Skip to main content
  • 25 Lines or Fewer

Cool Tombs

By Carl Sandburg

When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin ... in the dust, in the cool tombs.

And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes ... in the dust, in the cool tombs.

Pocahontas’ body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or a pawpaw in May, did she wonder? does she remember? ... in the dust, in the cool tombs?

Take any streetful of people buying clothes and groceries, cheering a hero or throwing confetti and blowing tin horns ... tell me if the lovers are losers ... tell me if any get more than the lovers ... in the dust ... in the cool tombs.

Poet Bio

Though first made famous for the urban aesthetic of his poems about the people and city of Chicago, Carl Sandburg was born with humble working-class roots in Galesburg, Illinois. An activist, poet, and author, he won two Pulitzer Prizes, the first in 1940 for his biography of Abraham Lincoln and the second in 1951 for his Collected Poems.

See More By This Poet