Carl Sandburg

Drumnotes

DAYS of the dead men, Danny.  
Drum for the dead, drum on your  
   remembering heart.  
 
Jaurès, a great love-heart of France,  
   a slug of lead in the red valves.          
Kitchener of Khartoum, tall, cold, proud,  
   a shark’s mouthful.  
Franz Josef, the old man of forty haunted  
   kingdoms, in a tomb with the Hapsburg  
   fathers, moths eating a green uniform        
   to tatters, worms taking all and leaving  
   only bones and gold buttons, bones and  
   iron crosses.  
Jack London, Jim Riley, Verhaeren, riders to the republic of dreams.  
 
Days of the dead, Danny.        
Drum on your remembering heart.

Cornhuskers. 1918.

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