Carl Sandburg, an American poet known for his unrhymed, plain-spoken verse, wrote “A Sphinx” in the early twentieth century, a time when modernists were stripping poetry of conventional meter and rhyme and when ancient Egyptian artifacts were capturing the Western imagination. Sandburg had a lifelong habit of listening to things that do not speak—prairies, factories, graves—and in this poem he listens to the stone silence of a monument that has outlasted empires.
The poem addresses the Sphinx directly as “you.” For “five thousand years” it has sat “Close-mouthed” and never let out a “whisper.” “Processions” and “marchers” pass by with questions, but the Sphinx responds only with “grey eyes never blinking, shut lips never talking.” The speaker separates himself from those questioners. He does not beg for speech. Instead he declares, “I am one of those who know all you know and I keep my questions : I know the answers you hold.” The central idea is not that the Sphinx refuses knowledge; it is that silence itself can be a way of holding knowledge. The speaker claims a fellowship with that silence. Some truths, Sandburg implies, become smaller when forced into words. A “croak” would not be wisdom.
Sandburg constructs the poem in free verse, without rhyme or a regular beat, so the rhythm comes from line breaks and repetition. The first line ends on “never” before the next line releases “let out a whisper,” as though the poem itself hesitates before making sound. When the Sphinx is said to have answered the “questions you / answered,” the line break keeps the asking and the answering apart, just as the stone keeps its knowledge away from the marchers. The repeated negatives—“never blinking,” “never talking”—build a sense of absolute refusal, while the phrase “cat crouch of ages” gives the monument an animal stillness and patience. The colon in “I keep my / questions : I know the answers you hold” acts as an equals sign, linking the refusal to ask with the possession of answers. The final word “hold” matters: answers are not spoken but held, kept close.
The imagery is spare and memorable. “Grey eyes never blinking” turns stone into a living stare. “Shut lips never talking” doubles the closed mouth with the silence it maintains. The “cat crouch” suggests both the Sphinx’s lion body and a cat waiting motionless for centuries. Sandburg’s vocabulary stays deliberately plain: “Close-mouthed,” “whisper,” “croak.” Even the ugly sound of “croak” is important; it is the opposite of the dignity the Sphinx protects by staying silent.
What makes the poem significant is its quiet resistance to the modern hunger for explanations and ready answers. Sandburg wrote amid the noise of industry, war, and mass movements, and the marchers in the poem stand for all who demand that mystery explain itself. The poem answers that demand not with a doctrine but with an image of patient silence. It also democratizes the Sphinx. The ordinary speaker claims to know “all you know,” meaning that any person can share in the silent wisdom of the ancient monument. To keep one’s questions, the poem suggests, may be a sign not of ignorance but of already possessing the answers.