Carl Sandburg

Panels

Panels - meaning Summary

Nature Framing Memory

The poem presents a quiet domestic view through a west window, where ordinary garden details—marching onions, nodding lilacs, sun-dried fence boards and stained knot holes—convey a current calm. Those same objects evoke a remembered winter storm: knee drifts and a howling blizzard described as whistling war drums. The juxtaposition links peaceful present sensory observation with an imaginative recollection of past violence, suggesting memory lives within small, everyday sights.

Read Complete Analyses

THE WEST window is a panel of marching onions. Five new lilacs nod to the wind and fence boards. The rain dry fence boards, the stained knot holes, heliograph a peace. (How long ago the knee drifts here and a blizzard howling at the knot holes, whistling winter war drums?)

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