Poem - "They Will Say" by Carl Sandburg

"They Will Say" 
by Carl Sandburg




OF my city the worst that men will ever say is this:

You took little children away from the sun and the dew,
And the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky,
And the reckless rain; you put them between walls
To work, broken and smothered, for bread and wages,
To eat dust in their throats and die empty-hearted
For a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights.