I Am The People, The Mob
Carl Sandburg 1878 (Galesburg) – 1967 (Flat Rock)
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?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the
world's food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons
come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And
then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand
for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me.
I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted.
I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and
makes me work and give up what I have. And I
forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red
drops for history to remember. Then--I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the
People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer
forget who robbed me last year, who played me for
a fool--then there will be no speaker in all the world
say the name: 'The People,' with any fleck of a
sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob--the crowd--the mass--will arrive then.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 02, 2023
- 1:00 min read
- 116 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABCDEAFGHCIFJKLKDMNODPQ |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,199 |
Words | 200 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 23 |
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"I Am The People, The Mob" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/4684/i-am-the-people,-the-mob>.
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