Carl Sandburg

I once made a visit to old Carl Sandburg’s home,

A small little cottage there in an Illinois town,

Not far from where Lincoln and Douglas speechified,

Where Abe crawled atop of the world yet unknown,

He joked that was all the college he’d been through,

Once he crawled out that window upon a platform,

But in those debates he told the whole town,

That Mister Douglas might blow out the lights of our souls,

By slavery as dark as man’s ever seen,

And when Lincoln came in behind in that race,

It just didn’t matter,

He had bigger fights,

Which somehow we knew even then was just right,

For he made sure old Carl would have much more to write,

By the end of the War that restored right not might,

And the words are so many about Abe which he wrote,

They look too many to fit in the little white house where

Carl Sandburg grew up.

So are the humble when they start in this world,

From humble small houses and not palaces grand,

So should it be always,

where the people shall stand.

-Albert Turner Goins, Sr.