Carl Sandburg. They Will Say. Harriet Monroe, ed. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912-22

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22.

They Will Say

By Carl Sandburg


From “Days” OF my city the worst that men will ever say is this:
You took little children away from the sun and the dew,
And the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky
And the reckless rain; you put them between walls
To work, broken and smothered, for bread and wages,	5
To eat dust in their throats and die empty-hearted
For a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights.