
As a fence, it is a masterpiece, and will shut off the rabble
and all vagabonds and hungry men and all wandering
children looking for a place to play.
Passing through the bars and over the steel points will go
nothing except Death and the Rain and To-morrow.





Young Sea

The sea is never still.
It pounds on the shore
Restless as a young heart,
Hunting.

The sea speaks
And only the stormy hearts
Know what it says:
It is the face
of a rough mother speaking.

The sea is young.
One storm cleans all the hoar
And loosens the age of it.
I hear it laughing, reckless.

They love the sea,
Men who ride on it
And know they will die
Under the salt of it

Let only the young come,
Says the sea.

Let them kiss my face
And hear me.
I am the last word
And I tell
Where storms and stars come from.





Follies

Shaken,
The blossoms of lilac,
And shattered,
The atoms of purple.
Green dip the leaves,
Darker the bark,
Longer the shadows.

Sheer lines of poplar
Shimmer with masses of silver
And down in a garden old with years
And broken walls of ruin and story,
Roses rise with red rain-memories.
May!
In the open world
The sun comes and finds your face,
Remembering all.

Between Two Hills

Between two hills
The old town stands.
The houses loom
And the roofs and trees
And the dusk and the dark,
The damp and the dew
Are there.

The prayers are said
And the people rest
For sleep is there
And the touch of dreams
Is over all.

Accomplished Facts

Every year Emily Dickinson sent one friend
the first arbutus bud in her garden.

In a last will and testament Andrew Jackson
remembered a friend with the gift of George
Washington’s pocket spy-glass.

Napoleon too, in a last testament, mentioned a silver
watch taken from the bedroom of Frederick the Great,
and passed along this trophy to a particular friend.

O. Henry took a blood carnation from his coat lapel
and handed it to a country girl starting work in a
bean bazaar, and scribbled: “Peach blossoms may or
may not stay pink in city dust.”
So it goes. Some things we buy, some not.
Tom Jefferson was proud of his radishes, and Abe
Lincoln blacked his own boots, and Bismarck called
Berlin a wilderness of brick and newspapers.

So it goes. There are accomplished facts.
Ride, ride, ride on in the great new blimps—
Cross unheard-of oceans, circle the planet.
When you come back we may sit by five hollyhocks.
We might listen to boys fighting for marbles.
The grasshopper will look good to us.

So it goes …

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Chronology

• 1878: Born Jan. 6 in Galesburg, Illinois, second child and eldest son of August and Clara Sandburg. Baptized Carl August, called Charles.
• 1883: Lilian Steichen, future wife, born May 1 in Hancock, Michigan.
• 1891: Leaves school after eighth grade. Works as newsboy, milk delivery boy, and, in subsequent years, as barbershop shoeshine boy and milkman.
• 1896: Sees Robert Todd Lincoln at 40^th anniversary of Lincoln-Douglas debate, Knox College, Galesburg.
• 1897: Rides boxcar to Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Iowa, and works on railroad section gang, as farmhand, as dishwasher, and at other odd jobs.
• 1898: Paints houses in Galesburg and on April 26 enlists in Illinois Volunteers. Serves as private in Puerto Rico during Spanish-American War. Returns to Galesburg, enrolls as special student at Lombard College, Galesburg.
• 1899: Appointed to West Point but fails written examination in grammar and arithmetic. Enters Lombard College. Serves in town fire department and as school janitor.
• 1900: In summer sells stereographs with Fredrick Dickinson.
• 1901: Editor-in-chief of The Lombard Review.
• 1902: Leaves college in spring before graduating; wanders country selling stereographs.
• 1904: Writes "Inklings & Idlings" articles in Galesburg Evening Mail, using pseudonym "Crimson." First poetry and a few prose pieces published as booklet, In Reckless Ecstasy, by Professor Philip Green Wright’s Asgard Press.
• 1905: Becomes assistant editor of To-Morrow magazine in Chicago, which publishes some of his poems and pieces.
• 1906: Becomes lecturer on Walt Whitman and other subjects.
• 1907: Becomes associate editor and advertising man of The Lyceumite, Chicago. Continues lecturing at Elbert Hubbard’s chautauquas. Asgard Press publishes Incidentals. Becomes organizer for Social-Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Meets Lilian Steichen, schoolteacher and fellow Socialist.
• 1908: Publishes The Plaint of a Rose. Marries Lilian Steichen on June 15. Thereafter uses "Carl," not "Charles," as given name. Campaigns in Wisconsin with Socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs. Writes pamphlet You and Your Job.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems - http://carl-sandburg.com/POEMS.htm


More Poems by Carl Sandburg - http://www.poemhunter.com/carl-sandburg/poems/


Wikipedia Bio - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sandburg



~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Biography

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/carl-sandburg

Carl Sandburg

1878–1967

"Trying to write briefly about Carl Sandburg," said a friend of the poet, "is like trying to picture the Grand Canyon in one black and white snapshot." His range of interests was enumerated by his close friend, Harry Golden, who, in his study of the poet, called Sandburg "the one American writer who distinguished himself in five fields—poetry, history, biography, fiction, and music."

Sandburg composed his poetry primarily in free verse. Concerning rhyme versus non-rhyme Sandburg once said airily: "If it jells into free verse, all right. If it jells into rhyme, all right." Some critics noted that the illusion of poetry in his works was based more on the arrangement of the lines than on the lines themselves. Sandburg, aware of the criticism, wrote in the preface to Complete Poems: "There is a formal poetry only in form, all dressed up and nowhere to go. The number of syllables, the designated and required stresses of accent, the rhymes if wanted—they all come off with the skill of a solved crossword puzzle.... The fact is ironic. A proficient and sometimes exquisite performer in rhymed verse goes out of his way to register the point that the more rhyme there is in poetry the more danger of its tricking the writer into something other than the urge in the beginning." He dismissed modern poetry, however, as "a series of ear wigglings." In Good Morning, America, he published thirty-eight definitions of poetry, among them: "Poetry is a pack-sack of invisible keepsakes. Poetry is a sky dark with a wild-duck migration. Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment." His success as a poet was limited to that of a follower of Whitman and of the Imagists. In Carl Sandburg, Karl Detzer says that in 1918 "admirers proclaimed him a latter-day Walt Whitman; objectors cried that their six-year-old daughters could write better poetry."

Admirers of his poetry, however, have included Sherwood Anderson ("among all the poets of America he is my poet"), and Amy Lowell, who called Chicago Poems "one of the most original books this age has produced." Lowell's observations were reiterated by H. L. Mencken, who called Sandburg "a true original, his own man." No one, it is agreed, can deny the unique quality of his style. In his newspaper days, an old friend recalls, the slogan was, "Print Sandburg as is." It was Sandburg, as Golden observes, who "put America on paper," writing the American idiom, speaking to the masses, who held no terror for him. As Richard Crowder notes in Carl Sandburg, the poet "Had been the first poet of modern times actually to use the language of the people as his almost total means of expression.... Sandburg had entered into the language of the people; he was not looking at it as a scientific phenomenon or a curiosity.... He was at home with it." Sandburg's own Whitmanesque comment was: "I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass. Did you know that all the work of the world is done through me?" He was always read by the masses, as well as by scholars. He once observed: "I'll probably die propped up in bed trying to write a poem about America."

Sandburg's account of the life of Abraham Lincoln is one of the monumental works of the century. Abraham Lincoln: The War Years alone exceeds in length the collected writings of Shakespeare by some 150,000 words. Though Sandburg did deny the story that in preparation he read everything ever published on Lincoln, he did collect and classify Lincoln material for thirty years, moving himself into a garret, storing his extra material in a barn, and for nearly fifteen years writing on a cracker-box typewriter. His intent was to separate Lincoln the man from Lincoln the myth, to avoid hero-worship, to relate with graphic detail and humanness the man both he and Whitman so admired. The historian Charles A. Beard called the finished product "a noble monument of American literature," written with "indefatigable thoroughness." Allan Nevins saw it as "homely but beautiful, learned but simple, exhaustively detailed but panoramic ... [occupying] a niche all its own, unlike any other biography or history in the language." The Pulitzer Prize committee apparently agreed. Prohibited from awarding the biography prize for any work on Washington or Lincoln, it circumvented the rules by placing the book in the category of history. As a result of this work Sandburg was the first private citizen to deliver an address before a joint session of Congress (on February 12, 1959, the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's birth).

Perhaps Sandburg was best known to America as the singing bard—the "voice of America singing," says Golden. Sandburg was an author accepted as a personality, as was Mark Twain. Requests for his lectures began to appear as early as 1908. He was his own accompanist, and was not merely a musician of sorts; he played the guitar well enough to have been a pupil of Andres Segovia. Sandburg's songs were projected by a voice "in which you [could] hear farm hands wailing and levee Negroes moaning." It was fortunate that he was willing to travel about reciting and recording his poetry, for the interpretation his voice lent to his work was unforgettable. With its deep rich cadences, dramatic pauses, and midwestern dialect, his speech was "a kind of singing." Ben Hecht once wrote: "Whether he chatted at lunch or recited from the podium he had always the same voice. He spoke like a man slowly revealing something."

A self-styled hobo, Sandburg was the recipient of numerous honorary degrees, had six high schools and five elementary schools named for him, and held news conferences with presidents at the White House. "My father couldn't sign his name," wrote Sandburg; "[he] made his 'mark' on the CB&Q payroll sheet. My mother was able to read the Scriptures in her native language, but she could not write, and I wrote of Abraham Lincoln whose own mother could not read or write! I guess that somewhere along in this you'll find a story of America."

A Sandburg archives is maintained in the Sandburg Room at the University of Illinois. Ralph G. Newman, who is known primarily as a Lincoln scholar but who also is the possessor of what is perhaps the largest and most important collection of Sandburgiana, has said that a complete bibliography of Sandburg's works, including contributions to periodicals and anthologies, forewords, introductions, and foreign editions would number more than four hundred pages. Sandburg received 200-400 letters each week. Though, to a friend who asked how he managed to look ten years younger than he appeared on his last visit, he replied: "From NOT answering my correspondence," he reportedly filed his mail under "F" (friendly and fan letters), "No reply needed," and "Hi fi" (to be read and answered).

For all this fame, he remained unassuming. What he wanted from life was "to be out of jail,... to eat regular,... to get what I write printed,... a little love at home and a little nice affection hither and yon over the American landscape,... [and] to sing every day." He wrote with a pencil, a fountain pen, or a typewriter, "but I draw the line at dictating 'em," he said. He kept his home as it was, refusing, for example, to rearrange his vast library in some orderly fashion; he knew where everything was. Furthermore, he said, "I want Emerson in every room."

On September 17, 1967, there was a National Memorial Service at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., at which Archibald MacLeish and Mark Van Doren read from Sandburg's poetry. A Carl Sandburg Exhibition of memorabilia was held at the Hallmark Gallery, New York City, January-February, 1968, and his home is under consideration as a National Historical site.

Sandburg's prose and poetry continues to inspire publication in new formats. The volume Arithmetic, for example, presents Sandburg's famous poem of the same title in the form of a uniquely illustrated text for children. Sandburg's poem is a humorous commentary on the grade-school experience of learning arithmetic: "Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head." Reviewers praised the creative presentation of the poem, and the effectiveness of what School Library Journal reviewer JoAnn Rees called Ted Rand's "brightly colored, mixed-media anamorphic paintings." Also written for children, several of Sandburg's unpublished "Rootabaga" stories (also referred to as "American fairy tales") have been posthumously collected by Sandburg scholar George Hendrick in More Rootabagas. Sandburg had published Rootabaga Pigeons in 1923 and Potato Face in 1930, leaving many other tales in the series unpublished. Critics praised the inventiveness, whimsicality, and humor of the stories, which feature such characters and places as "The Potato Face Blind Man," "Ax Me No Questions," and "The Village of Liver and Onions." "Sandburg was writing for the children in himself . . ." comments Verlyn Klinkenborg in New York Times Book Review, "for the eternal child, who, when he or she hears language spoken, hears rhythm, not sense."

In 2002, a collection of Sandburg's previously unknown letters, manuscripts, and photographs was auctioned for $80,000 by Tom Hall Auctions in Schneckville, Pennsylvania. The papers belonged to Sandburg's editor until her death, when they were given to her nephew. Many items were obtained by the University of Illinois, where Sandburg's papers are held.

Career

Held many odd jobs, including work as milk-delivery boy, barber shop porter, fireman, truck operator, and apprentice house painter; sold films for Underwood and Underwood; helped to organize Wisconsin Socialist Democratic Party; worked for Milwaukee Sentinel and Milwaukee Daily News; city hall reporter for Milwaukee Journal; secretary to Milwaukee Mayor Emil Seidel, 1910-12; worked for Milwaukee Leader and Chicago World, 1912; worked for Day Book (daily), Chicago, 1912-17; System: The Magazine of Business, Chicago, associate editor, February to early fall, 1913 (returned to Day Book); worked for Chicago Evening American for three weeks in 1917; Newspaper Enterprise Association (390 newspapers), Stockholm correspondent, 1918, ran Chicago office, 1919; Chicago Daily News, 1917-30, served as reporter (covered Chicago race riots), editorial writer, and motion picture editor, later continued as columnist until 1932; wrote weekly column syndicated by Chicago Daily Times, beginning in 1941. Presidential Medal of Freedom lecturer, University of Hawaii, 1934; Walgreen Foundation Lecturer, University of Chicago, 1940. Contributed newspaper columns to Chicago Times Syndicate and radio broadcasts such as "Cavalcade of America" and foreign broadcasts for the Office of War Information during World War II. Lectured and sang folk songs to his own guitar accompaniment.

Bibliography

• (As Charles A. Sandburg) In Reckless Ecstasy, Asgard Press, 1904.
• (As Charles A. Sandburg) The Plaint of a Rose, Asgard Press, 1905.
• (As Charles A. Sandburg) Incidentals, Asgard Press, 1905.
• (As Charles A. Sandburg) You and Your Job, [Chicago], ca. 1906.
• (As Charles Sandburg) Joseffy (promotional biography; commissioned by a wandering magician), Asgard Press, 1910.
• Chicago Poems, Holt, 1916, reprinted, Dover, 1994.
• Cornhuskers, Holt, 1918.
• The Chicago Race Riots, July, 1919, Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1919, reprinted with new introduction, 1969.
• Smoke and Steel (also see below), Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920.
• Rootabaga Stories (also see below), Harcourt, Brace, 1922, illustrated by Maud Fuller Petersham and Miska Petersham, Barefoot Books, 1994.
• Slabs of the Sunburnt West (also see below), Harcourt, Brace, 1922.
• Rootabaga Pigeons (also see below), Harcourt, Brace, 1923.
• Selected Poems of Carl Sandburg, edited by Rebecca West, Harcourt, Brace, 1926.
• Songs of America, Harcourt, Brace, 1926.
• (Editor) The American Songbag, Harcourt, Brace, 1927.
• Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (also see below), Harcourt, Brace, 1927.
• Abe Lincoln Grows Up, Harcourt, Brace, 1928.
• Good Morning, America (also see below), Harcourt, Brace, 1928.
• Rootabaga Country: Selections from Rootabaga Stories and Rootabaga Pigeons, Harcourt, Brace, 1929.
• Steichen, the Photographer, Harcourt, Brace, 1929.
• M'Liss and Louie, J. Zeitlin (Los Angeles, Calif.), 1929.
• Early Moon, Harcourt, Brace, 1930.
• Potato Face, Harcourt, Brace, 1930.
• (With Paul M. Angle) Mary Lincoln, Wife and Widow, Harcourt, Brace, 1932, reprinted, Applewood, 1995.
• The People, Yes, Harcourt, Brace, 1936.
• Smoke and Steel [and] Slabs of the Sunburnt West, Harcourt, Brace, 1938.
• A Lincoln and Whitman Miscellany, Holiday Press, 1938.
• Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (also see below), four volumes, Harcourt, Brace, 1939.
• Abraham Lincoln: The Sangamon Edition, six volumes, Scribner, 1940.
• Bronze Wood, Grabhorn Press, 1941.
• Storm Over the Land, Harcourt, Brace, 1942.
• Smoke and Steel, Slabs of the Sunburnt West [and] Good Morning, America (omnibus volume), Harcourt, Brace, 1942.
• Home Front Memo, Harcourt, Brace, 1943.
• (With Frederick Hill Meserve) Photographs of Abraham Lincoln, Harcourt, Brace, 1944.
• Poems of the Midwest, two volumes, World Publishing, 1946.
• The Lincoln Reader: An Appreciation, privately printed, 1947.
• Remembrance Rock (novel), Harcourt, Brace, 1948.
• Lincoln Collector: The Story of Oliver R. Barrett's Great Private Collection, Harcourt, Brace, 1949.
• (Editor) Carl Sandburg's New American Songbag, Broadcast Music, Inc., 1950. Complete Poems, Harcourt, Brace, 1950, revised and enlarged edition published as The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, 1970.
• Always the Young Strangers (autobiography), Harcourt, Brace, 1952.
• A Lincoln Preface, Harcourt, Brace, 1953.
• Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years, Harcourt, 1954, reprinted, 1974.
• Prairie-Town Boy, Harcourt, Brace, 1955.
• The Sandburg Range, Harcourt, Brace, 1957.
• Chicago Dynamic, Harcourt, Brace, 1957.
• The Fiery Trial, Dell, 1959.
• Address Before a Joint Session of Congress, February 12, 1959, Harcourt, Brace, 1959 (also published as Carl Sandburg on Abraham Lincoln, [Cedar Rapids], 1959, and as Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1959, J. St. Onge, 1959).
• Abraham Lincoln, three volume condensation of earlier work, Dell, 1959.
• Harvest Poems, 1910-1960, Harcourt, Brace, 1960.
• Wind Song, Harcourt, Brace, 1960.
• Six New Poems and a Parable, privately printed, 1960.
• Address Upon the Occasion of Abraham Lincoln's One Hundredth Inaugural Anniversary, Black Cat Books, 1961.
• Honey and Salt, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963.
• The Wedding Procession of the Rag Doll and the Broom Handle and Who Was in It (chapter of Rootabaga stories), Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967.
• The Letters of Carl Sandburg, edited by Herbert Mitgang, Harcourt, 1968.
• A Sandburg Treasury: Prose & Poetry for Young People, Harcourt, 1970.
• Seven Poems, illustrated with seven original etchings by Gregory Masurovsky, Associated American Artists, 1970.
• Breathing Tokens, edited by daughter Margaret Sandburg, Harcourt, 1978.
• Ever the Winds of Chance, edited by daughter M. Sandburg and George Hendrick, University of Illinois Press, 1983.
• Fables, Foibles and Foobles, edited by Hendrick, University of Illinois Press, 1988.
• Arithmetic, Harcourt, 1993.
• Billy Sunday and Other Poems, Harcourt, 1993.
• More Rootabagas, Knopf, 1993.
• Carl Sandburg (children's poems), edited by Frances S. Bolin, illustrated by Steve Arcella, Sterling, 1995.
• Poetry for Young People, Sterling, 1995.
• (Author of introduction) Lincoln's Devotional, Applewood, 1996.
• Selected Poems, edited by George Hendrick and Willene Hendrick, Harcourt, 1996.
• Grassroots (children's poems), Browndeer, 1997.

Also author of commentary for U.S. Government film "Bomber." Author of captions for "Road to Victory" mural photograph show, 1942. Collaborator on screenplay for the film "King of Kings," 1960. The World of Carl Sandburg, a stage presentation by Norman Corwin, was published by Harcourt in 1961. Contributor to International Socialist Review, Tomorrow, Poetry, Saturday Evening Post, Masses, Little Review, New Leader, Nation, and Playboy.

Further Reading

BOOKS

• Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale, Volume 1, 1973, Volume 4, 1975, Volume 10, 1979, Volume 15, 1980, Volume 35, 1985.
• Crane, Joan St. C., compiler, Carl Sandburg, Philip Green Wright, and the Asgard Press, 1900-1910, University of Virginia Press, 1975.
• Crowder, Richard, Carl Sandburg, Twayne, 1964.
• Detzer, Karl William, Carl Sandburg, Harcourt, 1941.
• Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale, Volume 17:Twentieth-Century American Historians, 1983, Volume 54: American Poets, 1880-1945, 1987.
• Durnell, Hazel, America of Carl Sandburg, University Press of Washington, 1965.
• Golden, Harry, Carl Sandburg, World Publishing, 1961.
• Haas, Joseph, and Gene Lovietz, Carl Sandburg: A Pictorial Biography, Putnam, 1967.
• Picture Book of American Authors, Sterling, 1962.
• Sandburg, Carl, Complete Poems, Harcourt, Brace, 1950.
• Sandburg, Good Morning, America, Harcourt, Brace, 1928.
• Sandburg, The Letters of Carl Sandburg, edited by Herbert Mitgang, Harcourt, 1968.
• Steichen, Edward, editor, Sandburg: Photographers View Carl Sandburg, Harcourt, 1966.
• Tribute to Carl Sandburg at Seventy-Five, special edition of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Abraham Lincoln Book Shop, 1953.
• Yannella, Philip, The Other Carl Sandburg, University Press of Mississippi, 1996.
• Zehnpfennig, Gladys, Carl Sandburg, Poet and Patriot, Denison, 1963.

PERIODICALS

• Booklist, March 1, 1993, p. 1225.
• Books, August, 1967.
• Chicago Tribune Book World, October 23, 1983.
• Commentary, May, 1992, p. 47.
• Detroit Free Press, November 30, 1965.
• Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 1993; June 1, 1995, p. 777.
• Life, December 1, 1961, February 23, 1953.
• Look, July 10, 1956.
• New Republic, September 4, 1995, p. 30.
• Newsweek, January 12, 1953.
• New York, December 12, 1998, p. 91.
• New York Herald Tribune Book Review, October 8, 1950.
• New York Public Library Bulletin, March, 1962.
• New York Times, January 10, 1968, September 25, 1968.
• New York Times Book Review, June 1, 1952, January 4, 1953, January 2, 1966, September 29, 1968, January 1, 1984, November 14, 1993, p. 32.
• Progressive, July, 1994, p. 40.
• Publishers Weekly, January 28, 1963; April 5, 1993, p. 78.
• Redbook, February, 1966.
• Saturday Evening Post, June 6, 1964.
• School Library Journal, May, 1993, p. 120; December, 1993, p. 116; June, 1995, p. 116.

OBITUARIES: PERIODICALS

• New York Times, July 23, 1967.
• Time, July 28, 1967, July 31, 1967.

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Biography of Carl Sandburg http://www.poemhunter.com/carl-sandburg/biography/ Author-poet Carl Sandburg was born in the three-room cottage at 313 East Third Street in Galesburg on January 6, 1878. The modest house, which is maintained by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, reflects the typical living conditions of a late nineteenth century working-class family. Many of the furnishings once belonged to the Sandburg family. Behind the home stands a small wooded park. There, beneath Remembrance Rock, lie the ashes of Carl Sandburg, who died in 1967. Early Years Carl August Sandburg was born the son of Swedish immigrants August and Clara Anderson Sandburg. The elder Sandburg, a blacksmith's helper for the nearby Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, purchased the cottage in 1873. Carl, called "Charlie" by the family, was born the second of seven children in 1878. A year later the Sandburgs sold the small cottage in favor of a larger house in Galesburg. Carl Sandburg worked from the time he was a young boy. He quit school following his graduation from eighth grade in 1891 and spent a decade working a variety of jobs. He delivered milk, harvested ice, laid bricks, threshed wheat in Kansas, and shined shoes in Galesburg's Union Hotel before traveling as a hobo in 1897. His experiences working and traveling greatly influenced his writing and political views. As a hobo he learned a number of folk songs, which he later performed at speaking engagements. He saw first-hand the sharp contrast between rich and poor, a dichotomy that instilled in him a distrust of capitalism. When the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898 Sandburg volunteered for service, and at the age of twenty was ordered to Puerto Rico, where he spent days battling only heat and mosquitoes. Upon his return to his hometown later that year, he entered Lombard College, supporting himself as a call fireman. Sandburg's college years shaped his literary talents and political views. While at Lombard, Sandburg joined the Poor Writers' Club, an informal literary organization whose members met to read and criticize poetry. Poor Writers' founder, Lombard professor Phillip Green Wright, a talented scholar and political liberal, encouraged the talented young Sandburg. Writer, Political Organizer, Reporter Sandburg honed his writing skills and adopted the socialist views of his mentor before leaving school in his senior year. Sandburg sold stereoscope views and wrote poetry for two years before his first book of verse, In Reckless Ecstasy, was printed on Wright's basement press in 1904. Wright printed two more volumes for Sandburg, Incidentals (1907) and The Plaint of a Rose (1908). As the first decade of the century wore on, Sandburg grew increasingly concerned with the plight of the American worker. In 1907 he worked as an organizer for the Wisconsin Social Democratic party, writing and distributing political pamphlets and literature. At party headquarters in Milwaukee, Sandburg met Lilian Steichen, whom he married in 1908. The responsibilities of marriage and family prompted a career change. Sandburg returned to Illinois and took up journalism. For several years he worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News, covering mostly labor issues and later writing his own feature. Internationally Recognized Author Sandburg was virtually unknown to the literary world when, in 1914, a group of his poems appeared in the nationally circulated Poetry magazine. Two years later his book Chicago Poems was published, and the thirty-eight-year-old author found himself on the brink of a career that would bring him international acclaim. Sandburg published another volume of poems, Cornhuskers, in 1918, and wrote a searching analysis of the 1919 Chicago race riots. More poetry followed, along with Rootabaga Stories (1922), a book of fanciful children's tales. That book prompted Sandburg's publisher, Alfred Harcourt, to suggest a biography of Abraham Lincoln for children. Sandburg researched and wrote for three years, producing not a children's book, but a two-volume biography for adults. His Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, published in 1926, was Sandburg's first financial success. He moved to a new home on the Michigan dunes and devoted the next several years to completing four additional volumes, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940. Sandburg continued his prolific writing, publishing more poems, a novel, Remembrance Rock, a second volume of folk songs, and an autobiography, Always the Young Strangers. In 1945 the Sandburgs moved with their herd of prize-winning goats and thousands of books to Flat Rock, North Carolina. Sandburg's Complete Poems won him a second Pulitzer Prize in 1951. Sandburg died at his North Carolina home July 22, 1967. His ashes were returned, as he had requested, to his Galesburg birthplace. In the small Carl Sandburg Park behind the house, his ashes were placed beneath Remembrance Rock, a red granite boulder. Ten years later the ashes of his wife were placed there.