Poetry Explorer


Classic and Contemporary Poetry


SOILED DOVE by CARL SANDBURG

Poet Analysis

First Line: LET US BE HONEST; THE LADY WAS NOT A HARLOT UNTIL SHE
Last Line: TO YEAR, AND WONDERS SOMETIMES HOW ONE MAN IS COMING ALONG WITH SIX WOMEN.
Subject(s): UNFAITHFULNESS; INFIDELITY; ADULTERY; INCONSTANCY;

LET us be honest; the lady was not a harlot until she married a corporation lawyer who picked her
from a Ziegfeld chorus.
Before then she never took anybody's money and paid for her silk stockings out of what she earned
singing and dancing.
She loved one man and he loved six women and the game was changing her looks, calling for more and
more massage money and high coin for the beauty doctors.
Now she drives a long, underslung motor car all by herself, reads in the day's papers what her
husband is doing to the inter-state commerce commission, requires a larger corsage from year
to year, and wonders sometimes how one man is coming along with six women.



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