Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Chicago Poems. 1916.

52. On the Way

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?