Carl Sandburg
Selected Poems
Introduction
Hats
Skypieces
Haunts
from Prairie
Under the Harvest Moon
Under a Hat Rim
Prayers of Steel
Broken Face Gargoyles
Upstream
Pennsylvania
Aprons of Silence
Speed
The Junk Man
A Million Young Workmen, 1915
PENNSYLVANIA
I HAVE been in Pennsylvania,
In the Monongahela and the Hocking Valleys.
In the blue Susquehanna
On a Saturday morning
I saw the mounted constabulary go by,
I saw boys playing marbles.
Spring and the hills laughed.
And in places
Along the Appalachian chain,
I saw steel arms handling coal and iron,
And I saw the white-cauliflower faces
Of miners’ wives waiting for the men to come home from the day’s work.
I made color studies in crimson and violet
Over the dust and domes of culm at sunset.
