Carl Sandburg

Solo 1: Thomas Jefferson had red hair and a violin

and he loved life and people and music

and books and writing and quiet thoughts—

a lover of peace, decency, good order,

All: summer corn ripening for the bins of winter,

cows in green pastures, colts sucking at mares,

apple trees waiting to laugh with pippins—

Solo 1: Jefferson loved peace like a good farmer.

And yet—for eight years he fought in a war—

writing with his own hand the war announcement

named The Declaration of Independence

All: making the Fourth of July a sacred calendar date.

Solo 2: And there was his friend and comrade

Ben Franklin, the printer, bookman, diplomat:

All: all Franklin asked was they let him alone

so he could do his work as a lover of peace and work—

Solo 2: Franklin too made war for eight years—

the same Franklin who said two nations

would better throw dice than go to war—

he threw in with fighters for freedom—

All: for eight years he threw in all he had:

the books, the printshop, fun with electricity,

searches and researches in science pure and applied—

these had to wait while he joined himself

to eight long years of war from freedom, independence.

Solo 1: Now, of course, these two odd fellows

stand as only two among many:

Solo 2: the list runs long of these fellows,

lovers of peace, decency, good order,

who throw in with all they’ve got

for the abstractions “freedom,” “independence.”

All: Strictly they were gentle men, not hunting trouble.

Strictly they wanted quiet, the good life, freedom.

Solo 1: They would rather have had the horses of instruction

those eight years they gave to the tigers of wrath.

Solo 2: The record runs they were both dreamers

at the same time they refused imitations of the real thing

All: at the same time they stood up and talked back

at the same time they met the speech of steel and cunning

with their own relentless steel and cunning.