| Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Chicago Poems. 1916. |
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| 52. On the Way |
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| LITTLE one, you have been buzzing in the books, | |
| Flittering in the newspapers and drinking beer with lawyers | |
| And amid the educated men of the clubs you have been getting an earful of speech from trained tongues. | |
| Take an earful from me once, go with me on a hike | |
| Along sand stretches on the great inland sea here | 5 |
| And while the eastern breeze blows on us and the restless surge | |
| Of the lake waves on the breakwater breaks with an ever fresh monotone, | |
| Let us ask ourselves: What is truth? what do you or I know? | |
| How much do the wisest of the world’s men know about where the massed human procession is going? | |
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| You have heard the mob laughed at? | 10 |
| I ask you: Is not the mob rough as the mountains are rough? | |
| And all things human rise from the mob and relapse and rise again as rain to the sea? | |
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