[1750] Grass

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work --
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.

	-- Carl Sandburg

This poem really impressed me when I was young.  One of the few poems I ever
felt compelled to take to memory.  I noticed that you have a good number of
Sandburg poems (relatively speaking) on your website, so maybe this one does
not appeal to everybody [1].

Philip Schreiner.

[1] Or maybe we just never got round to running it :) -- thomas.

[this poem is archived, accessible and awaiting your comments at]
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1748.html
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From: Rudi von Staden <rudivs@>

It is interesting to compare this poem by Thomas Hardy with Robert
Frost's Range Finding
(http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1036.html). Both present
creatures in nature as innocent bystanders in war - Frost's portrayal
perhaps a little more detatched than Hardy's.