Carl Sandburg

(1878-1967)

Lay me on an anvil, O God

Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.

Let me pry loose old walls.

Let me lift and loosen old foundations

Lay me on an anvil, Oh God.

Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.

Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together.

Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders.

Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper together through blue nights into white stars.

A formalist reading of the poem

"Prayer of Steel" is a short poem composed of 9 lines, the ninth being the longest. The cohesive devices in the poem will be analyzed on three levels: lexical, grammatical, and phonological. The analysis will be made first of the individual stanzas, then of the overall structure of the whole poem. Leech's concept of cohesion will be...