On the Way
On the Way - meaning Summary
Questions on Truth and Mob
Sandburg addresses a young, worldly listener and invites them away from books and social clubs to a lakeshore walk. In plain, conversational language he questions claims to knowledge and authority, suggesting that the crowd or mob—rough, natural, cyclical—is the source of human life and movement. The poem doubts elite certainty and emphasizes communal, recurring patterns over individual expertise.
Read Complete AnalysesLittle one, you have been buzzing in the books, Flittering in the newspapers and drinking beer with lawyers And amid the educated men of the clubs you have been getting an earful of speech from trained tongues. Take an earful from me once, go with me on a hike Along sand stretches on the great inland sea here And while the eastern breeze blows on us and the restless surge Of the lake waves on the breakwater breaks with an ever fresh monotone, Let us ask ourselves: What is truth? what do you or I know? How much do the wisest of the world's men know about where the massed human procession is going? You have heard the mob laughed at? I ask you: Is not the mob rough as the mountains are rough? And all things human rise from the mob and relapse and rise again as rain to the sea.
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