Testament
Testament - fact Summary
Statement of Class Allegiance
This brief poem, printed in the collection Good Morning, America, presents Sandburg’s deliberate choice of social affiliation. He gives "permission" for a plain burial, imagines shanty people and goats caring for his grave, and contrasts having "too much" with having "too little." The lines reflect Sandburg’s lived observations of American social classes and assert his solidarity with the poor without explicit explanation.
Read Complete AnalysesI GIVE the undertakers permission to haul my body to the graveyard and to lay away all, the head, the feet, the hands, all: I know there is something left over they can not put away. Let the nanny goats and the billy goats of the shanty people eat the clover over my grave and if any yellow hair or any blue smoke of flowers is good enough to grow over me let the dirty-fisted children of the shanty people pick these flowers. I have had my chance to live with the people who have too much and the people who have too little and I chose one of the two and I have told no man why.
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