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Carl Sandburg - Manitoba Childe Roland
Work rating: Medium

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-centimetre
     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 North-
     west 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 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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