Carl Sandburg’s short elegy honors an old Illinois farmer by connecting his life and death to the land he worked. The speaker asks that he be buried with respect, not because he was famous, but because his days were spent in Illinois cornfields and his nights were real rest after that labor. Now death is imagined as another long sleep. The wind becomes the poem’s central image: it was there when he listened to cornsilk and tassels, and it combed his red beard on freezing mornings while he handled yellow ears by the corncrib. That same wind still blows over his grave, so the man and the landscape remain tied together. The final image, of his hands dreaming of Illinois corn, is tender and slightly eerie, suggesting that even in death he is not fully separated from the work and place that shaped him. The mood is quiet, respectful, and rooted in rural life.
Illinois Farmer — Summary
Bury this old Illinois farmer with respect. He slept the Illinois nights of his life after days of work in Illinois cornfields. Now he goes on a long sleep.
The wind he listened to in the cornsilk and the tassels, the wind that combed his red beard zero mornings when the snow lay white on the yellow ears in the bushel basket at the corncrib, The same wind will now blow over the place here where his hands must dream of Illinois corn.