Four prairie songs of Sandburg

Poems (or excerpts from poems) of Carl Sandburg (18781967): 1. Prairie (first & last lines of Cornhuskers: Prairie) I WAS born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a slogan. O prairie mother, I am one of your boys. I have loved the prairie as a man with a heart shot full of pain over love. Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water. … I speak of new cities and new people. I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes. I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down, a sun dropped in the west. I tell you there is nothing in the world only an ocean of tomorrows, a sky of tomorrows. I am the brother of the cornhuskers who say at sundown: Tomorrow is a day. 2. The Smoke of Autumn (last lines from Cornhuskers: Three Pieces on the Smoke of Autumn)