A Million Young Workmen, 1915
A million young workmen straight and strong lay stiff on the grass and roads,And the million are now under soil and their rottening flesh will in the years feed roots of blood-red roses.Yes, this million of young workmen slaughtered one another and never saw their red hands.And oh, it would have been a great job of killing and a new and beautiful thing under the sun if the million knew why they hacked and tore each other to death.The kings are grinning, the kaiser and the czar—they are alive riding in leather-seated motor cars, and they have their women and roses for ease, and they eat fresh-poached eggs for breakfast, new butter on toast, sitting in tall water-tight houses reading the news of war.I dreamed a million ghosts of the young workmen rose in their shirts all soaked in crimson...and yelled:God damn the grinning kings, God damn the kaiser and the czar.Chicago, 1915.
Words in this poem
- tore n.
- The dead grass that remains on mowing land in winter and spring. Mortimer. [Probably from the root of tear; cf. W. tór a break, cut, tóri to break, cut.]
- kaiser n.
- The ancient title of emperors of Germany assumed by King William of Prussia when crowned sovereign of the new German empire in 1871. [Gr., fr. L. Caesar. Cf. Kesar, and Czar.]
- damn v. t.
- To condemn; to declare guilty; to doom; to adjudge to punishment; to sentence; to censhure. [OE. damnen dap), OF. damner, dampner, F. damner, fr. L. damnare, damnatum, to condemn, fr. damnum damage, a fine, penalty. Cf. Condemn, Damage.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Million Young Workmen, 1915 is in the public domain. This text is taken from Cornhuskers, Wikisource; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Carl Sandburg, A Million Young Workmen, 1915, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/a-million-young-workmen-1915.html, id L29095.
Form and metre
A Million Young Workmen, 1915 is 8 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| A million young workmen straight and strong lay stiff on the grass and roads, | 16 | ·/˘·/˘·········· |
| And the million are now under soil and their rottening flesh will in the years feed roots of blood-red roses. | 26 | ··/˘·······/˘˘··········/˘ |
| Yes, this million of young workmen slaughtered one another and never saw their red hands. | 21 | ··/˘··/˘/˘·˘/˘·/˘···· |
| And oh, it would have been a great job of killing and a new and beautiful thing under the sun if the million knew why they hacked and tore each other to death. | 39 | ··········/˘····/˘˘·······/˘·······/˘·· |
| The kings are grinning, the kaiser and the czar—they are alive riding in leather-seated motor cars, and they have their women and roses for ease, and they eat fresh-poached eggs for breakfast, new butter on toast, sitting in tall water-tight houses reading the news of war. | 65 | ···/˘·/˘·····˘//˘·/˘/˘/˘·····/˘·/˘·········/˘·/˘··/˘··/˘·/˘/˘···· |
| I dreamed a million ghosts of the young workmen rose in their shirts all soaked in crimson...and yelled: | 22 | ···/˘····/˘·······/˘·· |
| God damn the grinning kings, God damn the kaiser and the czar. | 14 | ···/˘····/˘··· |
| Chicago, 1915. | 3 | ˘/· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.