Sandburg treats memory like currency, asking us to count old scenes the way we might count coins. He imagines Greeks, Romans, and medieval Carlovingians not as distant textbook figures but as rowdy, recognizable people—picnicking, wearing flashy clothes, making rude gestures, cracking eggs into copper pans. Even their violence sits beside everyday cooking, inherited from uncles who fought with spears. The speaker isn’t after facts; he wants the feel of their aliveness, the “symphonic dream” of ordinary bodily life. The white ships sailing through blue sky make the whole poem float between memory and dream, suggesting longing and freedom. The repeated line “Count these reminiscences like money” gives the poem a wistful, almost incantatory tone: the past is worth keeping, and remembering it—especially its bad manners and messy breakfasts—feels rich and springlike.
Carlovingian Dreams — Summary
Count these reminiscences like money. The Greeks had their picnics under another name. The Romans wore glad rags and told their neighbors, "What of it?" The Carlovingians hauling logs on carts, they too Stuck their noses in the air and stuck their thumbs to their noses And tasted life as a symphonic dream of fresh eggs broken over a frying pan left by an uncle who killed men with spears and short swords. Count these reminiscences like money. Drift, and drift on, white ships. Sailing the free sky blue, sailing and changing and sailing, Oh, I remember in the blood of my dreams how they sang before me. Oh, they were men and women who got money for their work, money or love or dreams. Sail on, white ships. Let me have spring dreams. Let me count reminiscences like money; let me count picnics, glad rags and the great bad manners of the Carlovingians breaking fresh eggs in the copper pans of their proud uncles.