And This Will be All

And this will be all?
 And the gates will never open again?
 And the dust and the wind will play around the rusty door hinges and the songs of October moan, Why-oh, why-oh?

 And you will look to the mountains
 And the mountains will look to you
 And you will wish you were a mountain
 And the mountain will wish nothing at all?
   This will be all?
 The gates will never-never open again?

 The dust and the wind only
 And the rusty door hinges and moaning October
 And Why-oh, why-oh, in the moaning dry leaves,
   This will be all?

 Nothing in the air but songs
 And no singers, no mouths to know the songs?
 You tell us a woman with a heartache tells you it is so?
   This will be all?
And This Will be All

by Carl Sandburg, 1920
