Brass Keys
Brass Keys - meaning Summary
Joy as Everyday Revelation
The poem presents joy as a quiet, domestic revelation found in small acts—making lapel petals, painting, slipping brass keys into locks—that open a "new room" of lasting significance. It moves from tender images to large questions about love, return, and meaning, insisting these mysteries evade logical verification or official authority. Sandburg frames existence as an irreducible riddle that must be lived rather than solved.
Read Complete AnalysesJOY ... weaving two violet petals for a coat lapel ... painting on a slab of night sky a Christ face ... slipping new brass keys into rusty iron locks and shouldering till at last the door gives and we are in a new room ... forever and ever violet petals, slabs, the Christ face, brass keys and new rooms. are we near or far?... is there anything else?... who comes back?... and why does love ask nothing and give all? and why is love rare as a tailed comet shaking guesses out of men at telescopes ten feet long? why does the mystery sit with its chin on the lean forearm of women in gray eyes and women in hazel eyes? are any of these less proud, less important, than a cross-examining lawyer? are any of these less perfect than the front page of a morning newspaper? the answers are not computed and attested in the back of an arithmetic for the verifications of the lazy there is no authority in the phone book for us to call and ask the why, the wherefore, and the howbeit it's ... a riddle ... by God.
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