Pals
Pals - context Summary
Composed for a Funeral
Written for a funeral, Sandburg’s free-verse short poem depicts the practical, solemn work of pallbearers carrying a coffin. The simple, direct lines focus on ritual gestures—the silver handles, rollers, last haul—and then shift to a meditation on the dead: mute but knowing, keeping a "locked-up story." The poem compresses ceremony and mystery, showing how ordinary actions at a funeral meet the unknowable silence of death.
Read Complete AnalysesTake a hold now On the silver handles here, Six silver handles, One for each of his old pals. Take hold And lift him down the stairs, Put him on the rollers Over the floor of the hearse. Take him on the last haul, To the cold straight house, The level even house, To the last house of all. The dead say nothing And the dead know much And the dead hold under their tongues A locked-up story.
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