| Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Chicago Poems. 1916. |
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| 82. Momus |
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| MOMUS is the name men give your face, | |
| The brag of its tone, like a long low steamboat whistle | |
| Finding a way mid mist on a shoreland, | |
| Where gray rocks let the salt water shatter spray | |
| Against horizons purple, silent. | 5 |
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| Yes, Momus, | |
| Men have flung your face in bronze | |
| To gaze in gargoyle downward on a street-whirl of folk. | |
| They were artists did this, shaped your sad mouth, | |
| Gave you a tall forehead slanted with calm, broad wisdom; | 10 |
| All your lips to the corners and your cheeks to the high bones | |
| Thrown over and through with a smile that forever wishes and wishes, purple, silent, fled from all the iron things of life, evaded like a sought bandit, gone into dreams, by God. | |
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| I wonder, Momus, | |
| Whether shadows of the dead sit somewhere and look with deep laughter | |
| On men who play in terrible earnest the old, known, solemn repetitions of history. | 15 |
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| A droning monotone soft as sea laughter hovers from your kindliness of bronze, | |
| You give me the human ease of a mountain peak, purple, silent; | |
| Granite shoulders heaving above the earth curves, | |
| Careless eye-witness of the spawning tides of men and women | |
| Swarming always in a drift of millions to the dust of toil, the salt of tears, | 20 |
| And blood drops of undiminishing war. | |
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