On The Way
Carl Sandburg
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
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?
You have heard the mob laughed at?
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.
