Carl Sandburg

Night Stuff

Night Stuff - meaning Summary

Loneliness in Moonlight

The speaker asks the listener to attend as natural images—moon and lake—are imagined as the same "lonely woman": beautiful, alluring, and isolated. Repeated phrases link the celestial and terrestrial, clothing both in a "silver dress" that suggests glamour and estrangement. The final line makes the comparison personal: these luminous figures have "twisted the roots" under the speaker's heart, implying deep, unsettling longing and imaginative fusion with nature.

Read Complete Analyses

LISTEN a while, the moon is a lovely woman, a lonely woman, lost in a silver dress, lost in a circus rider's silver dress. Listen a while, the lake by night is a lonely woman, a lovely woman, circled with birches and pines mixing their green and white among stars shattered in spray clear nights. I know the moon and the lake have twisted the roots under my heart the same as a lonely woman, a lovely woman, in a silver dress, in a circus rider's silver dress.

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