Society and the World

The people know the salt of the sea and the strength of the winds lashing the corners of the earth. The people take the earth as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope. Who else speaks for the Family of Man?

Lay me on an anvil, O God. Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar. Let me pry loose old walls. Let me lift and loosen old foundations.

The learning and blundering people will live on. They will be tricked and sold and again sold And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds.

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

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.

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?

It takes all sorts of in and outdoor schooling To get adapted to my kind of fooling.

But strictly held by none, is loosely bound By countless silken ties of love and thought To everything on earth the compass round, And only by one’s going slightly taut In the capriciousness of summer air Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

The land was ours before we were the land’s. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people.

But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For Heaven and the future’s sakes.

Don’t join too many gangs. Join few if any. Join the United States and join the family— But not much in between unless a college.

I shall set forth for somewhere, I shall make the reckless choice Some say when they are in voice And tossing so as to scare The white clouds over them on, I shall have less to say, But I shall be gone.

Pressed into service means pressed out of shape.

My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.” 1

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.

It’s easy ’nough to titter w’en de stew is smokin’ hot, But hit’s mighty ha’d to giggle w’en dey’s nuffin’ in de pot.

“Is there anybody there?” said the Traveler, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grasses Of the forest’s ferny floor.

Since thou 2 and those who died with thee for right Have died, the Present teaches, but in vain!

It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core… I know why the caged bird sings! 1

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind. Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky And the affrighted steed ran on alone, Do not weep. War is kind.

A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.”

I’m tired of Love: I’m still more tired of Rhyme. But Money gives me pleasure all the time.

Here richly, with ridiculous display, The Politician’s corpse was laid away. While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.