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Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg

Lawyer

WHEN the jury files in to deliver a verdict after weeks of direct and cross examinations, hot clashes of lawyers and cool decisions of the judge,  
There are points of high silence—twiddling of thumbs is at an end—bailiffs near cuspidors take fresh chews of tobacco and wait—and the clock has a chance for its ticking to be heard.  
A lawyer for the defense clears his throat and holds himself ready if the word is “Guilty” to enter motion for a new trial, speaking in a soft voice, speaking in a voice slightly colored with bitter wrongs mingled with monumental patience, speaking with mythic Atlas shoulders of many preposterous, unjust circumstances.

Cornhuskers. 1918.

#AmericanWriters

Other works by Carl Sandburg...
Old Woman

THE owl-car clatters along, dogge… From building and battered paving-… The headlight scoffs at the mist, And fixes its yellow rays in the c… Against a pane I press my forehea…
Old-Fashioned Requited Love

I HAVE ransacked the encyclopedi… And slid my fingers among topics a… Looking for you. And the answer comes slow. There seems to be no answer.
Do You Want Affidavits?

THERE’S a hole in the bottom of… Do you want affidavits? There’s a man in the moon with mon… Do you want affidavits? There are ten dancing girls in a s…
Weeds

FROM the time of the early radis… To the time of the standing corn Sleepy Henry Hackerman hoes. There are laws in the village agai… The law says a weed is wrong and s…
Statistics

NAPOLEON shifted, Restless in the old sarcophagus And murmured to a watchguard: “Who goes there?” “Twenty-one million men,
Woman With a Past

There was a woman tore off a red v… And slashed the white skin of her… And a crimson zigzag wrote a finge… There was a woman spoke six short… And quit a life that was old to he…
Have Me

HAVE me in the blue and the sun. Have me on the open sea and the mo… When I go into the grass of the s… This is where I came from—the chl… It is here the nostrils rush the a…
Autumn Movement

I cried over beautiful things know… The field of cornflower yellow is… the mother of the year, the taker… The northwest wind comes and the y… come in the first spit of snow on…
Three Spring Notations on Bipeds

THE DOWN drop of the blackbird, The wing catch of arrested flight, The stop midway and then off: off… This is April’s way: a woman: ‘O yes, I’m here again and your h…
Our Prayer of Thanks

FOR the gladness here where the s… evening on the weeds at the river, Our prayer of thanks. For the laughter of children who t… bareheaded in the summer grass,
 1
Fire-Logs

NANCY HANKS dreams by the fir… Dreams, and the logs sputter, And the yellow tongues climb. Red lines lick their way in flicke… Oh, sputter, logs.
Portrait

(For S. A.)TO write one book in… or five books in one year, to be the painter and the thing pa… ... where are we, bo? Wait-get his number.
Sunset From Omaha Hotel Window

Into the blue river hills The red sun runners go And the long sand changes And to-day is a goner And to-day is not worth haggling o…
A Fence

Now the stone house on the lake fr… workmen are beginning the fence. The palings are made of iron bars… can stab the life out of any man w… As a fence, it is a masterpiece, a…
Losses

I HAVE love And a child, A banjo And shadows. (Losses of God,



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