writer and editor, best known for his poetry
. He won three Pulitzer Prize
s, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln
. H. L. Mencken
called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."
Sandburg was born in Galesburg
, Illinois
, to parents of Swedish
ancestry. At the age of thirteen he left school and began driving a milk wagon. From the age of about fourteen until he was seventeen or eighteen, he worked as a porter at the Union Hotel barbershop in Galesburg.
There are some people who can receive a truth by no other way than to have their understanding shocked and insulted.
Yesterday is done. Tomorrow never comes. Today is here. If you don't know what to do, sit still and listen. You may hear something. Nobody knows. We may pull apart the petals of a rose or make chemical analysis of its perfume, but the mystic beauty of its form and odor is still a secret, locked in to where we have no keys.
I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.
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.
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?
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.
The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over the harbor and city on silent haunches, and then moves on.
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. Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: What place is this? Where are we now?
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.