Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an influential American poet, journalist, and editor born in Galesburg, Illinois, to Swedish immigrant parents. He is best known for his poetry that captures the spirit of the American experience, particularly through his works that celebrate the working class and the simple beauty of everyday life.
In this post you can read Sandburg’s Halloween-themed poem “Theme in Yellow.” It is a playful, festive, and wonderfully evocative poem, unusually written from the perspective of a pumpkin. If you love this time of year as much as I do, I’m sure you’ll enjoy “Theme in Yellow!”
As usual, there’s a simple vocabulary exercise intended for English language learners found below (answer key available).
I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o'-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling.
VOCABULARY EXERCISE
Match the following words from the poem with the definitions:
TAWNY | DUSK | GHOST | HARVEST | PRAIRIE
- gathering crops from the fields in autumn
- a large, open area of grassland
- the darkest part of twilight before night
- the spirit of a dead person
- orange-brown or yellowish-brown
To check your answers, please click here.
NOTES
If you wish to receive new content from the Grammaticus blog in your inbox, please enter your email address in the box below. You can also subscribe to my free monthly Newsletter.
To support my work, you can send me a donation via PayPal. It would be greatly appreciated!
COVER PHOTO CREDIT
Fredrik Solli Wandem via Unsplash
Discover more from grammaticus
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
grammaticus 