Cripple
Cripple - context Summary
Chicago Poems, 1916
Published in 1916 in Chicago Poems, Sandburg’s free-verse "Cripple" was shaped by his attention to urban poverty and disease. The speaker encounters a dying man with the white plague and imagines an alternative life as a tall sunflower in a rural garden. The poem contrasts grim slum reality with tranquil country imagery to register social empathy and longing for simple, natural beauty amid industrial-city suffering.
Read Complete AnalysesOnce when I saw a cripple Gasping slowly his last days with the white plague, Looking from hollow eyes, calling for air, Desperately gesturing with wasted hands In the dark and dust of a house down in a slum, I said to myself I would rather have been a tall sunflower Living in a country garden Lifting a golden-brown face to the summer, Rain-washed and dew-misted, Mixed with the poppies and ranking hollyhocks, And wonderingly watching night after night The clear silent processionals of stars.
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