Carl Sandburg’s “Paula” is a love lyric built on repetition, like a tune the speaker can’t stop humming. He insists that there is nothing in the song but Paula’s face and her “night-gray eyes,” but then he stands on a pier that “runs into the lake straight as a rifle barrel” and admits that he does not remember her eyes or her dancing feet. What he remembers is more physical and fleeting: hands “sweeter than nut-brown bread,” a shoulder brushing his arm like a warm southwest wind. Each time that touch comes back to him, though, it slips away, and he returns to the same simple refrain. The mood is tender and a little haunted—intimate but unresolved, as if he is trying to capture a person who keeps escaping into image, sensation, and song.
Paula — Summary
Nothing else in this song — only your face. Nothing else here — only your drinking, night-gray eyes. The pier runs into the lake straight as a rifle barrel. I stand on the pier and sing how I know you mornings. It is not your eyes, your face, I remember. It is not your dancing, race-horse feet. It is something else I remember you for on the pier mornings. Your hands are sweeter than nut-brown bread when you touch me. Your shoulder brushes my arm — a south-west wind crosses the pier. I forget your hands and your shoulder and I say again : Nothing else in this song — only your face. Nothing else here — only your drinking, night-gray eyes.