money buys everything
‘cept love, personality,
freedom, or peace
Money is power so said one
Money is a cushion so said another
Money is the root of evil so said still another
Money means freedom so runs an old saying
And money is all of these – and more
Money pays for whatever you want — if you have the money
Money buys food, clothes, houses, land, guns, jewels, men, women, time to be lazy and listen to music
Money buys everything except love, personality, freedom, immortality, silence, peace
Carl Sandburg in The People, Yes as published in the Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, Harcourt Brace and Company, New York, 1957.
Such cheek on my part to adapt Carl Sandburg and change around his words but there it is.
When Mr. Sandburg died in the summer of 1967, the office of President Lyndon Johnson issued this statement in his name.
THE ROAD has come to an end for Carl Sandburg, my friend
Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America. We knew and cherished him as the bard of democracy, the echo of the people, our conscience, and chronicler of truth and beauty and purpose.
Carl Sandburg needs no epitaph. It is written for all time in the fields, the cities, the face and heart of the land he loved and the people he celebrated and inspired.
With the world, we mourn his passing. It is our special pride and fortune as Americans that we will always hear Carl Sandburg’s voice within ourselves. For he gave us the truest and most enduring vision of our own greatness.
At a memorial service for Mr. Sandburg held in front of the Lincoln Memorial later that fall of 1967, President Johnson closed his remarks with:
He knew that always in America “the strong men keep coming on.”
I will miss him; we will all miss him. There will not be one like him again.
But that line of Mr. Johnson’s, “For he gave us the truest and most enduring vision of our own greatness.“
And I read … Money buys everything except love, personality, freedom, immortality, silence, peace.
I will miss him; we will all miss him. There will not be one like him again.
No Haiku For You 