Child of the Romans
Child of the Romans - context Summary
Published in Chicago Poems
Published in 1916 in Chicago Poems, Carl Sandburg's free-verse vignette portrays an immigrant railroad worker eating simple bread and bologna beside the track while luxury passengers dine on steaks and desserts. The poem reflects Sandburg's social consciousness and his recurring focus on working-class and immigrant lives, using a stark juxtaposition to highlight economic inequality amid early twentieth-century industrial and urban expansion.
Read Complete AnalysesThe dago shovelman sits by the railroad track Eating a noon meal of bread and bologna. A train whirls by, and men and women at tables Alive with red roses and yellow jonquils, Eat steaks running with brown gravy, Strawberries and cream, eclaires and coffee. The dago shovelman finishes the dry bread and bologna, Washes it down with a dipper from the water-boy, And goes back to the second half of a ten-hour day's work Keeping the road-bed so the roses and jonquils Shake hardly at all in the cut glass vases Standing slender on the tables in the dining cars.
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