| Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Chicago Poems. 1916. |
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| 6. They Will Say |
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| OF my city the worst that men will ever say is this: | |
| You took little children away from the sun and the dew, | |
| And the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky, | |
| And the reckless rain; you put them between walls | |
| To work, broken and smothered, for bread and wages, | 5 |
| To eat dust in their throats and die empty-hearted | |
| For a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights. | |
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