William Shakespeare Images Photos

Poem of the day

House
 by Carl Sandburg

TWO Swede families live downstairs and an Irish policeman upstairs, and an old soldier, Uncle Joe.
Two Swede boys go upstairs and see Joe. His wife is dead, his only son is dead, and his two daughters in Missouri and Texas don't want him around.
The boys and Uncle Joe crack walnuts with a hammer on the bottom of a flatiron while the January wind howls and the zero air weaves laces on the window glass.
Joe tells the Swede boys all about Chickamauga and Chattanooga, how the Union soldiers crept in rain somewhere a dark night and ran forward and killed many Rebels, took flags, held a hill, and won a victory told about in the histories in school.
Joe takes a piece of carpenter's chalk, draws lines on the floor and piles stove wood to show where six regiments were slaughtered climbing a slope.
'Here they went' and 'Here they went,' says Joe, and the January wind howls and the zero air weaves laces on the window glass.
The two Swede boys go downstairs with a big blur of guns, men, and hills in their heads. They eat herring and potatoes and tell the family war is a wonder and soldiers are a wonder.
One breaks out with a cry at supper: I wish we had a war now and I could be a soldier.
...

---

Read complete poem

Popular Poets

• 1. Emily Dickinson(2411 poems)
• 2. Madison Julius Cawein(1231 poems)
• 3. Ella Wheeler Wilcox(1136 poems)
• 4. William Wordsworth(1016 poems)
• 5. Robert Burns(986 poems)
• 6. Edgar Albert Guest(945 poems)
• 7. Thomas Moore(849 poems)
• 8. Robert Service(831 poems)