Analysis of A Million Young Work Men
Carl Sandburg 1878 (Galesburg) – 1967 (Flat Rock)
A million young workmen straight and strong lay stiff on the grass and roads,
And the million are now under soil and their rottening flesh will in the years feed roots of blood-red roses.
Yes, this million of young workmen slaughtered one another and never saw their red hands.
And oh, it would have been a great job of killing and a new and beautiful thing under the sun if the million knew why they hacked and tore each other to death.
The kings are grinning, the Kaiser and the czar—they are alive riding in leather-seated motor cars, and they have their women and roses for ease, and they eat fresh-poached eggs for breakfast, new butter on toast, sitting in tall water-tight houses reading the news of war.
I dreamed a million ghosts of the young workmen rose in their shirts all soaked in crimson … and yelled:
God damn the grinning kings, God damn the kaiser and the czar.
Scheme | ABCDEFG |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0101101011110101 001011101011110011111110 111011101010100101111 011111011110001010011001101011110111011 01110010001110110010101010111100101101111111011011100110110100111 1101011011010111101001 11010111010001 |
Characters | 885 |
Words | 162 |
Sentences | 6 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 7 |
Lines Amount | 7 |
Letters per line (avg) | 100 |
Words per line (avg) | 23 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 699 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 160 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 17, 2023
- 48 sec read
- 191 Views
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"A Million Young Work Men" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 3 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/4590/a-million-young-work-men>.
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