Medallion
Medallion - context Summary
Published in 1920
Published in 1920 within Smoke and Steel, Sandburg’s "Medallion" locates a private, durable remembrance amid the collection’s public focus on industry and endurance. The speaker guards a brass medallion—forged by elemental forces—and treats it as a secret talisman for a woman who waits and vows that the sea will return what is lost. The poem pairs domestic intimacy with material imagery drawn from harsh, distant laboring conditions.
Read Complete AnalysesThe brass medallion profile of your face I keep always. It is not jingling with loose change in my pockets. It is not stuck up in a show place on the office wall. I carry it in a special secret pocket in the day and it is under my pillow at night. The brass came from a long ways off: it was up against hell and high water, fire and flood, before the face was put on it. It is the side of a head; a woman wishes; a woman waits; a woman swears behind silent lips that the sea will bring home what is gone.
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