Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MANITOBA CHILDE ROLAND, by CARL SANDBURG


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MANITOBA CHILDE ROLAND, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Last night a january wind was ripping at the shingles over our house
Last Line: It was beautiful to her and she could not understand.


LAST night a January wind was ripping at the shingles over our house
and whistling a wolf song under the eaves.

I sat in a leather rocker and read to a six-year-old girl the Browning
poem, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.

And her eyes had the haze of autumn hills and it was beautiful to her
and she could not understand.

A man is crossing a big prairie, says the poem, and nothing
happens -- and he goes on and on -- and it's all lonesome
and empty and
nobody home.

And he goes on and on -- and nothing happens -- and he
comes on a horse's
skull, dry bones of a dead horse -- and you know more than
ever it's all
lonesome and empty and nobody home.

And the man raises a horn to his lips and blows -- he fixes
a proud neck
and forehead toward the empty sky and the empty land -- and blows one
last wonder-cry.

And as the shuttling automatic memory of man clicks off its results
willy-nilly and inevitable as the snick of a mouse-trap or the
trajectory of a 42-centimeter projectile,

I flash to the form of a man to his hips in snow drifts of Manitoba
and Minnesota -- in the sled derby run from Winnipeg to Minneapolis.

He is beaten in the race the first day out of Winnipeg -- the lead dog
is eaten by four team mates -- and the man goes on and on
-- running while
the other racers ride -- running while the other racers sleep --

Lost in a blizzard twenty-four hours, repeating a circle of travel
hour after hour -- fighting the dogs who dig holes in the snow and
whimper for sleep -- pushing on -- running and walking five
hundred miles
to the end of the race -- almost a winner -- one toe frozen, feet
blistered and frost-bitten.

And I know why a thousand young men of the Northwest meet him in the
finishing miles and yell cheers -- I know why judges of the race call
him a winner and give him a special prize even though he is a loser.

I know he kept under his shirt and around his thudding heart amid the
blizzards of five hundred miles that one last wonder-cry of Childe
Roland -- and I told the six-year-old girl all about it.

And while the January wind was ripping at the shingles and whistling a
wolf song under the eaves, her eyes had the haze of autumn hills and
it was beautiful to her and she could not understand.






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