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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/1280-0.txt b/1280-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a618fea --- /dev/null +++ b/1280-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7584 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1280 *** + +[Illustration] + + + + +Spoon River Anthology + +by Edgar Lee Masters + + +Contents + +A + +Altman, Herman +Armstrong, Hannah +Arnett, Harold +Arnett, Justice +Atheist, The Village +Atherton, Lucius + +B + +Ballard, John +Barker, Amanda +Barrett, Pauline +Bartlett, Ezra +Bateson, Marie +Beatty, Tom +Beethoven, Isaiah +Bennett, Hon. Henry +Bindle, Nicholas +Bliss, Mrs. Charles +Blood, A. D. +Bloyd, Wendell P. +Bone, Richard +Branson, Caroline +Brown, Jim +Brown, Sarah +Browning, Elijah +Burke, Robert Southey +Burleson, John Horace +Butler, Roy + +C + +Cabanis, Flossie +Cabanis, John +Calhoun, Granville +Calhoun, Henry C. +Campbell, Calvin +Carlisle, Jeremy +Carman, Eugene +Cheney, Columbus +Chicken, Ida +Childers, Elizabeth +Church, John M. +Churchill, Alfonso +Clapp, Homer +Clark, Nellie +Clute, Aner +Compton, Seth +Conant, Edith +Culbertson, E. C. + +D + +Davidson, Robert +Dement, Silas +Dippold the Optician +Dixon, Joseph +Dobyns, Batterton +Drummer, Frank +Drummer, Hare +Dunlap, Enoch +Dye, Shack + +E + +Ehrenhardt, Imanuel +Epilogue + +F + +Fallas, State’s Attorney +Fawcett, Clarence +Ferguson, Wallace +Findlay, Anthony +Fluke, Willard +Foote, Searcy +Ford, Webster +Fraser, Benjamin +Fraser, Daisy +French, Charlie +Frickey, Ida + +G + +Garber, James +Gardner, Samuel +Garrick, Amelia +Godbey, Jacob +Goldman, Le Roy +Goode, William +Goodhue, Harry Carey +Goodpasture, Jacob +Graham, Magrady +Gray, George +Green, Ami +Greene, Hamilton +Griffy, The Cooper +Gustine, Dorcas + +H + +Hainsfeather, Barney +Hamblin, Carl +Hately, Constance +Hatfield, Aaron +Hawkins, Elliott +Hawley, Jeduthan +Henry, Chase +Herndon, William H. +Heston, Roger +Higbie, Archibald +Hill, Doc +Hill, The +Hoheimer, Knowlt +Holden, Barry +Hookey, Sam +Houghton, Jonathan +Howard, Jefferson +Hueffer, Cassius +Hummel, Oscar +Humphrey, Lydia +Hurley, Scholfield +Hutchins, Lambert +Hyde, Ernest + +I + +Iseman, Dr. Siegfried + +J + +Jack, Blind +James, Godwin +Joe, Plymouth Rock +Johnson, Voltaire +Jones, Fiddler +Jones, Franklin +Jones, Indignation +Jones, Minerva +Jones, William +Judge, The Circuit + +K + +Karr, Elmer +Keene, Jonas +Kessler, Bert +Kessler, Mrs. +Killion, Captain Orlando +Kincaid, Russell +King, Lyman +Keene, Kinsey +Knapp, Nancy +Konovaloff, Ippolit +Kritt, Dow + +L + +Layton, Henry +Lively, Judge Selah + +M + +M’Cumber, Daniel +McDowell, Rutherford +McFarlane, Widow +McGee, Fletcher +McGee, Ollie +M’Grew, Jennie +M’Grew, Mickey +McGuire, Jack +McNeely, Mary +McNeely, Paul +McNeely, Washington +Malloy, Father +Marsh, Zilpha +Marshal, The Town +Marshall, Herbert +Mason, Serepta +Matheny, Faith +Matlock, Davis +Matlock, Lucinda +Melveny, Abel +Merritt, Mrs. +Merritt, Tom +Metcalf, Willie +Meyers, Doctor +Meyers, Mrs. +Micure, Hamlet +Miles, J. Milton +Miller, Julia +Miner, Georgine Sand +Moir, Alfred + +N + +Newcomer, Professor +Night-Watch, Andy The +Nutter, Isa + +O + +Osborne, Mabel +Otis, John Hancock + +P + +Pantier, Benjamin +Pantier, Mrs. Benjamin +Pantier, Reuben +Peet, Rev. Abner +Pennington, Willie +Penniwit, the Artist +Petit, the Poet +Phipps, Henry +Poague, Peleg +Pollard, Edmund +Potter, Cooney +Puckett, Lydia +Purkapile, Mrs. +Purkapile, Roscoe +Putt, Hod + +R + +Reece, Mrs. George +Rhodes, Ralph +Rhodes, Thomas +Richter, Gustav +Robbins, Hortense +Roberts, Rosie +Ross, Thomas, Jr. +Russian Sonia +Rutledge, Anne + +S + +Sayre, Johnnie +Scates, Hiram +Schirding, Albert +Schmidt, Felix +Schrœder The Fisherman +Scott, Julian +Sersmith the Dentist +Sewall, Harlan +Sharp, Percival +Shaw, “Ace” +Shelley, Percy Bysshe +Shope, Tennessee Claflin +Sibley, Amos +Sibley, Mrs. +Siever, Conrad +Simmons, Walter +Sissman, Dillard +Slack, Margaret Fuller +Smith, Louise +Soldiers, Many +Somers, Jonathan Swift +Somers, Judge +Sparks, Emily +Spears, Lois +Spooniad, The +Standard, W. Lloyd Garrison +Stewart, Lillian +Stoddard, Judson + +T + +Tanner, Robert Fulton +Taylor, Deacon +Theodore, The Poet +Thornton, English +Throckmorton, Alexander +Todd, Eugenia +Tompkins, Josiah +Trainor, the Druggist +Trevelyan, Thomas +Trimble, George +Tripp, Henry +Tubbs, Hildrup +Turner, Francis +Tutt, Oaks + +U + +Unknown, The + +W + +Wasson, John +Wasson, Rebecca +Webster, Charles +Weirauch, Adam +Weldy, “Butch” +Wertman, Elsa +Whedon, Editor +Whitney, Harmon +Wiley, Rev. Lemuel +Will, Arlo +William and Emily +Williams, Dora +Williams, Mrs. +Wilmans, Harry +Witt, Zenas + +Y + +Yee Bow + +Z + +Zoll, Perry + + + + +The Hill + + +_Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley, +The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the +fighter? +All, all are sleeping on the hill. + +One passed in a fever, +One was burned in a mine, +One was killed in a brawl, +One died in a jail, +One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife— +All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill. + +Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith, +The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?— +All, all are sleeping on the hill. + +One died in shameful child-birth, +One of a thwarted love, +One at the hands of a brute in a brothel, +One of a broken pride, in the search for heart’s desire; +One after life in far-away London and Paris +Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag— +All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill. + +Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily, +And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton, +And Major Walker who had talked +With venerable men of the revolution?— +All, all are sleeping on the hill. + +They brought them dead sons from the war, +And daughters whom life had crushed, +And their children fatherless, crying— +All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill. + +Where is Old Fiddler Jones +Who played with life all his ninety years, +Braving the sleet with bared breast, +Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin, +Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven? +Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago, +Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary’s Grove, +Of what Abe Lincoln said +One time at Springfield._ + + + + +Hod Putt + + +Here I lie close to the grave +Of Old Bill Piersol, +Who grew rich trading with the Indians, and who +Afterwards took the Bankrupt Law +And emerged from it richer than ever +Myself grown tired of toil and poverty +And beholding how Old Bill and others grew in wealth +Robbed a traveler one Night near Proctor’s Grove, +Killing him unwittingly while doing so, +For which I was tried and hanged. +That was my way of going into bankruptcy. +Now we who took the bankrupt law in our respective ways +Sleep peacefully side by side. + + + + +Ollie McGee + + +Have you seen walking through the village +A man with downcast eyes and haggard face? +That is my husband who, by secret cruelty +Never to be told, robbed me of my youth and my beauty; +Till at last, wrinkled and with yellow teeth, +And with broken pride and shameful humility, +I sank into the grave. +But what think you gnaws at my husband’s heart? +The face of what I was, the face of what he made me! +These are driving him to the place where I lie. +In death, therefore, I am avenged. + + + + +Fletcher McGee + + +She took my strength by minutes, +She took my life by hours, +She drained me like a fevered moon +That saps the spinning world. +The days went by like shadows, +The minutes wheeled like stars. +She took the pity from my heart, +And made it into smiles. +She was a hunk of sculptor’s clay, +My secret thoughts were fingers: +They flew behind her pensive brow +And lined it deep with pain. +They set the lips, and sagged the cheeks, +And drooped the eye with sorrow. +My soul had entered in the clay, +Fighting like seven devils. +It was not mine, it was not hers; +She held it, but its struggles +Modeled a face she hated, +And a face I feared to see. +I beat the windows, shook the bolts. +I hid me in a corner +And then she died and haunted me, +And hunted me for life. + + + + +Robert Fulton Tanner + + +If a man could bite the giant hand +That catches and destroys him, +As I was bitten by a rat +While demonstrating my patent trap, +In my hardware store that day. +But a man can never avenge himself +On the monstrous ogre Life. +You enter the room—that’s being born; +And then you must live—work out your soul, +Aha! the bait that you crave is in view: +A woman with money you want to marry, +Prestige, place, or power in the world. +But there’s work to do and things to conquer— +Oh, yes! the wires that screen the bait. +At last you get in—but you hear a step: +The ogre, Life, comes into the room, +(He was waiting and heard the clang of the spring) +To watch you nibble the wondrous cheese, +And stare with his burning eyes at you, +And scowl and laugh, and mock and curse you, +Running up and down in the trap, +Until your misery bores him. + + + + +Cassius Hueffer + + +They have chiseled on my stone the words: +“His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him +That nature might stand up and say to all the world, +This was a man.” +Those who knew me smile +As they read this empty rhetoric. +My epitaph should have been: +“Life was not gentle to him, +And the elements so mixed in him +That he made warfare on life +In the which he was slain.” +While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues, +Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph +Graven by a fool! + + + + +Serepta Mason + + +My life’s blossom might have bloomed on all sides +Save for a bitter wind which stunted my petals +On the side of me which you in the village could see. +From the dust I lift a voice of protest: +My flowering side you never saw! +Ye living ones, ye are fools indeed +Who do not know the ways of the wind +And the unseen forces +That govern the processes of life. + + + + +Amanda Barker + + +Henry got me with child, +Knowing that I could not bring forth life +Without losing my own. +In my youth therefore I entered the portals of dust. +Traveler, it is believed in the village where I lived +That Henry loved me with a husband’s love +But I proclaim from the dust +That he slew me to gratify his hatred. + + + + +Constance Hately + + +You praise my self-sacrifice, Spoon River, +In rearing Irene and Mary, +Orphans of my older sister! +And you censure Irene and Mary +For their contempt for me! +But praise not my self-sacrifice. +And censure not their contempt; +I reared them, I cared for them, true enough!— +But I poisoned my benefactions +With constant reminders of their dependence. + + + + +Chase Henry + + +In life I was the town drunkard; +When I died the priest denied me burial +In holy ground. +The which redounded to my good fortune. +For the Protestants bought this lot, +And buried my body here, +Close to the grave of the banker Nicholas, +And of his wife Priscilla. +Take note, ye prudent and pious souls, +Of the cross—currents in life +Which bring honor to the dead, who lived in shame + + + + +Harry Carey Goodhue + + +You never marveled, dullards of Spoon River, +When Chase Henry voted against the saloons +To revenge himself for being shut off. +But none of you was keen enough +To follow my steps, or trace me home +As Chase’s spiritual brother. +Do you remember when I fought +The bank and the courthouse ring, +For pocketing the interest on public funds? +And when I fought our leading citizens +For making the poor the pack-horses of the taxes? +And when I fought the water works +For stealing streets and raising rates? +And when I fought the business men +Who fought me in these fights? +Then do you remember: +That staggering up from the wreck of defeat, +And the wreck of a ruined career, +I slipped from my cloak my last ideal, +Hidden from all eyes until then, +Like the cherished jawbone of an ass, +And smote the bank and the water works, +And the business men with prohibition, +And made Spoon River pay the cost +Of the fights that I had lost. + + + + +Judge Somers + + +How does it happen, tell me, +That I who was most erudite of lawyers, +Who knew Blackstone and Coke +Almost by heart, who made the greatest speech +The court-house ever heard, and wrote +A brief that won the praise of Justice Breese +How does it happen, tell me, +That I lie here unmarked, forgotten, +While Chase Henry, the town drunkard, +Has a marble block, topped by an urn +Wherein Nature, in a mood ironical, +Has sown a flowering weed? + + + + +Kinsey Keene + + +Your attention, Thomas Rhodes, president of the bank; +Coolbaugh Whedon, editor of the Argus; +Rev. Peet, pastor of the leading church; +A. D. Blood, several times Mayor of Spoon River; +And finally all of you, members of the Social Purity Club— +Your attention to Cambronne’s dying words, +Standing with the heroic remnant +Of Napoleon’s guard on Mount Saint Jean +At the battle field of Waterloo, +When Maitland, the Englishman, called to them: +“Surrender, brave Frenchmen!”— +There at close of day with the battle hopelessly lost, +And hordes of men no longer the army +Of the great Napoleon +Streamed from the field like ragged strips +Of thunder clouds in the storm. +Well, what Cambronne said to Maitland +Ere the English fire made smooth the brow of the hill +Against the sinking light of day +Say I to you, and all of you, +And to you, O world. +And I charge you to carve it +Upon my stone. + + + + +Benjamin Pantier + + +Together in this grave lie Benjamin Pantier, attorney at law, +And Nig, his dog, constant companion, solace and friend. +Down the gray road, friends, children, men and women, +Passing one by one out of life, left me till I was alone +With Nig for partner, bed-fellow; comrade in drink. +In the morning of life I knew aspiration and saw glory, +The she, who survives me, snared my soul +With a snare which bled me to death, +Till I, once strong of will, lay broken, indifferent, +Living with Nig in a room back of a dingy office. +Under my Jaw-bone is snuggled the bony nose of Nig +Our story is lost in silence. Go by, mad world! + + + + +Mrs. Benjamin Pantier + + +I know that he told that I snared his soul +With a snare which bled him to death. +And all the men loved him, +And most of the women pitied him. +But suppose you are really a lady, and have delicate tastes, +And loathe the smell of whiskey and onions, +And the rhythm of Wordsworth’s “Ode” runs in your ears, +While he goes about from morning till night +Repeating bits of that common thing; +“Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?” +And then, suppose; +You are a woman well endowed, +And the only man with whom the law and morality +Permit you to have the marital relation +Is the very man that fills you with disgust +Every time you think of it while you think of it +Every time you see him? +That’s why I drove him away from home +To live with his dog in a dingy room +Back of his office. + + + + +Reuben Pantier + + +Well, Emily Sparks, your prayers were not wasted, +Your love was not all in vain. +I owe whatever I was in life +To your hope that would not give me up, +To your love that saw me still as good. +Dear Emily Sparks, let me tell you the story. +I pass the effect of my father and mother; +The milliner’s daughter made me trouble +And out I went in the world, +Where I passed through every peril known +Of wine and women and joy of life. +One night, in a room in the Rue de Rivoli, +I was drinking wine with a black-eyed cocotte, +And the tears swam into my eyes. +She though they were amorous tears and smiled +For thought of her conquest over me. +But my soul was three thousand miles away, +In the days when you taught me in Spoon River. +And just because you no more could love me, +Nor pray for me, nor write me letters, +The eternal silence of you spoke instead. +And the Black-eyed cocotte took the tears for hers, +As well as the deceiving kisses I gave her. +Somehow, from that hour, I had a new vision +Dear Emily Sparks! + + + + +Emily Sparks + + +Where is my boy, my boy +In what far part of the world? +The boy I loved best of all in the school?— +I, the teacher, the old maid, the virgin heart, +Who made them all my children. +Did I know my boy aright, +Thinking of him as a spirit aflame, +Active, ever aspiring? +Oh, boy, boy, for whom I prayed and prayed +In many a watchful hour at night, +Do you remember the letter I wrote you +Of the beautiful love of Christ? +And whether you ever took it or not, +My, boy, wherever you are, +Work for your soul’s sake, +That all the clay of you, all of the dross of you, +May yield to the fire of you, +Till the fire is nothing but light!… +Nothing but light! + + + + +Trainor, the Druggist + + +Only the chemist can tell, and not always the chemist, +What will result from compounding +Fluids or solids. +And who can tell +How men and women will interact +On each other, or what children will result? +There were Benjamin Pantier and his wife, +Good in themselves, but evil toward each other; +He oxygen, she hydrogen, +Their son, a devastating fire. +I Trainor, the druggist, a miser of chemicals, +Killed while making an experiment, +Lived unwedded. + + + + +Daisy Fraser + + +Did you ever hear of Editor Whedon +Giving to the public treasury any of the money he received +For supporting candidates for office? +Or for writing up the canning factory +To get people to invest? +Or for suppressing the facts about the bank, +When it was rotten and ready to break? +Did you ever hear of the Circuit Judge +Helping anyone except the “Q” railroad, +Or the bankers? Or did Rev. Peet or Rev. Sibley +Give any part of their salary, earned by keeping still, +Or speaking out as the leaders wished them to do, +To the building of the water works? +But I—Daisy Fraser who always passed +Along the street through rows of nods and smiles, +And coughs and words such as “there she goes.” +Never was taken before Justice Arnett +Without contributing ten dollars and costs +To the school fund of Spoon River! + + + + +Benjamin Fraser + + +Their spirits beat upon mine +Like the wings of a thousand butterflies. +I closed my eyes and felt their spirits vibrating. +I closed my eyes, yet I knew when their lashes +Fringed their cheeks from downcast eyes, +And when they turned their heads; +And when their garments clung to them, +Or fell from them, in exquisite draperies. +Their spirits watched my ecstasy +With wide looks of starry unconcern. +Their spirits looked upon my torture; +They drank it as it were the water of life; +With reddened cheeks, brightened eyes, +The rising flame of my soul made their spirits gilt, +Like the wings of a butterfly drifting suddenly into sunlight. +And they cried to me for life, life, life. +But in taking life for myself, +In seizing and crushing their souls, +As a child crushes grapes and drinks +From its palms the purple juice, +I came to this wingless void, +Where neither red, nor gold, nor wine, +Nor the rhythm of life are known. + + + + +Minerva Jones + + +I am Minerva, the village poetess, +Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street +For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk, +And all the more when “Butch” Weldy +Captured me after a brutal hunt. +He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers; +And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up, +Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice. +Will some one go to the village newspaper, +And gather into a book the verses I wrote?— +I thirsted so for love +I hungered so for life! + + + + +“Indignation” Jones + + +You would not believe, would you +That I came from good Welsh stock? +That I was purer blooded than the white trash here? +And of more direct lineage than the +New Englanders And Virginians of Spoon River? +You would not believe that I had been to school +And read some books. +You saw me only as a run-down man +With matted hair and beard +And ragged clothes. +Sometimes a man’s life turns into a cancer +From being bruised and continually bruised, +And swells into a purplish mass +Like growths on stalks of corn. +Here was I, a carpenter, mired in a bog of life +Into which I walked, thinking it was a meadow, +With a slattern for a wife, and poor Minerva, my daughter, +Whom you tormented and drove to death. +So I crept, crept, like a snail through the days +Of my life. +No more you hear my footsteps in the morning, +Resounding on the hollow sidewalk +Going to the grocery store for a little corn meal +And a nickel’s worth of bacon. + + + + +“Butch” Weldy + + +After I got religion and steadied down +They gave me a job in the canning works, +And every morning I had to fill +The tank in the yard with gasoline, +That fed the blow-fires in the sheds +To heat the soldering irons. +And I mounted a rickety ladder to do it, +Carrying buckets full of the stuff. +One morning, as I stood there pouring, +The air grew still and seemed to heave, +And I shot up as the tank exploded, +And down I came with both legs broken, +And my eyes burned crisp as a couple of eggs. +For someone left a blow—fire going, +And something sucked the flame in the tank. +The Circuit Judge said whoever did it +Was a fellow-servant of mine, and so +Old Rhodes’ son didn’t have to pay me. +And I sat on the witness stand as blind +As Jack the Fiddler, saying over and over, +“I didn’t know him at all.” + + + + +Doctor Meyers + + +No other man, unless it was Doc Hill, +Did more for people in this town than I. +And all the weak, the halt, the improvident +And those who could not pay flocked to me. +I was good-hearted, easy Doctor Meyers. +I was healthy, happy, in comfortable fortune, +Blest with a congenial mate, my children raised, +All wedded, doing well in the world. +And then one night, Minerva, the poetess, +Came to me in her trouble, crying. +I tried to help her out—she died— +They indicted me, the newspapers disgraced me, +My wife perished of a broken heart. +And pneumonia finished me. + + + + +Mrs. Meyers + + +He protested all his life long +The newspapers lied about him villainously; +That he was not at fault for Minerva’s fall, +But only tried to help her. +Poor soul so sunk in sin he could not see +That even trying to help her, as he called it, +He had broken the law human and divine. +Passers by, an ancient admonition to you: +If your ways would be ways of pleasantness, +And all your pathways peace, +Love God and keep his commandments. + + + + +Knowlt Hoheimer + + +I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge. +When I felt the bullet enter my heart +I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail +For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary, +Instead of running away and joining the army. +Rather a thousand times the county jail +Than to lie under this marble figure with wings, +And this granite pedestal Bearing the words, “Pro Patria.” +What do they mean, anyway? + + + + +Lydia Puckett + + +Knowlt Hoheimer ran away to the war +The day before Curl Trenary +Swore out a warrant through Justice Arnett +For stealing hogs. +But that’s not the reason he turned a soldier. +He caught me running with Lucius Atherton. +We quarreled and I told him never again +To cross my path. +Then he stole the hogs and went to the war— +Back of every soldier is a woman. + + + + +Frank Drummer + + +Out of a cell into this darkened space— +The end at twenty-five! +My tongue could not speak what stirred within me, +And the village thought me a fool. +Yet at the start there was a clear vision, +A high and urgent purpose in my soul +Which drove me on trying to memorize +The Encyclopedia Britannica! + + + + +Hare Drummer + + +Do the boys and girls still go to Siever’s +For cider, after school, in late September? +Or gather hazel nuts among the thickets +On Aaron Hatfield’s farm when the frosts begin? +For many times with the laughing girls and boys +Played I along the road and over the hills +When the sun was low and the air was cool, +Stopping to club the walnut tree +Standing leafless against a flaming west. +Now, the smell of the autumn smoke, +And the dropping acorns, +And the echoes about the vales +Bring dreams of life. +They hover over me. +They question me: +Where are those laughing comrades? +How many are with me, how many +In the old orchards along the way to Siever’s, +And in the woods that overlook +The quiet water? + + + + +Conrad Siever + + +Not in that wasted garden +Where bodies are drawn into grass +That feeds no flocks, and into evergreens +That bear no fruit— +There where along the shaded walks +Vain sighs are heard, +And vainer dreams are dreamed +Of close communion with departed souls— +But here under the apple tree +I loved and watched and pruned +With gnarled hands +In the long, long years; +Here under the roots of this northern-spy +To move in the chemic change and circle of life, +Into the soil and into the flesh of the tree, +And into the living epitaphs +Of redder apples! + + + + +Doc Hill + + +I went up and down the streets +Here and there by day and night, +Through all hours of the night caring for the poor who were sick. +Do you know why? +My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs. +And I turned to the people and poured out my love to them. +Sweet it was to see the crowds about the lawns on the day of my +funeral, +And hear them murmur their love and sorrow. +But oh, dear God, my soul trembled, scarcely able +To hold to the railing of the new life +When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree +At the grave, +Hiding herself, and her grief! + + + + +Andy The Night-Watch + + +In my Spanish cloak, +And old slouch hat, +And overshoes of felt, +And Tyke, my faithful dog, +And my knotted hickory cane, +I slipped about with a bull’s-eye lantern +From door to door on the square, +As the midnight stars wheeled round, +And the bell in the steeple murmured +From the blowing of the wind; +And the weary steps of old Doc Hill +Sounded like one who walks in sleep, +And a far-off rooster crew. +And now another is watching Spoon River +As others watched before me. +And here we lie, Doc Hill and I +Where none breaks through and steals, +And no eye needs to guard. + + + + +Sarah Brown + + +Maurice, weep not, I am not here under this pine tree. +The balmy air of spring whispers through the sweet grass, +The stars sparkle, the whippoorwill calls, +But thou grievest, while my soul lies rapturous +In the blest Nirvana of eternal light! +Go to the good heart that is my husband +Who broods upon what he calls our guilty love:— +Tell him that my love for you, no less than my love for him +Wrought out my destiny—that through the flesh +I won spirit, and through spirit, peace. +There is no marriage in heaven +But there is love. + + + + +Percy Bysshe Shelley + + +My father who owned the wagon-shop +And grew rich shoeing horses +Sent me to the University of Montreal. +I learned nothing and returned home, +Roaming the fields with Bert Kessler, +Hunting quail and snipe. +At Thompson’s Lake the trigger of my gun +Caught in the side of the boat +And a great hole was shot through my heart. +Over me a fond father erected this marble shaft, +On which stands the figure of a woman +Carved by an Italian artist. +They say the ashes of my namesake +Were scattered near the pyramid of Caius Cestius +Somewhere near Rome. + + + + +Flossie Cabanis + + +From Bindle’s opera house in the village +To Broadway is a great step. +But I tried to take it, my ambition fired +When sixteen years of age, +Seeing “East Lynne,” played here in the village +By Ralph Barrett, the coming +Romantic actor, who enthralled my soul. +True, I trailed back home, a broken failure, +When Ralph disappeared in New York, +Leaving me alone in the city— +But life broke him also. +In all this place of silence +There are no kindred spirits. +How I wish Duse could stand amid the pathos +Of these quiet fields +And read these words. + + + + +Julia Miller + + +We quarreled that morning, +For he was sixty—five, and I was thirty, +And I was nervous and heavy with the child +Whose birth I dreaded. +I thought over the last letter written me +By that estranged young soul +Whose betrayal of me I had concealed +By marrying the old man. +Then I took morphine and sat down to read. +Across the blackness that came over my eyes +I see the flickering light of these words even now: +“And Jesus said unto him, Verily +I say unto thee, To-day thou shalt +Be with me in paradise.” + + + + +Johnnie Sayre + + +Father, thou canst never know +The anguish that smote my heart +For my disobedience, the moment I felt +The remorseless wheel of the engine +Sink into the crying flesh of my leg. +As they carried me to the home of widow Morris +I could see the school-house in the valley +To which I played truant to steal rides upon the trains. +I prayed to live until I could ask your forgiveness— +And then your tears, your broken words of comfort! +From the solace of that hour I have gained infinite happiness. +Thou wert wise to chisel for me: +“Taken from the evil to come.” + + + + +Charlie French + + +Did you ever find out +Which one of the O’Brien boys it was +Who snapped the toy pistol against my hand? +There when the flags were red and white +In the breeze and “Bucky” Estil +Was firing the cannon brought to Spoon River +From Vicksburg by Captain Harris; +And the lemonade stands were running +And the band was playing, +To have it all spoiled +By a piece of a cap shot under the skin of my hand, +And the boys all crowding about me saying: +“You’ll die of lock-jaw, Charlie, sure.” +Oh, dear! oh, dear! +What chum of mine could have done it? + + + + +Zenas Witt + + +I was sixteen, and I had the most terrible dreams, +And specks before my eyes, and nervous weakness. +And I couldn’t remember the books I read, +Like Frank Drummer who memorized page after page. +And my back was weak, and I worried and worried, +And I was embarrassed and stammered my lessons, +And when I stood up to recite I’d forget +Everything that I had studied. +Well, I saw Dr. Weese’s advertisement, +And there I read everything in print, +Just as if he had known me; +And about the dreams which I couldn’t help. +So I knew I was marked for an early grave. +And I worried until I had a cough +And then the dreams stopped. +And then I slept the sleep without dreams +Here on the hill by the river. + + + + +Theodore the Poet + + +As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours +On the shore of the turbid Spoon +With deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish’s burrow, +Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead, +First his waving antennæ, like straws of hay, +And soon his body, colored like soap-stone, +Gemmed with eyes of jet. +And you wondered in a trance of thought +What he knew, what he desired, and why he lived at all. +But later your vision watched for men and women +Hiding in burrows of fate amid great cities, +Looking for the souls of them to come out, +So that you could see +How they lived, and for what, +And why they kept crawling so busily +Along the sandy way where water fails +As the summer wanes. + + + + +The Town Marshal + + +The Prohibitionists made me Town Marshal +When the saloons were voted out, +Because when I was a drinking man, +Before I joined the church, I killed a Swede +At the saw-mill near Maple Grove. +And they wanted a terrible man, +Grim, righteous, strong, courageous, +And a hater of saloons and drinkers, +To keep law and order in the village. +And they presented me with a loaded cane +With which I struck Jack McGuire +Before he drew the gun with which he killed me. +The Prohibitionists spent their money in vain +To hang him, for in a dream +I appeared to one of the twelve jurymen +And told him the whole secret story. +Fourteen years were enough for killing me. + + + + +Jack McGuire + + +They would have lynched me +Had I not been secretly hurried away +To the jail at Peoria. +And yet I was going peacefully home, +Carrying my jug, a little drunk, +When Logan, the marshal, halted me +Called me a drunken hound and shook me +And, when I cursed him for it, struck me +With that Prohibition loaded cane— +All this before I shot him. +They would have hanged me except for this: +My lawyer, Kinsey Keene, was helping to land +Old Thomas Rhodes for wrecking the bank, +And the judge was a friend of +Rhodes And wanted him to escape, +And Kinsey offered to quit on Rhodes +For fourteen years for me. +And the bargain was made. +I served my time +And learned to read and write. + + + + +Jacob Goodpasture + + +When Fort Sumter fell and the war came +I cried out in bitterness of soul: +“O glorious republic now no more!” +When they buried my soldier son +To the call of trumpets and the sound of drums +My heart broke beneath the weight +Of eighty years, and I cried: +“Oh, son who died in a cause unjust! +In the strife of Freedom slain!” +And I crept here under the grass. +And now from the battlements of time, behold: +Thrice thirty million souls being bound together +In the love of larger truth, +Rapt in the expectation of the birth +Of a new Beauty, +Sprung from Brotherhood and Wisdom. +I with eyes of spirit see the Transfiguration +Before you see it. +But ye infinite brood of golden eagles nesting ever higher, +Wheeling ever higher, the sun-light wooing +Of lofty places of Thought, +Forgive the blindness of the departed owl. + + + + +Dorcas Gustine + + +I was not beloved of the villagers, +But all because I spoke my mind, +And met those who transgressed against me +With plain remonstrance, hiding nor nurturing +Nor secret griefs nor grudges. +That act of the Spartan boy is greatly praised, +Who hid the wolf under his cloak, +Letting it devour him, uncomplainingly. +It is braver, I think, to snatch the wolf forth +And fight him openly, even in the street, +Amid dust and howls of pain. +The tongue may be an unruly member— +But silence poisons the soul. +Berate me who will—I am content. + + + + +Nicholas Bindle + + +Were you not ashamed, fellow citizens, +When my estate was probated and everyone knew +How small a fortune I left?— +You who hounded me in life, +To give, give, give to the churches, to the poor, +To the village!—me who had already given much. +And think you not I did not know +That the pipe-organ, which I gave to the church, +Played its christening songs when Deacon Rhodes, +Who broke and all but ruined me, +Worshipped for the first time after his acquittal? + + + + +Harold Arnett + + +I leaned against the mantel, sick, sick, +Thinking of my failure, looking into the abysm, +Weak from the noon-day heat. +A church bell sounded mournfully far away, +I heard the cry of a baby, +And the coughing of John Yarnell, +Bed-ridden, feverish, feverish, dying, +Then the violent voice of my wife: +“Watch out, the potatoes are burning!” +I smelled them . . . then there was irresistible disgust. +I pulled the trigger . . . blackness . . . light . . . +Unspeakable regret . . . fumbling for the world again. +Too late! Thus I came here, +With lungs for breathing . . . one cannot breathe here with lungs, +Though one must breathe +Of what use is it To rid one’s self of the world, +When no soul may ever escape the eternal destiny of life? + + + + +Margaret Fuller Slack + + +I would have been as great as George Eliot +But for an untoward fate. +For look at the photograph of me made by Penniwit, +Chin resting on hand, and deep—set eyes— +Gray, too, and far-searching. +But there was the old, old problem: +Should it be celibacy, matrimony or unchastity? +Then John Slack, the rich druggist, wooed me, +Luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel, +And I married him, giving birth to eight children, +And had no time to write. +It was all over with me, anyway, +When I ran the needle in my hand +While washing the baby’s things, +And died from lock—jaw, an ironical death. +Hear me, ambitious souls, +Sex is the curse of life. + + + + +George Trimble + + +Do you remember when I stood on the steps +Of the Court House and talked free-silver, +And the single-tax of Henry George? +Then do you remember that, when the Peerless Leader +Lost the first battle, I began to talk prohibition, +And became active in the church? +That was due to my wife, +Who pictured to me my destruction +If I did not prove my morality to the people. +Well, she ruined me: +For the radicals grew suspicious of me, +And the conservatives were never sure of me— +And here I lie, unwept of all. + + + + +Dr. Siegfried Iseman + + +I said when they handed me my diploma, +I said to myself I will be good +And wise and brave and helpful to others; +I said I will carry the Christian creed +Into the practice of medicine! +Somehow the world and the other doctors +Know what’s in your heart as soon as you make +This high-souled resolution. +And the way of it is they starve you out. +And no one comes to you but the poor. +And you find too late that being a doctor +Is just a way of making a living. +And when you are poor and have to carry +The Christian creed and wife and children +All on your back, it is too much! +That’s why I made the Elixir of Youth, +Which landed me in the jail at Peoria +Branded a swindler and a crook +By the upright Federal Judge! + + + + +“Ace” Shaw + + +I never saw any difference +Between playing cards for money +And selling real estate, +Practicing law, banking, or anything else. +For everything is chance. +Nevertheless +Seest thou a man diligent in business? +He shall stand before Kings! + + + + +Lois Spears + + +Here lies the body of Lois Spears, +Born Lois Fluke, daughter of Willard Fluke, +Wife of Cyrus Spears, +Mother of Myrtle and Virgil Spears, +Children with clear eyes and sound limbs— +(I was born blind) +I was the happiest of women +As wife, mother and housekeeper. +Caring for my loved ones, +And making my home +A place of order and bounteous hospitality: +For I went about the rooms, +And about the garden +With an instinct as sure as sight, +As though there were eyes in my finger tips— +Glory to God in the highest. + + + + +Justice Arnett + + +It is true, fellow citizens, +That my old docket lying there for years +On a shelf above my head and over +The seat of justice, I say it is true +That docket had an iron rim +Which gashed my baldness when it fell— +(Somehow I think it was shaken loose +By the heave of the air all over town +When the gasoline tank at the canning works +Blew up and burned Butch Weldy)— +But let us argue points in order, +And reason the whole case carefully: +First I concede my head was cut, +But second the frightful thing was this: +The leaves of the docket shot and showered +Around me like a deck of cards +In the hands of a sleight of hand performer. +And up to the end I saw those leaves +Till I said at last, “Those are not leaves, +Why, can’t you see they are days and days +And the days and days of seventy years? +And why do you torture me with leaves +And the little entries on them? + + + + +Willard Fluke + + +My wife lost her health, +And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds. +Then that woman, whom the men +Styled Cleopatra, came along. +And we—we married ones +All broke our vows, myself among the rest. +Years passed and one by one +Death claimed them all in some hideous form +And I was borne along by dreams +Of God’s particular grace for me, +And I began to write, write, write, reams on reams +Of the second coming of Christ. +Then Christ came to me and said, +“Go into the church and stand before the congregation +And confess your sin.” +But just as I stood up and began to speak +I saw my little girl, who was sitting in the front seat— +My little girl who was born blind! +After that, all is blackness. + + + + +Aner Clute + + +Over and over they used to ask me, +While buying the wine or the beer, +In Peoria first, and later in Chicago, +Denver, Frisco, New York, wherever I lived +How I happened to lead the life, +And what was the start of it. +Well, I told them a silk dress, +And a promise of marriage from a rich man— +(It was Lucius Atherton). +But that was not really it at all. +Suppose a boy steals an apple +From the tray at the grocery store, +And they all begin to call him a thief, +The editor, minister, judge, and all the people— +“A thief,” “a thief,” “a thief,” wherever he goes +And he can’t get work, and he can’t get bread +Without stealing it, why the boy will steal. +It’s the way the people regard the theft of the apple +That makes the boy what he is. + + + + +Lucius Atherton + + +When my moustache curled, +And my hair was black, +And I wore tight trousers +And a diamond stud, +I was an excellent knave of hearts and took many a trick. +But when the gray hairs began to appear— +Lo! a new generation of girls +Laughed at me, not fearing me, +And I had no more exciting adventures +Wherein I was all but shot for a heartless devil, +But only drabby affairs, warmed-over affairs +Of other days and other men. +And time went on until I lived at +Mayer’s restaurant, +Partaking of short-orders, a gray, untidy, +Toothless, discarded, rural Don Juan. . . . +There is a mighty shade here who sings +Of one named Beatrice; +And I see now that the force that made him great +Drove me to the dregs of life. + + + + +Homer Clapp + + +Often Aner Clute at the gate +Refused me the parting kiss, +Saying we should be engaged before that; +And just with a distant clasp of the hand +She bade me good-night, as I brought her home +From the skating rink or the revival. +No sooner did my departing footsteps die away +Than Lucius Atherton, +(So I learned when Aner went to Peoria) +Stole in at her window, or took her riding +Behind his spanking team of bays +Into the country. +The shock of it made me settle down +And I put all the money I got from my father’s estate +Into the canning factory, to get the job +Of head accountant, and lost it all. +And then I knew I was one of Life’s fools, +Whom only death would treat as the equal +Of other men, making me feel like a man. + + + + +Deacon Taylor + + +I belonged to the church, +And to the party of prohibition; +And the villagers thought I died of eating watermelon. +In truth I had cirrhosis of the liver, +For every noon for thirty years, +I slipped behind the prescription partition +In Trainor’s drug store +And poured a generous drink +From the bottle marked “Spiritus frumenti.” + + + + +Sam Hookey + + +I ran away from home with the circus, +Having fallen in love with Mademoiselle Estralada, +The lion tamer. +One time, having starved the lions +For more than a day, +I entered the cage and began to beat Brutus +And Leo and Gypsy. +Whereupon Brutus sprang upon me, +And killed me. +On entering these regions +I met a shadow who cursed me, +And said it served me right. . . . +It was Robespierre! + + + + +Cooney Potter + + +I inherited forty acres from my Father +And, by working my wife, my two sons and two daughters +From dawn to dusk, I acquired +A thousand acres. +But not content, +Wishing to own two thousand acres, +I bustled through the years with axe and plow, +Toiling, denying myself, my wife, my sons, my daughters. +Squire Higbee wrongs me to say +That I died from smoking Red Eagle cigars. +Eating hot pie and gulping coffee +During the scorching hours of harvest time +Brought me here ere I had reached my sixtieth year. + + + + +Fiddler Jones + + +The earth keeps some vibration going +There in your heart, and that is you. +And if the people find you can fiddle, +Why, fiddle you must, for all your life. +What do you see, a harvest of clover? +Or a meadow to walk through to the river? +The wind’s in the corn; you rub your hands +For beeves hereafter ready for market; +Or else you hear the rustle of skirts +Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove. +To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust +Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth; +They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy +Stepping it off, to “Toor-a-Loor.” +How could I till my forty acres +Not to speak of getting more, +With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos +Stirred in my brain by crows and robins +And the creak of a wind-mill—only these? +And I never started to plow in my life +That some one did not stop in the road +And take me away to a dance or picnic. +I ended up with forty acres; +I ended up with a broken fiddle— +And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories, +And not a single regret. + + + + +Nellie Clark + + +I was only eight years old; +And before I grew up and knew what it meant +I had no words for it, except +That I was frightened and told my +Mother; And that my Father got a pistol +And would have killed Charlie, who was a big boy, +Fifteen years old, except for his Mother. +Nevertheless the story clung to me. +But the man who married me, a widower of thirty-five, +Was a newcomer and never heard it +’Till two years after we were married. +Then he considered himself cheated, +And the village agreed that I was not really a virgin. +Well, he deserted me, and I died +The following winter. + + + + +Louise Smith + + +Herbert broke our engagement of eight years +When Annabelle returned to the village From the +Seminary, ah me! +If I had let my love for him alone +It might have grown into a beautiful sorrow— +Who knows?—filling my life with healing fragrance. +But I tortured it, I poisoned it +I blinded its eyes, and it became hatred— +Deadly ivy instead of clematis. +And my soul fell from its support +Its tendrils tangled in decay. +Do not let the will play gardener to your soul +Unless you are sure +It is wiser than your soul’s nature. + + + + +Herbert Marshall + + +All your sorrow, Louise, and hatred of me +Sprang from your delusion that it was wantonness +Of spirit and contempt of your soul’s rights +Which made me turn to Annabelle and forsake you. +You really grew to hate me for love of me, +Because I was your soul’s happiness, +Formed and tempered +To solve your life for you, and would not. +But you were my misery. +If you had been +My happiness would I not have clung to you? +This is life’s sorrow: +That one can be happy only where two are; +And that our hearts are drawn to stars +Which want us not. + + + + +George Gray + + +I have studied many times +The marble which was chiseled for me— +A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor. +In truth it pictures not my destination +But my life. +For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment; +Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid; +Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances. +Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life. +And now I know that we must lift the sail +And catch the winds of destiny +Wherever they drive the boat. +To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness, +But life without meaning is the torture +Of restlessness and vague desire— +It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid. + + + + +Hon. Henry Bennett + + +It never came into my mind +Until I was ready to die +That Jenny had loved me to death, with malice of heart. +For I was seventy, she was thirty—five, +And I wore myself to a shadow trying to husband +Jenny, rosy Jenny full of the ardor of life. +For all my wisdom and grace of mind +Gave her no delight at all, in very truth, +But ever and anon she spoke of the giant strength +Of Willard Shafer, and of his wonderful feat +Of lifting a traction engine out of the ditch +One time at Georgie Kirby’s. +So Jenny inherited my fortune and married Willard— +That mount of brawn! That clownish soul! + + + + +Griffy the Cooper + + +The cooper should know about tubs. +But I learned about life as well, +And you who loiter around these graves +Think you know life. +You think your eye sweeps about a wide horizon, perhaps, +In truth you are only looking around the interior of your tub. +You cannot lift yourself to its rim +And see the outer world of things, +And at the same time see yourself. +You are submerged in the tub of yourself— +Taboos and rules and appearances, +Are the staves of your tub. +Break them and dispel the witchcraft +Of thinking your tub is life +And that you know life. + + + + +Sersmith the Dentist + + +Do you think that odes and sermons, +And the ringing of church bells, +And the blood of old men and young men, +Martyred for the truth they saw +With eyes made bright by faith in God, +Accomplished the world’s great reformations? +Do you think that the Battle Hymn of the Republic +Would have been heard if the chattel slave +Had crowned the dominant dollar, +In spite of Whitney’s cotton gin, +And steam and rolling mills and iron +And telegraphs and white free labor? +Do you think that Daisy Fraser +Had been put out and driven out +If the canning works had never needed +Her little house and lot? +Or do you think the poker room +Of Johnnie Taylor, and Burchard’s bar +Had been closed up if the money lost +And spent for beer had not been turned, +By closing them, to Thomas Rhodes +For larger sales of shoes and blankets, +And children’s cloaks and gold-oak cradles? +Why, a moral truth is a hollow tooth +Which must be propped with gold. + + + + +A. D. Blood + + +If you in the village think that my work was a good one, +Who closed the saloons and stopped all playing at cards, +And haled old Daisy Fraser before Justice Arnett, +In many a crusade to purge the people of sin; +Why do you let the milliner’s daughter Dora, +And the worthless son of Benjamin Pantier +Nightly make my grave their unholy pillow? + + + + +Robert Southey Burke + + +I spent my money trying to elect you Mayor +A. D. Blood. +I lavished my admiration upon you, +You were to my mind the almost perfect man. +You devoured my personality, +And the idealism of my youth, +And the strength of a high-souled fealty. +And all my hopes for the world, +And all my beliefs in Truth, +Were smelted up in the blinding heat +Of my devotion to you, +And molded into your image. +And then when I found what you were: +That your soul was small +And your words were false +As your blue-white porcelain teeth, +And your cuffs of celluloid, +I hated the love I had for you, +I hated myself, I hated you +For my wasted soul, and wasted youth. +And I say to all, beware of ideals, +Beware of giving your love away +To any man alive. + + + + +Dora Williams + + +When Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me +I went to Springfield. There I met a lush, +Whose father just deceased left him a fortune. +He married me when drunk. +My life was wretched. +A year passed and one day they found him dead. +That made me rich. I moved on to Chicago. +After a time met Tyler Rountree, villain. +I moved on to New York. A gray-haired magnate +Went mad about me—so another fortune. +He died one night right in my arms, you know. +(I saw his purple face for years thereafter. ) +There was almost a scandal. +I moved on, This time to Paris. I was now a woman, +Insidious, subtle, versed in the world and rich. +My sweet apartment near the Champs Elysees +Became a center for all sorts of people, +Musicians, poets, dandies, artists, nobles, +Where we spoke French and German, Italian, English. +I wed Count Navigato, native of Genoa. +We went to Rome. He poisoned me, I think. +Now in the Campo Santo overlooking +The sea where young Columbus dreamed new worlds, +See what they chiseled: “Contessa Navigato +Implora eterna quiete.” + + + + +Mrs. Williams + + +I was the milliner +Talked about, lied about, +Mother of Dora, +Whose strange disappearance +Was charged to her rearing. +My eye quick to beauty +Saw much beside ribbons +And buckles and feathers +And leghorns and felts, +To set off sweet faces, +And dark hair and gold. +One thing I will tell you +And one I will ask: +The stealers of husbands +Wear powder and trinkets, +And fashionable hats. +Wives, wear them yourselves. +Hats may make divorces— +They also prevent them. +Well now, let me ask you: +If all of the children, born here in Spoon River +Had been reared by the +County, somewhere on a farm; +And the fathers and mothers had been given their freedom +To live and enjoy, change mates if they wished, +Do you think that Spoon River +Had been any the worse? + + + + +William and Emily + + +There is something about Death +Like love itself! +If with some one with whom you have known passion +And the glow of youthful love, +You also, after years of life +Together, feel the sinking of the fire +And thus fade away together, +Gradually, faintly, delicately, +As it were in each other’s arms, +Passing from the familiar room— +That is a power of unison between souls +Like love itself! + + + + +The Circuit Judge + + +Take note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions +Eaten in my head-stone by the wind and rain— +Almost as if an intangible Nemesis or hatred +Were marking scores against me, +But to destroy, and not preserve, my memory. +I in life was the Circuit Judge, a maker of notches, +Deciding cases on the points the lawyers scored, +Not on the right of the matter. +O wind and rain, leave my head-stone alone +For worse than the anger of the wronged, +The curses of the poor, +Was to lie speechless, yet with vision clear, +Seeing that even Hod Putt, the murderer, +Hanged by my sentence, +Was innocent in soul compared with me. + + + + +Blind Jack + + +I had fiddled all day at the county fair. +But driving home “Butch” Weldy and Jack McGuire, +Who were roaring full, made me fiddle and fiddle +To the song of _Susie Skinner_, while whipping the horses +Till they ran away. Blind as I was, I tried to get out +As the carriage fell in the ditch, +And was caught in the wheels and killed. +There’s a blind man here with a brow +As big and white as a cloud. +And all we fiddlers, from highest to lowest, +Writers of music and tellers of stories +Sit at his feet, +And hear him sing of the fall of Troy. + + + + +John Horace Burleson + + +I won the prize essay at school +Here in the village, +And published a novel before I was twenty-five. +I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art; +There married the banker’s daughter, +And later became president of the bank— +Always looking forward to some leisure +To write an epic novel of the war. +Meanwhile friend of the great, and lover of letters, +And host to Matthew Arnold and to Emerson. +An after dinner speaker, writing essays +For local clubs. At last brought here— +My boyhood home, you know— +Not even a little tablet in Chicago +To keep my name alive. +How great it is to write the single line: +“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll!“ + + + + +Nancy Knapp + + +Well, don’t you see this was the way of it: +We bought the farm with what he inherited, +And his brothers and sisters accused him of poisoning +His father’s mind against the rest of them. +And we never had any peace with our treasure. +The murrain took the cattle, and the crops failed. +And lightning struck the granary. +So we mortgaged the farm to keep going. +And he grew silent and was worried all the time. +Then some of the neighbors refused to speak to us, +And took sides with his brothers and sisters. +And I had no place to turn, as one may say to himself, +At an earlier time in life; +“No matter, So and so is my friend, or I can shake this off +With a little trip to Decatur.” +Then the dreadfulest smells infested the rooms. +So I set fire to the beds and the old witch-house +Went up in a roar of flame, +As I danced in the yard with waving arms, +While he wept like a freezing steer. + + + + +Barry Holden + + +The very fall my sister Nancy Knapp +Set fire to the house +They were trying Dr. Duval +For the murder of Zora Clemens, +And I sat in the court two weeks +Listening to every witness. +It was clear he had got her in a family way; +And to let the child be born +Would not do. +Well, how about me with eight children, +And one coming, and the farm +Mortgaged to Thomas Rhodes? +And when I got home that night, +(After listening to the story of the buggy ride, +And the finding of Zora in the ditch,) +The first thing I saw, right there by the steps, +Where the boys had hacked for angle worms, +Was the hatchet! +And just as I entered there was my wife, +Standing before me, big with child. +She started the talk of the mortgaged farm, +And I killed her. + + + + +State’s Attorney Fallas + + +I, the scourge-wielder, balance-wrecker, +Smiter with whips and swords; +I, hater of the breakers of the law; +I, legalist, inexorable and bitter, +Driving the jury to hang the madman, Barry Holden, +Was made as one dead by light too bright for eyes, +And woke to face a Truth with bloody brow: +Steel forceps fumbled by a doctor’s hand +Against my boy’s head as he entered life +Made him an idiot. I turned to books of science +To care for him. +That’s how the world of those whose minds are sick +Became my work in life, and all my world. +Poor ruined boy! You were, at last, the potter +And I and all my deeds of charity +The vessels of your hand. + + + + +Wendell P. Bloyd + + +They first charged me with disorderly conduct, +There being no statute on blasphemy. +Later they locked me up as insane +Where I was beaten to death by a Catholic guard. +My offense was this: +I said God lied to Adam, and destined him +To lead the life of a fool, +Ignorant that there is evil in the world as well as good. +And when Adam outwitted God by eating the apple +And saw through the lie, +God drove him out of Eden to keep him from taking +The fruit of immortal life. +For Christ’s sake, you sensible people, +Here’s what God Himself says about it in the book of Genesis: +“And the Lord God said, behold the man +Is become as one of us” (a little envy, you see), +“To know good and evil” (The all-is-good lie exposed): +“And now lest he put forth his hand and take +Also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever: +Therefore the Lord God sent Him forth from the garden of Eden.” (The +reason I believe God crucified His Own Son +To get out of the wretched tangle is, because it sounds just like Him. +) + + + + +Francis Turner + + +I could not run or play +In boyhood. +In manhood I could only sip the cup, +Not drink—For scarlet-fever left my heart diseased. +Yet I lie here +Soothed by a secret none but Mary knows: +There is a garden of acacia, +Catalpa trees, and arbors sweet with vines— +There on that afternoon in June +By Mary’s side— +Kissing her with my soul upon my lips +It suddenly took flight. + + + + +Franklin Jones + + +If I could have lived another year +I could have finished my flying machine, +And become rich and famous. +Hence it is fitting the workman +Who tried to chisel a dove for me +Made it look more like a chicken. +For what is it all but being hatched, +And running about the yard, +To the day of the block? +Save that a man has an angel’s brain, +And sees the ax from the first! + + + + +John M. Church + + +I was attorney for the “Q” +And the Indemnity Company which insured +The owners of the mine. +I pulled the wires with judge and jury, +And the upper courts, to beat the claims +Of the crippled, the widow and orphan, +And made a fortune thereat. +The bar association sang my praises +In a high-flown resolution. +And the floral tributes were many— +But the rats devoured my heart +And a snake made a nest in my skull + + + + +Russian Sonia + + +I, born in Weimar +Of a mother who was French +And German father, a most learned professor, +Orphaned at fourteen years, +Became a dancer, known as Russian Sonia, +All up and down the boulevards of Paris, +Mistress betimes of sundry dukes and counts, +And later of poor artists and of poets. +At forty years, _passée_, I sought New York +And met old Patrick Hummer on the boat, +Red-faced and hale, though turned his sixtieth year, +Returning after having sold a ship-load +Of cattle in the German city, Hamburg. +He brought me to Spoon River and we lived here +For twenty years—they thought that we were married +This oak tree near me is the favorite haunt +Of blue jays chattering, chattering all the day. +And why not? for my very dust is laughing +For thinking of the humorous thing called life. + + + + +Isa Nutter + + +Doc Meyers said I had satyriasis, +And Doc Hill called it leucæmia— +But I know what brought me here: +I was sixty-four but strong as a man +Of thirty-five or forty. +And it wasn’t writing a letter a day, +And it wasn’t late hours seven nights a week, +And it wasn’t the strain of thinking of Minnie, +And it wasn’t fear or a jealous dread, +Or the endless task of trying to fathom +Her wonderful mind, or sympathy +For the wretched life she led +With her first and second husband— +It was none of these that laid me low— +But the clamor of daughters and threats of sons, +And the sneers and curses of all my kin +Right up to the day I sneaked to Peoria +And married Minnie in spite of them— +And why do you wonder my will was made +For the best and purest of women? + + + + +Barney Hainsfeather + + +If the excursion train to Peoria +Had just been wrecked, I might have escaped with my life— +Certainly I should have escaped this place. +But as it was burned as well, they mistook me +For John Allen who was sent to the Hebrew Cemetery +At Chicago, +And John for me, so I lie here. +It was bad enough to run a clothing store in this town, +But to be buried here—_ach!_ + + + + +Petit, the Poet + + +Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, +Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel— +Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens— +But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof. +Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus, +Ballades by the score with the same old thought: +The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished; +And what is love but a rose that fades? +Life all around me here in the village: +Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth, +Courage, constancy, heroism, failure— +All in the loom, and oh what patterns! +Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers— +Blind to all of it all my life long. +Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus, +Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little +iambics, +While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines? + + + + +Pauline Barrett + + +Almost the shell of a woman after the surgeon’s knife +And almost a year to creep back into strength, +Till the dawn of our wedding decennial +Found me my seeming self again. +We walked the forest together, +By a path of soundless moss and turf. +But I could not look in your eyes, +And you could not look in my eyes, +For such sorrow was ours—the beginning of gray in your hair. +And I but a shell of myself. +And what did we talk of?—sky and water, +Anything, ’most, to hide our thoughts. +And then your gift of wild roses, +Set on the table to grace our dinner. +Poor heart, how bravely you struggled +To imagine and live a remembered rapture! +Then my spirit drooped as the night came on, +And you left me alone in my room for a while, +As you did when I was a bride, poor heart. +And I looked in the mirror and something said: +“One should be all dead when one is half-dead—” +Nor ever mock life, nor ever cheat love.” +And I did it looking there in the mirror— +Dear, have you ever understood? + + + + +Mrs. Charles Bliss + + +Reverend Wiley advised me not to divorce him +For the sake of the children, +And Judge Somers advised him the same. +So we stuck to the end of the path. +But two of the children thought he was right, +And two of the children thought I was right. +And the two who sided with him blamed me, +And the two who sided with me blamed him, +And they grieved for the one they sided with. +And all were torn with the guilt of judging, +And tortured in soul because they could not admire +Equally him and me. +Now every gardener knows that plants grown in cellars +Or under stones are twisted and yellow and weak. +And no mother would let her baby suck +Diseased milk from her breast. +Yet preachers and judges advise the raising of souls +Where there is no sunlight, but only twilight, +No warmth, but only dampness and cold— +Preachers and judges! + + + + +Mrs. George Reece + + +To this generation I would say: +Memorize some bit of verse of truth or beauty. +It may serve a turn in your life. +My husband had nothing to do +With the fall of the bank—he was only cashier. +The wreck was due to the president, Thomas Rhodes, +And his vain, unscrupulous son. +Yet my husband was sent to prison, +And I was left with the children, +To feed and clothe and school them. +And I did it, and sent them forth +Into the world all clean and strong, +And all through the wisdom of Pope, the poet: +“Act well your part, there all the honor lies.” + + + + +Rev. Lemuel Wiley + + +I preached four thousand sermons, +I conducted forty revivals, +And baptized many converts. +Yet no deed of mine +Shines brighter in the memory of the world, +And none is treasured more by me: +Look how I saved the Blisses from divorce, +And kept the children free from that disgrace, +To grow up into moral men and women, +Happy themselves, a credit to the village. + + + + +Thomas Ross, Jr. + + +This I saw with my own eyes: A cliff—swallow +Made her nest in a hole of the high clay-bank +There near Miller’s Ford. +But no sooner were the young hatched +Than a snake crawled up to the nest +To devour the brood. +Then the mother swallow with swift flutterings +And shrill cries +Fought at the snake, +Blinding him with the beat of her wings, +Until he, wriggling and rearing his head, +Fell backward down the bank +Into Spoon River and was drowned. +Scarcely an hour passed +Until a shrike +Impaled the mother swallow on a thorn. +As for myself I overcame my lower nature +Only to be destroyed by my brother’s ambition. + + + + +Rev. Abner Peet + + +I had no objection at all +To selling my household effects at auction +On the village square. +It gave my beloved flock the chance +To get something which had belonged to me +For a memorial. +But that trunk which was struck off +To Burchard, the grog-keeper! +Did you know it contained the manuscripts +Of a lifetime of sermons? +And he burned them as waste paper. + + + + +Jefferson Howard + + +My valiant fight! For I call it valiant, +With my father’s beliefs from old Virginia: +Hating slavery, but no less war. +I, full of spirit, audacity, courage +Thrown into life here in Spoon River, +With its dominant forces drawn from +New England, Republicans, Calvinists, merchants, bankers, +Hating me, yet fearing my arm. +With wife and children heavy to carry— +Yet fruits of my very zest of life. +Stealing odd pleasures that cost me prestige, +And reaping evils I had not sown; +Foe of the church with its charnel dankness, +Friend of the human touch of the tavern; +Tangled with fates all alien to me, +Deserted by hands I called my own. +Then just as I felt my giant strength +Short of breath, behold my children +Had wound their lives in stranger gardens— +And I stood alone, as I started alone +My valiant life! I died on my feet, +Facing the silence—facing the prospect +That no one would know of the fight I made. + + + + +Judge Selah Lively + + +Suppose you stood just five feet two, +And had worked your way as a grocery clerk, +Studying law by candle light +Until you became an attorney at law? +And then suppose through your diligence, +And regular church attendance, +You became attorney for Thomas Rhodes, +Collecting notes and mortgages, +And representing all the widows +In the Probate Court? And through it all +They jeered at your size, and laughed at your clothes +And your polished boots? And then suppose +You became the County Judge? +And Jefferson Howard and Kinsey Keene, +And Harmon Whitney, and all the giants +Who had sneered at you, were forced to stand +Before the bar and say “Your Honor”— +Well, don’t you think it was natural +That I made it hard for them? + + + + +Albert Schirding + + +Jonas Keene thought his lot a hard one +Because his children were all failures. +But I know of a fate more trying than that: +It is to be a failure while your children are successes. +For I raised a brood of eagles +Who flew away at last, leaving me +A crow on the abandoned bough. +Then, with the ambition to prefix +Honorable to my name, +And thus to win my children’s admiration, +I ran for County Superintendent of Schools, +Spending my accumulations to win—and lost. +That fall my daughter received first prize in Paris +For her picture, entitled, “The Old Mill”— +(It was of the water mill before Henry Wilkin put in steam.) +The feeling that I was not worthy of her finished me. + + + + +Jonas Keene + + +Why did Albert Schirding kill himself +Trying to be County Superintendent of Schools, +Blest as he was with the means of life +And wonderful children, bringing him honor +Ere he was sixty? +If even one of my boys could have run a news-stand, +Or one of my girls could have married a decent man, +I should not have walked in the rain +And jumped into bed with clothes all wet, +Refusing medical aid. + + + + +Eugenia Todd + + +Have any of you, passers-by, +Had an old tooth that was an unceasing discomfort? +Or a pain in the side that never quite left you? +Or a malignant growth that grew with time? +So that even in profoundest slumber +There was shadowy consciousness or the phantom of thought +Of the tooth, the side, the growth? +Even so thwarted love, or defeated ambition, +Or a blunder in life which mixed your life +Hopelessly to the end, +Will like a tooth, or a pain in the side, +Float through your dreams in the final sleep +Till perfect freedom from the earth-sphere +Comes to you as one who wakes +Healed and glad in the morning! + + + + +Yee Bow + + +They got me into the Sunday-school +In Spoon River +And tried to get me to drop Confucius for Jesus. +I could have been no worse off +If I had tried to get them to drop Jesus for Confucius. +For, without any warning, as if it were a prank, +And sneaking up behind me, Harry Wiley, +The minister’s son, caved my ribs into my lungs, +With a blow of his fist. +Now I shall never sleep with my ancestors in Pekin, +And no children shall worship at my grave. + + + + +Washington McNeely + + +Rich, honored by my fellow citizens, +The father of many children, born of a noble mother, +All raised there +In the great mansion—house, at the edge of town. +Note the cedar tree on the lawn! +I sent all the boys to Ann Arbor, all of the girls to Rockford, +The while my life went on, getting more riches and honors— +Resting under my cedar tree at evening. +The years went on. +I sent the girls to Europe; +I dowered them when married. +I gave the boys money to start in business. +They were strong children, promising as apples +Before the bitten places show. +But John fled the country in disgrace. +Jenny died in child-birth— +I sat under my cedar tree. +Harry killed himself after a debauch, +Susan was divorced— +I sat under my cedar tree. +Paul was invalided from over study, +Mary became a recluse at home for love of a man— +I sat under my cedar tree. +All were gone, or broken-winged or devoured by life— +I sat under my cedar tree. +My mate, the mother of them, was taken— +I sat under my cedar tree, +Till ninety years were tolled. +O maternal Earth, which rocks the fallen leaf to sleep. + + + + +Paul McNeely + + +Dear Jane! dear winsome Jane! +How you stole in the room (where I lay so ill) +In your nurse’s cap and linen cuffs, +And took my hand and said with a smile: +“You are not so ill—you’ll soon be well.” +And how the liquid thought of your eyes +Sank in my eyes like dew that slips +Into the heart of a flower. +Dear Jane! the whole McNeely fortune +Could not have bought your care of me, +By day and night, and night and day; +Nor paid for your smile, nor the warmth of your soul, +In your little hands laid on my brow. +Jane, till the flame of life went out +In the dark above the disk of night +I longed and hoped to be well again +To pillow my head on your little breasts, +And hold you fast in a clasp of love— +Did my father provide for you when he died, +Jane, dear Jane? + + + + +Mary McNeely + + +Passer-by, +To love is to find your own soul +Through the soul of the beloved one. +When the beloved one withdraws itself from your soul +Then you have lost your soul. +It is written: “l have a friend, +But my sorrow has no friend.” +Hence my long years of solitude at the home of my father, +Trying to get myself back, +And to turn my sorrow into a supremer self. +But there was my father with his sorrows, +Sitting under the cedar tree, +A picture that sank into my heart at last +Bringing infinite repose. +Oh, ye souls who have made life +Fragrant and white as tube roses +From earth’s dark soil, +Eternal peace! + + + + +Daniel M’Cumber + + +When I went to the city, Mary McNeely, +I meant to return for you, yes I did. +But Laura, my landlady’s daughter, +Stole into my life somehow, and won me away. +Then after some years whom should I meet +But Georgine Miner from Niles—a sprout +Of the free love, Fourierist gardens that flourished +Before the war all over Ohio. +Her dilettante lover had tired of her, +And she turned to me for strength and solace. +She was some kind of a crying thing +One takes in one’s arms, and all at once +It slimes your face with its running nose, +And voids its essence all over you; +Then bites your hand and springs away. +And there you stand bleeding and smelling to heaven +Why, Mary McNeely, I was not worthy +To kiss the hem of your robe! + + + + +Georgine Sand Miner + + +A stepmother drove me from home, embittering me. +A squaw-man, a flaneur and dilettante took my virtue. +For years I was his mistress—no one knew. +I learned from him the parasite cunning +With which I moved with the bluffs, like a flea on a dog. +All the time I was nothing but “very private,” with different men. +Then Daniel, the radical, had me for years. +His sister called me his mistress; +And Daniel wrote me: +“Shameful word, soiling our beautiful love!” +But my anger coiled, preparing its fangs. +My Lesbian friend next took a hand. +She hated Daniel’s sister. +And Daniel despised her midget husband. +And she saw a chance for a poisonous thrust: +I must complain to the wife of Daniel’s pursuit! +But before I did that I begged him to fly to London with me. +“Why not stay in the city just as we have?” he asked. +Then I turned submarine and revenged his repulse +In the arms of my dilettante friend. +Then up to the surface, Bearing the letter that Daniel wrote me +To prove my honor was all intact, showing it to his wife, +My Lesbian friend and everyone. +If Daniel had only shot me dead! +Instead of stripping me naked of lies +A harlot in body and soul. + + + + +Thomas Rhodes + + +Very well, you liberals, +And navigators into realms intellectual, +You sailors through heights imaginative, +Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets, +You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits, +And Tennessee Claflin Shopes— +You found with all your boasted wisdom +How hard at the last it is +To keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms. +While we, seekers of earth’s treasures +Getters and hoarders of gold, +Are self-contained, compact, harmonized, +Even to the end. + + + + +Ida Chicken + + +After I had attended lectures +At our Chautauqua, and studied French +For twenty years, committing the grammar +Almost by heart, +I thought I’d take a trip to Paris +To give my culture a final polish. +So I went to Peoria for a passport— +(Thomas Rhodes was on the train that morning.) +And there the clerk of the district Court +Made me swear to support and defend +The constitution—yes, even me— +Who couldn’t defend or support it at all! +And what do you think? That very morning +The Federal Judge, in the very next room +To the room where I took the oath, +Decided the constitution +Exempted Rhodes from paying taxes +For the water works of Spoon River! + + + + +Penniwit, the Artist + + +I lost my patronage in Spoon River +From trying to put my mind in the camera +To catch the soul of the person. +The very best picture I ever took +Was of Judge Somers, attorney at law. +He sat upright and had me pause +Till he got his cross-eye straight. +Then when he was ready he said “all right.” +And I yelled “overruled” and his eye turned up. +And I caught him just as he used to look +When saying “I except.” + + + + +Jim Brown + + +While I was handling Dom Pedro +I got at the thing that divides the race between men who are +For singing “Turkey in the straw” or +“There is a fountain filled with blood”— +(Like Rile Potter used to sing it over at Concord). +For cards, or for Rev. Peet’s lecture on the holy land; +For skipping the light fantastic, or passing the plate; +For Pinafore, or a Sunday school cantata; +For men, or for money; +For the people or against them. +This was it: Rev. Peet and the Social Purity Club, +Headed by Ben Pantier’s wife, +Went to the Village trustees, +And asked them to make me take Dom Pedro +From the barn of Wash McNeely, there at the edge of town, +To a barn outside of the corporation, +On the ground that it corrupted public morals. +Well, Ben Pantier and Fiddler Jones saved the day— +They thought it a slam on colts. + + + + +Robert Davidson + + +I grew spiritually fat living off the souls of men. +If I saw a soul that was strong +I wounded its pride and devoured its strength. +The shelters of friendship knew my cunning +For where I could steal a friend I did so. +And wherever I could enlarge my power +By undermining ambition, I did so, +Thus to make smooth my own. +And to triumph over other souls, +Just to assert and prove my superior strength, +Was with me a delight, +The keen exhilaration of soul gymnastics. +Devouring souls, I should have lived forever. +But their undigested remains bred in me a deadly nephritis, +With fear, restlessness, sinking spirits, +Hatred, suspicion, vision disturbed. +I collapsed at last with a shriek. +Remember the acorn; +It does not devour other acorns. + + + + +Elsa Wertman + + +I was a peasant girl from Germany, +Blue-eyed, rosy, happy and strong. +And the first place I worked was at Thomas Greene’s. +On a summer’s day when she was away +He stole into the kitchen and took me +Right in his arms and kissed me on my throat, +I turning my head. Then neither of us +Seemed to know what happened. +And I cried for what would become of me. +And cried and cried as my secret began to show. +One day Mrs. Greene said she understood, +And would make no trouble for me, +And, being childless, would adopt it. +(He had given her a farm to be still.) +So she hid in the house and sent out rumors, +As if it were going to happen to her. +And all went well and the child was born— +They were so kind to me. +Later I married Gus Wertman, and years passed. +But—at political rallies when sitters-by thought I was crying +At the eloquence of Hamilton Greene— +That was not it. No! I wanted to say: +That’s my son! +That’s my son. + + + + +Hamilton Greene + + +I was the only child of Frances Harris of Virginia +And Thomas Greene of Kentucky, +Of valiant and honorable blood both. +To them I owe all that I became, +Judge, member of Congress, leader in the State. +From my mother I inherited +Vivacity, fancy, language; +From my father will, judgment, logic. +All honor to them +For what service I was to the people! + + + + +Ernest Hyde + + +My mind was a mirror: +It saw what it saw, it knew what it knew. +In youth my mind was just a mirror +In a rapidly flying car, +Which catches and loses bits of the landscape. +Then in time +Great scratches were made on the mirror, +Letting the outside world come in, +And letting my inner self look out. +For this is the birth of the soul in sorrow, +A birth with gains and losses. +The mind sees the world as a thing apart, +And the soul makes the world at one with itself. +A mirror scratched reflects no image— +And this is the silence of wisdom. + + + + +Roger Heston + + +Oh many times did Ernest Hyde and I +Argue about the freedom of the will. +My favorite metaphor was Prickett’s cow +Roped out to grass, and free you know as far +As the length of the rope. +One day while arguing so, watching the cow +Pull at the rope to get beyond the circle +Which she had eaten bare, +Out came the stake, and tossing up her head, +She ran for us. +“What’s that, free-will or what?” said Ernest, running. +I fell just as she gored me to my death. + + + + +Amos Sibley + + +Not character, not fortitude, not patience +Were mine, the which the village thought I had +In bearing with my wife, while preaching on, +Doing the work God chose for me. +I loathed her as a termagant, as a wanton. +I knew of her adulteries, every one. +But even so, if I divorced the woman +I must forsake the ministry. +Therefore to do God’s work and have it crop, +I bore with her +So lied I to myself +So lied I to Spoon River! +Yet I tried lecturing, ran for the legislature, +Canvassed for books, with just the thought in mind: +If I make money thus, +I will divorce her. + + + + +Mrs. Sibley + + +The secret of the stars—gravitation. +The secret of the earth—layers of rock. +The secret of the soil—to receive seed. +The secret of the seed—the germ. +The secret of man—the sower. +The secret of woman—the soil. +My secret: Under a mound that you shall never find. + + + + +Adam Weirauch + + +I was crushed between Altgeld and Armour. +I lost many friends, much time and money +Fighting for Altgeld whom Editor Whedon +Denounced as the candidate of gamblers and anarchists. +Then Armour started to ship dressed meat to Spoon River, +Forcing me to shut down my slaughter-house +And my butcher shop went all to pieces. +The new forces of Altgeld and Armour caught me +At the same time. I thought it due me, to recoup the money I lost +And to make good the friends that left me, +For the Governor to appoint me Canal Commissioner. +Instead he appointed Whedon of the Spoon River Argus, +So I ran for the legislature and was elected. +I said to hell with principle and sold my vote +On Charles T. Yerkes’ street-car franchise. +Of course I was one of the fellows they caught. +Who was it, Armour, Altgeld or myself +That ruined me? + + + + +Ezra Bartlett + + +A chaplain in the army, +A chaplain in the prisons, +An exhorter in Spoon River, +Drunk with divinity, Spoon River— +Yet bringing poor Eliza Johnson to shame, +And myself to scorn and wretchedness. +But why will you never see that love of women, +And even love of wine, +Are the stimulants by which the soul, hungering for divinity, +Reaches the ecstatic vision +And sees the celestial outposts? +Only after many trials for strength, +Only when all stimulants fail, +Does the aspiring soul +By its own sheer power +Find the divine +By resting upon itself. + + + + +Amelia Garrick + + +Yes, here I lie close to a stunted rose bush +In a forgotten place near the fence +Where the thickets from Siever’s woods +Have crept over, growing sparsely. +And you, you are a leader in New York, +The wife of a noted millionaire, +A name in the society columns, +Beautiful, admired, magnified perhaps +By the mirage of distance. +You have succeeded, I have failed +In the eyes of the world. +You are alive, I am dead. +Yet I know that I vanquished your spirit; +And I know that lying here far from you, +Unheard of among your great friends +In the brilliant world where you move, +I am really the unconquerable power over your life +That robs it of complete triumph. + + + + +John Hancock Otis + + +As to democracy, fellow citizens, +Are you not prepared to admit +That I, who inherited riches and was to the manor born, +Was second to none in Spoon River +In my devotion to the cause of Liberty? +While my contemporary, Anthony Findlay, +Born in a shanty and beginning life +As a water carrier to the section hands, +Then becoming a section hand when he was grown, +Afterwards foreman of the gang, until he rose +To the superintendency of the railroad, +Living in Chicago, +Was a veritable slave driver, +Grinding the faces of labor, +And a bitter enemy of democracy. +And I say to you, Spoon River, +And to you, O republic, +Beware of the man who rises to power +From one suspender. + + + + +Anthony Findlay + + +Both for the country and for the man, +And for a country as well as a man, +’Tis better to be feared than loved. +And if this country would rather part +With the friendship of every nation +Than surrender its wealth, +I say of a man ’tis worse to lose +Money than friends. +And I rend the curtain that hides the soul +Of an ancient aspiration: +When the people clamor for freedom +They really seek for power o’er the strong. +I, Anthony Findlay, rising to greatness +From a humble water carrier, +Until I could say to thousands “Come,” +And say to thousands “Go,” +Affirm that a nation can never be good. +Or achieve the good, +Where the strong and the wise have not the rod +To use on the dull and weak. + + + + +John Cabanis + + +Neither spite, fellow citizens, +Nor forgetfulness of the shiftlessness. +And the lawlessness and waste +Under democracy’s rule in Spoon River +Made me desert the party of law and order +And lead the liberal party. +Fellow citizens! I saw as one with second sight +That every man of the millions of men +Who give themselves to Freedom, +And fail while Freedom fails, +Enduring waste and lawlessness, +And the rule of the weak and the blind, +Dies in the hope of building earth, +Like the coral insect, for the temple +To stand on at the last. +And I swear that Freedom will wage to the end +The war for making every soul +Wise and strong and as fit to rule +As Plato’s lofty guardians +In a world republic girdled! + + + + +The Unknown + + +Ye aspiring ones, listen to the story of the unknown +Who lies here with no stone to mark the place. +As a boy reckless and wanton, +Wandering with gun in hand through the forest +Near the mansion of Aaron Hatfield, +I shot a hawk perched on the top +Of a dead tree. He fell with guttural cry +At my feet, his wing broken. +Then I put him in a cage +Where he lived many days cawing angrily at me +When I offered him food. +Daily I search the realms of Hades +For the soul of the hawk, +That I may offer him the friendship +Of one whom life wounded and caged. + + + + +Alexander Throckmorton + + +In youth my wings were strong and tireless, +But I did not know the mountains. +In age I knew the mountains +But my weary wings could not follow my vision— +Genius is wisdom and youth. + + + + +Jonathan Swift Somers (Author of the Spooniad) + + +After you have enriched your soul +To the highest point, +With books, thought, suffering, +The understanding of many personalities, +The power to interpret glances, silences, +The pauses in momentous transformations, +The genius of divination and prophecy; +So that you feel able at times to hold the world +In the hollow of your hand; +Then, if, by the crowding of so many powers +Into the compass of your soul, +Your soul takes fire, +And in the conflagration of your soul +The evil of the world is lighted up and made clear— +Be thankful if in that hour of supreme vision +Life does not fiddle. + + + + +Widow McFarlane + + +I was the Widow McFarlane, +Weaver of carpets for all the village. +And I pity you still at the loom of life, +You who are singing to the shuttle +And lovingly watching the work of your hands, +If you reach the day of hate, of terrible truth. +For the cloth of life is woven, you know, +To a pattern hidden under the loom— +A pattern you never see! +And you weave high-hearted, singing, singing, +You guard the threads of love and friendship +For noble figures in gold and purple. +And long after other eyes can see +You have woven a moon-white strip of cloth, +You laugh in your strength, for Hope overlays it +With shapes of love and beauty. +The loom stops short! +The pattern’s out +You’re alone in the room! +You have woven a shroud +And hate of it lays you in it. + + + + +Carl Hamblin + + +The press of the Spoon River _Clarion_ was wrecked, +And I was tarred and feathered, +For publishing this on the day the +Anarchists were hanged in Chicago: +“I saw a beautiful woman with bandaged eyes +Standing on the steps of a marble temple. +Great multitudes passed in front of her, +Lifting their faces to her imploringly. +In her left hand she held a sword. +She was brandishing the sword, +Sometimes striking a child, again a laborer, +Again a slinking woman, again a lunatic. +In her right hand she held a scale; +Into the scale pieces of gold were tossed +By those who dodged the strokes of the sword. +A man in a black gown read from a manuscript: +“She is no respecter of persons.” +Then a youth wearing a red cap +Leaped to her side and snatched away the bandage. +And lo, the lashes had been eaten away +From the oozy eye-lids; +The eye-balls were seared with a milky mucus; +The madness of a dying soul +Was written on her face— +But the multitude saw why she wore the bandage.” + + + + +Editor Whedon + + +To be able to see every side of every question; +To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long; +To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose, +To use great feelings and passions of the human family +For base designs, for cunning ends, +To wear a mask like the Greek actors— +Your eight-page paper—behind which you huddle, +Bawling through the megaphone of big type: +“This is I, the giant.” +Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief, +Poisoned with the anonymous words +Of your clandestine soul. +To scratch dirt over scandal for money, +And exhume it to the winds for revenge, +Or to sell papers, +Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be, +To win at any cost, save your own life. +To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization, +As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track +And derails the express train. +To be an editor, as I was. +Then to lie here close by the river over the place +Where the sewage flows from the village, +And the empty cans and garbage are dumped, +And abortions are hidden. + + + + +Eugene Carman + + +Rhodes’ slave! Selling shoes and gingham, +Flour and bacon, overalls, clothing, all day long +For fourteen hours a day for three hundred and thirteen days +For more than twenty years. +Saying “Yes’m” and “Yes, sir”, and “Thank you” +A thousand times a day, and all for fifty dollars a month. +Living in this stinking room in the rattle-trap “Commercial.” +And compelled to go to Sunday School, and to listen +To the Rev. Abner Peet one hundred and four times a year +For more than an hour at a time, +Because Thomas Rhodes ran the church +As well as the store and the bank. +So while I was tying my neck-tie that morning +I suddenly saw myself in the glass: +My hair all gray, my face like a sodden pie. +So I cursed and cursed: You damned old thing +You cowardly dog! You rotten pauper! +You Rhodes’ slave! Till Roger Baughman +Thought I was having a fight with some one, +And looked through the transom just in time +To see me fall on the floor in a heap +From a broken vein in my head. + + + + +Clarence Fawcett + + +The sudden death of Eugene Carman +Put me in line to be promoted to fifty dollars a month, +And I told my wife and children that night. +But it didn’t come, and so I thought +Old Rhodes suspected me of stealing +The blankets I took and sold on the side +For money to pay a doctor’s bill for my little girl. +Then like a bolt old Rhodes accused me, +And promised me mercy for my family’s sake +If I confessed, and so I confessed, +And begged him to keep it out of the papers, +And I asked the editors, too. +That night at home the constable took me +And every paper, except the Clarion, +Wrote me up as a thief +Because old Rhodes was an advertiser +And wanted to make an example of me. +Oh! well, you know how the children cried, +And how my wife pitied and hated me, +And how I came to lie here. + + + + +W. Lloyd Garrison Standard + + +Vegetarian, non-resistant, free-thinker, in ethics a Christian; +Orator apt at the rhine-stone rhythm of Ingersoll. +Carnivorous, avenger, believer and pagan. +Continent, promiscuous, changeable, treacherous, vain, +Proud, with the pride that makes struggle a thing for laughter; +With heart cored out by the worm of theatric despair. +Wearing the coat of indifference to hide the shame of defeat; +I, child of the abolitionist idealism— +A sort of _Brand_ in a birth of half-and-half. +What other thing could happen when I defended +The patriot scamps who burned the court house +That Spoon River might have a new one +Than plead them guilty? +When Kinsey Keene drove through +The card-board mask of my life with a spear of light, +What could I do but slink away, like the beast of myself +Which I raised from a whelp, to a corner and growl? +The pyramid of my life was nought but a dune, +Barren and formless, spoiled at last by the storm. + + + + +Professor Newcomer + + +Everyone laughed at Col. Prichard +For buying an engine so powerful +That it wrecked itself, and wrecked the grinder +He ran it with. +But here is a joke of cosmic size: +The urge of nature that made a man +Evolve from his brain a spiritual life— +Oh miracle of the world!— +The very same brain with which the ape and wolf +Get food and shelter and procreate themselves. +Nature has made man do this, +In a world where she gives him nothing to do +After all—(though the strength of his soul goes round +In a futile waste of power. +To gear itself to the mills of the gods)— +But get food and shelter and procreate himself! + + + + +Ralph Rhodes + + +All they said was true: +I wrecked my father’s bank with my loans +To dabble in wheat; but this was true— +I was buying wheat for him as well, +Who couldn’t margin the deal in his name +Because of his church relationship. +And while George Reece was serving his term +I chased the will-o-the-wisp of women +And the mockery of wine in New York. +It’s deathly to sicken of wine and women +When nothing else is left in life. +But suppose your head is gray, and bowed +On a table covered with acrid stubs +Of cigarettes and empty glasses, +And a knock is heard, and you know it’s the knock +So long drowned out by popping corks +And the pea-cock screams of demireps— +And you look up, and there’s your Theft, +Who waited until your head was gray, +And your heart skipped beats to say to you: +The game is ended. I’ve called for you, +Go out on Broadway and be run over, +They’ll ship you back to Spoon River. + + + + +Mickey M’Grew + + +It was just like everything else in life: +Something outside myself drew me down, +My own strength never failed me. +Why, there was the time I earned the money +With which to go away to school, +And my father suddenly needed help +And I had to give him all of it. +Just so it went till I ended up +A man-of-all-work in Spoon River. +Thus when I got the water-tower cleaned, +And they hauled me up the seventy feet, +I unhooked the rope from my waist, +And laughingly flung my giant arms +Over the smooth steel lips of the top of the tower— +But they slipped from the treacherous slime, +And down, down, down, I plunged +Through bellowing darkness! + + + + +Rosie Roberts + + +I was sick, but more than that, I was mad +At the crooked police, and the crooked game of life. +So I wrote to the Chief of Police at Peoria: +“I am here in my girlhood home in Spoon River, +Gradually wasting away. +But come and take me, I killed the son +Of the merchant prince, in Madam Lou’s +And the papers that said he killed himself +In his home while cleaning a hunting gun— +Lied like the devil to hush up scandal +For the bribe of advertising. +In my room I shot him, at Madam Lou’s, +Because he knocked me down when I said +That, in spite of all the money he had, +I’d see my lover that night.” + + + + +Oscar Hummel + + +I staggered on through darkness, +There was a hazy sky, a few stars +Which I followed as best I could. +It was nine o’clock, I was trying to get home. +But somehow I was lost, +Though really keeping the road. +Then I reeled through a gate and into a yard, +And called at the top of my voice: +“Oh, Fiddler! Oh, Mr. Jones!” +(I thought it was his house and he would show me the way home. ) +But who should step out but A. D. Blood, +In his night shirt, waving a stick of wood, +And roaring about the cursed saloons, +And the criminals they made? +“You drunken Oscar Hummel,” he said, +As I stood there weaving to and fro, +Taking the blows from the stick in his hand +Till I dropped down dead at his feet. + + + + +Josiah Tompkins + + +I was well known and much beloved +And rich, as fortunes are reckoned +In Spoon River, where I had lived and worked. +That was the home for me, +Though all my children had flown afar— +Which is the way of Nature—all but one. +The boy, who was the baby, stayed at home, +To be my help in my failing years +And the solace of his mother. +But I grew weaker, as he grew stronger, +And he quarreled with me about the business, +And his wife said I was a hindrance to it; +And he won his mother to see as he did, +Till they tore me up to be transplanted +With them to her girlhood home in Missouri. +And so much of my fortune was gone at last, +Though I made the will just as he drew it, +He profited little by it. + + + + +Roscoe Purkapile + + +She loved me. +Oh! how she loved me I never had a chance to escape +From the day she first saw me. +But then after we were married I thought +She might prove her mortality and let me out, +Or she might divorce me. But few die, none resign. +Then I ran away and was gone a year on a lark. +But she never complained. She said all would be well +That I would return. And I did return. +I told her that while taking a row in a boat +I had been captured near Van Buren Street +By pirates on Lake Michigan, +And kept in chains, so I could not write her. +She cried and kissed me, and said it was cruel, +Outrageous, inhuman! I then concluded our marriage +Was a divine dispensation +And could not be dissolved, +Except by death. +I was right. + + + + +Mrs. Purkapile + + +He ran away and was gone for a year. +When he came home he told me the silly story +Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan +And kept in chains so he could not write me. +I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well +What he was doing, and that he met +The milliner, Mrs. Williams, now and then +When she went to the city to buy goods, as she said. +But a promise is a promise +And marriage is marriage, +And out of respect for my own character +I refused to be drawn into a divorce +By the scheme of a husband who had merely grown tired +Of his marital vow and duty. + + + + +Mrs. Kessler + + +Mr. Kessler, you know, was in the army, +And he drew six dollars a month as a pension, +And stood on the corner talking politics, +Or sat at home reading Grant’s Memoirs; +And I supported the family by washing, +Learning the secrets of all the people +From their curtains, counterpanes, shirts and skirts. +For things that are new grow old at length, +They’re replaced with better or none at all: +People are prospering or falling back. +And rents and patches widen with time; +No thread or needle can pace decay, +And there are stains that baffle soap, +And there are colors that run in spite of you, +Blamed though you are for spoiling a dress. +Handkerchiefs, napery, have their secrets— +The laundress, Life, knows all about it. +And I, who went to all the funerals +Held in Spoon River, swear I never +Saw a dead face without thinking it looked +Like something washed and ironed. + + + + +Harmon Whitney + + +Out of the lights and roar of cities, +Drifting down like a spark in Spoon River, +Burnt out with the fire of drink, and broken, +The paramour of a woman I took in self-contempt, +But to hide a wounded pride as well. +To be judged and loathed by a village of little minds— +I, gifted with tongues and wisdom, +Sunk here to the dust of the justice court, +A picker of rags in the rubbage of spites and wrongs,— +I, whom fortune smiled on! +I in a village, +Spouting to gaping yokels pages of verse, +Out of the lore of golden years, +Or raising a laugh with a flash of filthy wit +When they bought the drinks to kindle my dying mind. +To be judged by you, +The soul of me hidden from you, +With its wound gangrened +By love for a wife who made the wound, +With her cold white bosom, treasonous, pure and hard, +Relentless to the last, when the touch of her hand, +At any time, might have cured me of the typhus, +Caught in the jungle of life where many are lost. +And only to think that my soul could not react, +Like Byron’s did, in song, in something noble, +But turned on itself like a tortured snake—judge me this way, +O world. + + + + +Bert Kessler + + +I winged my bird, +Though he flew toward the setting sun; +But just as the shot rang out, he soared +Up and up through the splinters of golden light, +Till he turned right over, feathers ruffled, +With some of the down of him floating near, +And fell like a plummet into the grass. +I tramped about, parting the tangles, +Till I saw a splash of blood on a stump, +And the quail lying close to the rotten roots. +I reached my hand, but saw no brier, +But something pricked and stung and numbed it. +And then, in a second, I spied the rattler— +The shutters wide in his yellow eyes, +The head of him arched, sunk back in the rings of him, +A circle of filth, the color of ashes, +Or oak leaves bleached under layers of leaves. +I stood like a stone as he shrank and uncoiled +And started to crawl beneath the stump, +When I fell limp in the grass. + + + + +Lambert Hutchins + + +I have two monuments besides this granite obelisk: +One, the house I built on the hill, +With its spires, bay windows, and roof of slate. +The other, the lake-front in Chicago, +Where the railroad keeps a switching yard, +With whistling engines and crunching wheels +And smoke and soot thrown over the city, +And the crash of cars along the boulevard,— +A blot like a hog-pen on the harbor +Of a great metropolis, foul as a sty. +I helped to give this heritage +To generations yet unborn, with my vote +In the House of Representatives, +And the lure of the thing was to be at rest +From the never—ending fright of need, +And to give my daughters gentle breeding, +And a sense of security in life. +But, you see, though I had the mansion house +And traveling passes and local distinction, +I could hear the whispers, whispers, whispers, +Wherever I went, and my daughters grew up +With a look as if some one were about to strike them; +And they married madly, helter-skelter, +Just to get out and have a change. +And what was the whole of the business worth? +Why, it wasn’t worth a damn! + + + + +Lillian Stewart + + +I was the daughter of Lambert Hutchins, +Born in a cottage near the grist-mill, +Reared in the mansion there on the hill, +With its spires, bay-windows, and roof of slate. +How proud my mother was of the mansion +How proud of father’s rise in the world! +And how my father loved and watched us, +And guarded our happiness. +But I believe the house was a curse, +For father’s fortune was little beside it; +And when my husband found he had married +A girl who was really poor, +He taunted me with the spires, +And called the house a fraud on the world, +A treacherous lure to young men, raising hopes +Of a dowry not to be had; +And a man while selling his vote +Should get enough from the people’s betrayal +To wall the whole of his family in. +He vexed my life till I went back home +And lived like an old maid till I died, +Keeping house for father. + + + + +Hortense Robbins + + +My name used to be in the papers daily +As having dined somewhere, +Or traveled somewhere, +Or rented a house in Paris, +Where I entertained the nobility. +I was forever eating or traveling, +Or taking the cure at Baden-Baden. +Now I am here to do honor +To Spoon River, here beside the family whence I sprang. +No one cares now where I dined, +Or lived, or whom I entertained, +Or how often I took the cure at Baden-Baden. + + + + +Batterton Dobyns + + +Did my widow flit about +From Mackinac to Los Angeles, +Resting and bathing and sitting an hour +Or more at the table over soup and meats +And delicate sweets and coffee? +I was cut down in my prime +From overwork and anxiety. +But I thought all along, whatever happens +I’ve kept my insurance up, +And there’s something in the bank, +And a section of land in Manitoba. +But just as I slipped I had a vision +In a last delirium: +I saw myself lying nailed in a box +With a white lawn tie and a boutonnière, +And my wife was sitting by a window +Some place afar overlooking the sea; +She seemed so rested, ruddy and fat, +Although her hair was white. +And she smiled and said to a colored waiter: +“Another slice of roast beef, George. +Here’s a nickel for your trouble.” + + + + +Jacob Godbey + + +How did you feel, you libertarians, +Who spent your talents rallying noble reasons +Around the saloon, as if Liberty +Was not to be found anywhere except at the bar +Or at a table, guzzling? +How did you feel, Ben Pantier, and the rest of you, +Who almost stoned me for a tyrant +Garbed as a moralist, +And as a wry-faced ascetic frowning upon Yorkshire pudding, +Roast beef and ale and good will and rosy cheer— +Things you never saw in a grog-shop in your life? +How did you feel after I was dead and gone, +And your goddess, Liberty, unmasked as a strumpet, +Selling out the streets of Spoon River +To the insolent giants +Who manned the saloons from afar? +Did it occur to you that personal liberty +Is liberty of the mind, +Rather than of the belly? + + + + +Walter Simmons + + +My parents thought that I would be +As great as Edison or greater: +For as a boy I made balloons +And wondrous kites and toys with clocks +And little engines with tracks to run on +And telephones of cans and thread. +I played the cornet and painted pictures, +Modeled in clay and took the part +Of the villain in the “Octoroon.” +But then at twenty-one I married +And had to live, and so, to live +I learned the trade of making watches +And kept the jewelry store on the square, +Thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking,— +Not of business, but of the engine +I studied the calculus to build. +And all Spoon River watched and waited +To see it work, but it never worked. +And a few kind souls believed my genius +Was somehow hampered by the store. +It wasn’t true. +The truth was this: +I did not have the brains. + + + + +Tom Beatty + + +I was a lawyer like Harmon Whitney +Or Kinsey Keene or Garrison Standard, +For I tried the rights of property, +Although by lamp-light, for thirty years, +In that poker room in the opera house. +And I say to you that Life’s a gambler +Head and shoulders above us all. +No mayor alive can close the house. +And if you lose, you can squeal as you will; +You’ll not get back your money. +He makes the percentage hard to conquer; +He stacks the cards to catch your weakness +And not to meet your strength. +And he gives you seventy years to play: +For if you cannot win in seventy +You cannot win at all. +So, if you lose, get out of the room— +Get out of the room when your time is up. +It’s mean to sit and fumble the cards +And curse your losses, leaden-eyed, +Whining to try and try. + + + + +Roy Butler + + +If the learned Supreme Court of Illinois +Got at the secret of every case +As well as it does a case of rape +It would be the greatest court in the world. +A jury, of neighbors mostly, with “Butch” Weldy +As foreman, found me guilty in ten minutes +And two ballots on a case like this: +Richard Bandle and I had trouble over a fence +And my wife and Mrs. Bandle quarreled +As to whether Ipava was a finer town than Table Grove. +I awoke one morning with the love of God +Brimming over my heart, so I went to see Richard +To settle the fence in the spirit of Jesus Christ. +I knocked on the door, and his wife opened; +She smiled and asked me in. +I entered— She slammed the door and began to scream, +“Take your hands off, you low down varlet!” +Just then her husband entered. +I waved my hands, choked up with words. +He went for his gun, and I ran out. +But neither the Supreme Court nor my wife +Believed a word she said. + + + + +Searcy Foote + + +I wanted to go away to college +But rich Aunt Persis wouldn’t help me. +So I made gardens and raked the lawns +And bought John Alden’s books with my earnings +And toiled for the very means of life. +I wanted to marry Delia Prickett, +But how could I do it with what I earned? +And there was Aunt Persis more than seventy +Who sat in a wheel-chair half alive +With her throat so paralyzed, when she swallowed +The soup ran out of her mouth like a duck— +A gourmand yet, investing her income +In mortgages, fretting all the time +About her notes and rents and papers. +That day I was sawing wood for her, +And reading Proudhon in between. +I went in the house for a drink of water, +And there she sat asleep in her chair, +And Proudhon lying on the table, +And a bottle of chloroform on the book, +She used sometimes for an aching tooth! +I poured the chloroform on a handkerchief +And held it to her nose till she died.— +Oh Delia, Delia, you and Proudhon +Steadied my hand, and the coroner +Said she died of heart failure. +I married Delia and got the money— +A joke on you, Spoon River? + + + + +Edmund Pollard + + +I would I had thrust my hands of flesh +Into the disk-flowers bee-infested, +Into the mirror-like core of fire +Of the light of life, the sun of delight. +For what are anthers worth or petals +Or halo-rays? Mockeries, shadows +Of the heart of the flower, the central flame +All is yours, young passer-by; +Enter the banquet room with the thought; +Don’t sidle in as if you were doubtful +Whether you’re welcome—the feast is yours! +Nor take but a little, refusing more +With a bashful “Thank you”, when you’re hungry. +Is your soul alive? Then let it feed! +Leave no balconies where you can climb; +Nor milk-white bosoms where you can rest; +Nor golden heads with pillows to share; +Nor wine cups while the wine is sweet; +Nor ecstasies of body or soul, +You will die, no doubt, but die while living +In depths of azure, rapt and mated, +Kissing the queen-bee, Life! + + + + +Thomas Trevelyan + + +Reading in Ovid the sorrowful story of Itys, +Son of the love of Tereus and Procne, slain +For the guilty passion of Tereus for Philomela, +The flesh of him served to Tereus by Procne, +And the wrath of Tereus, the murderess pursuing +Till the gods made Philomela a nightingale, +Lute of the rising moon, and Procne a swallow +Oh livers and artists of Hellas centuries gone, +Sealing in little thuribles dreams and wisdom, +Incense beyond all price, forever fragrant, +A breath whereof makes clear the eyes of the soul +How I inhaled its sweetness here in Spoon River! +The thurible opening when I had lived and learned +How all of us kill the children of love, and all of us, +Knowing not what we do, devour their flesh; +And all of us change to singers, although it be +But once in our lives, or change—alas!—to swallows, +To twitter amid cold winds and falling leaves! + + + + +Percival Sharp + + +Observe the clasped hands! +Are they hands of farewell or greeting, +Hands that I helped or hands that helped me? +Would it not be well to carve a hand +With an inverted thumb, like Elagabalus? +And yonder is a broken chain, +The weakest-link idea perhaps— +But what was it? +And lambs, some lying down, +Others standing, as if listening to the shepherd— +Others bearing a cross, one foot lifted up— +Why not chisel a few shambles? +And fallen columns! +Carve the pedestal, please, +Or the foundations; let us see the cause of the fall. +And compasses and mathematical instruments, +In irony of the under tenants, ignorance +Of determinants and the calculus of variations. +And anchors, for those who never sailed. +And gates ajar—yes, so they were; +You left them open and stray goats entered your garden. +And an eye watching like one of the Arimaspi— +So did you—with one eye. +And angels blowing trumpets—you are heralded— +It is your horn and your angel and your family’s estimate. +It is all very well, but for myself +I know I stirred certain vibrations in Spoon River +Which are my true epitaph, more lasting than stone. + + + + +Hiram Scates + + +I tried to win the nomination +For president of the County-board +And I made speeches all over the County +Denouncing Solomon Purple, my rival, +As an enemy of the people, +In league with the master-foes of man. +Young idealists, broken warriors, +Hobbling on one crutch of hope, +Souls that stake their all on the truth, +Losers of worlds at heaven’s bidding, +Flocked about me and followed my voice +As the savior of the County. +But Solomon won the nomination; +And then I faced about, +And rallied my followers to his standard, +And made him victor, made him King +Of the Golden Mountain with the door +Which closed on my heels just as I entered, +Flattered by Solomon’s invitation, +To be the County—board’s secretary. +And out in the cold stood all my followers: +Young idealists, broken warriors +Hobbling on one crutch of hope— +Souls that staked their all on the truth, +Losers of worlds at heaven’s bidding, +Watching the Devil kick the Millennium +Over the Golden Mountain. + + + + +Peleg Poague + + +Horses and men are just alike. +There was my stallion, Billy Lee, +Black as a cat and trim as a deer, +With an eye of fire, keen to start, +And he could hit the fastest speed +Of any racer around Spoon River. +But just as you’d think he couldn’t lose, +With his lead of fifty yards or more, +He’d rear himself and throw the rider, +And fall back over, tangled up, +Completely gone to pieces. +You see he was a perfect fraud: +He couldn’t win, he couldn’t work, +He was too light to haul or plow with, +And no one wanted colts from him. +And when I tried to drive him—well, +He ran away and killed me. + + + + +Jeduthan Hawley + + +There would be a knock at the door +And I would arise at midnight and go to the shop, +Where belated travelers would hear me hammering +Sepulchral boards and tacking satin. +And often I wondered who would go with me +To the distant land, our names the theme +For talk, in the same week, for I’ve observed +Two always go together. +Chase Henry was paired with Edith Conant; +And Jonathan Somers with Willie Metcalf; +And Editor Hamblin with Francis Turner, +When he prayed to live longer than Editor Whedon, +And Thomas Rhodes with widow McFarlane; +And Emily Sparks with Barry Holden; +And Oscar Hummel with Davis Matlock; +And Editor Whedon with Fiddler Jones; +And Faith Matheny with Dorcas Gustine. +And I, the solemnest man in town, +Stepped off with Daisy Fraser. + + + + +Abel Melveny + + +I bought every kind of machine that’s known— +Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers, +Mills and rakes and ploughs and threshers— +And all of them stood in the rain and sun, +Getting rusted, warped and battered, +For I had no sheds to store them in, +And no use for most of them. +And toward the last, when I thought it over, +There by my window, growing clearer +About myself, as my pulse slowed down, +And looked at one of the mills I bought— +Which I didn’t have the slightest need of, +As things turned out, and I never ran— +A fine machine, once brightly varnished, +And eager to do its work, +Now with its paint washed off— +I saw myself as a good machine +That Life had never used. + + + + +Oaks Tutt + + +My mother was for woman’s rights +And my father was the rich miller at London Mills. +I dreamed of the wrongs of the world and wanted to right them. +When my father died, I set out to see peoples and countries +In order to learn how to reform the world. +I traveled through many lands. I saw the ruins of Rome +And the ruins of Athens, And the ruins of Thebes. +And I sat by moonlight amid the necropolis of Memphis. +There I was caught up by wings of flame, +And a voice from heaven said to me: +“Injustice, Untruth destroyed them. +Go forth Preach Justice! Preach Truth!” +And I hastened back to Spoon River +To say farewell to my mother before beginning my work. +They all saw a strange light in my eye. +And by and by, when I talked, they discovered +What had come in my mind. +Then Jonathan Swift Somers challenged me to debate +The subject, (I taking the negative): +“Pontius Pilate, the Greatest Philosopher of the World.” +And he won the debate by saying at last, +“Before you reform the world, Mr. Tutt +Please answer the question of Pontius Pilate: +“What is Truth?” + + + + +Elliott Hawkins + + +I looked like Abraham Lincoln. +I was one of you, Spoon River, in all fellowship, +But standing for the rights of property and for order. +A regular church attendant, +Sometimes appearing in your town meetings to warn you +Against the evils of discontent and envy +And to denounce those who tried to destroy the Union, +And to point to the peril of the Knights of Labor. +My success and my example are inevitable influences +In your young men and in generations to come, +In spite of attacks of newspapers like the _Clarion;_ +A regular visitor at Springfield +When the Legislature was in session +To prevent raids upon the railroads +And the men building up the state. +Trusted by them and by you, Spoon River, equally +In spite of the whispers that I was a lobbyist. +Moving quietly through the world, rich and courted. +Dying at last, of course, but lying here +Under a stone with an open book carved upon it +And the words _“Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”_ +And now, you world-savers, who reaped nothing in life +And in death have neither stones nor epitaphs, +How do you like your silence from mouths stopped +With the dust of my triumphant career? + + + + +Voltaire Johnson + + +Why did you bruise me with your rough places +If you did not want me to tell you about them? +And stifle me with your stupidities, +If you did not want me to expose them? +And nail me with the nails of cruelty, +If you did not want me to pluck the nails forth +And fling them in your faces? +And starve me because I refused to obey you, +If you did not want me to undermine your tyranny? +I might have been as soul serene +As William Wordsworth except for you! +But what a coward you are, Spoon River, +When you drove me to stand in a magic circle +By the sword of Truth described! +And then to whine and curse your burns, +And curse my power who stood and laughed +Amid ironical lightning! + + + + +English Thornton + + +Here! You sons of the men +Who fought with Washington at Valley Forge, +And whipped Black Hawk at Starved Rock, +Arise! Do battle with the descendants of those +Who bought land in the loop when it was waste sand, +And sold blankets and guns to the army of Grant, +And sat in legislatures in the early days, +Taking bribes from the railroads! +Arise! Do battle with the fops and bluffs, +The pretenders and figurantes of the society column +And the yokel souls whose daughters marry counts; +And the parasites on great ideas, +And the noisy riders of great causes, +And the heirs of ancient thefts. +Arise! And make the city yours, +And the State yours— +You who are sons of the hardy yeomanry of the forties! +By God! If you do not destroy these vermin +My avenging ghost will wipe out +Your city and your state. + + + + +Enoch Dunlap + + +How many times, during the twenty years +I was your leader, friends of Spoon River, +Did you neglect the convention and caucus, +And leave the burden on my hands +Of guarding and saving the people’s cause?— +Sometimes because you were ill; +Or your grandmother was ill; +Or you drank too much and fell asleep; +Or else you said: “He is our leader, +All will be well; he fights for us; +We have nothing to do but follow.” +But oh, how you cursed me when I fell, +And cursed me, saying I had betrayed you, +In leaving the caucus room for a moment, +When the people’s enemies, there assembled, +Waited and watched for a chance to destroy +The Sacred Rights of the People. +You common rabble! I left the caucus +To go to the urinal. + + + + +Ida Frickey + + +Nothing in life is alien to you: +I was a penniless girl from Summum +Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River. +All the houses stood before me with closed doors +And drawn shades—I was barred out; +I had no place or part in any of them. +And I walked past the old McNeely mansion, +A castle of stone ’mid walks and gardens +With workmen about the place on guard +And the County and State upholding it +For its lordly owner, full of pride. +I was so hungry I had a vision: +I saw a giant pair of scissors +Dip from the sky, like the beam of a dredge, +And cut the house in two like a curtain. +But at the “Commercial” I saw a man +Who winked at me as I asked for work— +It was Wash McNeely’s son. +He proved the link in the chain of title +To half my ownership of the mansion, +Through a breach of promise suit—the scissors. +So, you see, the house, from the day I was born, +Was only waiting for me. + + + + +Seth Compton + + +When I died, the circulating library +Which I built up for Spoon River, +And managed for the good of inquiring minds, +Was sold at auction on the public square, +As if to destroy the last vestige +Of my memory and influence. +For those of you who could not see the virtue +Of knowing Volney’s “Ruins” as well as Butler’s “Analogy” +And “Faust” as well as “Evangeline,” +Were really the power in the village, +And often you asked me +“What is the use of knowing the evil in the world?” +I am out of your way now, Spoon River, +Choose your own good and call it good. +For I could never make you see +That no one knows what is good +Who knows not what is evil; +And no one knows what is true +Who knows not what is false. + + + + +Felix Schmidt + + +It was only a little house of two rooms— +Almost like a child’s play-house— +With scarce five acres of ground around it; +And I had so many children to feed +And school and clothe, and a wife who was sick +From bearing children. +One day lawyer Whitney came along +And proved to me that Christian Dallman, +Who owned three thousand acres of land, +Had bought the eighty that adjoined me +In eighteen hundred and seventy-one +For eleven dollars, at a sale for taxes, +While my father lay in his mortal illness. +So the quarrel arose and I went to law. +But when we came to the proof, +A survey of the land showed clear as day +That Dallman’s tax deed covered my ground +And my little house of two rooms. +It served me right for stirring him up. +I lost my case and lost my place. +I left the court room and went to work +As Christian Dallman’s tenant. + + + + +Schrœder The Fisherman + + +I sat on the bank above Bernadotte +And dropped crumbs in the water, +Just to see the minnows bump each other, +Until the strongest got the prize. +Or I went to my little pasture, +Where the peaceful swine were asleep in the wallow, +Or nosing each other lovingly, +And emptied a basket of yellow corn, +And watched them push and squeal and bite, +And trample each other to get the corn. +And I saw how Christian Dallman’s farm, +Of more than three thousand acres, +Swallowed the patch of Felix Schmidt, +As a bass will swallow a minnow +And I say if there’s anything in man— +Spirit, or conscience, or breath of God +That makes him different from fishes or hogs, +I’d like to see it work! + + + + +Richard Bone + + +When I first came to Spoon River +I did not know whether what they told me +Was true or false. +They would bring me the epitaph +And stand around the shop while I worked +And say “He was so kind,” “He was so wonderful,” +“She was the sweetest woman,” “He was a consistent Christian.” +And I chiseled for them whatever they wished, +All in ignorance of the truth. +But later, as I lived among the people here, +I knew how near to the life +Were the epitaphs that were ordered for them as they died. +But still I chiseled whatever they paid me to chisel +And made myself party to the false chronicles +Of the stones, +Even as the historian does who writes +Without knowing the truth, +Or because he is influenced to hide it. + + + + +Silas Dement + + +It was moon-light, and the earth sparkled +With new-fallen frost. +It was midnight and not a soul abroad. +Out of the chimney of the court-house +A gray-hound of smoke leapt and chased +The northwest wind. +I carried a ladder to the landing of the stairs +And leaned it against the frame of the trap-door +In the ceiling of the portico, +And I crawled under the roof and amid the rafters +And flung among the seasoned timbers +A lighted handful of oil-soaked waste. +Then I came down and slunk away. +In a little while the fire-bell rang— +Clang! Clang! Clang! +And the Spoon River ladder company +Came with a dozen buckets and began to pour water +On the glorious bon-fire, growing hotter +Higher and brighter, till the walls fell in +And the limestone columns where Lincoln stood +Crashed like trees when the woodman fells them. +When I came back from Joliet +There was a new court house with a dome. +For I was punished like all who destroy +The past for the sake of the future. + + + + +Dillard Sissman + + +The buzzards wheel slowly +In wide circles, in a sky +Faintly hazed as from dust from the road. +And a wind sweeps through the pasture where I lie +Beating the grass into long waves. +My kite is above the wind, +Though now and then it wobbles, +Like a man shaking his shoulders; +And the tail streams out momentarily, +Then sinks to rest. +And the buzzards wheel and wheel, +Sweeping the zenith with wide circles +Above my kite. And the hills sleep. +And a farm house, white as snow, +Peeps from green trees—far away. +And I watch my kite, +For the thin moon will kindle herself ere long, +Then she will swing like a pendulum dial +To the tail of my kite. +A spurt of flame like a water-dragon +Dazzles my eyes— +I am shaken as a banner! + + + + +Jonathan Houghton + + +There is the caw of a crow, +And the hesitant song of a thrush. +There is the tinkle of a cowbell far away, +And the voice of a plowman on Shipley’s hill. +The forest beyond the orchard is still +With midsummer stillness; +And along the road a wagon chuckles, +Loaded with corn, going to Atterbury. +And an old man sits under a tree asleep, +And an old woman crosses the road, +Coming from the orchard with a bucket of blackberries. +And a boy lies in the grass +Near the feet of the old man, +And looks up at the sailing clouds, +And longs, and longs, and longs +For what, he knows not: +For manhood, for life, for the unknown world! +Then thirty years passed, +And the boy returned worn out by life +And found the orchard vanished, +And the forest gone, +And the house made over, +And the roadway filled with dust from automobiles— +And himself desiring The Hill! + + + + +E. C. Culbertson + + +Is it true, Spoon River, +That in the hall—way of the New Court House +There is a tablet of bronze +Containing the embossed faces +Of Editor Whedon and Thomas Rhodes? +And is it true that my successful labors +In the County Board, without which +Not one stone would have been placed on another, +And the contributions out of my own pocket +To build the temple, are but memories among the people, +Gradually fading away, and soon to descend +With them to this oblivion where I lie? +In truth, I can so believe. +For it is a law of the Kingdom of Heaven +That whoso enters the vineyard at the eleventh hour +Shall receive a full day’s pay. +And it is a law of the Kingdom of this World +That those who first oppose a good work +Seize it and make it their own, +When the corner—stone is laid, +And memorial tablets are erected. + + + + +Shack Dye + + +The white men played all sorts of jokes on me. +They took big fish off my hook +And put little ones on, while I was away +Getting a stringer, and made me believe +I hadn’t seen aright the fish I had caught. +When Burr Robbins circus came to town +They got the ring master to let a tame leopard +Into the ring, and made me believe +I was whipping a wild beast like Samson +When I, for an offer of fifty dollars, +Dragged him out to his cage. +One time I entered my blacksmith shop +And shook as I saw some horse-shoes crawling +Across the floor, as if alive— +Walter Simmons had put a magnet +Under the barrel of water. +Yet everyone of you, you white men, +Was fooled about fish and about leopards too, +And you didn’t know any more than the horse-shoes did +What moved you about Spoon River. + + + + +Hildrup Tubbs + + +I made two fights for the people. +First I left my party, bearing the gonfalon +Of independence, for reform, and was defeated. +Next I used my rebel strength +To capture the standard of my old party— +And I captured it, but I was defeated. +Discredited and discarded, misanthropical, +I turned to the solace of gold +And I used my remnant of power +To fasten myself like a saprophyte +Upon the putrescent carcass +Of Thomas Rhodes, bankrupt bank, +As assignee of the fund. +Everyone now turned from me. +My hair grew white, +My purple lusts grew gray, +Tobacco and whisky lost their savor +And for years Death ignored me +As he does a hog. + + + + +Henry Tripp + + +The bank broke and I lost my savings. +I was sick of the tiresome game in Spoon River +And I made up my mind to run away +And leave my place in life and my family; +But just as the midnight train pulled in, +Quick off the steps jumped Cully Green +And Martin Vise, and began to fight +To settle their ancient rivalry, +Striking each other with fists that sounded +Like the blows of knotted clubs. +Now it seemed to me that Cully was winning, +When his bloody face broke into a grin +Of sickly cowardice, leaning on Martin +And whining out “We’re good friends, Mart, +You know that I’m your friend.” +But a terrible punch from Martin knocked him +Around and around and into a heap. +And then they arrested me as a witness, +And I lost my train and staid in Spoon River +To wage my battle of life to the end. +Oh, Cully Green, you were my savior— +You, so ashamed and drooped for years, +Loitering listless about the streets, +And tying rags round your festering soul, +Who failed to fight it out. + + + + +Granville Calhoun + + +I wanted to be County Judge +One more term, so as to round out a service +Of thirty years. +But my friends left me and joined my enemies, +And they elected a new man. +Then a spirit of revenge seized me, +And I infected my four sons with it, +And I brooded upon retaliation, +Until the great physician, Nature, +Smote me through with paralysis +To give my soul and body a rest. +Did my sons get power and money? +Did they serve the people or yoke them, +To till and harvest fields of self? +For how could they ever forget +My face at my bed-room window, +Sitting helpless amid my golden cages +Of singing canaries, +Looking at the old court-house? + + + + +Henry C. Calhoun + + +I reached the highest place in Spoon River, +But through what bitterness of spirit! +The face of my father, sitting speechless, +Child-like, watching his canaries, +And looking at the court-house window +Of the county judge’s room, +And his admonitions to me to seek +My own in life, and punish Spoon River +To avenge the wrong the people did him, +Filled me with furious energy +To seek for wealth and seek for power. +But what did he do but send me along +The path that leads to the grove of the Furies? +I followed the path and I tell you this: +On the way to the grove you’ll pass the Fates, +Shadow-eyed, bent over their weaving. +Stop for a moment, and if you see +The thread of revenge leap out of the shuttle +Then quickly snatch from Atropos +The shears and cut it, lest your sons +And the children of them and their children +Wear the envenomed robe. + + + + +Alfred Moir + + +Why was I not devoured by self-contempt, +And rotted down by indifference +And impotent revolt like Indignation Jones? +Why, with all of my errant steps +Did I miss the fate of Willard Fluke? +And why, though I stood at Burchard’s bar, +As a sort of decoy for the house to the boys +To buy the drinks, did the curse of drink +Fall on me like rain that runs off, +Leaving the soul of me dry and clean? +And why did I never kill a man +Like Jack McGuire? +But instead I mounted a little in life, +And I owe it all to a book I read. +But why did I go to Mason City, +Where I chanced to see the book in a window, +With its garish cover luring my eye? +And why did my soul respond to the book, +As I read it over and over? + + + + +Perry Zoll + + +My thanks, friends of the +County Scientific Association, +For this modest boulder, +And its little tablet of bronze. +Twice I tried to join your honored body, +And was rejected +And when my little brochure +On the intelligence of plants +Began to attract attention +You almost voted me in. +After that I grew beyond the need of you +And your recognition. +Yet I do not reject your memorial stone +Seeing that I should, in so doing, +Deprive you of honor to yourselves. + + + + +Dippold the Optician + + +What do you see now? +Globes of red, yellow, purple. +Just a moment! And now? +My father and mother and sisters. +Yes! And now? +Knights at arms, beautiful women, kind faces. +Try this. +A field of grain—a city. +Very good! And now? +A young woman with angels bending over her. +A heavier lens! And now? +Many women with bright eyes and open lips. +Try this. +Just a goblet on a table. +Oh I see! Try this lens! +Just an open space—I see nothing in particular. +Well, now! +Pine trees, a lake, a summer sky. +That’s better. And now? +A book. +Read a page for me. +I can’t. My eyes are carried beyond the page. +Try this lens. +Depths of air. +Excellent! And now! +Light, just light making everything below it a toy world. +Very well, we’ll make the glasses accordingly. + + + + +Magrady Graham + + +Tell me, was Altgeld elected Governor? +For when the returns began to come in +And Cleveland was sweeping the East +It was too much for you, poor old heart, +Who had striven for democracy +In the long, long years of defeat. +And like a watch that is worn +I felt you growing slower until you stopped. +Tell me, was Altgeld elected, +And what did he do? +Did they bring his head on a platter to a dancer, +Or did he triumph for the people? +For when I saw him +And took his hand, +The child-like blueness of his eyes +Moved me to tears, +And there was an air of eternity about him, +Like the cold, clear light that rests at dawn +On the hills! + + + + +Archibald Higbie + + +I loathed you, Spoon River. +I tried to rise above you, +I was ashamed of you. +I despised you +As the place of my nativity. +And there in Rome, among the artists, +Speaking Italian, speaking French, +I seemed to myself at times to be free +Of every trace of my origin. +I seemed to be reaching the heights of art +And to breathe the air that the masters breathed +And to see the world with their eyes. +But still they’d pass my work and say: +“What are you driving at, my friend? +Sometimes the face looks like Apollo’s +At others it has a trace of Lincoln’s.” +There was no culture, you know, in Spoon River +And I burned with shame and held my peace. +And what could I do, all covered over +And weighted down with western soil +Except aspire, and pray for another +Birth in the world, with all of Spoon River +Rooted out of my soul? + + + + +Tom Merritt + + +At first I suspected something— +She acted so calm and absent-minded. +And one day I heard the back door shut +As I entered the front, and I saw him slink +Back of the smokehouse into the lot +And run across the field. +And I meant to kill him on sight. +But that day, walking near Fourth Bridge +Without a stick or a stone at hand, +All of a sudden I saw him standing +Scared to death, holding his rabbits, +And all I could say was, “Don’t, Don’t, Don’t,” +As he aimed and fired at my heart. + + + + +Mrs. Merritt + + +Silent before the jury +Returning no word to the judge when he asked me +If I had aught to say against the sentence, +Only shaking my head. +What could I say to people who thought +That a woman of thirty-five was at fault +When her lover of nineteen killed her husband? +Even though she had said to him over and over, +“Go away, Elmer, go far away, +I have maddened your brain with the gift of my body: +You will do some terrible thing.” +And just as I feared, he killed my husband; +With which I had nothing to do, before +God Silent for thirty years in prison +And the iron gates of Joliet +Swung as the gray and silent trusties +Carried me out in a coffin. + + + + +Elmer Karr + + +What but the love of God could have softened +And made forgiving the people of Spoon River +Toward me who wronged the bed of Thomas Merritt +And murdered him beside? +Oh, loving hearts that took me in again +When I returned from fourteen years in prison! +Oh, helping hands that in the church received me +And heard with tears my penitent confession, +Who took the sacrament of bread and wine! +Repent, ye living ones, and rest with Jesus. + + + + +Elizabeth Childers + + +Dust of my dust, +And dust with my dust, +O, child who died as you entered the world, +Dead with my death! +Not knowing +Breath, though you tried so hard, +With a heart that beat when you lived with me, +And stopped when you left me for Life. +It is well, my child. +For you never traveled +The long, long way that begins with school days, +When little fingers blur under the tears +That fall on the crooked letters. +And the earliest wound, when a little mate +Leaves you alone for another; +And sickness, and the face of +Fear by the bed; +The death of a father or mother; +Or shame for them, or poverty; +The maiden sorrow of school days ended; +And eyeless Nature that makes you drink +From the cup of Love, though you know it’s poisoned; +To whom would your flower-face have been lifted? +Botanist, weakling? +Cry of what blood to yours?— +Pure or foul, for it makes no matter, +It’s blood that calls to our blood. +And then your children—oh, what might they be? +And what your sorrow? +Child! Child Death is better than Life. + + + + +Edith Conant + + +We stand about this place—we, the memories; +And shade our eyes because we dread to read: +“June 17th, 1884, aged 21 years and 3 days.” +And all things are changed. +And we—we, the memories, stand here for ourselves alone, +For no eye marks us, or would know why we are here. +Your husband is dead, your sister lives far away, +Your father is bent with age; +He has forgotten you, he scarcely leaves the house +Any more. No one remembers your exquisite face, +Your lyric voice! +How you sang, even on the morning you were stricken, +With piercing sweetness, with thrilling sorrow, +Before the advent of the child which died with you. +It is all forgotten, save by us, the memories, +Who are forgotten by the world. +All is changed, save the river and the hill— +Even they are changed. +Only the burning sun and the quiet stars are the same. +And we—we, the memories, stand here in awe, +Our eyes closed with the weariness of tears— +In immeasurable weariness + + + + +Charles Webster + + +The pine woods on the hill, +And the farmhouse miles away, +Showed clear as though behind a lens +Under a sky of peacock blue! +But a blanket of cloud by afternoon +Muffled the earth. And you walked the road +And the clover field, where the only sound +Was the cricket’s liquid tremolo. +Then the sun went down between great drifts +Of distant storms. For a rising wind +Swept clean the sky and blew the flames +Of the unprotected stars; +And swayed the russet moon, +Hanging between the rim of the hill +And the twinkling boughs of the apple orchard. +You walked the shore in thought +Where the throats of the waves were like whip-poor-wills +Singing beneath the water and crying +To the wash of the wind in the cedar trees, +Till you stood, too full for tears, by the cot, +And looking up saw Jupiter, +Tipping the spire of the giant pine, +And looking down saw my vacant chair, +Rocked by the wind on the lonely porch— +Be brave, Beloved! + + + + +Father Malloy + + +You are over there, Father Malloy, +Where holy ground is, and the cross marks every grave, +Not here with us on the hill— +Us of wavering faith, and clouded vision +And drifting hope, and unforgiven sins. +You were so human, Father Malloy, +Taking a friendly glass sometimes with us, +Siding with us who would rescue Spoon River +From the coldness and the dreariness of village morality. +You were like a traveler who brings a little box of sand +From the wastes about the pyramids +And makes them real and Egypt real. +You were a part of and related to a great past, +And yet you were so close to many of us. +You believed in the joy of life. +You did not seem to be ashamed of the flesh. +You faced life as it is, +And as it changes. +Some of us almost came to you, Father Malloy, +Seeing how your church had divined the heart, +And provided for it, +Through Peter the Flame, +Peter the Rock. + + + + +Ami Green + + +Not “a youth with hoary head and haggard eye”, +But an old man with a smooth skin +And black hair! I had the face of a boy as long as I lived, +And for years a soul that was stiff and bent, +In a world which saw me just as a jest, +To be hailed familiarly when it chose, +And loaded up as a man when it chose, +Being neither man nor boy. +In truth it was soul as well as body +Which never matured, and I say to you +That the much-sought prize of eternal youth +Is just arrested growth. + + + + +Calvin Campbell + + +Ye who are kicking against Fate, +Tell me how it is that on this hill-side +Running down to the river, +Which fronts the sun and the south-wind, +This plant draws from the air and soil +Poison and becomes poison ivy? +And this plant draws from the same air and soil +Sweet elixirs and colors and becomes arbutus? +And both flourish? +You may blame Spoon River for what it is, +But whom do you blame for the will in you +That feeds itself and makes you dock-weed, +Jimpson, dandelion or mullen +And which can never use any soil or air +So as to make you jessamine or wistaria? + + + + +Henry Layton + + +Whoever thou art who passest by +Know that my father was gentle, +And my mother was violent, +While I was born the whole of such hostile halves, +Not intermixed and fused, +But each distinct, feebly soldered together. +Some of you saw me as gentle, +Some as violent, +Some as both. +But neither half of me wrought my ruin. +It was the falling asunder of halves, +Never a part of each other, +That left me a lifeless soul. + + + + +Harlan Sewall + + +You never understood, +O unknown one, +Why it was I repaid +Your devoted friendship and delicate ministrations +First with diminished thanks, +Afterward by gradually withdrawing my presence from you, +So that I might not be compelled to thank you, +And then with silence which followed upon +Our final Separation. +You had cured my diseased soul. +But to cure it +You saw my disease, you knew my secret, +And that is why I fled from you. +For though when our bodies rise from pain +We kiss forever the watchful hands +That gave us wormwood, while we shudder +For thinking of the wormwood, +A soul that’s cured is a different matter, +For there we’d blot from memory +The soft-toned words, the searching eyes, +And stand forever oblivious, +Not so much of the sorrow itself +As of the hand that healed it. + + + + +Ippolit Konovaloff + + +I was a gun-smith in Odessa. +One night the police broke in the room +Where a group of us were reading Spencer. +And seized our books and arrested us. +But I escaped and came to New York +And thence to Chicago, and then to Spoon River, +Where I could study my Kant in peace +And eke out a living repairing guns +Look at my moulds! My architectonics +One for a barrel, one for a hammer +And others for other parts of a gun! +Well, now suppose no gun-smith living +Had anything else but duplicate moulds +Of these I show you—well, all guns +Would be just alike, with a hammer to hit +The cap and a barrel to carry the shot +All acting alike for themselves, and all +Acting against each other alike. +And there would be your world of guns! +Which nothing could ever free from itself +Except a Moulder with different moulds +To mould the metal over. + + + + +Henry Phipps + + +I was the Sunday-school superintendent, +The dummy president of the wagon works +And the canning factory, +Acting for Thomas Rhodes and the banking clique; +My son the cashier of the bank, +Wedded to Rhodes’ daughter, +My week days spent in making money, +My Sundays at church and in prayer. +In everything a cog in the wheel of things-as-they-are: +Of money, master and man, made white +With the paint of the Christian creed. +And then: +The bank collapsed. +I stood and hooked at the wrecked machine— +The wheels with blow-holes stopped with putty and painted; +The rotten bolts, the broken rods; +And only the hopper for souls fit to be used again +In a new devourer of life, +When newspapers, judges and money-magicians +Build over again. +I was stripped to the bone, but I lay in the Rock of Ages, +Seeing now through the game, no longer a dupe, +And knowing “the upright shall dwell in the land +But the years of the wicked shall be shortened.” +Then suddenly, Dr. Meyers discovered +A cancer in my liver. +I was not, after all, the particular care of God +Why, even thus standing on a peak +Above the mists through which I had climbed, +And ready for larger life in the world, +Eternal forces +Moved me on with a push. + + + + +Harry Wilmans + + +I was just turned twenty-one, +And Henry Phipps, the Sunday-school superintendent, +Made a speech in Bindle’s Opera House. +“The honor of the flag must be upheld,” he said, +“Whether it be assailed by a barbarous tribe of Tagalogs +Or the greatest power in Europe.” +And we cheered and cheered the speech and the flag he waved +As he spoke. +And I went to the war in spite of my father, +And followed the flag till I saw it raised +By our camp in a rice field near Manila, +And all of us cheered and cheered it. +But there were flies and poisonous things; +And there was the deadly water, +And the cruel heat, +And the sickening, putrid food; +And the smell of the trench just back of the tents +Where the soldiers went to empty themselves; +And there were the whores who followed us, full of syphilis; +And beastly acts between ourselves or alone, +With bullying, hatred, degradation among us, +And days of loathing and nights of fear +To the hour of the charge through the steaming swamp, +Following the flag, +Till I fell with a scream, shot through the guts. +Now there’s a flag over me in +Spoon River. A flag! +A flag! + + + + +John Wasson + + +Oh! the dew-wet grass of the meadow in North Carolina +Through which Rebecca followed me wailing, wailing, +One child in her arms, and three that ran along wailing, +Lengthening out the farewell to me off to the war with the British, +And then the long, hard years down to the day of Yorktown. +And then my search for Rebecca, +Finding her at last in Virginia, +Two children dead in the meanwhile. +We went by oxen to Tennessee, +Thence after years to Illinois, +At last to Spoon River. +We cut the buffalo grass, +We felled the forests, +We built the school houses, built the bridges, +Leveled the roads and tilled the fields +Alone with poverty, scourges, death— +If Harry Wilmans who fought the Filipinos +Is to have a flag on his grave +Take it from mine. + + + + +Many Soldiers + + +The idea danced before us as a flag; +The sound of martial music; +The thrill of carrying a gun; +Advancement in the world on coming home; +A glint of glory, wrath for foes; +A dream of duty to country or to God. +But these were things in ourselves, shining before us, +They were not the power behind us, +Which was the Almighty hand of Life, +Like fire at earth’s center making mountains, +Or pent up waters that cut them through. +Do you remember the iron band +The blacksmith, Shack Dye, welded +Around the oak on Bennet’s lawn, +From which to swing a hammock, +That daughter Janet might repose in, reading +On summer afternoons? +And that the growing tree at last +Sundered the iron band? +But not a cell in all the tree +Knew aught save that it thrilled with life, +Nor cared because the hammock fell +In the dust with Milton’s Poems. + + + + +Godwin James + + +Harry Wilmans! You who fell in a swamp +Near Manila, following the flag +You were not wounded by the greatness of a dream, +Or destroyed by ineffectual work, +Or driven to madness by Satanic snags; +You were not torn by aching nerves, +Nor did you carry great wounds to your old age. +You did not starve, for the government fed you. +You did not suffer yet cry “forward” +To an army which you led +Against a foe with mocking smiles, +Sharper than bayonets. +You were not smitten down +By invisible bombs. +You were not rejected +By those for whom you were defeated. +You did not eat the savorless bread +Which a poor alchemy had made from ideals. +You went to Manila, Harry Wilmans, +While I enlisted in the bedraggled army +Of bright-eyed, divine youths, +Who surged forward, who were driven back and fell +Sick, broken, crying, shorn of faith, +Following the flag of the Kingdom of Heaven. +You and I, Harry Wilmans, have fallen +In our several ways, not knowing +Good from bad, defeat from victory, +Nor what face it is that smiles +Behind the demoniac mask. + + + + +Lyman King + + +You may think, passer-by, that Fate +Is a pit-fall outside of yourself, +Around which you may walk by the use of foresight +And wisdom. +Thus you believe, viewing the lives of other men, +As one who in God-like fashion bends over an anthill, +Seeing how their difficulties could be avoided. +But pass on into life: +In time you shall see Fate approach you +In the shape of your own image in the mirror; +Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth, +And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest, +And you shall know that guest +And read the authentic message of his eyes. + + + + +Caroline Branson + + +With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked, +As often before, the April fields till star-light +Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness +Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood, +Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing +Like notes of music that run together, into winning, +In the inspired improvisation of love! +But to put back of us as a canticle ended +The rapt enchantment of the flesh, +In which our souls swooned, down, down, +Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves— +Annihilated in love! +To leave these behind for a room with lamps: +And to stand with our Secret mocking itself, +And hiding itself amid flowers and mandolins, +Stared at by all between salad and coffee. +And to see him tremble, and feel myself +Prescient, as one who signs a bond— +Not flaming with gifts and pledges heaped +With rosy hands over his brow. +And then, O night! deliberate! unlovely! +With all of our wooing blotted out by the winning, +In a chosen room in an hour that was known to all! +Next day he sat so listless, almost cold +So strangely changed, wondering why I wept, +Till a kind of sick despair and voluptuous madness +Seized us to make the pact of death. + +A stalk of the earth-sphere, +Frail as star-light; +Waiting to be drawn once again +Into creation’s stream. +But next time to be given birth +Gazed at by Raphael and St. Francis +Sometimes as they pass. +For I am their little brother, +To be known clearly face to face +Through a cycle of birth hereafter run. +You may know the seed and the soil; +You may feel the cold rain fall, +But only the earth-sphere, only heaven +Knows the secret of the seed +In the nuptial chamber under the soil. +Throw me into the stream again, +Give me another trial— +Save me, Shelley! + + + + +Anne Rutledge + + +Out of me unworthy and unknown +The vibrations of deathless music; +“With malice toward none, with charity for all.” +Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions, +And the beneficent face of a nation +Shining with justice and truth. +I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds, +Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln, +Wedded to him, not through union, But through separation. +Bloom forever, O Republic, +From the dust of my bosom! + + + + +Hamlet Micure + + +In a lingering fever many visions come to you: +I was in the little house again +With its great yard of clover +Running down to the board-fence, +Shadowed by the oak tree, +Where we children had our swing. +Yet the little house was a manor hall +Set in a lawn, and by the lawn was the sea. +I was in the room where little Paul +Strangled from diphtheria, +But yet it was not this room— +It was a sunny verandah enclosed +With mullioned windows +And in a chair sat a man in a dark cloak +With a face like Euripides. +He had come to visit me, or I had gone to visit him—I could not tell. +We could hear the beat of the sea, the clover nodded +Under a summer wind, and little Paul came +With clover blossoms to the window and smiled. +Then I said: “What is ‘divine despair,’ Alfred?” +“Have you read ‘Tears, Idle Tears’?” he asked. +“Yes, but you do not there express divine despair.” +“My poor friend,” he answered, “that was why the despair +Was divine.” + + + + +Mabel Osborne + + +Your red blossoms amid green leaves +Are drooping, beautiful geranium! +But you do not ask for water. +You cannot speak! +You do not need to speak— +Everyone knows that you are dying of thirst, +Yet they do not bring water! +They pass on, saying: +“The geranium wants water.” +And I, who had happiness to share +And longed to share your happiness; +I who loved you, Spoon River, +And craved your love, +Withered before your eyes, Spoon River— +Thirsting, thirsting, +Voiceless from chasteness of soul to ask you for love, +You who knew and saw me perish before you, +Like this geranium which someone has planted over me, +And left to die. + + + + +William H. Herndon + + +There by the window in the old house +Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley, +My days of labor closed, sitting out life’s decline, +Day by day did I look in my memory, +As one who gazes in an enchantress’ crystal globe, +And I saw the figures of the past +As if in a pageant glassed by a shining dream, +Move through the incredible sphere of time. +And I saw a man arise from the soil like a fabled giant +And throw himself over a deathless destiny, +Master of great armies, head of the republic, +Bringing together into a dithyramb of recreative song +The epic hopes of a people; +At the same time Vulcan of sovereign fires, +Where imperishable shields and swords were beaten out +From spirits tempered in heaven. +Look in the crystal! +See how he hastens on +To the place where his path comes up to the path +Of a child of Plutarch and Shakespeare. +O Lincoln, actor indeed, playing well your part +And Booth, who strode in a mimic play within the play, +Often and often I saw you, +As the cawing crows winged their way to the wood +Over my house—top at solemn sunsets, +There by my window, +Alone. + + + + +Rebecca Wasson + + +Spring and Summer, Fall and Winter and Spring, +After each other drifting, past my window drifting! +And I lay so many years watching them drift and counting +The years till a terror came in my heart at times, +With the feeling that I had become eternal; at last +My hundredth year was reached! And still I lay +Hearing the tick of the clock, and the low of cattle +And the scream of a jay flying through falling leaves! +Day after day alone in a room of the house +Of a daughter-in-law stricken with age and gray. +And by night, or looking out of the window by day +My thought ran back, it seemed, through infinite time +To North Carolina and all my girlhood days, +And John, my John, away to the war with the British, +And all the children, the deaths, and all the sorrows. +And that stretch of years like a prairie in Illinois +Through which great figures passed like hurrying horsemen, +Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Webster, Clay. +O beautiful young republic for whom my John and I +Gave all of our strength and love! +And O my John! +Why, when I lay so helpless in bed for years, +Praying for you to come, was your coming delayed? +Seeing that with a cry of rapture, like that I uttered +When you found me in old Virginia after the war, +I cried when I beheld you there by the bed, +As the sun stood low in the west growing smaller and fainter +In the light of your face! + + + + +Rutherford McDowell + + +They brought me ambrotypes +Of the old pioneers to enlarge. +And sometimes one sat for me— +Some one who was in being +When giant hands from the womb of the world +Tore the republic. +What was it in their eyes?— +For I could never fathom +That mystical pathos of drooped eyelids, +And the serene sorrow of their eyes. +It was like a pool of water, +Amid oak trees at the edge of a forest, +Where the leaves fall, +As you hear the crow of a cock +From a far-off farm house, seen near the hills +Where the third generation lives, and the strong men +And the strong women are gone and forgotten. +And these grand-children and great grand-children +Of the pioneers! +Truly did my camera record their faces, too, +With so much of the old strength gone, +And the old faith gone, +And the old mastery of life gone, +And the old courage gone, +Which labors and loves and suffers and sings +Under the sun! + + + + +Hannah Armstrong + + +I wrote him a letter asking him for old times’ sake +To discharge my sick boy from the army; +But maybe he couldn’t read it. +Then I went to town and had James Garber, +Who wrote beautifully, write him a letter. +But maybe that was lost in the mails. +So I traveled all the way to Washington. +I was more than an hour finding the White House. +And when I found it they turned me away, +Hiding their smiles. +Then I thought: “Oh, well, he ain’t the same as when I boarded him +And he and my husband worked together +And all of us called him Abe, there in Menard.” +As a last attempt I turned to a guard and said: +“Please say it’s old Aunt Hannah Armstrong +From Illinois, come to see him about her sick boy +In the army.” +Well, just in a moment they let me in! +And when he saw me he broke in a laugh, +And dropped his business as president, +And wrote in his own hand Doug’s discharge, +Talking the while of the early days, +And telling stories. + + + + +Lucinda Matlock + + +I went to the dances at Chandlerville, +And played snap-out at Winchester. +One time we changed partners, +Driving home in the moonlight of middle June, +And then I found Davis. +We were married and lived together for seventy years, +Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children, +Eight of whom we lost +Ere I had reached the age of sixty. +I spun, +I wove, +I kept the house, +I nursed the sick, +I made the garden, and for holiday +Rambled over the fields where sang the larks, +And by Spoon River gathering many a shell, +And many a flower and medicinal weed— +Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys. +At ninety—six I had lived enough, that is all, +And passed to a sweet repose. +What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness, +Anger, discontent and drooping hopes? +Degenerate sons and daughters, +Life is too strong for you— +It takes life to love Life. + + + + +Davis Matlock + + +Suppose it is nothing but the hive: +That there are drones and workers +And queens, and nothing but storing honey— +(Material things as well as culture and wisdom)— +For the next generation, this generation never living, +Except as it swarms in the sun-light of youth, +Strengthening its wings on what has been gathered, +And tasting, on the way to the hive +From the clover field, the delicate spoil. +Suppose all this, and suppose the truth: +That the nature of man is greater +Than nature’s need in the hive; +And you must bear the burden of life, +As well as the urge from your spirit’s excess— +Well, I say to live it out like a god +Sure of immortal life, though you are in doubt, +Is the way to live it. +If that doesn’t make God proud of you +Then God is nothing but gravitation +Or sleep is the golden goal. + + + + +Herman Altman + + +Did I follow Truth wherever she led, +And stand against the whole world for a cause, +And uphold the weak against the strong? +If I did I would be remembered among men +As I was known in life among the people, +And as I was hated and loved on earth, +Therefore, build no monument to me, +And carve no bust for me, +Lest, though I become not a demi-god, +The reality of my soul be lost, +So that thieves and liars, +Who were my enemies and destroyed me, +And the children of thieves and liars, +May claim me and affirm before my bust +That they stood with me in the days of my defeat. +Build me no monument +Lest my memory be perverted to the uses +Of lying and oppression. +My lovers and their children must not be dispossessed of me; +I would be the untarnished possession forever +Of those for whom I lived. + + + + +Jennie M’Grew + + +Not, where the stairway turns in the dark +A hooded figure, shriveled under a flowing cloak! +Not yellow eyes in the room at night, +Staring out from a surface of cobweb gray! +And not the flap of a condor wing +When the roar of life in your ears begins +As a sound heard never before! +But on a sunny afternoon, +By a country road, +Where purple rag-weeds bloom along a straggling fence +And the field is gleaned, and the air is still +To see against the sun-light something black +Like a blot with an iris rim— +That is the sign to eyes of second sight. . . +And that I saw! + + + + +Columbus Cheney + + +This weeping willow! +Why do you not plant a few +For the millions of children not yet born, +As well as for us? +Are they not non-existent, or cells asleep +Without mind? +Or do they come to earth, their birth +Rupturing the memory of previous being? +Answer! +The field of unexplored intuition is yours. +But in any case why not plant willows for them, +As well as for us? + + + + +Wallace Ferguson + + +There at Geneva where Mt. Blanc floated above +The wine-hued lake like a cloud, when a breeze was blown +Out of an empty sky of blue, and the roaring Rhone +Hurried under the bridge through chasms of rock; +And the music along the cafés was part of the splendor +Of dancing water under a torrent of light; +And the purer part of the genius of Jean Rousseau +Was the silent music of all we saw or heard— +There at Geneva, I say, was the rapture less +Because I could not link myself with the I of yore, +When twenty years before I wandered about Spoon River? +Nor remember what I was nor what I felt? +We live in the hour all free of the hours gone by. +Therefore, O soul, if you lose yourself in death, +And wake in some Geneva by some Mt. Blanc, +What do you care if you know not yourself as the you +Who lived and loved in a little corner of earth +Known as Spoon River ages and ages vanished? + + + + +Marie Bateson + + +You observe the carven hand +With the index finger pointing heavenward. +That is the direction, no doubt. +But how shall one follow it? +It is well to abstain from murder and lust, +To forgive, do good to others, worship God +Without graven images. +But these are external means after all +By which you chiefly do good to yourself. +The inner kernel is freedom, +It is light, purity— +I can no more, +Find the goal or lose it, according to your vision. + + + + +Tennessee Claflin Shope + + +I was the laughing-stock of the village, +Chiefly of the people of good sense, as they call themselves— +Also of the learned, like Rev. Peet, who read Greek +The same as English. +For instead of talking free trade, +Or preaching some form of baptism; +Instead of believing in the efficacy +Of walking cracks, picking up pins the right way, +Seeing the new moon over the right shoulder, +Or curing rheumatism with blue glass, +I asserted the sovereignty of my own soul. +Before Mary Baker G. Eddy even got started +With what she called science I had mastered the “Bhagavad Gita,” +And cured my soul, before Mary +Began to cure bodies with souls— +Peace to all worlds! + + + + +Plymouth Rock Joe + + +Why are you running so fast hither and thither +Chasing midges or butterflies? +Some of you are standing solemnly scratching for grubs; +Some of you are waiting for corn to be scattered. +This is life, is it? +Cock-a-doodle-do! Very well, Thomas Rhodes, +You are cock of the walk, no doubt. +But here comes Elliott Hawkins, +Gluck, Gluck, Gluck, attracting political followers. +Quah! quah! quah! why so poetical, Minerva, +This gray morning? +Kittie—quah—quah! for shame, Lucius Atherton, +The raucous squawk you evoked from the throat +Of Aner Clute will be taken up later +By Mrs. Benjamin Pantier as a cry +Of votes for women: Ka dook—dook! +What inspiration has come to you, Margaret Fuller Slack? +And why does your gooseberry eye +Flit so liquidly, Tennessee Claflin Shope? +Are you trying to fathom the esotericism of an egg? +Your voice is very metallic this morning, Hortense Robbins— +Almost like a guinea hen’s! +Quah! That was a guttural sigh, Isaiah Beethoven; +Did you see the shadow of the hawk, +Or did you step upon the drumsticks +Which the cook threw out this morning? +Be chivalric, heroic, or aspiring, +Metaphysical, religious, or rebellious, +You shall never get out of the barnyard +Except by way of over the fence +Mixed with potato peelings and such into the trough! + + + + +Imanuel Ehrenhardt + + +I began with Sir William Hamilton’s lectures. +Then studied Dugald Stewart; +And then John Locke on the Understanding, +And then Descartes, Fichte and Schelling, +Kant and then Schopenhauer— +Books I borrowed from old Judge Somers. +All read with rapturous industry +Hoping it was reserved to me +To grasp the tail of the ultimate secret, +And drag it out of its hole. +My soul flew up ten thousand miles +And only the moon looked a little bigger. +Then I fell back, how glad of the earth! +All through the soul of William Jones +Who showed me a letter of John Muir. + + + + +Samuel Gardner + + +I who kept the greenhouse, +Lover of trees and flowers, +Oft in life saw this umbrageous elm, +Measuring its generous branches with my eye, +And listened to its rejoicing leaves +Lovingly patting each other +With sweet aeolian whispers. +And well they might: +For the roots had grown so wide and deep +That the soil of the hill could not withhold +Aught of its virtue, enriched by rain, +And warmed by the sun; +But yielded it all to the thrifty roots, +Through which it was drawn and whirled to the trunk, +And thence to the branches, and into the leaves, +Wherefrom the breeze took life and sang. +Now I, an under-tenant of the earth, can see +That the branches of a tree +Spread no wider than its roots. +And how shall the soul of a man +Be larger than the life he has lived? + + + + +Dow Kritt + + +Samuel is forever talking of his elm— +But I did not need to die to learn about roots: +I, who dug all the ditches about Spoon River. +Look at my elm! +Sprung from as good a seed as his, +Sown at the same time, +It is dying at the top: +Not from lack of life, nor fungus, +Nor destroying insect, as the sexton thinks. +Look, Samuel, where the roots have struck rock, +And can no further spread. +And all the while the top of the tree +Is tiring itself out, and dying, +Trying to grow. + + + + +William Jones + + +Once in a while a curious weed unknown to me, +Needing a name from my books; +Once in a while a letter from Yeomans. +Out of the mussel-shells gathered along the shore +Sometimes a pearl with a glint like meadow rue: +Then betimes a letter from Tyndall in England, +Stamped with the stamp of Spoon River. +I, lover of Nature, beloved for my love of her, +Held such converse afar with the great +Who knew her better than I. +Oh, there is neither lesser nor greater, +Save as we make her greater and win from her keener delight. +With shells from the river cover me, cover me. +I lived in wonder, worshipping earth and heaven. +I have passed on the march eternal of endless life. + + + + +William Goode + + +To all in the village I seemed, no doubt, +To go this way and that way, aimlessly. +But here by the river you can see at twilight +The soft-winged bats fly zig-zag here and there— +They must fly so to catch their food. +And if you have ever lost your way at night, +In the deep wood near Miller’s Ford, +And dodged this way and now that, +Wherever the light of the Milky Way shone through, +Trying to find the path, +You should understand I sought the way +With earnest zeal, and all my wanderings +Were wanderings in the quest. + + + + +J. Milton Miles + + +Whenever the Presbyterian bell +Was rung by itself, I knew it as the Presbyterian bell. +But when its sound was mingled +With the sound of the Methodist, the Christian, +The Baptist and the Congregational, +I could no longer distinguish it, +Nor any one from the others, or either of them. +And as many voices called to me in life +Marvel not that I could not tell +The true from the false, +Nor even, at last, the voice that +I should have known. + + + + +Faith Matheny + + +At first you will know not what they mean, +And you may never know, +And we may never tell you:— +These sudden flashes in your soul, +Like lambent lightning on snowy clouds +At midnight when the moon is full. +They come in solitude, or perhaps +You sit with your friend, and all at once +A silence falls on speech, and his eyes +Without a flicker glow at you:— +You two have seen the secret together, +He sees it in you, and you in him. +And there you sit thrilling lest the Mystery +Stand before you and strike you dead +With a splendor like the sun’s. +Be brave, all souls who have such visions +As your body’s alive as mine is dead, +You’re catching a little whiff of the ether +Reserved for God Himself. + + + + +Scholfield Hurley + + +God! ask me not to record your wonders, +I admit the stars and the suns +And the countless worlds. +But I have measured their distances +And weighed them and discovered their substances. +I have devised wings for the air, +And keels for water, +And horses of iron for the earth. +I have lengthened the vision you gave me a million times, +And the hearing you gave me a million times, +I have leaped over space with speech, +And taken fire for light out of the air. +I have built great cities and bored through the hills, +And bridged majestic waters. +I have written the Iliad and Hamlet; +And I have explored your mysteries, +And searched for you without ceasing, +And found you again after losing you +In hours of weariness— +And I ask you: +How would you like to create a sun +And the next day have the worms +Slipping in and out between your fingers? + + + + +Willie Metcalf + + +I was Willie Metcalf. +They used to call me “Doctor Meyers,” +Because, they said, I looked like him. +And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire. +I lived in the livery stable, +Sleeping on the floor +Side by side with Roger Baughman’s bulldog, +Or sometimes in a stall. +I could crawl between the legs of the wildest horses +Without getting kicked—we knew each other. +On spring days I tramped through the country +To get the feeling, which I sometimes lost, +That I was not a separate thing from the earth. +I used to lose myself, as if in sleep, +By lying with eyes half-open in the woods. +Sometimes I talked with animals—even toads and snakes— +Anything that had an eye to look into. +Once I saw a stone in the sunshine +Trying to turn into jelly. +In April days in this cemetery +The dead people gathered all about me, +And grew still, like a congregation in silent prayer. +I never knew whether I was a part of the earth +With flowers growing in me, or whether I walked— +Now I know. + + + + +Willie Pennington + + +They called me the weakling, the simpleton, +For my brothers were strong and beautiful, +While I, the last child of parents who had aged, +Inherited only their residue of power. +But they, my brothers, were eaten up +In the fury of the flesh, which I had not, +Made pulp in the activity of the senses, which I had not, +Hardened by the growth of the lusts, which I had not, +Though making names and riches for themselves. +Then I, the weak one, the simpleton, +Resting in a little corner of life, +Saw a vision, and through me many saw the vision, +Not knowing it was through me. +Thus a tree sprang +From me, a mustard seed. + + + + +The Village Atheist + + +Ye young debaters over the doctrine +Of the soul’s immortality +I who lie here was the village atheist, +Talkative, contentious, versed in the arguments +Of the infidels. But through a long sickness +Coughing myself to death I read the +Upanishads and the poetry of Jesus. +And they lighted a torch of hope and intuition +And desire which the Shadow +Leading me swiftly through the caverns of darkness, +Could not extinguish. +Listen to me, ye who live in the senses +And think through the senses only: +Immortality is not a gift, +Immortality is an achievement; +And only those who strive mightily +Shall possess it. + + + + +John Ballard + + +In the lust of my strength +I cursed God, but he paid no attention to me: +I might as well have cursed the stars. +In my last sickness I was in agony, but I was resolute +And I cursed God for my suffering; +Still He paid no attention to me; +He left me alone, as He had always done. +I might as well have cursed the Presbyterian steeple. +Then, as I grew weaker, a terror came over me: +Perhaps I had alienated God by cursing him. +One day Lydia Humphrey brought me a bouquet +And it occurred to me to try to make friends with God, +So I tried to make friends with Him; +But I might as well have tried to make friends with the bouquet. +Now I was very close to the secret, +For I really could make friends with the bouquet +By holding close to me the love in me for the bouquet +And so I was creeping upon the secret, but— + + + + +Julian Scott + + +Toward the last +The truth of others was untruth to me; +The justice of others injustice to me; +Their reasons for death, reasons with me for life; +Their reasons for life, reasons with me for death; +I would have killed those they saved, +And save those they killed. +And I saw how a god, if brought to earth, +Must act out what he saw and thought, +And could not live in this world of men +And act among them side by side +Without continual clashes. +The dust’s for crawling, heaven’s for flying— +Wherefore, O soul, whose wings are grown, +Soar upward to the sun! + + + + +Alfonso Churchill + + +They laughed at me as “Prof. Moon,” +As a boy in Spoon River, born with the thirst +Of knowing about the stars. +They jeered when I spoke of the lunar mountains, +And the thrilling heat and cold, +And the ebon valleys by silver peaks, +And Spica quadrillions of miles away, +And the littleness of man. +But now that my grave is honored, friends, +Let it not be because I taught +The lore of the stars in Knox College, +But rather for this: that through the stars +I preached the greatness of man, +Who is none the less a part of the scheme of things +For the distance of Spica or the Spiral Nebulae; +Nor any the less a part of the question +Of what the drama means. + + + + +Zilpha Marsh + + +At four o’clock in late October +I sat alone in the country school-house +Back from the road, mid stricken fields, +And an eddy of wind blew leaves on the pane, +And crooned in the flue of the cannon-stove, +With its open door blurring the shadows +With the spectral glow of a dying fire. +In an idle mood I was running the planchette— +All at once my wrist grew limp, +And my hand moved rapidly over the board, +’Till the name of “Charles Guiteau” was spelled, +Who threatened to materialize before me. +I rose and fled from the room bare-headed +Into the dusk, afraid of my gift. +And after that the spirits swarmed— +Chaucer, Caesar, Poe and Marlowe, +Cleopatra and Mrs. Surratt— +Wherever I went, with messages,— +Mere trifling twaddle, Spoon River agreed. +You talk nonsense to children, don’t you? +And suppose I see what you never saw +And never heard of and have no word for, +I must talk nonsense when you ask me +What it is I see! + + + + +James Garber + + +Do you remember, passer-by, the path +I wore across the lot where now stands the opera house +Hasting with swift feet to work through many years? +Take its meaning to heart: +You too may walk, after the hills at Miller’s Ford +Seem no longer far away; +Long after you see them near at hand, +Beyond four miles of meadow; +And after woman’s love is silent +Saying no more: “I will save you.” +And after the faces of friends and kindred +Become as faded photographs, pitifully silent, +Sad for the look which means: +“We cannot help you.” +And after you no longer reproach mankind +With being in league against your soul’s uplifted hands— +Themselves compelled at midnight and at noon +To watch with steadfast eye their destinies; +After you have these understandings, think of me +And of my path, who walked therein and knew +That neither man nor woman, neither toil, +Nor duty, gold nor power +Can ease the longing of the soul, +The loneliness of the soul! + + + + +Lydia Humphrey + + +Back and forth, back and forth, to and from the church, +With my Bible under my arm +’Till I was gray and old; +Unwedded, alone in the world, +Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation, +And children in the church. +I know they laughed and thought me queer. +I knew of the eagle souls that flew high in the sunlight, +Above the spire of the church, and laughed at the church, +Disdaining me, not seeing me. +But if the high air was sweet to them, sweet was the church to me. +It was the vision, vision, vision of the poets +Democratized! + + + + +Le Roy Goldman + + +“What will you do when you come to die, +If all your life long you have rejected Jesus, +And know as you lie there, +He is not your friend?” +Over and over I said, I, the revivalist. +Ah, yes! but there are friends and friends. +And blessed are you, say I, who know all now, +You who have lost ere you pass, +A father or mother, or old grandfather or mother +Some beautiful soul that lived life strongly +And knew you all through, and loved you ever, +Who would not fail to speak for you, +And give God an intimate view of your soul +As only one of your flesh could do it. +That is the hand your hand will reach for, +To lead you along the corridor +To the court where you are a stranger! + + + + +Gustav Richter + + +After a long day of work in my hot—houses +Sleep was sweet, but if you sleep on your left side +Your dreams may be abruptly ended. +I was among my flowers where some one +Seemed to be raising them on trial, +As if after-while to be transplanted +To a larger garden of freer air. +And I was disembodied vision +Amid a light, as it were the sun +Had floated in and touched the roof of glass +Like a toy balloon and softly bursted, +And etherealized in golden air. +And all was silence, except the splendor +Was immanent with thought as clear +As a speaking voice, and I, as thought, +Could hear a Presence think as he walked +Between the boxes pinching off leaves, +Looking for bugs and noting values, +With an eye that saw it all: +“Homer, oh yes! Pericles, good. +Caesar Borgia, what shall be done with it? +Dante, too much manure, perhaps. +Napoleon, leave him awhile as yet. +Shelley, more soil. Shakespeare, needs spraying—” +Clouds, eh!— + + + + +Arlo Will + + +Did you ever see an alligator +Come up to the air from the mud, +Staring blindly under the full glare of noon? +Have you seen the stabled horses at night +Tremble and start back at the sight of a lantern? +Have you ever walked in darkness +When an unknown door was open before you +And you stood, it seemed, in the light of a thousand candles +Of delicate wax? +Have you walked with the wind in your ears +And the sunlight about you +And found it suddenly shine with an inner splendor? +Out of the mud many times +Before many doors of light +Through many fields of splendor, +Where around your steps a soundless glory scatters +Like new-fallen snow, +Will you go through earth, O strong of soul, +And through unnumbered heavens +To the final flame! + + + + +Captain Orlando Killion + + +Oh, you young radicals and dreamers, +You dauntless fledglings +Who pass by my headstone, +Mock not its record of my captaincy in the army +And my faith in God! +They are not denials of each other. +Go by reverently, and read with sober care +How a great people, riding with defiant shouts +The centaur of Revolution, +Spurred and whipped to frenzy, +Shook with terror, seeing the mist of the sea +Over the precipice they were nearing, +And fell from his back in precipitate awe +To celebrate the Feast of the Supreme Being. +Moved by the same sense of vast reality +Of life and death, and burdened as they were +With the fate of a race, +How was I, a little blasphemer, +Caught in the drift of a nation’s unloosened flood, +To remain a blasphemer, +And a captain in the army? + + + + +Jeremy Carlisle + + +Passer-by, sin beyond any sin +Is the sin of blindness of souls to other souls. +And joy beyond any joy is the joy +Of having the good in you seen, and seeing the good +At the miraculous moment! +Here I confess to a lofty scorn, +And an acrid skepticism. +But do you remember the liquid that Penniwit +Poured on tintypes making them blue +With a mist like hickory smoke? +Then how the picture began to clear +Till the face came forth like life? +So you appeared to me, neglected ones, +And enemies too, as I went along +With my face growing clearer to you as yours +Grew clearer to me. +We were ready then to walk together +And sing in chorus and chant the dawn +Of life that is wholly life. + + + + +Joseph Dixon + + +Who carved this shattered harp on my stone? +I died to you, no doubt. But how many harps and pianos +Wired I and tightened and disentangled for you, +Making them sweet again—with tuning fork or without? +Oh well! A harp leaps out of the ear of a man, you say, +But whence the ear that orders the length of the strings +To a magic of numbers flying before your thought +Through a door that closes against your breathless wonder? +Is there no Ear round the ear of a man, that it senses +Through strings and columns of air the soul of sound? +I thrill as I call it a tuning fork that catches +The waves of mingled music and light from afar, +The antennæ of Thought that listens through utmost space. +Surely the concord that ruled my spirit is proof +Of an Ear that tuned me, able to tune me over +And use me again if I am worthy to use. + + + + +Judson Stoddard + + +On a mountain top above the clouds +That streamed like a sea below me +I said that peak is the thought of Budda, +And that one is the prayer of Jesus, +And this one is the dream of Plato, +And that one there the song of Dante, +And this is Kant and this is Newton, +And this is Milton and this is Shakespeare, +And this the hope of the Mother Church, +And this—why all these peaks are poems, +Poems and prayers that pierce the clouds. +And I said “What does God do with mountains +That rise almost to heaven?” + + + + +Russell Kincaid + + +In the last spring I ever knew, +In those last days, I sat in the forsaken orchard +Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered +The hills at Miller’s Ford; +Just to muse on the apple tree +With its ruined trunk and blasted branches, +And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms +Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle, +Never to grow in fruit. +And there was I with my spirit girded +By the flesh half dead, the senses numb +Yet thinking of youth and the earth in youth,— +Such phantom blossoms palely shining +Over the lifeless boughs of Time. +O earth that leaves us ere heaven takes us! +Had I been only a tree to shiver +With dreams of spring and a leafy youth, +Then I had fallen in the cyclone +Which swept me out of the soul’s suspense +Where it’s neither earth nor heaven. + + + + +Aaron Hatfield + + +Better than granite, Spoon River, +Is the memory-picture you keep of me +Standing before the pioneer men and women +There at Concord Church on Communion day. +Speaking in broken voice of the peasant youth +Of Galilee who went to the city +And was killed by bankers and lawyers; +My voice mingling with the June wind +That blew over wheat fields from Atterbury; +While the white stones in the burying ground +Around the Church shimmered in the summer sun. +And there, though my own memories +Were too great to bear, were you, O pioneers, +With bowed heads breathing forth your sorrow +For the sons killed in battle and the daughters +And little children who vanished in life’s morning, +Or at the intolerable hour of noon. +But in those moments of tragic silence, +When the wine and bread were passed, +Came the reconciliation for us— +Us the ploughmen and the hewers of wood, +Us the peasants, brothers of the peasant of Galilee— +To us came the Comforter +And the consolation of tongues of flame! + + + + +Isaiah Beethoven + + +They told me I had three months to live, +So I crept to Bernadotte, +And sat by the mill for hours and hours +Where the gathered waters deeply moving +Seemed not to move: +O world, that’s you! +You are but a widened place in the river +Where Life looks down and we rejoice for her +Mirrored in us, and so we dream +And turn away, but when again +We look for the face, behold the low-lands +And blasted cotton-wood trees where we empty +Into the larger stream! +But here by the mill the castled clouds +Mocked themselves in the dizzy water; +And over its agate floor at night +The flame of the moon ran under my eyes +Amid a forest stillness broken +By a flute in a hut on the hill. +At last when I came to lie in bed +Weak and in pain, with the dreams about me, +The soul of the river had entered my soul, +And the gathered power of my soul was moving +So swiftly it seemed to be at rest +Under cities of cloud and under +Spheres of silver and changing worlds— +Until I saw a flash of trumpets +Above the battlements over Time. + + + + +Elijah Browning + + +I was among multitudes of children +Dancing at the foot of a mountain. +A breeze blew out of the east and swept them as leaves, +Driving some up the slopes. . . . +All was changed. +Here were flying lights, and mystic moons, and dream-music. +A cloud fell upon us. +When it lifted all was changed. +I was now amid multitudes who were wrangling. +Then a figure in shimmering gold, and one with a trumpet, +And one with a sceptre stood before me. +They mocked me and danced a rigadoon and vanished. . . . +All was changed again. +Out of a bower of poppies +A woman bared her breasts and lifted her open mouth to mine. +I kissed her. +The taste of her lips was like salt. +She left blood on my lips. +I fell exhausted. +I arose and ascended higher, but a mist as from an iceberg +Clouded my steps. +I was cold and in pain. +Then the sun streamed on me again, +And I saw the mists below me hiding all below them. +And I, bent over my staff, knew myself +Silhouetted against the snow. And above me +Was the soundless air, pierced by a cone of ice, +Over which hung a solitary star! +A shudder of ecstasy, a shudder of fear +Ran through me. +But I could not return to the slopes— +Nay, I wished not to return. +For the spent waves of the symphony of freedom +Lapped the ethereal cliffs about me. +Therefore I climbed to the pinnacle. +I flung away my staff. +I touched that star +With my outstretched hand. +I vanished utterly. +For the mountain delivers to Infinite Truth +Whosoever touches the star. + + + + +Webster Ford + + +Do you remember, O Delphic Apollo, +The sunset hour by the river, when Mickey M’Grew +Cried, “There’s a ghost,” and I, “It’s Delphic Apollo”; +And the son of the banker derided us, saying, “It’s light +By the flags at the water’s edge, you half-witted fools.” +And from thence, as the wearisome years rolled on, long after +Poor Mickey fell down in the water tower to his death +Down, down, through bellowing darkness, I carried +The vision which perished with him like a rocket which falls +And quenches its light in earth, and hid it for fear +Of the son of the banker, calling on Plutus to save me? +Avenged were you for the shame of a fearful heart +Who left me alone till I saw you again in an hour +When I seemed to be turned to a tree with trunk and branches +Growing indurate, turning to stone, yet burgeoning +In laurel leaves, in hosts of lambent laurel, +Quivering, fluttering, shrinking, fighting the numbness +Creeping into their veins from the dying trunk and branches! +’Tis vain, O youth, to fly the call of Apollo. +Fling yourselves in the fire, die with a song of spring, +If die you must in the spring. For none shall look +On the face of Apollo and live, and choose you must +’Twixt death in the flame and death after years of sorrow, +Rooted fast in the earth, feeling the grisly hand, +Not so much in the trunk as in the terrible numbness +Creeping up to the laurel leaves that never cease +To flourish until you fall. O leaves of me +Too sere for coronal wreaths, and fit alone +For urns of memory, treasured, perhaps, as themes +For hearts heroic, fearless singers and livers— +Delphic Apollo! + + + + +The Spooniad + + +[_The late Mr. Jonathan Swift Somers, laureate of Spoon River (see page +111), planned The Spooniad as an epic in twenty-four books, but +unfortunately did not live to complete even the first book. The +fragment was found among his papers by William Marion Reedy and was for +the first time published in Reedy’s Mirror of December 18th, 1914._] + + +Of John Cabanis’ wrath and of the strife +Of hostile parties, and his dire defeat +Who led the common people in the cause +Of freedom for Spoon River, and the fall +Of Rhodes, bank that brought unnumbered woes +And loss to many, with engendered hate +That flamed into the torch in Anarch hands +To burn the court-house, on whose blackened wreck +A fairer temple rose and Progress stood— +Sing, muse, that lit the Chian’s face with smiles +Who saw the ant-like Greeks and Trojans crawl +About Scamander, over walls, pursued +Or else pursuing, and the funeral pyres +And sacred hecatombs, and first because +Of Helen who with Paris fled to Troy +As soul-mate; and the wrath of Peleus, son, +Decreed to lose Chryseis, lovely spoil +Of war, and dearest concubine. + +Say first, +Thou son of night, called Momus, from whose eyes +No secret hides, and Thalia, smiling one, +What bred ’twixt Thomas Rhodes and John Cabanis +The deadly strife? His daughter Flossie, she, +Returning from her wandering with a troop +Of strolling players, walked the village streets, +Her bracelets tinkling and with sparkling rings +And words of serpent wisdom and a smile +Of cunning in her eyes. Then Thomas Rhodes, +Who ruled the church and ruled the bank as well, +Made known his disapproval of the maid; +And all Spoon River whispered and the eyes +Of all the church frowned on her, till she knew +They feared her and condemned. + +But them to flout +She gave a dance to viols and to flutes, +Brought from Peoria, and many youths, +But lately made regenerate through the prayers +Of zealous preachers and of earnest souls, +Danced merrily, and sought her in the dance, +Who wore a dress so low of neck that eyes +Down straying might survey the snowy swale +’Till it was lost in whiteness. + +With the dance +The village changed to merriment from gloom. +The milliner, Mrs. Williams, could not fill +Her orders for new hats, and every seamstress +Plied busy needles making gowns; old trunks +And chests were opened for their store of laces +And rings and trinkets were brought out of hiding +And all the youths fastidious grew of dress; +Notes passed, and many a fair one’s door at eve +Knew a bouquet, and strolling lovers thronged +About the hills that overlooked the river. +Then, since the mercy seats more empty showed, +One of God’s chosen lifted up his voice: +“The woman of Babylon is among us; rise +Ye sons of light and drive the wanton forth!” +So John Cabanis left the church and left +The hosts of law and order with his eyes +By anger cleared, and him the liberal cause +Acclaimed as nominee to the mayoralty +To vanquish A. D. Blood. + +But as the war +Waged bitterly for votes and rumors flew +About the bank, and of the heavy loans +Which Rhodes, son had made to prop his loss +In wheat, and many drew their coin and left +The bank of Rhodes more hollow, with the talk +Among the liberals of another bank +Soon to be chartered, lo, the bubble burst +’Mid cries and curses; but the liberals laughed +And in the hall of Nicholas Bindle held +Wise converse and inspiriting debate. + +High on a stage that overlooked the chairs +Where dozens sat, and where a pop-eyed daub +Of Shakespeare, very like the hired man +Of Christian Dallman, brow and pointed beard, +Upon a drab proscenium outward stared, +Sat Harmon Whitney, to that eminence, +By merit raised in ribaldry and guile, +And to the assembled rebels thus he spake: +“Whether to lie supine and let a clique +Cold-blooded, scheming, hungry, singing psalms, +Devour our substance, wreck our banks and drain +Our little hoards for hazards on the price +Of wheat or pork, or yet to cower beneath +The shadow of a spire upreared to curb +A breed of lackeys and to serve the bank +Coadjutor in greed, that is the question. +Shall we have music and the jocund dance, +Or tolling bells? Or shall young romance roam +These hills about the river, flowering now +To April’s tears, or shall they sit at home, +Or play croquet where Thomas Rhodes may see, +I ask you? If the blood of youth runs o’er +And riots ’gainst this regimen of gloom, +Shall we submit to have these youths and maids +Branded as libertines and wantons?” + +Ere +His words were done a woman’s voice called “No!” +Then rose a sound of moving chairs, as when +The numerous swine o’er-run the replenished troughs; +And every head was turned, as when a flock +Of geese back-turning to the hunter’s tread +Rise up with flapping wings; then rang the hall +With riotous laughter, for with battered hat +Tilted upon her saucy head, and fist +Raised in defiance, Daisy Fraser stood. +Headlong she had been hurled from out the hall +Save Wendell Bloyd, who spoke for woman’s rights, +Prevented, and the bellowing voice of Burchard. +Then, mid applause she hastened toward the stage +And flung both gold and silver to the cause +And swiftly left the hall. +Meantime upstood +A giant figure, bearded like the son +Of Alcmene, deep-chested, round of paunch, +And spoke in thunder: “Over there behold +A man who for the truth withstood his wife— +Such is our spirit—when that A. D. Blood +Compelled me to remove Dom Pedro—” + +Quick +Before Jim Brown could finish, Jefferson Howard +Obtained the floor and spake: “Ill suits the time +For clownish words, and trivial is our cause +If naught’s at stake but John Cabanis, wrath, +He who was erstwhile of the other side +And came to us for vengeance. More’s at stake +Than triumph for New England or Virginia. +And whether rum be sold, or for two years +As in the past two years, this town be dry +Matters but little— Oh yes, revenue +For sidewalks, sewers; that is well enough! +I wish to God this fight were now inspired +By other passion than to salve the pride +Of John Cabanis or his daughter. Why +Can never contests of great moment spring +From worthy things, not little? Still, if men +Must always act so, and if rum must be +The symbol and the medium to release +From life’s denial and from slavery, +Then give me rum!” + +Exultant cries arose. +Then, as George Trimble had o’ercome his fear +And vacillation and begun to speak, +The door creaked and the idiot, Willie Metcalf, +Breathless and hatless, whiter than a sheet, +Entered and cried: “The marshal’s on his way +To arrest you all. And if you only knew +Who’s coming here to-morrow; I was listening +Beneath the window where the other side +Are making plans.” + +So to a smaller room +To hear the idiot’s secret some withdrew +Selected by the Chair; the Chair himself +And Jefferson Howard, Benjamin Pantier, +And Wendell Bloyd, George Trimble, Adam Weirauch, +Imanuel Ehrenhardt, Seth Compton, Godwin James +And Enoch Dunlap, Hiram Scates, Roy Butler, +Carl Hamblin, Roger Heston, Ernest Hyde +And Penniwit, the artist, Kinsey Keene, +And E. C. Culbertson and Franklin Jones, +Benjamin Fraser, son of Benjamin Pantier +By Daisy Fraser, some of lesser note, +And secretly conferred. + +But in the hall +Disorder reigned and when the marshal came +And found it so, he marched the hoodlums out +And locked them up. + +Meanwhile within a room +Back in the basement of the church, with Blood +Counseled the wisest heads. Judge Somers first, +Deep learned in life, and next him, Elliott Hawkins +And Lambert Hutchins; next him Thomas Rhodes +And Editor Whedon; next him Garrison Standard, +A traitor to the liberals, who with lip +Upcurled in scorn and with a bitter sneer: +“Such strife about an insult to a woman— +A girl of eighteen” —Christian Dallman too, +And others unrecorded. Some there were +Who frowned not on the cup but loathed the rule +Democracy achieved thereby, the freedom +And lust of life it symbolized. + +Now morn with snowy fingers up the sky +Flung like an orange at a festival +The ruddy sun, when from their hasty beds +Poured forth the hostile forces, and the streets +Resounded to the rattle of the wheels +That drove this way and that to gather in +The tardy voters, and the cries of chieftains +Who manned the battle. But at ten o’clock +The liberals bellowed fraud, and at the polls +The rival candidates growled and came to blows. +Then proved the idiot’s tale of yester-eve +A word of warning. Suddenly on the streets +Walked hog-eyed Allen, terror of the hills +That looked on Bernadotte ten miles removed. +No man of this degenerate day could lift +The boulders which he threw, and when he spoke +The windows rattled, and beneath his brows +Thatched like a shed with bristling hair of black, +His small eyes glistened like a maddened boar. +And as he walked the boards creaked, as he walked +A song of menace rumbled. Thus he came, +The champion of A. D. Blood, commissioned +To terrify the liberals. Many fled +As when a hawk soars o’er the chicken yard. +He passed the polls and with a playful hand +Touched Brown, the giant, and he fell against, +As though he were a child, the wall; so strong +Was hog-eyed Allen. But the liberals smiled. +For soon as hog-eyed Allen reached the walk, +Close on his steps paced Bengal Mike, brought in +By Kinsey Keene, the subtle-witted one, +To match the hog-eyed Allen. He was scarce +Three-fourths the other’s bulk, but steel his arms, +And with a tiger’s heart. Two men he killed +And many wounded in the days before, +And no one feared. + +But when the hog-eyed one +Saw Bengal Mike his countenance grew dark, +The bristles o’er his red eyes twitched with rage, +The song he rumbled lowered. Round and round +The court-house paced he, followed stealthily +By Bengal Mike, who jeered him every step: +“Come, elephant, and fight! Come, hog-eyed coward! +Come, face about and fight me, lumbering sneak! +Come, beefy bully, hit me, if you can! +Take out your gun, you duffer, give me reason +To draw and kill you. Take your billy out. +I’ll crack your boar’s head with a piece of brick!” +But never a word the hog-eyed one returned +But trod about the court-house, followed both +By troops of boys and watched by all the men. +All day, they walked the square. But when Apollo +Stood with reluctant look above the hills +As fain to see the end, and all the votes +Were cast, and closed the polls, before the door +Of Trainor’s drug store Bengal Mike, in tones +That echoed through the village, bawled the taunt: +“Who was your mother, hog—eyed?” In a trice +As when a wild boar turns upon the hound +That through the brakes upon an August day +Has gashed him with its teeth, the hog-eyed one +Rushed with his giant arms on Bengal Mike +And grabbed him by the throat. Then rose to heaven +The frightened cries of boys, and yells of men +Forth rushing to the street. And Bengal Mike +Moved this way and now that, drew in his head +As if his neck to shorten, and bent down +To break the death grip of the hog-eyed one; +’Twixt guttural wrath and fast-expiring strength +Striking his fists against the invulnerable chest +Of hog-eyed Allen. Then, when some came in +To part them, others stayed them, and the fight +Spread among dozens; many valiant souls +Went down from clubs and bricks. + +But tell me, Muse, +What god or goddess rescued Bengal Mike? +With one last, mighty struggle did he grasp +The murderous hands and turning kick his foe. +Then, as if struck by lightning, vanished all +The strength from hog-eyed Allen, at his side +Sank limp those giant arms and o’er his face +Dread pallor and the sweat of anguish spread. +And those great knees, invincible but late, +Shook to his weight. And quickly as the lion +Leaps on its wounded prey, did Bengal Mike +Smite with a rock the temple of his foe, +And down he sank and darkness o’er his eyes +Passed like a cloud. + +As when the woodman fells +Some giant oak upon a summer’s day +And all the songsters of the forest shrill, +And one great hawk that has his nestling young +Amid the topmost branches croaks, as crash +The leafy branches through the tangled boughs +Of brother oaks, so fell the hog-eyed one +Amid the lamentations of the friends +Of A. D. Blood. + +Just then, four lusty men +Bore the town marshal, on whose iron face +The purple pall of death already lay, +To Trainor’s drug store, shot by Jack McGuire. +And cries went up of “Lynch him!” and the sound +Of running feet from every side was heard +Bent on the + + + + +Epilogue + + +(THE GRAVEYARD OF SPOON RIVER. TWO VOICES ARE HEARD BEHIND A SCREEN +DECORATED WITH DIABOLICAL AND ANGELIC FIGURES IN VARIOUS ALLEGORICAL +RELATIONS. A FAINT LIGHT SHOWS DIMLY THROUGH THE SCREEN AS IF IT WERE +WOVEN OF LEAVES, BRANCHES AND SHADOWS.) + + +FIRST VOICE. +A game of checkers? + +SECOND VOICE +Well, I don’t mind. + +FIRST VOICE +I move the Will. + +SECOND VOICE +You’re playing it blind. + +FIRST VOICE +Then here’s the Soul. + +SECOND VOICE +Checked by the Will. + +FIRST VOICE +Eternal Good! + +SECOND VOICE +And Eternal Ill. + +FIRST VOICE +I haste for the King row. + +SECOND VOICE +Save your breath. + +FIRST VOICE +I was moving Life. + +SECOND VOICE +You’re checked by Death. + +FIRST VOICE +Very good, here’s Moses. + +SECOND VOICE +And here’s the Jew. + +FIRST VOICE +My next move is Jesus. + +SECOND VOICE +St. Paul for you! + +FIRST VOICE +Yes, but St. Peter— + +SECOND VOICE +You might have foreseen— + +FIRST VOICE +You’re in the King row— + +SECOND VOICE +With Constantine! + +FIRST VOICE +I’ll go back to Athens. + +SECOND VOICE +Well, here’s the Persian. + +FIRST VOICE +All right, the Bible. + +SECOND VOICE +Pray now, what version? + +FIRST VOICE +I take up Buddha. + +SECOND VOICE +It never will work. + +FIRST VOICE +From the corner Mahomet. + +SECOND VOICE +I move the Turk. + +FIRST VOICE +The game is tangled; where are we now? + +SECOND VOICE +You’re dreaming worlds. I’m in the King row. +Move as you will, if I can’t wreck you +I’ll thwart you, harry you, rout you, check you. + +FIRST VOICE +I’m tired. I’ll send for my Son to play. +I think he can beat you finally— + +SECOND VOICE +Eh? + +FIRST VOICE +I must preside at the stars’ convention. + +SECOND VOICE +Very well, my lord, but I beg to mention +I’ll give this game my direct attention. + +FIRST VOICE +A game indeed! But Truth is my quest. + +SECOND VOICE +Beaten, you walk away with a jest. +I strike the table, I scatter the checkers. +(_A rattle of a falling table and checkers flying over a floor_.) +Aha! You armies and iron deckers, +Races and states in a cataclysm— +Now for a day of atheism! + + +(_The screen vanishes and_ BEELZEBUB _steps forward carrying a trumpet, +which he blows faintly. Immediately_ LOKI _and_ YOCARINDRA _start up +from the shadows of night._) + + +BEELZEBUB +Good evening, Loki! + +LOKI +The same to you! + +BEELZEBUB +And Yogarindra! + +YOGARINDRA +My greetings, too. + +LOKI +Whence came you, comrade? + +BEELZEBUB +From yonder screen. + +YOGARINDRA +And what were you doing? + +BEELZEBUB +Stirring His spleen. + +LOKI +How did you do it? + +BEELZEBUB +I made it rough +In a game of checkers. + +LOKI +Good enough! + +YOGARINDRA +I thought I heard the sounds of a battle. + +BEELZEBUB +No doubt! I made the checkers rattle, +Turning the table over and strewing +The bits of wood like an army pursuing. + +YOGARINDRA +I have a game! Let us make a man. + +LOKI +My net is waiting him, if you can. + +YOGARINDRA +And here’s my mirror to fool him with— + +BEELZEBUB +Mystery, falsehood, creed and myth. + +LOKI +But no one can mold him, friend, but you. + +BEELZEBUB +Then to the sport without more ado. + +YOGARINDRA +Hurry the work ere it grow to day. + +BEELZEBUB +I set me to it. Where is the clay? +(_He scrapes the earth with his hands and begins to model._) + +BEELZEBUB +Out of the dust, +Out of the slime, +A little rust, +And a little lime. +Muscle and gristle, +Mucin, stone +Brayed with a pestle, +Fat and bone. +Out of the marshes, +Out of the vaults, +Matter crushes +Gas and salts. +What is this you call a mind, +Flitting, drifting, pale and blind, +Soul of the swamp that rides the wind? +Jack-o’-lantern, here you are! +Dream of heaven, pine for a star, +Chase your brothers to and fro, +Back to the swamp at last you’ll go. +Hilloo! Hilloo! + +THE VALLEY +Hilloo! Hilloo! +(_Beelzebub in scraping up the earth turns out a skull._) + +BEELZEBUB +Old one, old one. +Now ere I break you +Crush you and make you +Clay for my use, +Let me observe you: +You were a bold one +Flat at the dome of you, +Heavy the base of you, +False to the home of you, +Strong was the face of you, +Strange to all fears. +Yet did the hair of you +Hide what you were. +Now to re-nerve you— + +(_He crushes the skull between his hands and mixes it with the clay._) + + +Now you are dust, +Limestone and rust. +I mold and I stir +And make you again. + +THE VALLEY +Again? Again? + +(_In the same manner_ BEELZEBUB _has fashioned several figures, +standing them against the trees._) + + +LOKI +Now for the breath of life. As I remember +You have done right to mold your creatures first, +And stand them up. + +BEELZEBUB +From gravitation +I make the will. + +YOGARINDRA +Out of sensation +Comes his ill. +Out of my mirror +Springs his error. +Who was so cruel +To make him the slave +Of me the sorceress, you the knave, +And you the plotter to catch his thought, +Whatever he did, whatever he sought? +With a nature dual +Of will and mind, +A thing that sees, and a thing that’s blind. +Come! to our dance! Something hated him +Made us over him, therefore fated him. + +(_They join hands and dance._) + + +LOKI +Passion, reason, custom, ruels, +Creeds of the churches, lore of the schools, +Taint in the blood and strength of soul. +Flesh too weak for the will’s control; +Poverty, riches, pride of birth, +Wailing, laughter, over the earth. +Here I have you caught again. +Enter my web, ye sons of men. + +YOGARINDRA +Look in my mirror! Isn’t it real? +What do you think now, what do you feel? +Here is treasure of gold heaped up; +Here is wine in the festal cup. +Tendrils blossoming, turned to whips, +Love with her breasts and scarlet lips. +Breathe in their nostrils. + +BEELZEBUB +Falsehood’s breath, +Out of nothingness into death. +Out of the mold, out of the rocks, +Wonder, mockery, paradox! +Soaring spirit, groveling flesh, +Bait the trap, and spread the mesh. +Give him hunger, lure him with truth, +Give him the iris hopes of Youth. +Starve him, shame him, fling him down, +Whirled in the vortex of the town. +Break him, age him, till he curse +The idiot face of the universe. +Over and over we mix the clay,— +What was dust is alive to-day. + +THE THREE +Thus is the hell-born tangle wound +Swiftly, swiftly round and round. + +BEELZEBUB +(_Waving his trumpet._) +You live! Away! + +ONE OF THE FIGURES +How strange and new! +I am I, and another, too. + +ANOTHER FIGURE +I was a sun-dew’s leaf, but now +What is this longing?— + +ANOTHER FIGURE +Earth below +I was a seedling magnet-tipped +Drawn down earth— + +ANOTHER FIGURE +And I was gripped +Electrons in a granite stone, +Now I think. + +ANOTHER FIGURE +Oh, how alone! + +ANOTHER FIGURE +My lips to thine. Through thee I find +Something alone by love divined! + +BEELZEBUB +Begone! No, wait. I have bethought me, friends; +Let s give a play. + +(_He waves his trumpet._) + + +To yonder green rooms go. + +(_The figures disappear._) + + +YOGARINDRA +Oh, yes, a play! That’s very well, I think, +But who will be the audience? I must throw +Illusion over all. + +LOKI +And I must shift +The scenery, and tangle up the plot. + +BEELZEBUB +Well, so you shall! Our audience shall come +From yonder graves. + +(_He blows his trumpet slightly louder than before. The scene changes. +A stage arises among the graves. The curtain is down, concealing the +creatures just created, illuminated halfway up by spectral lights._ +BEELZEBUB _stands before the curtain._) + + +BEELZEBUB +(_A terrific blast of the trumpet._) +Who-o-o-o-o-o! + +(_Immediately there is a rustling as of the shells of grasshoppers +stirred by a wind; and hundreds of the dead, including those who have +appeared in the Anthology, hurry to the sound of the trumpet._) + + +A VOICE +Gabriel! Gabriel! + +MANY VOICES +The Judgment day! + +BEELZEBUB +Be quiet, if you please +At least until the stars fall and the moon. + +MANY VOICES +Save us! Save us! + +(_Beelzebub extends his hands over the audience with a benedictory +motion and restores order._) + + +BEELZEBUB +Ladies and gentlemen, your kind attention +To my interpretation of the scene. +I rise to give your fancy comprehension, +And analyze the parts of the machine. +My mood is such that I would not deceive you, +Though still a liar and the father of it, +From judgment’s frailty I would retrieve you, +Though falsehood is my art and though I love it. +Down in the habitations whence I rise, +The roots of human sorrow boundless spread. +Long have I watched them draw the strength that lies +In clay made richer by the rotting dead. +Here is a blossom, here a twisted stalk, +Here fruit that sourly withers ere its prime; +And here a growth that sprawls across the walk, +Food for the green worm, which it turns to slime. +The ruddy apple with a core of cork +Springs from a root which in a hollow dangles, +Not skillful husbandry nor laborious work +Can save the tree which lightning breaks and tangles. +Why does the bright nasturtium scarcely flower +But that those insects multiply and grow, +Which make it food, and in the very hour +In which the veined leaves and blossoms blow? +Why does a goodly tree, while fast maturing, +Turn crooked branches covered o’er with scale? +Why does the tree whose youth was not assuring +Prosper and bear while all its fellows fail? +I under earth see much. I know the soil. +I know where mold is heavy and where thin. +I see the stones that thwart the plowman’s toil, +The crooked roots of what the priests call sin. +I know all secrets, even to the core, +What seedlings will be upas, pine or laurel; +It cannot change howe’er the field’s worked o’er. +Man’s what he is and that’s the devil’s moral. +So with the souls of the ensuing drama +They sprang from certain seed in certain earth. +Behold them in the devil’s cyclorama, +Shown in their proper light for all they’re worth. +Now to my task: I’ll give an exhibition +Of mixing the ingredients of spirit. + +(_He waves his hand._) + + +Come, crucible, perform your magic mission, +Come, recreative fire, and hover near it! +I’ll make a soul, or show how one is made. + +(_He waves his wand again. Parti-colored flames appear._) + + +This is the woman you shall see anon! + +(_A red flame appears._) + + +This hectic flame makes all the world afraid: +It was a soldier’s scourge which ate the bone. +His daughter bore the lady of the action. +And died at thirty-nine of scrofula. +She was a creature of a sweet attraction, +Whose sex-obsession no one ever saw. + +(_A purple flame appears._) + + +Lo! this denotes aristocratic strains +Back in the centuries of France’s glory. + +(_A blue flame appears._) + + +And this the will that pulls against the chains +Her father strove until his hair was hoary. +Sorrow and failure made his nature cold. +He never loved the child whose woe is shown, +And hence her passion for the things which gold +Brings in this world of pride, and brings alone. +The human heart that’s famished from its birth +Turns to the grosser treasures, that is plain. +Thus aspiration fallen fills the earth +With jungle growths of bitterness and pain. +Of Celtic, Gallic fire our heroine! +Courageous, cruel, passionate and proud. +False, vengeful, cunning, without fear o’ sin. +A head that oft is bloody, but not bowed. +Now if she meet a man—suppose our hero, +With whom her chemistry shall war yet mix, +As if she were her Borgia to his Nero, +’Twill look like one of Satan’s little tricks! +However, it must be. The world’s great garden +Is not all mine. I only sow the tares. +Wheat should be made immune, or else the Warden +Should stop their coming in the world’s affairs. +But to our hero! Long ere he was born +I knew what would repel him and attract. +Such spirit mathematics, fig or thorn, +I can prognosticate before the fact. + +(_A yellow flame appears._) + + +This is a grandsire’s treason in an orchard +Against a maid whose nature with his mated. + +(_Lurid flames appear._) + + +And this his memory distrait and tortured, +Which marked the child with hate because she hated. +Our heroine’s grand dame was that maid’s own cousin— +But never this our man and woman knew. +The child, in time, of lovers had a dozen, +Then wed a gentleman upright and true. +And thus our hero had a double nature: +One half of him was bad, the other good. +The devil must exhaust his nomenclature +To make this puzzle rightly understood. +But when our hero and our heroine met +They were at once attracted, the repulsion +Was hidden under Passion, with her net +Which must enmesh you ere you feel revulsion. +The virus coursing in the soldier’s blood, +The orchard’s ghost, the unknown kinship ’twixt them, +Our hero’s mother’s lovers round them stood, +Shadows that smiled to see how Fate had fixed them. +This twain pledge vows and marry, that’s the play. +And then the tragic features rise and deepen. +He is a tender husband. When away +The serpents from the orchard slyly creep in. +Our heroine, born of spirit none too loyal, +Picks fruit of knowledge—leaves the tree of life. +Her fancy turns to France corrupt and royal, +Soon she forgets her duty as a wife. +You know the rest, so far as that’s concerned, +She met exposure and her husband slew her. +He lost his reason, for the love she spurned. +He prized her as his own—how slight he knew her. +(_He waves a wand, showing a man in a prison cell._) +Now here he sits condemned to mount the gallows— +He could not tell his story—he is dumb. +Love, says your poets, is a grace that hallows, +I call it suffering and martyrdom. +The judge with pointed finger says, “You killed her.” +Well, so he did—but here’s the explanation; +He could not give it. I, the drama-builder, +Show you the various truths and their relation. +(_He waves his wand._) +Now, to begin. The curtain is ascending, +They meet at tea upon a flowery lawn. +Fair, is it not? How sweet their souls are blending— +The author calls the play “Laocoon.” + +A VOICE +Only an earth dream. + +ANOTHER VOICE +With which we are done. +A flash of a comet +Upon the earth stream. + +ANOTHER VOICE +A dream twrice removed, +A spectral confusion +Of earth’s dread illusion. + +A FAR VOICE +These are the ghosts +From the desolate coasts. +Would you go to them? +Only pursue them. +Whatever enshrined is +Within you is you. +In a place where no wind is, +Out of the damps, +Be ye as lamps. +Flame-like aspire, +To me alone true, +The Life and the Fire. + +(BEELZEBUB, LOKI _and_ YOGARINDRA _vanish. The phantasmagoria fades +out. Where the dead seemed to have assembled, only heaps of leaves +appear. There is the light as of dawn. Voices of Spring._) + + +FIRST VOICE +The springtime is come, the winter departed. +She wakens from slumber and dances light-hearted. +The sun is returning, +We are done with alarms, +Earth lifts her face burning, +Held close in his arms. +The sun is an eagle +Who broods o’er his young, +The earth is his nursling +In whom he has flung +The life-flame in seed, +In blossom desire, +Till fire become life, +And life become fire. + +SECOND VOICE +I slip and I vanish, +I baffle your eye; +I dive and I climb, +I change and I fly. +You have me, you lose me, +Who have me too well, +Now find me and use me— +I am here in a cell. + +THIRD VOICE +You are there in a cell? +Oh, now for a rod +With which to divine you— + +SECOND VOICE +Nay, child, I am God. + +FOURTH VOICE +When the waking waters rise from their beds of snow, under the hill, +In little rooms of stone where they sleep when icicles reign, +The April breezes scurry through woodlands, saying “Fulfill! +Awaken roots under cover of soil—it is Spring again.” +Then the sun exults, the moon is at peace, and voices +Call to the silver shadows to lift the flowers from their dreams. +And a longing, longing enters my heart of sorrow, my heart that rejoices +In the fleeting glimpse of a shining face, and her hair that gleams. +I arise and follow alone for hours the winding way by the river. +Hunting a vanishing light, and a solace for joy too deep. +Where do you lead me, wild one, on and on forever? +Over the hill, over the hill, and down to the meadows of sleep. + +THE SUN +Over the soundless depths of space for a hundred million miles +Speeds the soul of me, silent thunder, struck from a harp of fire. +Before my eyes the planets wheel and a universe defiles, +I but a luminant speck of dust upborne in a vast desire. +What is my universe that obeys me—myself compelled to obey +A power that holds me and whirls me over a path that has no end? +And there are my children who call me great, the giver of life and day, +Myself a child who cry for life and know not whither I tend. +A million million suns above me, as if the curtain of night +Were hung before creation’s flame, that shone through the weave of the cloth, +Each with its worlds and worlds and worlds crying upward for light, +For each is drawn in its course to what?—as the candle draws the moth. + + +THE MILKY WAY +Orbits unending, +Life never ending, +Power without end. + +A VOICE +Wouldst thou be lord, +Not peace but a sword. +Not heart’s desire— +Ever aspire. +Worship thy power, +Conquer thy hour, +Sleep not but strive, +So shalt thou live. + +INFINITE DEPTHS +Infinite Law, +Infinite Life. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1280 *** diff --git a/1280-h/1280-h.htm b/1280-h/1280-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ba39b28 --- /dev/null +++ b/1280-h/1280-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,8470 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Spoon River Anthology, by Edgar Lee Masters</title> +<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +p.letter {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +p.center {text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +div.fig { display:block; + margin:0 auto; + text-align:center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em;} + +p.drama {text-indent: 0%; + margin-top: 0.7em; + margin-bottom: 0em; } + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> + +</head> + +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1280 ***</div> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="437" height="650" alt="[Illustration]" /> +</div> + +<h1>Spoon River Anthology</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">by Edgar Lee Masters</h2> + +<hr /> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<p class="center"> +A +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapA01">Altman, Herman</a><br /> +<a href="#chapA02">Armstrong, Hannah</a><br /> +<a href="#chapA03">Arnett, Harold</a><br /> +<a href="#chapA04">Arnett, Justice</a><br /> +<a href="#chapA05">Atheist, The Village</a><br /> +<a href="#chapA06">Atherton, Lucius</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +B +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapB01">Ballard, John</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB02">Barker, Amanda</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB03">Barrett, Pauline</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB04">Bartlett, Ezra</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB05">Bateson, Marie</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB06">Beatty, Tom</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB07">Beethoven, Isaiah</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB08">Bennett, Hon. Henry</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB09">Bindle, Nicholas</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB10">Bliss, Mrs. Charles</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB11">Blood, A. D.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB12">Bloyd, Wendell P.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB13">Bone, Richard</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB14">Branson, Caroline</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB15">Brown, Jim</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB16">Brown, Sarah</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB17">Browning, Elijah</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB18">Burke, Robert Southey</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB19">Burleson, John Horace</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB20">Butler, Roy</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +C +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapC01">Cabanis, Flossie</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC02">Cabanis, John</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC03">Calhoun, Granville</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC04">Calhoun, Henry C.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC05">Campbell, Calvin</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC06">Carlisle, Jeremy</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC07">Carman, Eugene</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC08">Cheney, Columbus</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC09">Chicken, Ida</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC10">Childers, Elizabeth</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC11">Church, John M.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC12">Churchill, Alfonso</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC13">Clapp, Homer</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC14">Clark, Nellie</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC15">Clute, Aner</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC16">Compton, Seth</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC17">Conant, Edith</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC18">Culbertson, E. C.</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +D +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapD01">Davidson, Robert</a><br /> +<a href="#chapD02">Dement, Silas</a><br /> +<a href="#chapD03">Dippold the Optician</a><br /> +<a href="#chapD04">Dixon, Joseph</a><br /> +<a href="#chapD05">Dobyns, Batterton</a><br /> +<a href="#chapD06">Drummer, Frank</a><br /> +<a href="#chapD07">Drummer, Hare</a><br /> +<a href="#chapD08">Dunlap, Enoch</a><br /> +<a href="#chapD09">Dye, Shack</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +E +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapE01">Ehrenhardt, Imanuel</a><br /> +<a href="#chapE02">Epilogue</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +F +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapF01">Fallas, State’s Attorney</a><br /> +<a href="#chapF02">Fawcett, Clarence</a><br /> +<a href="#chapF03">Ferguson, Wallace</a><br /> +<a href="#chapF04">Findlay, Anthony</a><br /> +<a href="#chapF05">Fluke, Willard</a><br /> +<a href="#chapF06">Foote, Searcy</a><br /> +<a href="#chapF07">Ford, Webster</a><br /> +<a href="#chapF08">Fraser, Benjamin</a><br /> +<a href="#chapF09">Fraser, Daisy</a><br /> +<a href="#chapF10">French, Charlie</a><br /> +<a href="#chapF11">Frickey, Ida</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +G +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapG01">Garber, James</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG02">Gardner, Samuel</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG03">Garrick, Amelia</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG04">Godbey, Jacob</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG05">Goldman, Le Roy</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG06">Goode, William</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG07">Goodhue, Harry Carey</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG08">Goodpasture, Jacob</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG09">Graham, Magrady</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG10">Gray, George</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG11">Green, Ami</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG12">Greene, Hamilton</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG13">Griffy, The Cooper</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG14">Gustine, Dorcas</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +H +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapH01">Hainsfeather, Barney</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH02">Hamblin, Carl</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH03">Hately, Constance</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH04">Hatfield, Aaron</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH05">Hawkins, Elliott</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH06">Hawley, Jeduthan</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH07">Henry, Chase</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH08">Herndon, William H.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH09">Heston, Roger</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH10">Higbie, Archibald</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH11">Hill, Doc</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH12">Hill, The</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH13">Hoheimer, Knowlt</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH14">Holden, Barry</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH15">Hookey, Sam</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH16">Houghton, Jonathan</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH17">Howard, Jefferson</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH18">Hueffer, Cassius</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH19">Hummel, Oscar</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH20">Humphrey, Lydia</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH21">Hurley, Scholfield</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH22">Hutchins, Lambert</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH23">Hyde, Ernest</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +I +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapI01">Iseman, Dr. Siegfried</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +J +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapJ01">Jack, Blind</a><br /> +<a href="#chapJ02">James, Godwin</a><br /> +<a href="#chapJ03">Joe, Plymouth Rock</a><br /> +<a href="#chapJ04">Johnson, Voltaire</a><br /> +<a href="#chapJ05">Jones, Fiddler</a><br /> +<a href="#chapJ06">Jones, Franklin</a><br /> +<a href="#chapJ07">Jones, Indignation</a><br /> +<a href="#chapJ08">Jones, Minerva</a><br /> +<a href="#chapJ09">Jones, William</a><br /> +<a href="#chapJ10">Judge, The Circuit</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +K +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapK01">Karr, Elmer</a><br /> +<a href="#chapK02">Keene, Jonas</a><br /> +<a href="#chapK03">Kessler, Bert</a><br /> +<a href="#chapK04">Kessler, Mrs.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapK05">Killion, Captain Orlando</a><br /> +<a href="#chapK06">Kincaid, Russell</a><br /> +<a href="#chapK07">King, Lyman</a><br /> +<a href="#chapK08">Keene, Kinsey</a><br /> +<a href="#chapK09">Knapp, Nancy</a><br /> +<a href="#chapK10">Konovaloff, Ippolit</a><br /> +<a href="#chapK11">Kritt, Dow</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +L +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapL01">Layton, Henry</a><br /> +<a href="#chapL02">Lively, Judge Selah</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +M +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapM01">M’Cumber, Daniel</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM02">McDowell, Rutherford</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM03">McFarlane, Widow</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM04">McGee, Fletcher</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM05">McGee, Ollie</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM06">M’Grew, Jennie</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM07">M’Grew, Mickey</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM08">McGuire, Jack</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM09">McNeely, Mary</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM10">McNeely, Paul</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM11">McNeely, Washington</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM12">Malloy, Father</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM13">Marsh, Zilpha</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM14">Marshal, The Town</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM15">Marshall, Herbert</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM16">Mason, Serepta</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM17">Matheny, Faith</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM18">Matlock, Davis</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM19">Matlock, Lucinda</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM20">Melveny, Abel</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM21">Merritt, Mrs.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM22">Merritt, Tom</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM23">Metcalf, Willie</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM24">Meyers, Doctor</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM25">Meyers, Mrs.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM26">Micure, Hamlet</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM27">Miles, J. Milton</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM28">Miller, Julia</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM29">Miner, Georgine Sand</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM30">Moir, Alfred</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +N +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapN01">Newcomer, Professor</a><br /> +<a href="#chapN02">Night-Watch, Andy The</a><br /> +<a href="#chapN03">Nutter, Isa</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +O +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapO01">Osborne, Mabel</a><br /> +<a href="#chapO02">Otis, John Hancock</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +P +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapP01">Pantier, Benjamin</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP02">Pantier, Mrs. Benjamin</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP03">Pantier, Reuben</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP04">Peet, Rev. Abner</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP05">Pennington, Willie</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP06">Penniwit, the Artist</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP07">Petit, the Poet</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP08">Phipps, Henry</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP09">Poague, Peleg</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP10">Pollard, Edmund</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP11">Potter, Cooney</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP12">Puckett, Lydia</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP13">Purkapile, Mrs.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP14">Purkapile, Roscoe</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP15">Putt, Hod</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +R +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapR01">Reece, Mrs. George</a><br /> +<a href="#chapR02">Rhodes, Ralph</a><br /> +<a href="#chapR03">Rhodes, Thomas</a><br /> +<a href="#chapR04">Richter, Gustav</a><br /> +<a href="#chapR05">Robbins, Hortense</a><br /> +<a href="#chapR06">Roberts, Rosie</a><br /> +<a href="#chapR07">Ross, Thomas, Jr.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapR08">Russian Sonia</a><br /> +<a href="#chapR09">Rutledge, Anne</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +S +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapS01">Sayre, Johnnie</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS02">Scates, Hiram</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS03">Schirding, Albert</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS04">Schmidt, Felix</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS05">Schrœder The Fisherman</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS06">Scott, Julian</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS07">Sersmith the Dentist</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS08">Sewall, Harlan</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS09">Sharp, Percival</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS10">Shaw, “Ace”</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS11">Shelley, Percy Bysshe</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS12">Shope, Tennessee Claflin</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS13">Sibley, Amos</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS14">Sibley, Mrs.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS15">Siever, Conrad</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS16">Simmons, Walter</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS17">Sissman, Dillard</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS18">Slack, Margaret Fuller</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS19">Smith, Louise</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS20">Soldiers, Many</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS21">Somers, Jonathan Swift</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS22">Somers, Judge</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS23">Sparks, Emily</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS24">Spears, Lois</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS25">Spooniad, The</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS26">Standard, W. Lloyd Garrison</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS27">Stewart, Lillian</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS28">Stoddard, Judson</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +T +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapT01">Tanner, Robert Fulton</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT02">Taylor, Deacon</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT03">Theodore, The Poet</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT04">Thornton, English</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT05">Throckmorton, Alexander</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT06">Todd, Eugenia</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT07">Tompkins, Josiah</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT08">Trainor, the Druggist</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT09">Trevelyan, Thomas</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT10">Trimble, George</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT11">Tripp, Henry</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT12">Tubbs, Hildrup</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT13">Turner, Francis</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT14">Tutt, Oaks</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +U +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapU01">Unknown, The</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +W +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapW01">Wasson, John</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW02">Wasson, Rebecca</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW03">Webster, Charles</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW04">Weirauch, Adam</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW05">Weldy, “Butch”</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW06">Wertman, Elsa</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW07">Whedon, Editor</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW08">Whitney, Harmon</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW09">Wiley, Rev. Lemuel</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW10">Will, Arlo</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW11">William and Emily</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW12">Williams, Dora</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW13">Williams, Mrs.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW14">Wilmans, Harry</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW15">Witt, Zenas</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +Y +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapY01">Yee Bow</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +Z +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapZ01">Zoll, Perry</a> +</p> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH12"></a>The Hill</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +<i>Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley,<br /> +The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?<br /> +All, all are sleeping on the hill.<br /> +<br /> +One passed in a fever,<br /> +One was burned in a mine,<br /> +One was killed in a brawl,<br /> +One died in a jail,<br /> +One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife—<br /> +All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.<br /> +<br /> +Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith,<br /> +The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?—<br /> +All, all are sleeping on the hill.<br /> +<br /> +One died in shameful child-birth,<br /> +One of a thwarted love,<br /> +One at the hands of a brute in a brothel,<br /> +One of a broken pride, in the search for heart’s desire;<br /> +One after life in far-away London and Paris<br /> +Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag—<br /> +All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.<br /> +<br /> +Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily,<br /> +And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton,<br /> +And Major Walker who had talked<br /> +With venerable men of the revolution?—<br /> +All, all are sleeping on the hill.<br /> +<br /> +They brought them dead sons from the war,<br /> +And daughters whom life had crushed,<br /> +And their children fatherless, crying—<br /> +All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.<br /> +<br /> +Where is Old Fiddler Jones<br /> +Who played with life all his ninety years,<br /> +Braving the sleet with bared breast,<br /> +Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin,<br /> +Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven?<br /> +Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago,<br /> +Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary’s Grove,<br /> +Of what Abe Lincoln said<br /> +One time at Springfield.</i> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP15"></a>Hod Putt</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Here I lie close to the grave<br /> +Of Old Bill Piersol,<br /> +Who grew rich trading with the Indians, and who<br /> +Afterwards took the Bankrupt Law<br /> +And emerged from it richer than ever<br /> +Myself grown tired of toil and poverty<br /> +And beholding how Old Bill and others grew in wealth<br /> +Robbed a traveler one Night near Proctor’s Grove,<br /> +Killing him unwittingly while doing so,<br /> +For which I was tried and hanged.<br /> +That was my way of going into bankruptcy.<br /> +Now we who took the bankrupt law in our respective ways<br /> +Sleep peacefully side by side. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM05"></a>Ollie McGee</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Have you seen walking through the village<br /> +A man with downcast eyes and haggard face?<br /> +That is my husband who, by secret cruelty<br /> +Never to be told, robbed me of my youth and my beauty;<br /> +Till at last, wrinkled and with yellow teeth,<br /> +And with broken pride and shameful humility,<br /> +I sank into the grave.<br /> +But what think you gnaws at my husband’s heart?<br /> +The face of what I was, the face of what he made me!<br /> +These are driving him to the place where I lie.<br /> +In death, therefore, I am avenged. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM04"></a>Fletcher McGee</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +She took my strength by minutes,<br /> +She took my life by hours,<br /> +She drained me like a fevered moon<br /> +That saps the spinning world.<br /> +The days went by like shadows,<br /> +The minutes wheeled like stars.<br /> +She took the pity from my heart,<br /> +And made it into smiles.<br /> +She was a hunk of sculptor’s clay,<br /> +My secret thoughts were fingers:<br /> +They flew behind her pensive brow<br /> +And lined it deep with pain.<br /> +They set the lips, and sagged the cheeks,<br /> +And drooped the eye with sorrow.<br /> +My soul had entered in the clay,<br /> +Fighting like seven devils.<br /> +It was not mine, it was not hers;<br /> +She held it, but its struggles<br /> +Modeled a face she hated,<br /> +And a face I feared to see.<br /> +I beat the windows, shook the bolts.<br /> +I hid me in a corner<br /> +And then she died and haunted me,<br /> +And hunted me for life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT01"></a>Robert Fulton Tanner</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +If a man could bite the giant hand<br /> +That catches and destroys him,<br /> +As I was bitten by a rat<br /> +While demonstrating my patent trap,<br /> +In my hardware store that day.<br /> +But a man can never avenge himself<br /> +On the monstrous ogre Life.<br /> +You enter the room—that’s being born;<br /> +And then you must live—work out your soul,<br /> +Aha! the bait that you crave is in view:<br /> +A woman with money you want to marry,<br /> +Prestige, place, or power in the world.<br /> +But there’s work to do and things to conquer—<br /> +Oh, yes! the wires that screen the bait.<br /> +At last you get in—but you hear a step:<br /> +The ogre, Life, comes into the room,<br /> +(He was waiting and heard the clang of the spring)<br /> +To watch you nibble the wondrous cheese,<br /> +And stare with his burning eyes at you,<br /> +And scowl and laugh, and mock and curse you,<br /> +Running up and down in the trap,<br /> +Until your misery bores him. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH18"></a>Cassius Hueffer</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +They have chiseled on my stone the words:<br /> +“His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him<br /> +That nature might stand up and say to all the world,<br /> +This was a man.”<br /> +Those who knew me smile<br /> +As they read this empty rhetoric.<br /> +My epitaph should have been:<br /> +“Life was not gentle to him,<br /> +And the elements so mixed in him<br /> +That he made warfare on life<br /> +In the which he was slain.”<br /> +While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues,<br /> +Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph<br /> +Graven by a fool! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM16"></a>Serepta Mason</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +My life’s blossom might have bloomed on all sides<br /> +Save for a bitter wind which stunted my petals<br /> +On the side of me which you in the village could see.<br /> +From the dust I lift a voice of protest:<br /> +My flowering side you never saw!<br /> +Ye living ones, ye are fools indeed<br /> +Who do not know the ways of the wind<br /> +And the unseen forces<br /> +That govern the processes of life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB02"></a>Amanda Barker</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Henry got me with child,<br /> +Knowing that I could not bring forth life<br /> +Without losing my own.<br /> +In my youth therefore I entered the portals of dust.<br /> +Traveler, it is believed in the village where I lived<br /> +That Henry loved me with a husband’s love<br /> +But I proclaim from the dust<br /> +That he slew me to gratify his hatred. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH03"></a>Constance Hately</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +You praise my self-sacrifice, Spoon River,<br /> +In rearing Irene and Mary,<br /> +Orphans of my older sister!<br /> +And you censure Irene and Mary<br /> +For their contempt for me!<br /> +But praise not my self-sacrifice.<br /> +And censure not their contempt;<br /> +I reared them, I cared for them, true enough!—<br /> +But I poisoned my benefactions<br /> +With constant reminders of their dependence. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH07"></a>Chase Henry</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +In life I was the town drunkard;<br /> +When I died the priest denied me burial<br /> +In holy ground.<br /> +The which redounded to my good fortune.<br /> +For the Protestants bought this lot,<br /> +And buried my body here,<br /> +Close to the grave of the banker Nicholas,<br /> +And of his wife Priscilla.<br /> +Take note, ye prudent and pious souls,<br /> +Of the cross—currents in life<br /> +Which bring honor to the dead, who lived in shame +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG07"></a>Harry Carey Goodhue</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +You never marveled, dullards of Spoon River,<br /> +When Chase Henry voted against the saloons<br /> +To revenge himself for being shut off.<br /> +But none of you was keen enough<br /> +To follow my steps, or trace me home<br /> +As Chase’s spiritual brother.<br /> +Do you remember when I fought<br /> +The bank and the courthouse ring,<br /> +For pocketing the interest on public funds?<br /> +And when I fought our leading citizens<br /> +For making the poor the pack-horses of the taxes?<br /> +And when I fought the water works<br /> +For stealing streets and raising rates?<br /> +And when I fought the business men<br /> +Who fought me in these fights?<br /> +Then do you remember:<br /> +That staggering up from the wreck of defeat,<br /> +And the wreck of a ruined career,<br /> +I slipped from my cloak my last ideal,<br /> +Hidden from all eyes until then,<br /> +Like the cherished jawbone of an ass,<br /> +And smote the bank and the water works,<br /> +And the business men with prohibition,<br /> +And made Spoon River pay the cost<br /> +Of the fights that I had lost. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS22"></a>Judge Somers</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +How does it happen, tell me,<br /> +That I who was most erudite of lawyers,<br /> +Who knew Blackstone and Coke<br /> +Almost by heart, who made the greatest speech<br /> +The court-house ever heard, and wrote<br /> +A brief that won the praise of Justice Breese<br /> +How does it happen, tell me,<br /> +That I lie here unmarked, forgotten,<br /> +While Chase Henry, the town drunkard,<br /> +Has a marble block, topped by an urn<br /> +Wherein Nature, in a mood ironical,<br /> +Has sown a flowering weed? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK08"></a>Kinsey Keene</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Your attention, Thomas Rhodes, president of the bank;<br /> +Coolbaugh Whedon, editor of the Argus;<br /> +Rev. Peet, pastor of the leading church;<br /> +A. D. Blood, several times Mayor of Spoon River;<br /> +And finally all of you, members of the Social Purity Club—<br /> +Your attention to Cambronne’s dying words,<br /> +Standing with the heroic remnant<br /> +Of Napoleon’s guard on Mount Saint Jean<br /> +At the battle field of Waterloo,<br /> +When Maitland, the Englishman, called to them:<br /> +“Surrender, brave Frenchmen!”—<br /> +There at close of day with the battle hopelessly lost,<br /> +And hordes of men no longer the army<br /> +Of the great Napoleon<br /> +Streamed from the field like ragged strips<br /> +Of thunder clouds in the storm.<br /> +Well, what Cambronne said to Maitland<br /> +Ere the English fire made smooth the brow of the hill<br /> +Against the sinking light of day<br /> +Say I to you, and all of you,<br /> +And to you, O world.<br /> +And I charge you to carve it<br /> +Upon my stone. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP01"></a>Benjamin Pantier</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Together in this grave lie Benjamin Pantier, attorney at law,<br /> +And Nig, his dog, constant companion, solace and friend.<br /> +Down the gray road, friends, children, men and women,<br /> +Passing one by one out of life, left me till I was alone<br /> +With Nig for partner, bed-fellow; comrade in drink.<br /> +In the morning of life I knew aspiration and saw glory,<br /> +The she, who survives me, snared my soul<br /> +With a snare which bled me to death,<br /> +Till I, once strong of will, lay broken, indifferent,<br /> +Living with Nig in a room back of a dingy office.<br /> +Under my Jaw-bone is snuggled the bony nose of Nig<br /> +Our story is lost in silence. Go by, mad world! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP02"></a>Mrs. Benjamin Pantier</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I know that he told that I snared his soul<br /> +With a snare which bled him to death.<br /> +And all the men loved him,<br /> +And most of the women pitied him.<br /> +But suppose you are really a lady, and have delicate tastes,<br /> +And loathe the smell of whiskey and onions,<br /> +And the rhythm of Wordsworth’s “Ode” runs in your ears,<br /> +While he goes about from morning till night<br /> +Repeating bits of that common thing;<br /> +“Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?”<br /> +And then, suppose;<br /> +You are a woman well endowed,<br /> +And the only man with whom the law and morality<br /> +Permit you to have the marital relation<br /> +Is the very man that fills you with disgust<br /> +Every time you think of it while you think of it<br /> +Every time you see him?<br /> +That’s why I drove him away from home<br /> +To live with his dog in a dingy room<br /> +Back of his office. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP03"></a>Reuben Pantier</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Well, Emily Sparks, your prayers were not wasted,<br /> +Your love was not all in vain.<br /> +I owe whatever I was in life<br /> +To your hope that would not give me up,<br /> +To your love that saw me still as good.<br /> +Dear Emily Sparks, let me tell you the story.<br /> +I pass the effect of my father and mother;<br /> +The milliner’s daughter made me trouble<br /> +And out I went in the world,<br /> +Where I passed through every peril known<br /> +Of wine and women and joy of life.<br /> +One night, in a room in the Rue de Rivoli,<br /> +I was drinking wine with a black-eyed cocotte,<br /> +And the tears swam into my eyes.<br /> +She though they were amorous tears and smiled<br /> +For thought of her conquest over me.<br /> +But my soul was three thousand miles away,<br /> +In the days when you taught me in Spoon River.<br /> +And just because you no more could love me,<br /> +Nor pray for me, nor write me letters,<br /> +The eternal silence of you spoke instead.<br /> +And the Black-eyed cocotte took the tears for hers,<br /> +As well as the deceiving kisses I gave her.<br /> +Somehow, from that hour, I had a new vision<br /> +Dear Emily Sparks! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS23"></a>Emily Sparks</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Where is my boy, my boy<br /> +In what far part of the world?<br /> +The boy I loved best of all in the school?—<br /> +I, the teacher, the old maid, the virgin heart,<br /> +Who made them all my children.<br /> +Did I know my boy aright,<br /> +Thinking of him as a spirit aflame,<br /> +Active, ever aspiring?<br /> +Oh, boy, boy, for whom I prayed and prayed<br /> +In many a watchful hour at night,<br /> +Do you remember the letter I wrote you<br /> +Of the beautiful love of Christ?<br /> +And whether you ever took it or not,<br /> +My, boy, wherever you are,<br /> +Work for your soul’s sake,<br /> +That all the clay of you, all of the dross of you,<br /> +May yield to the fire of you,<br /> +Till the fire is nothing but light!…<br /> +Nothing but light! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT08"></a>Trainor, the Druggist</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Only the chemist can tell, and not always the chemist,<br /> +What will result from compounding<br /> +Fluids or solids.<br /> +And who can tell<br /> +How men and women will interact<br /> +On each other, or what children will result?<br /> +There were Benjamin Pantier and his wife,<br /> +Good in themselves, but evil toward each other;<br /> +He oxygen, she hydrogen,<br /> +Their son, a devastating fire.<br /> +I Trainor, the druggist, a miser of chemicals,<br /> +Killed while making an experiment,<br /> +Lived unwedded. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF09"></a>Daisy Fraser</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Did you ever hear of Editor Whedon<br /> +Giving to the public treasury any of the money he received<br /> +For supporting candidates for office?<br /> +Or for writing up the canning factory<br /> +To get people to invest?<br /> +Or for suppressing the facts about the bank,<br /> +When it was rotten and ready to break?<br /> +Did you ever hear of the Circuit Judge<br /> +Helping anyone except the “Q” railroad,<br /> +Or the bankers? Or did Rev. Peet or Rev. Sibley<br /> +Give any part of their salary, earned by keeping still,<br /> +Or speaking out as the leaders wished them to do,<br /> +To the building of the water works?<br /> +But I—Daisy Fraser who always passed<br /> +Along the street through rows of nods and smiles,<br /> +And coughs and words such as “there she goes.”<br /> +Never was taken before Justice Arnett<br /> +Without contributing ten dollars and costs<br /> +To the school fund of Spoon River! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF08"></a>Benjamin Fraser</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Their spirits beat upon mine<br /> +Like the wings of a thousand butterflies.<br /> +I closed my eyes and felt their spirits vibrating.<br /> +I closed my eyes, yet I knew when their lashes<br /> +Fringed their cheeks from downcast eyes,<br /> +And when they turned their heads;<br /> +And when their garments clung to them,<br /> +Or fell from them, in exquisite draperies.<br /> +Their spirits watched my ecstasy<br /> +With wide looks of starry unconcern.<br /> +Their spirits looked upon my torture;<br /> +They drank it as it were the water of life;<br /> +With reddened cheeks, brightened eyes,<br /> +The rising flame of my soul made their spirits gilt,<br /> +Like the wings of a butterfly drifting suddenly into sunlight.<br /> +And they cried to me for life, life, life.<br /> +But in taking life for myself,<br /> +In seizing and crushing their souls,<br /> +As a child crushes grapes and drinks<br /> +From its palms the purple juice,<br /> +I came to this wingless void,<br /> +Where neither red, nor gold, nor wine,<br /> +Nor the rhythm of life are known. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapJ08"></a>Minerva Jones</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I am Minerva, the village poetess,<br /> +Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street<br /> +For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk,<br /> +And all the more when “Butch” Weldy<br /> +Captured me after a brutal hunt.<br /> +He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers;<br /> +And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up,<br /> +Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice.<br /> +Will some one go to the village newspaper,<br /> +And gather into a book the verses I wrote?—<br /> +I thirsted so for love<br /> +I hungered so for life! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapJ07"></a>“Indignation” Jones</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +You would not believe, would you<br /> +That I came from good Welsh stock?<br /> +That I was purer blooded than the white trash here?<br /> +And of more direct lineage than the<br /> +New Englanders And Virginians of Spoon River?<br /> +You would not believe that I had been to school<br /> +And read some books.<br /> +You saw me only as a run-down man<br /> +With matted hair and beard<br /> +And ragged clothes.<br /> +Sometimes a man’s life turns into a cancer<br /> +From being bruised and continually bruised,<br /> +And swells into a purplish mass<br /> +Like growths on stalks of corn.<br /> +Here was I, a carpenter, mired in a bog of life<br /> +Into which I walked, thinking it was a meadow,<br /> +With a slattern for a wife, and poor Minerva, my daughter,<br /> +Whom you tormented and drove to death.<br /> +So I crept, crept, like a snail through the days<br /> +Of my life.<br /> +No more you hear my footsteps in the morning,<br /> +Resounding on the hollow sidewalk<br /> +Going to the grocery store for a little corn meal<br /> +And a nickel’s worth of bacon. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW05"></a>“Butch” Weldy</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +After I got religion and steadied down<br /> +They gave me a job in the canning works,<br /> +And every morning I had to fill<br /> +The tank in the yard with gasoline,<br /> +That fed the blow-fires in the sheds<br /> +To heat the soldering irons.<br /> +And I mounted a rickety ladder to do it,<br /> +Carrying buckets full of the stuff.<br /> +One morning, as I stood there pouring,<br /> +The air grew still and seemed to heave,<br /> +And I shot up as the tank exploded,<br /> +And down I came with both legs broken,<br /> +And my eyes burned crisp as a couple of eggs.<br /> +For someone left a blow—fire going,<br /> +And something sucked the flame in the tank.<br /> +The Circuit Judge said whoever did it<br /> +Was a fellow-servant of mine, and so<br /> +Old Rhodes’ son didn’t have to pay me.<br /> +And I sat on the witness stand as blind<br /> +As Jack the Fiddler, saying over and over,<br /> +“I didn’t know him at all.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM24"></a>Doctor Meyers</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +No other man, unless it was Doc Hill,<br /> +Did more for people in this town than I.<br /> +And all the weak, the halt, the improvident<br /> +And those who could not pay flocked to me.<br /> +I was good-hearted, easy Doctor Meyers.<br /> +I was healthy, happy, in comfortable fortune,<br /> +Blest with a congenial mate, my children raised,<br /> +All wedded, doing well in the world.<br /> +And then one night, Minerva, the poetess,<br /> +Came to me in her trouble, crying.<br /> +I tried to help her out—she died—<br /> +They indicted me, the newspapers disgraced me,<br /> +My wife perished of a broken heart.<br /> +And pneumonia finished me. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM25"></a>Mrs. Meyers</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +He protested all his life long<br /> +The newspapers lied about him villainously;<br /> +That he was not at fault for Minerva’s fall,<br /> +But only tried to help her.<br /> +Poor soul so sunk in sin he could not see<br /> +That even trying to help her, as he called it,<br /> +He had broken the law human and divine.<br /> +Passers by, an ancient admonition to you:<br /> +If your ways would be ways of pleasantness,<br /> +And all your pathways peace,<br /> +Love God and keep his commandments. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH13"></a>Knowlt Hoheimer</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.<br /> +When I felt the bullet enter my heart<br /> +I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail<br /> +For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary,<br /> +Instead of running away and joining the army.<br /> +Rather a thousand times the county jail<br /> +Than to lie under this marble figure with wings,<br /> +And this granite pedestal Bearing the words, “Pro Patria.”<br /> +What do they mean, anyway? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP12"></a>Lydia Puckett</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Knowlt Hoheimer ran away to the war<br /> +The day before Curl Trenary<br /> +Swore out a warrant through Justice Arnett<br /> +For stealing hogs.<br /> +But that’s not the reason he turned a soldier.<br /> +He caught me running with Lucius Atherton.<br /> +We quarreled and I told him never again<br /> +To cross my path.<br /> +Then he stole the hogs and went to the war—<br /> +Back of every soldier is a woman. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapD06"></a>Frank Drummer</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Out of a cell into this darkened space—<br /> +The end at twenty-five!<br /> +My tongue could not speak what stirred within me,<br /> +And the village thought me a fool.<br /> +Yet at the start there was a clear vision,<br /> +A high and urgent purpose in my soul<br /> +Which drove me on trying to memorize<br /> +The Encyclopedia Britannica! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapD07"></a>Hare Drummer</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Do the boys and girls still go to Siever’s<br /> +For cider, after school, in late September?<br /> +Or gather hazel nuts among the thickets<br /> +On Aaron Hatfield’s farm when the frosts begin?<br /> +For many times with the laughing girls and boys<br /> +Played I along the road and over the hills<br /> +When the sun was low and the air was cool,<br /> +Stopping to club the walnut tree<br /> +Standing leafless against a flaming west.<br /> +Now, the smell of the autumn smoke,<br /> +And the dropping acorns,<br /> +And the echoes about the vales<br /> +Bring dreams of life.<br /> +They hover over me.<br /> +They question me:<br /> +Where are those laughing comrades?<br /> +How many are with me, how many<br /> +In the old orchards along the way to Siever’s,<br /> +And in the woods that overlook<br /> +The quiet water? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS15"></a>Conrad Siever</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Not in that wasted garden<br /> +Where bodies are drawn into grass<br /> +That feeds no flocks, and into evergreens<br /> +That bear no fruit—<br /> +There where along the shaded walks<br /> +Vain sighs are heard,<br /> +And vainer dreams are dreamed<br /> +Of close communion with departed souls—<br /> +But here under the apple tree<br /> +I loved and watched and pruned<br /> +With gnarled hands<br /> +In the long, long years;<br /> +Here under the roots of this northern-spy<br /> +To move in the chemic change and circle of life,<br /> +Into the soil and into the flesh of the tree,<br /> +And into the living epitaphs<br /> +Of redder apples! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH11"></a>Doc Hill</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I went up and down the streets<br /> +Here and there by day and night,<br /> +Through all hours of the night caring for the poor who were sick.<br /> +Do you know why?<br /> +My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs.<br /> +And I turned to the people and poured out my love to them.<br /> +Sweet it was to see the crowds about the lawns on the day of my funeral,<br /> +And hear them murmur their love and sorrow.<br /> +But oh, dear God, my soul trembled, scarcely able<br /> +To hold to the railing of the new life<br /> +When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree<br /> +At the grave,<br /> +Hiding herself, and her grief! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapN02"></a>Andy The Night-Watch</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +In my Spanish cloak,<br /> +And old slouch hat,<br /> +And overshoes of felt,<br /> +And Tyke, my faithful dog,<br /> +And my knotted hickory cane,<br /> +I slipped about with a bull’s-eye lantern<br /> +From door to door on the square,<br /> +As the midnight stars wheeled round,<br /> +And the bell in the steeple murmured<br /> +From the blowing of the wind;<br /> +And the weary steps of old Doc Hill<br /> +Sounded like one who walks in sleep,<br /> +And a far-off rooster crew.<br /> +And now another is watching Spoon River<br /> +As others watched before me.<br /> +And here we lie, Doc Hill and I<br /> +Where none breaks through and steals,<br /> +And no eye needs to guard. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB16"></a>Sarah Brown</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Maurice, weep not, I am not here under this pine tree.<br /> +The balmy air of spring whispers through the sweet grass,<br /> +The stars sparkle, the whippoorwill calls,<br /> +But thou grievest, while my soul lies rapturous<br /> +In the blest Nirvana of eternal light!<br /> +Go to the good heart that is my husband<br /> +Who broods upon what he calls our guilty love:—<br /> +Tell him that my love for you, no less than my love for him<br /> +Wrought out my destiny—that through the flesh<br /> +I won spirit, and through spirit, peace.<br /> +There is no marriage in heaven<br /> +But there is love. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS11"></a>Percy Bysshe Shelley</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +My father who owned the wagon-shop<br /> +And grew rich shoeing horses<br /> +Sent me to the University of Montreal.<br /> +I learned nothing and returned home,<br /> +Roaming the fields with Bert Kessler,<br /> +Hunting quail and snipe.<br /> +At Thompson’s Lake the trigger of my gun<br /> +Caught in the side of the boat<br /> +And a great hole was shot through my heart.<br /> +Over me a fond father erected this marble shaft,<br /> +On which stands the figure of a woman<br /> +Carved by an Italian artist.<br /> +They say the ashes of my namesake<br /> +Were scattered near the pyramid of Caius Cestius<br /> +Somewhere near Rome. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC01"></a>Flossie Cabanis</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +From Bindle’s opera house in the village<br /> +To Broadway is a great step.<br /> +But I tried to take it, my ambition fired<br /> +When sixteen years of age,<br /> +Seeing “East Lynne,” played here in the village<br /> +By Ralph Barrett, the coming<br /> +Romantic actor, who enthralled my soul.<br /> +True, I trailed back home, a broken failure,<br /> +When Ralph disappeared in New York,<br /> +Leaving me alone in the city—<br /> +But life broke him also.<br /> +In all this place of silence<br /> +There are no kindred spirits.<br /> +How I wish Duse could stand amid the pathos<br /> +Of these quiet fields<br /> +And read these words. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM28"></a>Julia Miller</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +We quarreled that morning,<br /> +For he was sixty—five, and I was thirty,<br /> +And I was nervous and heavy with the child<br /> +Whose birth I dreaded.<br /> +I thought over the last letter written me<br /> +By that estranged young soul<br /> +Whose betrayal of me I had concealed<br /> +By marrying the old man.<br /> +Then I took morphine and sat down to read.<br /> +Across the blackness that came over my eyes<br /> +I see the flickering light of these words even now:<br /> +“And Jesus said unto him, Verily<br /> +I say unto thee, To-day thou shalt<br /> +Be with me in paradise.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS01"></a>Johnnie Sayre</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Father, thou canst never know<br /> +The anguish that smote my heart<br /> +For my disobedience, the moment I felt<br /> +The remorseless wheel of the engine<br /> +Sink into the crying flesh of my leg.<br /> +As they carried me to the home of widow Morris<br /> +I could see the school-house in the valley<br /> +To which I played truant to steal rides upon the trains.<br /> +I prayed to live until I could ask your forgiveness—<br /> +And then your tears, your broken words of comfort!<br /> +From the solace of that hour I have gained infinite happiness.<br /> +Thou wert wise to chisel for me:<br /> +“Taken from the evil to come.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF10"></a>Charlie French</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Did you ever find out<br /> +Which one of the O’Brien boys it was<br /> +Who snapped the toy pistol against my hand?<br /> +There when the flags were red and white<br /> +In the breeze and “Bucky” Estil<br /> +Was firing the cannon brought to Spoon River<br /> +From Vicksburg by Captain Harris;<br /> +And the lemonade stands were running<br /> +And the band was playing,<br /> +To have it all spoiled<br /> +By a piece of a cap shot under the skin of my hand,<br /> +And the boys all crowding about me saying:<br /> +“You’ll die of lock-jaw, Charlie, sure.”<br /> +Oh, dear! oh, dear!<br /> +What chum of mine could have done it? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW15"></a>Zenas Witt</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was sixteen, and I had the most terrible dreams,<br /> +And specks before my eyes, and nervous weakness.<br /> +And I couldn’t remember the books I read,<br /> +Like Frank Drummer who memorized page after page.<br /> +And my back was weak, and I worried and worried,<br /> +And I was embarrassed and stammered my lessons,<br /> +And when I stood up to recite I’d forget<br /> +Everything that I had studied.<br /> +Well, I saw Dr. Weese’s advertisement,<br /> +And there I read everything in print,<br /> +Just as if he had known me;<br /> +And about the dreams which I couldn’t help.<br /> +So I knew I was marked for an early grave.<br /> +And I worried until I had a cough<br /> +And then the dreams stopped.<br /> +And then I slept the sleep without dreams<br /> +Here on the hill by the river. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT03"></a>Theodore the Poet</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours<br /> +On the shore of the turbid Spoon<br /> +With deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish’s burrow,<br /> +Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead,<br /> +First his waving antennæ, like straws of hay,<br /> +And soon his body, colored like soap-stone,<br /> +Gemmed with eyes of jet.<br /> +And you wondered in a trance of thought<br /> +What he knew, what he desired, and why he lived at all.<br /> +But later your vision watched for men and women<br /> +Hiding in burrows of fate amid great cities,<br /> +Looking for the souls of them to come out,<br /> +So that you could see<br /> +How they lived, and for what,<br /> +And why they kept crawling so busily<br /> +Along the sandy way where water fails<br /> +As the summer wanes. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM14"></a>The Town Marshal</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The Prohibitionists made me Town Marshal<br /> +When the saloons were voted out,<br /> +Because when I was a drinking man,<br /> +Before I joined the church, I killed a Swede<br /> +At the saw-mill near Maple Grove.<br /> +And they wanted a terrible man,<br /> +Grim, righteous, strong, courageous,<br /> +And a hater of saloons and drinkers,<br /> +To keep law and order in the village.<br /> +And they presented me with a loaded cane<br /> +With which I struck Jack McGuire<br /> +Before he drew the gun with which he killed me.<br /> +The Prohibitionists spent their money in vain<br /> +To hang him, for in a dream<br /> +I appeared to one of the twelve jurymen<br /> +And told him the whole secret story.<br /> +Fourteen years were enough for killing me. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM08"></a>Jack McGuire</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +They would have lynched me<br /> +Had I not been secretly hurried away<br /> +To the jail at Peoria.<br /> +And yet I was going peacefully home,<br /> +Carrying my jug, a little drunk,<br /> +When Logan, the marshal, halted me<br /> +Called me a drunken hound and shook me<br /> +And, when I cursed him for it, struck me<br /> +With that Prohibition loaded cane—<br /> +All this before I shot him.<br /> +They would have hanged me except for this:<br /> +My lawyer, Kinsey Keene, was helping to land<br /> +Old Thomas Rhodes for wrecking the bank,<br /> +And the judge was a friend of<br /> +Rhodes And wanted him to escape,<br /> +And Kinsey offered to quit on Rhodes<br /> +For fourteen years for me.<br /> +And the bargain was made.<br /> +I served my time<br /> +And learned to read and write. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG08"></a>Jacob Goodpasture</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +When Fort Sumter fell and the war came<br /> +I cried out in bitterness of soul:<br /> +“O glorious republic now no more!”<br /> +When they buried my soldier son<br /> +To the call of trumpets and the sound of drums<br /> +My heart broke beneath the weight<br /> +Of eighty years, and I cried:<br /> +“Oh, son who died in a cause unjust!<br /> +In the strife of Freedom slain!”<br /> +And I crept here under the grass.<br /> +And now from the battlements of time, behold:<br /> +Thrice thirty million souls being bound together<br /> +In the love of larger truth,<br /> +Rapt in the expectation of the birth<br /> +Of a new Beauty,<br /> +Sprung from Brotherhood and Wisdom.<br /> +I with eyes of spirit see the Transfiguration<br /> +Before you see it.<br /> +But ye infinite brood of golden eagles nesting ever higher,<br /> +Wheeling ever higher, the sun-light wooing<br /> +Of lofty places of Thought,<br /> +Forgive the blindness of the departed owl. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG14"></a>Dorcas Gustine</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was not beloved of the villagers,<br /> +But all because I spoke my mind,<br /> +And met those who transgressed against me<br /> +With plain remonstrance, hiding nor nurturing<br /> +Nor secret griefs nor grudges.<br /> +That act of the Spartan boy is greatly praised,<br /> +Who hid the wolf under his cloak,<br /> +Letting it devour him, uncomplainingly.<br /> +It is braver, I think, to snatch the wolf forth<br /> +And fight him openly, even in the street,<br /> +Amid dust and howls of pain.<br /> +The tongue may be an unruly member—<br /> +But silence poisons the soul.<br /> +Berate me who will—I am content. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB09"></a>Nicholas Bindle</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Were you not ashamed, fellow citizens,<br /> +When my estate was probated and everyone knew<br /> +How small a fortune I left?—<br /> +You who hounded me in life,<br /> +To give, give, give to the churches, to the poor,<br /> +To the village!—me who had already given much.<br /> +And think you not I did not know<br /> +That the pipe-organ, which I gave to the church,<br /> +Played its christening songs when Deacon Rhodes,<br /> +Who broke and all but ruined me,<br /> +Worshipped for the first time after his acquittal? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapA03"></a>Harold Arnett</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I leaned against the mantel, sick, sick,<br /> +Thinking of my failure, looking into the abysm,<br /> +Weak from the noon-day heat.<br /> +A church bell sounded mournfully far away,<br /> +I heard the cry of a baby,<br /> +And the coughing of John Yarnell,<br /> +Bed-ridden, feverish, feverish, dying,<br /> +Then the violent voice of my wife:<br /> +“Watch out, the potatoes are burning!”<br /> +I smelled them . . . then there was irresistible disgust.<br /> +I pulled the trigger . . . blackness . . . light . . .<br /> +Unspeakable regret . . . fumbling for the world again.<br /> +Too late! Thus I came here,<br /> +With lungs for breathing . . . one cannot breathe here with lungs,<br /> +Though one must breathe<br /> +Of what use is it To rid one’s self of the world,<br /> +When no soul may ever escape the eternal destiny of life? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS18"></a>Margaret Fuller Slack</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I would have been as great as George Eliot<br /> +But for an untoward fate.<br /> +For look at the photograph of me made by Penniwit,<br /> +Chin resting on hand, and deep—set eyes—<br /> +Gray, too, and far-searching.<br /> +But there was the old, old problem:<br /> +Should it be celibacy, matrimony or unchastity?<br /> +Then John Slack, the rich druggist, wooed me,<br /> +Luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel,<br /> +And I married him, giving birth to eight children,<br /> +And had no time to write.<br /> +It was all over with me, anyway,<br /> +When I ran the needle in my hand<br /> +While washing the baby’s things,<br /> +And died from lock—jaw, an ironical death.<br /> +Hear me, ambitious souls,<br /> +Sex is the curse of life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT10"></a>George Trimble</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Do you remember when I stood on the steps<br /> +Of the Court House and talked free-silver,<br /> +And the single-tax of Henry George?<br /> +Then do you remember that, when the Peerless Leader<br /> +Lost the first battle, I began to talk prohibition,<br /> +And became active in the church?<br /> +That was due to my wife,<br /> +Who pictured to me my destruction<br /> +If I did not prove my morality to the people.<br /> +Well, she ruined me:<br /> +For the radicals grew suspicious of me,<br /> +And the conservatives were never sure of me—<br /> +And here I lie, unwept of all. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapI01"></a>Dr. Siegfried Iseman</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I said when they handed me my diploma,<br /> +I said to myself I will be good<br /> +And wise and brave and helpful to others;<br /> +I said I will carry the Christian creed<br /> +Into the practice of medicine!<br /> +Somehow the world and the other doctors<br /> +Know what’s in your heart as soon as you make<br /> +This high-souled resolution.<br /> +And the way of it is they starve you out.<br /> +And no one comes to you but the poor.<br /> +And you find too late that being a doctor<br /> +Is just a way of making a living.<br /> +And when you are poor and have to carry<br /> +The Christian creed and wife and children<br /> +All on your back, it is too much!<br /> +That’s why I made the Elixir of Youth,<br /> +Which landed me in the jail at Peoria<br /> +Branded a swindler and a crook<br /> +By the upright Federal Judge! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS10"></a>“Ace” Shaw</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I never saw any difference<br /> +Between playing cards for money<br /> +And selling real estate,<br /> +Practicing law, banking, or anything else.<br /> +For everything is chance.<br /> +Nevertheless<br /> +Seest thou a man diligent in business?<br /> +He shall stand before Kings! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS24"></a>Lois Spears</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Here lies the body of Lois Spears,<br /> +Born Lois Fluke, daughter of Willard Fluke,<br /> +Wife of Cyrus Spears,<br /> +Mother of Myrtle and Virgil Spears,<br /> +Children with clear eyes and sound limbs—<br /> +(I was born blind)<br /> +I was the happiest of women<br /> +As wife, mother and housekeeper.<br /> +Caring for my loved ones,<br /> +And making my home<br /> +A place of order and bounteous hospitality:<br /> +For I went about the rooms,<br /> +And about the garden<br /> +With an instinct as sure as sight,<br /> +As though there were eyes in my finger tips—<br /> +Glory to God in the highest. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapA04"></a>Justice Arnett</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +It is true, fellow citizens,<br /> +That my old docket lying there for years<br /> +On a shelf above my head and over<br /> +The seat of justice, I say it is true<br /> +That docket had an iron rim<br /> +Which gashed my baldness when it fell—<br /> +(Somehow I think it was shaken loose<br /> +By the heave of the air all over town<br /> +When the gasoline tank at the canning works<br /> +Blew up and burned Butch Weldy)—<br /> +But let us argue points in order,<br /> +And reason the whole case carefully:<br /> +First I concede my head was cut,<br /> +But second the frightful thing was this:<br /> +The leaves of the docket shot and showered<br /> +Around me like a deck of cards<br /> +In the hands of a sleight of hand performer.<br /> +And up to the end I saw those leaves<br /> +Till I said at last, “Those are not leaves,<br /> +Why, can’t you see they are days and days<br /> +And the days and days of seventy years?<br /> +And why do you torture me with leaves<br /> +And the little entries on them? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF05"></a>Willard Fluke</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +My wife lost her health,<br /> +And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds.<br /> +Then that woman, whom the men<br /> +Styled Cleopatra, came along.<br /> +And we—we married ones<br /> +All broke our vows, myself among the rest.<br /> +Years passed and one by one<br /> +Death claimed them all in some hideous form<br /> +And I was borne along by dreams<br /> +Of God’s particular grace for me,<br /> +And I began to write, write, write, reams on reams<br /> +Of the second coming of Christ.<br /> +Then Christ came to me and said,<br /> +“Go into the church and stand before the congregation<br /> +And confess your sin.”<br /> +But just as I stood up and began to speak<br /> +I saw my little girl, who was sitting in the front seat—<br /> +My little girl who was born blind!<br /> +After that, all is blackness. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC15"></a>Aner Clute</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Over and over they used to ask me,<br /> +While buying the wine or the beer,<br /> +In Peoria first, and later in Chicago,<br /> +Denver, Frisco, New York, wherever I lived<br /> +How I happened to lead the life,<br /> +And what was the start of it.<br /> +Well, I told them a silk dress,<br /> +And a promise of marriage from a rich man—<br /> +(It was Lucius Atherton).<br /> +But that was not really it at all.<br /> +Suppose a boy steals an apple<br /> +From the tray at the grocery store,<br /> +And they all begin to call him a thief,<br /> +The editor, minister, judge, and all the people—<br /> +“A thief,” “a thief,” “a thief,” wherever he goes<br /> +And he can’t get work, and he can’t get bread<br /> +Without stealing it, why the boy will steal.<br /> +It’s the way the people regard the theft of the apple<br /> +That makes the boy what he is. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapA06"></a>Lucius Atherton</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +When my moustache curled,<br /> +And my hair was black,<br /> +And I wore tight trousers<br /> +And a diamond stud,<br /> +I was an excellent knave of hearts and took many a trick.<br /> +But when the gray hairs began to appear—<br /> +Lo! a new generation of girls<br /> +Laughed at me, not fearing me,<br /> +And I had no more exciting adventures<br /> +Wherein I was all but shot for a heartless devil,<br /> +But only drabby affairs, warmed-over affairs<br /> +Of other days and other men.<br /> +And time went on until I lived at<br /> +Mayer’s restaurant,<br /> +Partaking of short-orders, a gray, untidy,<br /> +Toothless, discarded, rural Don Juan. . . .<br /> +There is a mighty shade here who sings<br /> +Of one named Beatrice;<br /> +And I see now that the force that made him great<br /> +Drove me to the dregs of life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC13"></a>Homer Clapp</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Often Aner Clute at the gate<br /> +Refused me the parting kiss,<br /> +Saying we should be engaged before that;<br /> +And just with a distant clasp of the hand<br /> +She bade me good-night, as I brought her home<br /> +From the skating rink or the revival.<br /> +No sooner did my departing footsteps die away<br /> +Than Lucius Atherton,<br /> +(So I learned when Aner went to Peoria)<br /> +Stole in at her window, or took her riding<br /> +Behind his spanking team of bays<br /> +Into the country.<br /> +The shock of it made me settle down<br /> +And I put all the money I got from my father’s estate<br /> +Into the canning factory, to get the job<br /> +Of head accountant, and lost it all.<br /> +And then I knew I was one of Life’s fools,<br /> +Whom only death would treat as the equal<br /> +Of other men, making me feel like a man. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT02"></a>Deacon Taylor</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I belonged to the church,<br /> +And to the party of prohibition;<br /> +And the villagers thought I died of eating watermelon.<br /> +In truth I had cirrhosis of the liver,<br /> +For every noon for thirty years,<br /> +I slipped behind the prescription partition<br /> +In Trainor’s drug store<br /> +And poured a generous drink<br /> +From the bottle marked “Spiritus frumenti.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH15"></a>Sam Hookey</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I ran away from home with the circus,<br /> +Having fallen in love with Mademoiselle Estralada,<br /> +The lion tamer.<br /> +One time, having starved the lions<br /> +For more than a day,<br /> +I entered the cage and began to beat Brutus<br /> +And Leo and Gypsy.<br /> +Whereupon Brutus sprang upon me,<br /> +And killed me.<br /> +On entering these regions<br /> +I met a shadow who cursed me,<br /> +And said it served me right. . . .<br /> +It was Robespierre! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP11"></a>Cooney Potter</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I inherited forty acres from my Father<br /> +And, by working my wife, my two sons and two daughters<br /> +From dawn to dusk, I acquired<br /> +A thousand acres.<br /> +But not content,<br /> +Wishing to own two thousand acres,<br /> +I bustled through the years with axe and plow,<br /> +Toiling, denying myself, my wife, my sons, my daughters.<br /> +Squire Higbee wrongs me to say<br /> +That I died from smoking Red Eagle cigars.<br /> +Eating hot pie and gulping coffee<br /> +During the scorching hours of harvest time<br /> +Brought me here ere I had reached my sixtieth year. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapJ05"></a>Fiddler Jones</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The earth keeps some vibration going<br /> +There in your heart, and that is you.<br /> +And if the people find you can fiddle,<br /> +Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.<br /> +What do you see, a harvest of clover?<br /> +Or a meadow to walk through to the river?<br /> +The wind’s in the corn; you rub your hands<br /> +For beeves hereafter ready for market;<br /> +Or else you hear the rustle of skirts<br /> +Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.<br /> +To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust<br /> +Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;<br /> +They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy<br /> +Stepping it off, to “Toor-a-Loor.”<br /> +How could I till my forty acres<br /> +Not to speak of getting more,<br /> +With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos<br /> +Stirred in my brain by crows and robins<br /> +And the creak of a wind-mill—only these?<br /> +And I never started to plow in my life<br /> +That some one did not stop in the road<br /> +And take me away to a dance or picnic.<br /> +I ended up with forty acres;<br /> +I ended up with a broken fiddle—<br /> +And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,<br /> +And not a single regret. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC14"></a>Nellie Clark</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was only eight years old;<br /> +And before I grew up and knew what it meant<br /> +I had no words for it, except<br /> +That I was frightened and told my<br /> +Mother; And that my Father got a pistol<br /> +And would have killed Charlie, who was a big boy,<br /> +Fifteen years old, except for his Mother.<br /> +Nevertheless the story clung to me.<br /> +But the man who married me, a widower of thirty-five,<br /> +Was a newcomer and never heard it<br /> +’Till two years after we were married.<br /> +Then he considered himself cheated,<br /> +And the village agreed that I was not really a virgin.<br /> +Well, he deserted me, and I died<br /> +The following winter. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS19"></a>Louise Smith</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Herbert broke our engagement of eight years<br /> +When Annabelle returned to the village From the<br /> +Seminary, ah me!<br /> +If I had let my love for him alone<br /> +It might have grown into a beautiful sorrow—<br /> +Who knows?—filling my life with healing fragrance.<br /> +But I tortured it, I poisoned it<br /> +I blinded its eyes, and it became hatred—<br /> +Deadly ivy instead of clematis.<br /> +And my soul fell from its support<br /> +Its tendrils tangled in decay.<br /> +Do not let the will play gardener to your soul<br /> +Unless you are sure<br /> +It is wiser than your soul’s nature. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM15"></a>Herbert Marshall</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +All your sorrow, Louise, and hatred of me<br /> +Sprang from your delusion that it was wantonness<br /> +Of spirit and contempt of your soul’s rights<br /> +Which made me turn to Annabelle and forsake you.<br /> +You really grew to hate me for love of me,<br /> +Because I was your soul’s happiness,<br /> +Formed and tempered<br /> +To solve your life for you, and would not.<br /> +But you were my misery.<br /> +If you had been<br /> +My happiness would I not have clung to you?<br /> +This is life’s sorrow:<br /> +That one can be happy only where two are;<br /> +And that our hearts are drawn to stars<br /> +Which want us not. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG10"></a>George Gray</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I have studied many times<br /> +The marble which was chiseled for me—<br /> +A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.<br /> +In truth it pictures not my destination<br /> +But my life.<br /> +For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;<br /> +Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;<br /> +Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.<br /> +Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.<br /> +And now I know that we must lift the sail<br /> +And catch the winds of destiny<br /> +Wherever they drive the boat.<br /> +To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,<br /> +But life without meaning is the torture<br /> +Of restlessness and vague desire—<br /> +It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB08"></a>Hon. Henry Bennett</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +It never came into my mind<br /> +Until I was ready to die<br /> +That Jenny had loved me to death, with malice of heart.<br /> +For I was seventy, she was thirty—five,<br /> +And I wore myself to a shadow trying to husband<br /> +Jenny, rosy Jenny full of the ardor of life.<br /> +For all my wisdom and grace of mind<br /> +Gave her no delight at all, in very truth,<br /> +But ever and anon she spoke of the giant strength<br /> +Of Willard Shafer, and of his wonderful feat<br /> +Of lifting a traction engine out of the ditch<br /> +One time at Georgie Kirby’s.<br /> +So Jenny inherited my fortune and married Willard—<br /> +That mount of brawn! That clownish soul! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG13"></a>Griffy the Cooper</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The cooper should know about tubs.<br /> +But I learned about life as well,<br /> +And you who loiter around these graves<br /> +Think you know life.<br /> +You think your eye sweeps about a wide horizon, perhaps,<br /> +In truth you are only looking around the interior of your tub.<br /> +You cannot lift yourself to its rim<br /> +And see the outer world of things,<br /> +And at the same time see yourself.<br /> +You are submerged in the tub of yourself—<br /> +Taboos and rules and appearances,<br /> +Are the staves of your tub.<br /> +Break them and dispel the witchcraft<br /> +Of thinking your tub is life<br /> +And that you know life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS07"></a>Sersmith the Dentist</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Do you think that odes and sermons,<br /> +And the ringing of church bells,<br /> +And the blood of old men and young men,<br /> +Martyred for the truth they saw<br /> +With eyes made bright by faith in God,<br /> +Accomplished the world’s great reformations?<br /> +Do you think that the Battle Hymn of the Republic<br /> +Would have been heard if the chattel slave<br /> +Had crowned the dominant dollar,<br /> +In spite of Whitney’s cotton gin,<br /> +And steam and rolling mills and iron<br /> +And telegraphs and white free labor?<br /> +Do you think that Daisy Fraser<br /> +Had been put out and driven out<br /> +If the canning works had never needed<br /> +Her little house and lot?<br /> +Or do you think the poker room<br /> +Of Johnnie Taylor, and Burchard’s bar<br /> +Had been closed up if the money lost<br /> +And spent for beer had not been turned,<br /> +By closing them, to Thomas Rhodes<br /> +For larger sales of shoes and blankets,<br /> +And children’s cloaks and gold-oak cradles?<br /> +Why, a moral truth is a hollow tooth<br /> +Which must be propped with gold. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB11"></a>A. D. Blood</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +If you in the village think that my work was a good one,<br /> +Who closed the saloons and stopped all playing at cards,<br /> +And haled old Daisy Fraser before Justice Arnett,<br /> +In many a crusade to purge the people of sin;<br /> +Why do you let the milliner’s daughter Dora,<br /> +And the worthless son of Benjamin Pantier<br /> +Nightly make my grave their unholy pillow? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB18"></a>Robert Southey Burke</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I spent my money trying to elect you Mayor<br /> +A. D. Blood.<br /> +I lavished my admiration upon you,<br /> +You were to my mind the almost perfect man.<br /> +You devoured my personality,<br /> +And the idealism of my youth,<br /> +And the strength of a high-souled fealty.<br /> +And all my hopes for the world,<br /> +And all my beliefs in Truth,<br /> +Were smelted up in the blinding heat<br /> +Of my devotion to you,<br /> +And molded into your image.<br /> +And then when I found what you were:<br /> +That your soul was small<br /> +And your words were false<br /> +As your blue-white porcelain teeth,<br /> +And your cuffs of celluloid,<br /> +I hated the love I had for you,<br /> +I hated myself, I hated you<br /> +For my wasted soul, and wasted youth.<br /> +And I say to all, beware of ideals,<br /> +Beware of giving your love away<br /> +To any man alive. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW12"></a>Dora Williams</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +When Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me<br /> +I went to Springfield. There I met a lush,<br /> +Whose father just deceased left him a fortune.<br /> +He married me when drunk.<br /> +My life was wretched.<br /> +A year passed and one day they found him dead.<br /> +That made me rich. I moved on to Chicago.<br /> +After a time met Tyler Rountree, villain.<br /> +I moved on to New York. A gray-haired magnate<br /> +Went mad about me—so another fortune.<br /> +He died one night right in my arms, you know.<br /> +(I saw his purple face for years thereafter. )<br /> +There was almost a scandal.<br /> +I moved on, This time to Paris. I was now a woman,<br /> +Insidious, subtle, versed in the world and rich.<br /> +My sweet apartment near the Champs Elysees<br /> +Became a center for all sorts of people,<br /> +Musicians, poets, dandies, artists, nobles,<br /> +Where we spoke French and German, Italian, English.<br /> +I wed Count Navigato, native of Genoa.<br /> +We went to Rome. He poisoned me, I think.<br /> +Now in the Campo Santo overlooking<br /> +The sea where young Columbus dreamed new worlds,<br /> +See what they chiseled: “Contessa Navigato<br /> +Implora eterna quiete.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW13"></a>Mrs. Williams</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was the milliner<br /> +Talked about, lied about,<br /> +Mother of Dora,<br /> +Whose strange disappearance<br /> +Was charged to her rearing.<br /> +My eye quick to beauty<br /> +Saw much beside ribbons<br /> +And buckles and feathers<br /> +And leghorns and felts,<br /> +To set off sweet faces,<br /> +And dark hair and gold.<br /> +One thing I will tell you<br /> +And one I will ask:<br /> +The stealers of husbands<br /> +Wear powder and trinkets,<br /> +And fashionable hats.<br /> +Wives, wear them yourselves.<br /> +Hats may make divorces—<br /> +They also prevent them.<br /> +Well now, let me ask you:<br /> +If all of the children, born here in Spoon River<br /> +Had been reared by the<br /> +County, somewhere on a farm;<br /> +And the fathers and mothers had been given their freedom<br /> +To live and enjoy, change mates if they wished,<br /> +Do you think that Spoon River<br /> +Had been any the worse? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW11"></a>William and Emily</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +There is something about Death<br /> +Like love itself!<br /> +If with some one with whom you have known passion<br /> +And the glow of youthful love,<br /> +You also, after years of life<br /> +Together, feel the sinking of the fire<br /> +And thus fade away together,<br /> +Gradually, faintly, delicately,<br /> +As it were in each other’s arms,<br /> +Passing from the familiar room—<br /> +That is a power of unison between souls<br /> +Like love itself! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapJ10"></a>The Circuit Judge</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Take note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions<br /> +Eaten in my head-stone by the wind and rain—<br /> +Almost as if an intangible Nemesis or hatred<br /> +Were marking scores against me,<br /> +But to destroy, and not preserve, my memory.<br /> +I in life was the Circuit Judge, a maker of notches,<br /> +Deciding cases on the points the lawyers scored,<br /> +Not on the right of the matter.<br /> +O wind and rain, leave my head-stone alone<br /> +For worse than the anger of the wronged,<br /> +The curses of the poor,<br /> +Was to lie speechless, yet with vision clear,<br /> +Seeing that even Hod Putt, the murderer,<br /> +Hanged by my sentence,<br /> +Was innocent in soul compared with me. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapJ01"></a>Blind Jack</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I had fiddled all day at the county fair.<br /> +But driving home “Butch” Weldy and Jack McGuire,<br /> +Who were roaring full, made me fiddle and fiddle<br /> +To the song of <i>Susie Skinner</i>, while whipping the horses<br /> +Till they ran away. Blind as I was, I tried to get out<br /> +As the carriage fell in the ditch,<br /> +And was caught in the wheels and killed.<br /> +There’s a blind man here with a brow<br /> +As big and white as a cloud.<br /> +And all we fiddlers, from highest to lowest,<br /> +Writers of music and tellers of stories<br /> +Sit at his feet,<br /> +And hear him sing of the fall of Troy. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB19"></a>John Horace Burleson</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I won the prize essay at school<br /> +Here in the village,<br /> +And published a novel before I was twenty-five.<br /> +I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art;<br /> +There married the banker’s daughter,<br /> +And later became president of the bank—<br /> +Always looking forward to some leisure<br /> +To write an epic novel of the war.<br /> +Meanwhile friend of the great, and lover of letters,<br /> +And host to Matthew Arnold and to Emerson.<br /> +An after dinner speaker, writing essays<br /> +For local clubs. At last brought here—<br /> +My boyhood home, you know—<br /> +Not even a little tablet in Chicago<br /> +To keep my name alive.<br /> +How great it is to write the single line:<br /> +“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll!“ +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK09"></a>Nancy Knapp</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Well, don’t you see this was the way of it:<br /> +We bought the farm with what he inherited,<br /> +And his brothers and sisters accused him of poisoning<br /> +His father’s mind against the rest of them.<br /> +And we never had any peace with our treasure.<br /> +The murrain took the cattle, and the crops failed.<br /> +And lightning struck the granary.<br /> +So we mortgaged the farm to keep going.<br /> +And he grew silent and was worried all the time.<br /> +Then some of the neighbors refused to speak to us,<br /> +And took sides with his brothers and sisters.<br /> +And I had no place to turn, as one may say to himself,<br /> +At an earlier time in life;<br /> +“No matter, So and so is my friend, or I can shake this off<br /> +With a little trip to Decatur.”<br /> +Then the dreadfulest smells infested the rooms.<br /> +So I set fire to the beds and the old witch-house<br /> +Went up in a roar of flame,<br /> +As I danced in the yard with waving arms,<br /> +While he wept like a freezing steer. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH14"></a>Barry Holden</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The very fall my sister Nancy Knapp<br /> +Set fire to the house<br /> +They were trying Dr. Duval<br /> +For the murder of Zora Clemens,<br /> +And I sat in the court two weeks<br /> +Listening to every witness.<br /> +It was clear he had got her in a family way;<br /> +And to let the child be born<br /> +Would not do.<br /> +Well, how about me with eight children,<br /> +And one coming, and the farm<br /> +Mortgaged to Thomas Rhodes?<br /> +And when I got home that night,<br /> +(After listening to the story of the buggy ride,<br /> +And the finding of Zora in the ditch,)<br /> +The first thing I saw, right there by the steps,<br /> +Where the boys had hacked for angle worms,<br /> +Was the hatchet!<br /> +And just as I entered there was my wife,<br /> +Standing before me, big with child.<br /> +She started the talk of the mortgaged farm,<br /> +And I killed her. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF01"></a>State’s Attorney Fallas</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I, the scourge-wielder, balance-wrecker,<br /> +Smiter with whips and swords;<br /> +I, hater of the breakers of the law;<br /> +I, legalist, inexorable and bitter,<br /> +Driving the jury to hang the madman, Barry Holden,<br /> +Was made as one dead by light too bright for eyes,<br /> +And woke to face a Truth with bloody brow:<br /> +Steel forceps fumbled by a doctor’s hand<br /> +Against my boy’s head as he entered life<br /> +Made him an idiot. I turned to books of science<br /> +To care for him.<br /> +That’s how the world of those whose minds are sick<br /> +Became my work in life, and all my world.<br /> +Poor ruined boy! You were, at last, the potter<br /> +And I and all my deeds of charity<br /> +The vessels of your hand. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB12"></a>Wendell P. Bloyd</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +They first charged me with disorderly conduct,<br /> +There being no statute on blasphemy.<br /> +Later they locked me up as insane<br /> +Where I was beaten to death by a Catholic guard.<br /> +My offense was this:<br /> +I said God lied to Adam, and destined him<br /> +To lead the life of a fool,<br /> +Ignorant that there is evil in the world as well as good.<br /> +And when Adam outwitted God by eating the apple<br /> +And saw through the lie,<br /> +God drove him out of Eden to keep him from taking<br /> +The fruit of immortal life.<br /> +For Christ’s sake, you sensible people,<br /> +Here’s what God Himself says about it in the book of Genesis:<br /> +“And the Lord God said, behold the man<br /> +Is become as one of us” (a little envy, you see),<br /> +“To know good and evil” (The all-is-good lie exposed):<br /> +“And now lest he put forth his hand and take<br /> +Also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever:<br /> +Therefore the Lord God sent Him forth from the garden of Eden.” (The<br /> +reason I believe God crucified His Own Son<br /> +To get out of the wretched tangle is, because it sounds just like Him. ) +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT13"></a>Francis Turner</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I could not run or play<br /> +In boyhood.<br /> +In manhood I could only sip the cup,<br /> +Not drink—For scarlet-fever left my heart diseased.<br /> +Yet I lie here<br /> +Soothed by a secret none but Mary knows:<br /> +There is a garden of acacia,<br /> +Catalpa trees, and arbors sweet with vines—<br /> +There on that afternoon in June<br /> +By Mary’s side—<br /> +Kissing her with my soul upon my lips<br /> +It suddenly took flight. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapJ06"></a>Franklin Jones</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +If I could have lived another year<br /> +I could have finished my flying machine,<br /> +And become rich and famous.<br /> +Hence it is fitting the workman<br /> +Who tried to chisel a dove for me<br /> +Made it look more like a chicken.<br /> +For what is it all but being hatched,<br /> +And running about the yard,<br /> +To the day of the block?<br /> +Save that a man has an angel’s brain,<br /> +And sees the ax from the first! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC11"></a>John M. Church</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was attorney for the “Q”<br /> +And the Indemnity Company which insured<br /> +The owners of the mine.<br /> +I pulled the wires with judge and jury,<br /> +And the upper courts, to beat the claims<br /> +Of the crippled, the widow and orphan,<br /> +And made a fortune thereat.<br /> +The bar association sang my praises<br /> +In a high-flown resolution.<br /> +And the floral tributes were many—<br /> +But the rats devoured my heart<br /> +And a snake made a nest in my skull +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapR08"></a>Russian Sonia</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I, born in Weimar<br /> +Of a mother who was French<br /> +And German father, a most learned professor,<br /> +Orphaned at fourteen years,<br /> +Became a dancer, known as Russian Sonia,<br /> +All up and down the boulevards of Paris,<br /> +Mistress betimes of sundry dukes and counts,<br /> +And later of poor artists and of poets.<br /> +At forty years, <i>passée</i>, I sought New York<br /> +And met old Patrick Hummer on the boat,<br /> +Red-faced and hale, though turned his sixtieth year,<br /> +Returning after having sold a ship-load<br /> +Of cattle in the German city, Hamburg.<br /> +He brought me to Spoon River and we lived here<br /> +For twenty years—they thought that we were married<br /> +This oak tree near me is the favorite haunt<br /> +Of blue jays chattering, chattering all the day.<br /> +And why not? for my very dust is laughing<br /> +For thinking of the humorous thing called life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapN03"></a>Isa Nutter</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Doc Meyers said I had satyriasis,<br /> +And Doc Hill called it leucæmia—<br /> +But I know what brought me here:<br /> +I was sixty-four but strong as a man<br /> +Of thirty-five or forty.<br /> +And it wasn’t writing a letter a day,<br /> +And it wasn’t late hours seven nights a week,<br /> +And it wasn’t the strain of thinking of Minnie,<br /> +And it wasn’t fear or a jealous dread,<br /> +Or the endless task of trying to fathom<br /> +Her wonderful mind, or sympathy<br /> +For the wretched life she led<br /> +With her first and second husband—<br /> +It was none of these that laid me low—<br /> +But the clamor of daughters and threats of sons,<br /> +And the sneers and curses of all my kin<br /> +Right up to the day I sneaked to Peoria<br /> +And married Minnie in spite of them—<br /> +And why do you wonder my will was made<br /> +For the best and purest of women? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH01"></a>Barney Hainsfeather</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +If the excursion train to Peoria<br /> +Had just been wrecked, I might have escaped with my life—<br /> +Certainly I should have escaped this place.<br /> +But as it was burned as well, they mistook me<br /> +For John Allen who was sent to the Hebrew Cemetery<br /> +At Chicago,<br /> +And John for me, so I lie here.<br /> +It was bad enough to run a clothing store in this town,<br /> +But to be buried here—<i>ach!</i> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP07"></a>Petit, the Poet</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,<br /> +Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel—<br /> +Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens—<br /> +But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.<br /> +Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,<br /> +Ballades by the score with the same old thought:<br /> +The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;<br /> +And what is love but a rose that fades?<br /> +Life all around me here in the village:<br /> +Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,<br /> +Courage, constancy, heroism, failure—<br /> +All in the loom, and oh what patterns!<br /> +Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers—<br /> +Blind to all of it all my life long.<br /> +Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,<br /> +Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics,<br /> +While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB03"></a>Pauline Barrett</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Almost the shell of a woman after the surgeon’s knife<br /> +And almost a year to creep back into strength,<br /> +Till the dawn of our wedding decennial<br /> +Found me my seeming self again.<br /> +We walked the forest together,<br /> +By a path of soundless moss and turf.<br /> +But I could not look in your eyes,<br /> +And you could not look in my eyes,<br /> +For such sorrow was ours—the beginning of gray in your hair.<br /> +And I but a shell of myself.<br /> +And what did we talk of?—sky and water,<br /> +Anything, ’most, to hide our thoughts.<br /> +And then your gift of wild roses,<br /> +Set on the table to grace our dinner.<br /> +Poor heart, how bravely you struggled<br /> +To imagine and live a remembered rapture!<br /> +Then my spirit drooped as the night came on,<br /> +And you left me alone in my room for a while,<br /> +As you did when I was a bride, poor heart.<br /> +And I looked in the mirror and something said:<br /> +“One should be all dead when one is half-dead—”<br /> +Nor ever mock life, nor ever cheat love.”<br /> +And I did it looking there in the mirror—<br /> +Dear, have you ever understood? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB10"></a>Mrs. Charles Bliss</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Reverend Wiley advised me not to divorce him<br /> +For the sake of the children,<br /> +And Judge Somers advised him the same.<br /> +So we stuck to the end of the path.<br /> +But two of the children thought he was right,<br /> +And two of the children thought I was right.<br /> +And the two who sided with him blamed me,<br /> +And the two who sided with me blamed him,<br /> +And they grieved for the one they sided with.<br /> +And all were torn with the guilt of judging,<br /> +And tortured in soul because they could not admire<br /> +Equally him and me.<br /> +Now every gardener knows that plants grown in cellars<br /> +Or under stones are twisted and yellow and weak.<br /> +And no mother would let her baby suck<br /> +Diseased milk from her breast.<br /> +Yet preachers and judges advise the raising of souls<br /> +Where there is no sunlight, but only twilight,<br /> +No warmth, but only dampness and cold—<br /> +Preachers and judges! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapR01"></a>Mrs. George Reece</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +To this generation I would say:<br /> +Memorize some bit of verse of truth or beauty.<br /> +It may serve a turn in your life.<br /> +My husband had nothing to do<br /> +With the fall of the bank—he was only cashier.<br /> +The wreck was due to the president, Thomas Rhodes,<br /> +And his vain, unscrupulous son.<br /> +Yet my husband was sent to prison,<br /> +And I was left with the children,<br /> +To feed and clothe and school them.<br /> +And I did it, and sent them forth<br /> +Into the world all clean and strong,<br /> +And all through the wisdom of Pope, the poet:<br /> +“Act well your part, there all the honor lies.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW09"></a>Rev. Lemuel Wiley</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I preached four thousand sermons,<br /> +I conducted forty revivals,<br /> +And baptized many converts.<br /> +Yet no deed of mine<br /> +Shines brighter in the memory of the world,<br /> +And none is treasured more by me:<br /> +Look how I saved the Blisses from divorce,<br /> +And kept the children free from that disgrace,<br /> +To grow up into moral men and women,<br /> +Happy themselves, a credit to the village. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapR07"></a>Thomas Ross, Jr.</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +This I saw with my own eyes: A cliff—swallow<br /> +Made her nest in a hole of the high clay-bank<br /> +There near Miller’s Ford.<br /> +But no sooner were the young hatched<br /> +Than a snake crawled up to the nest<br /> +To devour the brood.<br /> +Then the mother swallow with swift flutterings<br /> +And shrill cries<br /> +Fought at the snake,<br /> +Blinding him with the beat of her wings,<br /> +Until he, wriggling and rearing his head,<br /> +Fell backward down the bank<br /> +Into Spoon River and was drowned.<br /> +Scarcely an hour passed<br /> +Until a shrike<br /> +Impaled the mother swallow on a thorn.<br /> +As for myself I overcame my lower nature<br /> +Only to be destroyed by my brother’s ambition. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP04"></a>Rev. Abner Peet</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I had no objection at all<br /> +To selling my household effects at auction<br /> +On the village square.<br /> +It gave my beloved flock the chance<br /> +To get something which had belonged to me<br /> +For a memorial.<br /> +But that trunk which was struck off<br /> +To Burchard, the grog-keeper!<br /> +Did you know it contained the manuscripts<br /> +Of a lifetime of sermons?<br /> +And he burned them as waste paper. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH17"></a>Jefferson Howard</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +My valiant fight! For I call it valiant,<br /> +With my father’s beliefs from old Virginia:<br /> +Hating slavery, but no less war.<br /> +I, full of spirit, audacity, courage<br /> +Thrown into life here in Spoon River,<br /> +With its dominant forces drawn from<br /> +New England, Republicans, Calvinists, merchants, bankers,<br /> +Hating me, yet fearing my arm.<br /> +With wife and children heavy to carry—<br /> +Yet fruits of my very zest of life.<br /> +Stealing odd pleasures that cost me prestige,<br /> +And reaping evils I had not sown;<br /> +Foe of the church with its charnel dankness,<br /> +Friend of the human touch of the tavern;<br /> +Tangled with fates all alien to me,<br /> +Deserted by hands I called my own.<br /> +Then just as I felt my giant strength<br /> +Short of breath, behold my children<br /> +Had wound their lives in stranger gardens—<br /> +And I stood alone, as I started alone<br /> +My valiant life! I died on my feet,<br /> +Facing the silence—facing the prospect<br /> +That no one would know of the fight I made. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapL02"></a>Judge Selah Lively</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Suppose you stood just five feet two,<br /> +And had worked your way as a grocery clerk,<br /> +Studying law by candle light<br /> +Until you became an attorney at law?<br /> +And then suppose through your diligence,<br /> +And regular church attendance,<br /> +You became attorney for Thomas Rhodes,<br /> +Collecting notes and mortgages,<br /> +And representing all the widows<br /> +In the Probate Court? And through it all<br /> +They jeered at your size, and laughed at your clothes<br /> +And your polished boots? And then suppose<br /> +You became the County Judge?<br /> +And Jefferson Howard and Kinsey Keene,<br /> +And Harmon Whitney, and all the giants<br /> +Who had sneered at you, were forced to stand<br /> +Before the bar and say “Your Honor”—<br /> +Well, don’t you think it was natural<br /> +That I made it hard for them? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS03"></a>Albert Schirding</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Jonas Keene thought his lot a hard one<br /> +Because his children were all failures.<br /> +But I know of a fate more trying than that:<br /> +It is to be a failure while your children are successes.<br /> +For I raised a brood of eagles<br /> +Who flew away at last, leaving me<br /> +A crow on the abandoned bough.<br /> +Then, with the ambition to prefix<br /> +Honorable to my name,<br /> +And thus to win my children’s admiration,<br /> +I ran for County Superintendent of Schools,<br /> +Spending my accumulations to win—and lost.<br /> +That fall my daughter received first prize in Paris<br /> +For her picture, entitled, “The Old Mill”—<br /> +(It was of the water mill before Henry Wilkin put in steam.)<br /> +The feeling that I was not worthy of her finished me. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK02"></a>Jonas Keene</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Why did Albert Schirding kill himself<br /> +Trying to be County Superintendent of Schools,<br /> +Blest as he was with the means of life<br /> +And wonderful children, bringing him honor<br /> +Ere he was sixty?<br /> +If even one of my boys could have run a news-stand,<br /> +Or one of my girls could have married a decent man,<br /> +I should not have walked in the rain<br /> +And jumped into bed with clothes all wet,<br /> +Refusing medical aid. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT06"></a>Eugenia Todd</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Have any of you, passers-by,<br /> +Had an old tooth that was an unceasing discomfort?<br /> +Or a pain in the side that never quite left you?<br /> +Or a malignant growth that grew with time?<br /> +So that even in profoundest slumber<br /> +There was shadowy consciousness or the phantom of thought<br /> +Of the tooth, the side, the growth?<br /> +Even so thwarted love, or defeated ambition,<br /> +Or a blunder in life which mixed your life<br /> +Hopelessly to the end,<br /> +Will like a tooth, or a pain in the side,<br /> +Float through your dreams in the final sleep<br /> +Till perfect freedom from the earth-sphere<br /> +Comes to you as one who wakes<br /> +Healed and glad in the morning! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapY01"></a>Yee Bow</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +They got me into the Sunday-school<br /> +In Spoon River<br /> +And tried to get me to drop Confucius for Jesus.<br /> +I could have been no worse off<br /> +If I had tried to get them to drop Jesus for Confucius.<br /> +For, without any warning, as if it were a prank,<br /> +And sneaking up behind me, Harry Wiley,<br /> +The minister’s son, caved my ribs into my lungs,<br /> +With a blow of his fist.<br /> +Now I shall never sleep with my ancestors in Pekin,<br /> +And no children shall worship at my grave. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM11"></a>Washington McNeely</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Rich, honored by my fellow citizens,<br /> +The father of many children, born of a noble mother,<br /> +All raised there<br /> +In the great mansion—house, at the edge of town.<br /> +Note the cedar tree on the lawn!<br /> +I sent all the boys to Ann Arbor, all of the girls to Rockford,<br /> +The while my life went on, getting more riches and honors—<br /> +Resting under my cedar tree at evening.<br /> +The years went on.<br /> +I sent the girls to Europe;<br /> +I dowered them when married.<br /> +I gave the boys money to start in business.<br /> +They were strong children, promising as apples<br /> +Before the bitten places show.<br /> +But John fled the country in disgrace.<br /> +Jenny died in child-birth—<br /> +I sat under my cedar tree.<br /> +Harry killed himself after a debauch,<br /> +Susan was divorced—<br /> +I sat under my cedar tree.<br /> +Paul was invalided from over study,<br /> +Mary became a recluse at home for love of a man—<br /> +I sat under my cedar tree.<br /> +All were gone, or broken-winged or devoured by life—<br /> +I sat under my cedar tree.<br /> +My mate, the mother of them, was taken—<br /> +I sat under my cedar tree,<br /> +Till ninety years were tolled.<br /> +O maternal Earth, which rocks the fallen leaf to sleep. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM10"></a>Paul McNeely</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Dear Jane! dear winsome Jane!<br /> +How you stole in the room (where I lay so ill)<br /> +In your nurse’s cap and linen cuffs,<br /> +And took my hand and said with a smile:<br /> +“You are not so ill—you’ll soon be well.”<br /> +And how the liquid thought of your eyes<br /> +Sank in my eyes like dew that slips<br /> +Into the heart of a flower.<br /> +Dear Jane! the whole McNeely fortune<br /> +Could not have bought your care of me,<br /> +By day and night, and night and day;<br /> +Nor paid for your smile, nor the warmth of your soul,<br /> +In your little hands laid on my brow.<br /> +Jane, till the flame of life went out<br /> +In the dark above the disk of night<br /> +I longed and hoped to be well again<br /> +To pillow my head on your little breasts,<br /> +And hold you fast in a clasp of love—<br /> +Did my father provide for you when he died,<br /> +Jane, dear Jane? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM09"></a>Mary McNeely</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Passer-by,<br /> +To love is to find your own soul<br /> +Through the soul of the beloved one.<br /> +When the beloved one withdraws itself from your soul<br /> +Then you have lost your soul.<br /> +It is written: “l have a friend,<br /> +But my sorrow has no friend.”<br /> +Hence my long years of solitude at the home of my father,<br /> +Trying to get myself back,<br /> +And to turn my sorrow into a supremer self.<br /> +But there was my father with his sorrows,<br /> +Sitting under the cedar tree,<br /> +A picture that sank into my heart at last<br /> +Bringing infinite repose.<br /> +Oh, ye souls who have made life<br /> +Fragrant and white as tube roses<br /> +From earth’s dark soil,<br /> +Eternal peace! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM01"></a>Daniel M’Cumber</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +When I went to the city, Mary McNeely,<br /> +I meant to return for you, yes I did.<br /> +But Laura, my landlady’s daughter,<br /> +Stole into my life somehow, and won me away.<br /> +Then after some years whom should I meet<br /> +But Georgine Miner from Niles—a sprout<br /> +Of the free love, Fourierist gardens that flourished<br /> +Before the war all over Ohio.<br /> +Her dilettante lover had tired of her,<br /> +And she turned to me for strength and solace.<br /> +She was some kind of a crying thing<br /> +One takes in one’s arms, and all at once<br /> +It slimes your face with its running nose,<br /> +And voids its essence all over you;<br /> +Then bites your hand and springs away.<br /> +And there you stand bleeding and smelling to heaven<br /> +Why, Mary McNeely, I was not worthy<br /> +To kiss the hem of your robe! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM29"></a>Georgine Sand Miner</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +A stepmother drove me from home, embittering me.<br /> +A squaw-man, a flaneur and dilettante took my virtue.<br /> +For years I was his mistress—no one knew.<br /> +I learned from him the parasite cunning<br /> +With which I moved with the bluffs, like a flea on a dog.<br /> +All the time I was nothing but “very private,” with different men.<br /> +Then Daniel, the radical, had me for years.<br /> +His sister called me his mistress;<br /> +And Daniel wrote me:<br /> +“Shameful word, soiling our beautiful love!”<br /> +But my anger coiled, preparing its fangs.<br /> +My Lesbian friend next took a hand.<br /> +She hated Daniel’s sister.<br /> +And Daniel despised her midget husband.<br /> +And she saw a chance for a poisonous thrust:<br /> +I must complain to the wife of Daniel’s pursuit!<br /> +But before I did that I begged him to fly to London with me.<br /> +“Why not stay in the city just as we have?” he asked.<br /> +Then I turned submarine and revenged his repulse<br /> +In the arms of my dilettante friend.<br /> +Then up to the surface, Bearing the letter that Daniel wrote me<br /> +To prove my honor was all intact, showing it to his wife,<br /> +My Lesbian friend and everyone.<br /> +If Daniel had only shot me dead!<br /> +Instead of stripping me naked of lies<br /> +A harlot in body and soul. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapR03"></a>Thomas Rhodes</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Very well, you liberals,<br /> +And navigators into realms intellectual,<br /> +You sailors through heights imaginative,<br /> +Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets,<br /> +You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits,<br /> +And Tennessee Claflin Shopes—<br /> +You found with all your boasted wisdom<br /> +How hard at the last it is<br /> +To keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms.<br /> +While we, seekers of earth’s treasures<br /> +Getters and hoarders of gold,<br /> +Are self-contained, compact, harmonized,<br /> +Even to the end. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC09"></a>Ida Chicken</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +After I had attended lectures<br /> +At our Chautauqua, and studied French<br /> +For twenty years, committing the grammar<br /> +Almost by heart,<br /> +I thought I’d take a trip to Paris<br /> +To give my culture a final polish.<br /> +So I went to Peoria for a passport—<br /> +(Thomas Rhodes was on the train that morning.)<br /> +And there the clerk of the district Court<br /> +Made me swear to support and defend<br /> +The constitution—yes, even me—<br /> +Who couldn’t defend or support it at all!<br /> +And what do you think? That very morning<br /> +The Federal Judge, in the very next room<br /> +To the room where I took the oath,<br /> +Decided the constitution<br /> +Exempted Rhodes from paying taxes<br /> +For the water works of Spoon River! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP06"></a>Penniwit, the Artist</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I lost my patronage in Spoon River<br /> +From trying to put my mind in the camera<br /> +To catch the soul of the person.<br /> +The very best picture I ever took<br /> +Was of Judge Somers, attorney at law.<br /> +He sat upright and had me pause<br /> +Till he got his cross-eye straight.<br /> +Then when he was ready he said “all right.”<br /> +And I yelled “overruled” and his eye turned up.<br /> +And I caught him just as he used to look<br /> +When saying “I except.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB15"></a>Jim Brown</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +While I was handling Dom Pedro<br /> +I got at the thing that divides the race between men who are<br /> +For singing “Turkey in the straw” or<br /> +“There is a fountain filled with blood”—<br /> +(Like Rile Potter used to sing it over at Concord).<br /> +For cards, or for Rev. Peet’s lecture on the holy land;<br /> +For skipping the light fantastic, or passing the plate;<br /> +For Pinafore, or a Sunday school cantata;<br /> +For men, or for money;<br /> +For the people or against them.<br /> +This was it: Rev. Peet and the Social Purity Club,<br /> +Headed by Ben Pantier’s wife,<br /> +Went to the Village trustees,<br /> +And asked them to make me take Dom Pedro<br /> +From the barn of Wash McNeely, there at the edge of town,<br /> +To a barn outside of the corporation,<br /> +On the ground that it corrupted public morals.<br /> +Well, Ben Pantier and Fiddler Jones saved the day—<br /> +They thought it a slam on colts. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapD01"></a>Robert Davidson</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I grew spiritually fat living off the souls of men.<br /> +If I saw a soul that was strong<br /> +I wounded its pride and devoured its strength.<br /> +The shelters of friendship knew my cunning<br /> +For where I could steal a friend I did so.<br /> +And wherever I could enlarge my power<br /> +By undermining ambition, I did so,<br /> +Thus to make smooth my own.<br /> +And to triumph over other souls,<br /> +Just to assert and prove my superior strength,<br /> +Was with me a delight,<br /> +The keen exhilaration of soul gymnastics.<br /> +Devouring souls, I should have lived forever.<br /> +But their undigested remains bred in me a deadly nephritis,<br /> +With fear, restlessness, sinking spirits,<br /> +Hatred, suspicion, vision disturbed.<br /> +I collapsed at last with a shriek.<br /> +Remember the acorn;<br /> +It does not devour other acorns. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW06"></a>Elsa Wertman</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was a peasant girl from Germany,<br /> +Blue-eyed, rosy, happy and strong.<br /> +And the first place I worked was at Thomas Greene’s.<br /> +On a summer’s day when she was away<br /> +He stole into the kitchen and took me<br /> +Right in his arms and kissed me on my throat,<br /> +I turning my head. Then neither of us<br /> +Seemed to know what happened.<br /> +And I cried for what would become of me.<br /> +And cried and cried as my secret began to show.<br /> +One day Mrs. Greene said she understood,<br /> +And would make no trouble for me,<br /> +And, being childless, would adopt it.<br /> +(He had given her a farm to be still.)<br /> +So she hid in the house and sent out rumors,<br /> +As if it were going to happen to her.<br /> +And all went well and the child was born—<br /> +They were so kind to me.<br /> +Later I married Gus Wertman, and years passed.<br /> +But—at political rallies when sitters-by thought I was crying<br /> +At the eloquence of Hamilton Greene—<br /> +That was not it. No! I wanted to say:<br /> +That’s my son!<br /> +That’s my son. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG12"></a>Hamilton Greene</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was the only child of Frances Harris of Virginia<br /> +And Thomas Greene of Kentucky,<br /> +Of valiant and honorable blood both.<br /> +To them I owe all that I became,<br /> +Judge, member of Congress, leader in the State.<br /> +From my mother I inherited<br /> +Vivacity, fancy, language;<br /> +From my father will, judgment, logic.<br /> +All honor to them<br /> +For what service I was to the people! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH23"></a>Ernest Hyde</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +My mind was a mirror:<br /> +It saw what it saw, it knew what it knew.<br /> +In youth my mind was just a mirror<br /> +In a rapidly flying car,<br /> +Which catches and loses bits of the landscape.<br /> +Then in time<br /> +Great scratches were made on the mirror,<br /> +Letting the outside world come in,<br /> +And letting my inner self look out.<br /> +For this is the birth of the soul in sorrow,<br /> +A birth with gains and losses.<br /> +The mind sees the world as a thing apart,<br /> +And the soul makes the world at one with itself.<br /> +A mirror scratched reflects no image—<br /> +And this is the silence of wisdom. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH09"></a>Roger Heston</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Oh many times did Ernest Hyde and I<br /> +Argue about the freedom of the will.<br /> +My favorite metaphor was Prickett’s cow<br /> +Roped out to grass, and free you know as far<br /> +As the length of the rope.<br /> +One day while arguing so, watching the cow<br /> +Pull at the rope to get beyond the circle<br /> +Which she had eaten bare,<br /> +Out came the stake, and tossing up her head,<br /> +She ran for us.<br /> +“What’s that, free-will or what?” said Ernest, running.<br /> +I fell just as she gored me to my death. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS13"></a>Amos Sibley</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Not character, not fortitude, not patience<br /> +Were mine, the which the village thought I had<br /> +In bearing with my wife, while preaching on,<br /> +Doing the work God chose for me.<br /> +I loathed her as a termagant, as a wanton.<br /> +I knew of her adulteries, every one.<br /> +But even so, if I divorced the woman<br /> +I must forsake the ministry.<br /> +Therefore to do God’s work and have it crop,<br /> +I bore with her<br /> +So lied I to myself<br /> +So lied I to Spoon River!<br /> +Yet I tried lecturing, ran for the legislature,<br /> +Canvassed for books, with just the thought in mind:<br /> +If I make money thus,<br /> +I will divorce her. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS14"></a>Mrs. Sibley</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The secret of the stars—gravitation.<br /> +The secret of the earth—layers of rock.<br /> +The secret of the soil—to receive seed.<br /> +The secret of the seed—the germ.<br /> +The secret of man—the sower.<br /> +The secret of woman—the soil.<br /> +My secret: Under a mound that you shall never find. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW04"></a>Adam Weirauch</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was crushed between Altgeld and Armour.<br /> +I lost many friends, much time and money<br /> +Fighting for Altgeld whom Editor Whedon<br /> +Denounced as the candidate of gamblers and anarchists.<br /> +Then Armour started to ship dressed meat to Spoon River,<br /> +Forcing me to shut down my slaughter-house<br /> +And my butcher shop went all to pieces.<br /> +The new forces of Altgeld and Armour caught me<br /> +At the same time. I thought it due me, to recoup the money I lost<br /> +And to make good the friends that left me,<br /> +For the Governor to appoint me Canal Commissioner.<br /> +Instead he appointed Whedon of the Spoon River Argus,<br /> +So I ran for the legislature and was elected.<br /> +I said to hell with principle and sold my vote<br /> +On Charles T. Yerkes’ street-car franchise.<br /> +Of course I was one of the fellows they caught.<br /> +Who was it, Armour, Altgeld or myself<br /> +That ruined me? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB04"></a>Ezra Bartlett</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +A chaplain in the army,<br /> +A chaplain in the prisons,<br /> +An exhorter in Spoon River,<br /> +Drunk with divinity, Spoon River—<br /> +Yet bringing poor Eliza Johnson to shame,<br /> +And myself to scorn and wretchedness.<br /> +But why will you never see that love of women,<br /> +And even love of wine,<br /> +Are the stimulants by which the soul, hungering for divinity,<br /> +Reaches the ecstatic vision<br /> +And sees the celestial outposts?<br /> +Only after many trials for strength,<br /> +Only when all stimulants fail,<br /> +Does the aspiring soul<br /> +By its own sheer power<br /> +Find the divine<br /> +By resting upon itself. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG03"></a>Amelia Garrick</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Yes, here I lie close to a stunted rose bush<br /> +In a forgotten place near the fence<br /> +Where the thickets from Siever’s woods<br /> +Have crept over, growing sparsely.<br /> +And you, you are a leader in New York,<br /> +The wife of a noted millionaire,<br /> +A name in the society columns,<br /> +Beautiful, admired, magnified perhaps<br /> +By the mirage of distance.<br /> +You have succeeded, I have failed<br /> +In the eyes of the world.<br /> +You are alive, I am dead.<br /> +Yet I know that I vanquished your spirit;<br /> +And I know that lying here far from you,<br /> +Unheard of among your great friends<br /> +In the brilliant world where you move,<br /> +I am really the unconquerable power over your life<br /> +That robs it of complete triumph. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapO02"></a>John Hancock Otis</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +As to democracy, fellow citizens,<br /> +Are you not prepared to admit<br /> +That I, who inherited riches and was to the manor born,<br /> +Was second to none in Spoon River<br /> +In my devotion to the cause of Liberty?<br /> +While my contemporary, Anthony Findlay,<br /> +Born in a shanty and beginning life<br /> +As a water carrier to the section hands,<br /> +Then becoming a section hand when he was grown,<br /> +Afterwards foreman of the gang, until he rose<br /> +To the superintendency of the railroad,<br /> +Living in Chicago,<br /> +Was a veritable slave driver,<br /> +Grinding the faces of labor,<br /> +And a bitter enemy of democracy.<br /> +And I say to you, Spoon River,<br /> +And to you, O republic,<br /> +Beware of the man who rises to power<br /> +From one suspender. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF04"></a>Anthony Findlay</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Both for the country and for the man,<br /> +And for a country as well as a man,<br /> +’Tis better to be feared than loved.<br /> +And if this country would rather part<br /> +With the friendship of every nation<br /> +Than surrender its wealth,<br /> +I say of a man ’tis worse to lose<br /> +Money than friends.<br /> +And I rend the curtain that hides the soul<br /> +Of an ancient aspiration:<br /> +When the people clamor for freedom<br /> +They really seek for power o’er the strong.<br /> +I, Anthony Findlay, rising to greatness<br /> +From a humble water carrier,<br /> +Until I could say to thousands “Come,”<br /> +And say to thousands “Go,”<br /> +Affirm that a nation can never be good.<br /> +Or achieve the good,<br /> +Where the strong and the wise have not the rod<br /> +To use on the dull and weak. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC02"></a>John Cabanis</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Neither spite, fellow citizens,<br /> +Nor forgetfulness of the shiftlessness.<br /> +And the lawlessness and waste<br /> +Under democracy’s rule in Spoon River<br /> +Made me desert the party of law and order<br /> +And lead the liberal party.<br /> +Fellow citizens! I saw as one with second sight<br /> +That every man of the millions of men<br /> +Who give themselves to Freedom,<br /> +And fail while Freedom fails,<br /> +Enduring waste and lawlessness,<br /> +And the rule of the weak and the blind,<br /> +Dies in the hope of building earth,<br /> +Like the coral insect, for the temple<br /> +To stand on at the last.<br /> +And I swear that Freedom will wage to the end<br /> +The war for making every soul<br /> +Wise and strong and as fit to rule<br /> +As Plato’s lofty guardians<br /> +In a world republic girdled! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapU01"></a>The Unknown</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Ye aspiring ones, listen to the story of the unknown<br /> +Who lies here with no stone to mark the place.<br /> +As a boy reckless and wanton,<br /> +Wandering with gun in hand through the forest<br /> +Near the mansion of Aaron Hatfield,<br /> +I shot a hawk perched on the top<br /> +Of a dead tree. He fell with guttural cry<br /> +At my feet, his wing broken.<br /> +Then I put him in a cage<br /> +Where he lived many days cawing angrily at me<br /> +When I offered him food.<br /> +Daily I search the realms of Hades<br /> +For the soul of the hawk,<br /> +That I may offer him the friendship<br /> +Of one whom life wounded and caged. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT05"></a>Alexander Throckmorton</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +In youth my wings were strong and tireless,<br /> +But I did not know the mountains.<br /> +In age I knew the mountains<br /> +But my weary wings could not follow my vision—<br /> +Genius is wisdom and youth. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS21"></a>Jonathan Swift Somers (Author of <a href="#chapS25">the Spooniad</a>)</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +After you have enriched your soul<br /> +To the highest point,<br /> +With books, thought, suffering,<br /> +The understanding of many personalities,<br /> +The power to interpret glances, silences,<br /> +The pauses in momentous transformations,<br /> +The genius of divination and prophecy;<br /> +So that you feel able at times to hold the world<br /> +In the hollow of your hand;<br /> +Then, if, by the crowding of so many powers<br /> +Into the compass of your soul,<br /> +Your soul takes fire,<br /> +And in the conflagration of your soul<br /> +The evil of the world is lighted up and made clear—<br /> +Be thankful if in that hour of supreme vision<br /> +Life does not fiddle. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM03"></a>Widow McFarlane</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was the Widow McFarlane,<br /> +Weaver of carpets for all the village.<br /> +And I pity you still at the loom of life,<br /> +You who are singing to the shuttle<br /> +And lovingly watching the work of your hands,<br /> +If you reach the day of hate, of terrible truth.<br /> +For the cloth of life is woven, you know,<br /> +To a pattern hidden under the loom—<br /> +A pattern you never see!<br /> +And you weave high-hearted, singing, singing,<br /> +You guard the threads of love and friendship<br /> +For noble figures in gold and purple.<br /> +And long after other eyes can see<br /> +You have woven a moon-white strip of cloth,<br /> +You laugh in your strength, for Hope overlays it<br /> +With shapes of love and beauty.<br /> +The loom stops short!<br /> +The pattern’s out<br /> +You’re alone in the room!<br /> +You have woven a shroud<br /> +And hate of it lays you in it. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH02"></a>Carl Hamblin</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The press of the Spoon River <i>Clarion</i> was wrecked,<br /> +And I was tarred and feathered,<br /> +For publishing this on the day the<br /> +Anarchists were hanged in Chicago:<br /> +“I saw a beautiful woman with bandaged eyes<br /> +Standing on the steps of a marble temple.<br /> +Great multitudes passed in front of her,<br /> +Lifting their faces to her imploringly.<br /> +In her left hand she held a sword.<br /> +She was brandishing the sword,<br /> +Sometimes striking a child, again a laborer,<br /> +Again a slinking woman, again a lunatic.<br /> +In her right hand she held a scale;<br /> +Into the scale pieces of gold were tossed<br /> +By those who dodged the strokes of the sword.<br /> +A man in a black gown read from a manuscript:<br /> +“She is no respecter of persons.”<br /> +Then a youth wearing a red cap<br /> +Leaped to her side and snatched away the bandage.<br /> +And lo, the lashes had been eaten away<br /> +From the oozy eye-lids;<br /> +The eye-balls were seared with a milky mucus;<br /> +The madness of a dying soul<br /> +Was written on her face—<br /> +But the multitude saw why she wore the bandage.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW07"></a>Editor Whedon</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +To be able to see every side of every question;<br /> +To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long;<br /> +To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose,<br /> +To use great feelings and passions of the human family<br /> +For base designs, for cunning ends,<br /> +To wear a mask like the Greek actors—<br /> +Your eight-page paper—behind which you huddle,<br /> +Bawling through the megaphone of big type:<br /> +“This is I, the giant.”<br /> +Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief,<br /> +Poisoned with the anonymous words<br /> +Of your clandestine soul.<br /> +To scratch dirt over scandal for money,<br /> +And exhume it to the winds for revenge,<br /> +Or to sell papers,<br /> +Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be,<br /> +To win at any cost, save your own life.<br /> +To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization,<br /> +As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track<br /> +And derails the express train.<br /> +To be an editor, as I was.<br /> +Then to lie here close by the river over the place<br /> +Where the sewage flows from the village,<br /> +And the empty cans and garbage are dumped,<br /> +And abortions are hidden. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC07"></a>Eugene Carman</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Rhodes’ slave! Selling shoes and gingham,<br /> +Flour and bacon, overalls, clothing, all day long<br /> +For fourteen hours a day for three hundred and thirteen days<br /> +For more than twenty years.<br /> +Saying “Yes’m” and “Yes, sir”, and “Thank you”<br /> +A thousand times a day, and all for fifty dollars a month.<br /> +Living in this stinking room in the rattle-trap “Commercial.”<br /> +And compelled to go to Sunday School, and to listen<br /> +To the Rev. Abner Peet one hundred and four times a year<br /> +For more than an hour at a time,<br /> +Because Thomas Rhodes ran the church<br /> +As well as the store and the bank.<br /> +So while I was tying my neck-tie that morning<br /> +I suddenly saw myself in the glass:<br /> +My hair all gray, my face like a sodden pie.<br /> +So I cursed and cursed: You damned old thing<br /> +You cowardly dog! You rotten pauper!<br /> +You Rhodes’ slave! Till Roger Baughman<br /> +Thought I was having a fight with some one,<br /> +And looked through the transom just in time<br /> +To see me fall on the floor in a heap<br /> +From a broken vein in my head. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF02"></a>Clarence Fawcett</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The sudden death of Eugene Carman<br /> +Put me in line to be promoted to fifty dollars a month,<br /> +And I told my wife and children that night.<br /> +But it didn’t come, and so I thought<br /> +Old Rhodes suspected me of stealing<br /> +The blankets I took and sold on the side<br /> +For money to pay a doctor’s bill for my little girl.<br /> +Then like a bolt old Rhodes accused me,<br /> +And promised me mercy for my family’s sake<br /> +If I confessed, and so I confessed,<br /> +And begged him to keep it out of the papers,<br /> +And I asked the editors, too.<br /> +That night at home the constable took me<br /> +And every paper, except the Clarion,<br /> +Wrote me up as a thief<br /> +Because old Rhodes was an advertiser<br /> +And wanted to make an example of me.<br /> +Oh! well, you know how the children cried,<br /> +And how my wife pitied and hated me,<br /> +And how I came to lie here. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS26"></a>W. Lloyd Garrison Standard</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Vegetarian, non-resistant, free-thinker, in ethics a Christian;<br /> +Orator apt at the rhine-stone rhythm of Ingersoll.<br /> +Carnivorous, avenger, believer and pagan.<br /> +Continent, promiscuous, changeable, treacherous, vain,<br /> +Proud, with the pride that makes struggle a thing for laughter;<br /> +With heart cored out by the worm of theatric despair.<br /> +Wearing the coat of indifference to hide the shame of defeat;<br /> +I, child of the abolitionist idealism—<br /> +A sort of <i>Brand</i> in a birth of half-and-half.<br /> +What other thing could happen when I defended<br /> +The patriot scamps who burned the court house<br /> +That Spoon River might have a new one<br /> +Than plead them guilty?<br /> +When Kinsey Keene drove through<br /> +The card-board mask of my life with a spear of light,<br /> +What could I do but slink away, like the beast of myself<br /> +Which I raised from a whelp, to a corner and growl?<br /> +The pyramid of my life was nought but a dune,<br /> +Barren and formless, spoiled at last by the storm. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapN01"></a>Professor Newcomer</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Everyone laughed at Col. Prichard<br /> +For buying an engine so powerful<br /> +That it wrecked itself, and wrecked the grinder<br /> +He ran it with.<br /> +But here is a joke of cosmic size:<br /> +The urge of nature that made a man<br /> +Evolve from his brain a spiritual life—<br /> +Oh miracle of the world!—<br /> +The very same brain with which the ape and wolf<br /> +Get food and shelter and procreate themselves.<br /> +Nature has made man do this,<br /> +In a world where she gives him nothing to do<br /> +After all—(though the strength of his soul goes round<br /> +In a futile waste of power.<br /> +To gear itself to the mills of the gods)—<br /> +But get food and shelter and procreate himself! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapR02"></a>Ralph Rhodes</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +All they said was true:<br /> +I wrecked my father’s bank with my loans<br /> +To dabble in wheat; but this was true—<br /> +I was buying wheat for him as well,<br /> +Who couldn’t margin the deal in his name<br /> +Because of his church relationship.<br /> +And while George Reece was serving his term<br /> +I chased the will-o-the-wisp of women<br /> +And the mockery of wine in New York.<br /> +It’s deathly to sicken of wine and women<br /> +When nothing else is left in life.<br /> +But suppose your head is gray, and bowed<br /> +On a table covered with acrid stubs<br /> +Of cigarettes and empty glasses,<br /> +And a knock is heard, and you know it’s the knock<br /> +So long drowned out by popping corks<br /> +And the pea-cock screams of demireps—<br /> +And you look up, and there’s your Theft,<br /> +Who waited until your head was gray,<br /> +And your heart skipped beats to say to you:<br /> +The game is ended. I’ve called for you,<br /> +Go out on Broadway and be run over,<br /> +They’ll ship you back to Spoon River. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM07"></a>Mickey M’Grew</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +It was just like everything else in life:<br /> +Something outside myself drew me down,<br /> +My own strength never failed me.<br /> +Why, there was the time I earned the money<br /> +With which to go away to school,<br /> +And my father suddenly needed help<br /> +And I had to give him all of it.<br /> +Just so it went till I ended up<br /> +A man-of-all-work in Spoon River.<br /> +Thus when I got the water-tower cleaned,<br /> +And they hauled me up the seventy feet,<br /> +I unhooked the rope from my waist,<br /> +And laughingly flung my giant arms<br /> +Over the smooth steel lips of the top of the tower—<br /> +But they slipped from the treacherous slime,<br /> +And down, down, down, I plunged<br /> +Through bellowing darkness! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapR06"></a>Rosie Roberts</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was sick, but more than that, I was mad<br /> +At the crooked police, and the crooked game of life.<br /> +So I wrote to the Chief of Police at Peoria:<br /> +“I am here in my girlhood home in Spoon River,<br /> +Gradually wasting away.<br /> +But come and take me, I killed the son<br /> +Of the merchant prince, in Madam Lou’s<br /> +And the papers that said he killed himself<br /> +In his home while cleaning a hunting gun—<br /> +Lied like the devil to hush up scandal<br /> +For the bribe of advertising.<br /> +In my room I shot him, at Madam Lou’s,<br /> +Because he knocked me down when I said<br /> +That, in spite of all the money he had,<br /> +I’d see my lover that night.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH19"></a>Oscar Hummel</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I staggered on through darkness,<br /> +There was a hazy sky, a few stars<br /> +Which I followed as best I could.<br /> +It was nine o’clock, I was trying to get home.<br /> +But somehow I was lost,<br /> +Though really keeping the road.<br /> +Then I reeled through a gate and into a yard,<br /> +And called at the top of my voice:<br /> +“Oh, Fiddler! Oh, Mr. Jones!”<br /> +(I thought it was his house and he would show me the way home. )<br /> +But who should step out but A. D. Blood,<br /> +In his night shirt, waving a stick of wood,<br /> +And roaring about the cursed saloons,<br /> +And the criminals they made?<br /> +“You drunken Oscar Hummel,” he said,<br /> +As I stood there weaving to and fro,<br /> +Taking the blows from the stick in his hand<br /> +Till I dropped down dead at his feet. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT07"></a>Josiah Tompkins</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was well known and much beloved<br /> +And rich, as fortunes are reckoned<br /> +In Spoon River, where I had lived and worked.<br /> +That was the home for me,<br /> +Though all my children had flown afar—<br /> +Which is the way of Nature—all but one.<br /> +The boy, who was the baby, stayed at home,<br /> +To be my help in my failing years<br /> +And the solace of his mother.<br /> +But I grew weaker, as he grew stronger,<br /> +And he quarreled with me about the business,<br /> +And his wife said I was a hindrance to it;<br /> +And he won his mother to see as he did,<br /> +Till they tore me up to be transplanted<br /> +With them to her girlhood home in Missouri.<br /> +And so much of my fortune was gone at last,<br /> +Though I made the will just as he drew it,<br /> +He profited little by it. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP14"></a>Roscoe Purkapile</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +She loved me.<br /> +Oh! how she loved me I never had a chance to escape<br /> +From the day she first saw me.<br /> +But then after we were married I thought<br /> +She might prove her mortality and let me out,<br /> +Or she might divorce me. But few die, none resign.<br /> +Then I ran away and was gone a year on a lark.<br /> +But she never complained. She said all would be well<br /> +That I would return. And I did return.<br /> +I told her that while taking a row in a boat<br /> +I had been captured near Van Buren Street<br /> +By pirates on Lake Michigan,<br /> +And kept in chains, so I could not write her.<br /> +She cried and kissed me, and said it was cruel,<br /> +Outrageous, inhuman! I then concluded our marriage<br /> +Was a divine dispensation<br /> +And could not be dissolved,<br /> +Except by death.<br /> +I was right. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP13"></a>Mrs. Purkapile</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +He ran away and was gone for a year.<br /> +When he came home he told me the silly story<br /> +Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan<br /> +And kept in chains so he could not write me.<br /> +I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well<br /> +What he was doing, and that he met<br /> +The milliner, Mrs. Williams, now and then<br /> +When she went to the city to buy goods, as she said.<br /> +But a promise is a promise<br /> +And marriage is marriage,<br /> +And out of respect for my own character<br /> +I refused to be drawn into a divorce<br /> +By the scheme of a husband who had merely grown tired<br /> +Of his marital vow and duty. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK04"></a>Mrs. Kessler</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Mr. Kessler, you know, was in the army,<br /> +And he drew six dollars a month as a pension,<br /> +And stood on the corner talking politics,<br /> +Or sat at home reading Grant’s Memoirs;<br /> +And I supported the family by washing,<br /> +Learning the secrets of all the people<br /> +From their curtains, counterpanes, shirts and skirts.<br /> +For things that are new grow old at length,<br /> +They’re replaced with better or none at all:<br /> +People are prospering or falling back.<br /> +And rents and patches widen with time;<br /> +No thread or needle can pace decay,<br /> +And there are stains that baffle soap,<br /> +And there are colors that run in spite of you,<br /> +Blamed though you are for spoiling a dress.<br /> +Handkerchiefs, napery, have their secrets—<br /> +The laundress, Life, knows all about it.<br /> +And I, who went to all the funerals<br /> +Held in Spoon River, swear I never<br /> +Saw a dead face without thinking it looked<br /> +Like something washed and ironed. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW08"></a>Harmon Whitney</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Out of the lights and roar of cities,<br /> +Drifting down like a spark in Spoon River,<br /> +Burnt out with the fire of drink, and broken,<br /> +The paramour of a woman I took in self-contempt,<br /> +But to hide a wounded pride as well.<br /> +To be judged and loathed by a village of little minds—<br /> +I, gifted with tongues and wisdom,<br /> +Sunk here to the dust of the justice court,<br /> +A picker of rags in the rubbage of spites and wrongs,—<br /> +I, whom fortune smiled on!<br /> +I in a village,<br /> +Spouting to gaping yokels pages of verse,<br /> +Out of the lore of golden years,<br /> +Or raising a laugh with a flash of filthy wit<br /> +When they bought the drinks to kindle my dying mind.<br /> +To be judged by you,<br /> +The soul of me hidden from you,<br /> +With its wound gangrened<br /> +By love for a wife who made the wound,<br /> +With her cold white bosom, treasonous, pure and hard,<br /> +Relentless to the last, when the touch of her hand,<br /> +At any time, might have cured me of the typhus,<br /> +Caught in the jungle of life where many are lost.<br /> +And only to think that my soul could not react,<br /> +Like Byron’s did, in song, in something noble,<br /> +But turned on itself like a tortured snake—judge me this way,<br /> +O world. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK03"></a>Bert Kessler</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I winged my bird,<br /> +Though he flew toward the setting sun;<br /> +But just as the shot rang out, he soared<br /> +Up and up through the splinters of golden light,<br /> +Till he turned right over, feathers ruffled,<br /> +With some of the down of him floating near,<br /> +And fell like a plummet into the grass.<br /> +I tramped about, parting the tangles,<br /> +Till I saw a splash of blood on a stump,<br /> +And the quail lying close to the rotten roots.<br /> +I reached my hand, but saw no brier,<br /> +But something pricked and stung and numbed it.<br /> +And then, in a second, I spied the rattler—<br /> +The shutters wide in his yellow eyes,<br /> +The head of him arched, sunk back in the rings of him,<br /> +A circle of filth, the color of ashes,<br /> +Or oak leaves bleached under layers of leaves.<br /> +I stood like a stone as he shrank and uncoiled<br /> +And started to crawl beneath the stump,<br /> +When I fell limp in the grass. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH22"></a>Lambert Hutchins</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I have two monuments besides this granite obelisk:<br /> +One, the house I built on the hill,<br /> +With its spires, bay windows, and roof of slate.<br /> +The other, the lake-front in Chicago,<br /> +Where the railroad keeps a switching yard,<br /> +With whistling engines and crunching wheels<br /> +And smoke and soot thrown over the city,<br /> +And the crash of cars along the boulevard,—<br /> +A blot like a hog-pen on the harbor<br /> +Of a great metropolis, foul as a sty.<br /> +I helped to give this heritage<br /> +To generations yet unborn, with my vote<br /> +In the House of Representatives,<br /> +And the lure of the thing was to be at rest<br /> +From the never—ending fright of need,<br /> +And to give my daughters gentle breeding,<br /> +And a sense of security in life.<br /> +But, you see, though I had the mansion house<br /> +And traveling passes and local distinction,<br /> +I could hear the whispers, whispers, whispers,<br /> +Wherever I went, and my daughters grew up<br /> +With a look as if some one were about to strike them;<br /> +And they married madly, helter-skelter,<br /> +Just to get out and have a change.<br /> +And what was the whole of the business worth?<br /> +Why, it wasn’t worth a damn! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS27"></a>Lillian Stewart</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was the daughter of Lambert Hutchins,<br /> +Born in a cottage near the grist-mill,<br /> +Reared in the mansion there on the hill,<br /> +With its spires, bay-windows, and roof of slate.<br /> +How proud my mother was of the mansion<br /> +How proud of father’s rise in the world!<br /> +And how my father loved and watched us,<br /> +And guarded our happiness.<br /> +But I believe the house was a curse,<br /> +For father’s fortune was little beside it;<br /> +And when my husband found he had married<br /> +A girl who was really poor,<br /> +He taunted me with the spires,<br /> +And called the house a fraud on the world,<br /> +A treacherous lure to young men, raising hopes<br /> +Of a dowry not to be had;<br /> +And a man while selling his vote<br /> +Should get enough from the people’s betrayal<br /> +To wall the whole of his family in.<br /> +He vexed my life till I went back home<br /> +And lived like an old maid till I died,<br /> +Keeping house for father. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapR05"></a>Hortense Robbins</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +My name used to be in the papers daily<br /> +As having dined somewhere,<br /> +Or traveled somewhere,<br /> +Or rented a house in Paris,<br /> +Where I entertained the nobility.<br /> +I was forever eating or traveling,<br /> +Or taking the cure at Baden-Baden.<br /> +Now I am here to do honor<br /> +To Spoon River, here beside the family whence I sprang.<br /> +No one cares now where I dined,<br /> +Or lived, or whom I entertained,<br /> +Or how often I took the cure at Baden-Baden. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapD05"></a>Batterton Dobyns</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Did my widow flit about<br /> +From Mackinac to Los Angeles,<br /> +Resting and bathing and sitting an hour<br /> +Or more at the table over soup and meats<br /> +And delicate sweets and coffee?<br /> +I was cut down in my prime<br /> +From overwork and anxiety.<br /> +But I thought all along, whatever happens<br /> +I’ve kept my insurance up,<br /> +And there’s something in the bank,<br /> +And a section of land in Manitoba.<br /> +But just as I slipped I had a vision<br /> +In a last delirium:<br /> +I saw myself lying nailed in a box<br /> +With a white lawn tie and a boutonnière,<br /> +And my wife was sitting by a window<br /> +Some place afar overlooking the sea;<br /> +She seemed so rested, ruddy and fat,<br /> +Although her hair was white.<br /> +And she smiled and said to a colored waiter:<br /> +“Another slice of roast beef, George.<br /> +Here’s a nickel for your trouble.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG04"></a>Jacob Godbey</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +How did you feel, you libertarians,<br /> +Who spent your talents rallying noble reasons<br /> +Around the saloon, as if Liberty<br /> +Was not to be found anywhere except at the bar<br /> +Or at a table, guzzling?<br /> +How did you feel, Ben Pantier, and the rest of you,<br /> +Who almost stoned me for a tyrant<br /> +Garbed as a moralist,<br /> +And as a wry-faced ascetic frowning upon Yorkshire pudding,<br /> +Roast beef and ale and good will and rosy cheer—<br /> +Things you never saw in a grog-shop in your life?<br /> +How did you feel after I was dead and gone,<br /> +And your goddess, Liberty, unmasked as a strumpet,<br /> +Selling out the streets of Spoon River<br /> +To the insolent giants<br /> +Who manned the saloons from afar?<br /> +Did it occur to you that personal liberty<br /> +Is liberty of the mind,<br /> +Rather than of the belly? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS16"></a>Walter Simmons</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +My parents thought that I would be<br /> +As great as Edison or greater:<br /> +For as a boy I made balloons<br /> +And wondrous kites and toys with clocks<br /> +And little engines with tracks to run on<br /> +And telephones of cans and thread.<br /> +I played the cornet and painted pictures,<br /> +Modeled in clay and took the part<br /> +Of the villain in the “Octoroon.”<br /> +But then at twenty-one I married<br /> +And had to live, and so, to live<br /> +I learned the trade of making watches<br /> +And kept the jewelry store on the square,<br /> +Thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking,—<br /> +Not of business, but of the engine<br /> +I studied the calculus to build.<br /> +And all Spoon River watched and waited<br /> +To see it work, but it never worked.<br /> +And a few kind souls believed my genius<br /> +Was somehow hampered by the store.<br /> +It wasn’t true.<br /> +The truth was this:<br /> +I did not have the brains. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB06"></a>Tom Beatty</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was a lawyer like Harmon Whitney<br /> +Or Kinsey Keene or Garrison Standard,<br /> +For I tried the rights of property,<br /> +Although by lamp-light, for thirty years,<br /> +In that poker room in the opera house.<br /> +And I say to you that Life’s a gambler<br /> +Head and shoulders above us all.<br /> +No mayor alive can close the house.<br /> +And if you lose, you can squeal as you will;<br /> +You’ll not get back your money.<br /> +He makes the percentage hard to conquer;<br /> +He stacks the cards to catch your weakness<br /> +And not to meet your strength.<br /> +And he gives you seventy years to play:<br /> +For if you cannot win in seventy<br /> +You cannot win at all.<br /> +So, if you lose, get out of the room—<br /> +Get out of the room when your time is up.<br /> +It’s mean to sit and fumble the cards<br /> +And curse your losses, leaden-eyed,<br /> +Whining to try and try. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB20"></a>Roy Butler</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +If the learned Supreme Court of Illinois<br /> +Got at the secret of every case<br /> +As well as it does a case of rape<br /> +It would be the greatest court in the world.<br /> +A jury, of neighbors mostly, with “Butch” Weldy<br /> +As foreman, found me guilty in ten minutes<br /> +And two ballots on a case like this:<br /> +Richard Bandle and I had trouble over a fence<br /> +And my wife and Mrs. Bandle quarreled<br /> +As to whether Ipava was a finer town than Table Grove.<br /> +I awoke one morning with the love of God<br /> +Brimming over my heart, so I went to see Richard<br /> +To settle the fence in the spirit of Jesus Christ.<br /> +I knocked on the door, and his wife opened;<br /> +She smiled and asked me in.<br /> +I entered— She slammed the door and began to scream,<br /> +“Take your hands off, you low down varlet!”<br /> +Just then her husband entered.<br /> +I waved my hands, choked up with words.<br /> +He went for his gun, and I ran out.<br /> +But neither the Supreme Court nor my wife<br /> +Believed a word she said. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF06"></a>Searcy Foote</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I wanted to go away to college<br /> +But rich Aunt Persis wouldn’t help me.<br /> +So I made gardens and raked the lawns<br /> +And bought John Alden’s books with my earnings<br /> +And toiled for the very means of life.<br /> +I wanted to marry Delia Prickett,<br /> +But how could I do it with what I earned?<br /> +And there was Aunt Persis more than seventy<br /> +Who sat in a wheel-chair half alive<br /> +With her throat so paralyzed, when she swallowed<br /> +The soup ran out of her mouth like a duck—<br /> +A gourmand yet, investing her income<br /> +In mortgages, fretting all the time<br /> +About her notes and rents and papers.<br /> +That day I was sawing wood for her,<br /> +And reading Proudhon in between.<br /> +I went in the house for a drink of water,<br /> +And there she sat asleep in her chair,<br /> +And Proudhon lying on the table,<br /> +And a bottle of chloroform on the book,<br /> +She used sometimes for an aching tooth!<br /> +I poured the chloroform on a handkerchief<br /> +And held it to her nose till she died.—<br /> +Oh Delia, Delia, you and Proudhon<br /> +Steadied my hand, and the coroner<br /> +Said she died of heart failure.<br /> +I married Delia and got the money—<br /> +A joke on you, Spoon River? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP10"></a>Edmund Pollard</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I would I had thrust my hands of flesh<br /> +Into the disk-flowers bee-infested,<br /> +Into the mirror-like core of fire<br /> +Of the light of life, the sun of delight.<br /> +For what are anthers worth or petals<br /> +Or halo-rays? Mockeries, shadows<br /> +Of the heart of the flower, the central flame<br /> +All is yours, young passer-by;<br /> +Enter the banquet room with the thought;<br /> +Don’t sidle in as if you were doubtful<br /> +Whether you’re welcome—the feast is yours!<br /> +Nor take but a little, refusing more<br /> +With a bashful “Thank you”, when you’re hungry.<br /> +Is your soul alive? Then let it feed!<br /> +Leave no balconies where you can climb;<br /> +Nor milk-white bosoms where you can rest;<br /> +Nor golden heads with pillows to share;<br /> +Nor wine cups while the wine is sweet;<br /> +Nor ecstasies of body or soul,<br /> +You will die, no doubt, but die while living<br /> +In depths of azure, rapt and mated,<br /> +Kissing the queen-bee, Life! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT09"></a>Thomas Trevelyan</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Reading in Ovid the sorrowful story of Itys,<br /> +Son of the love of Tereus and Procne, slain<br /> +For the guilty passion of Tereus for Philomela,<br /> +The flesh of him served to Tereus by Procne,<br /> +And the wrath of Tereus, the murderess pursuing<br /> +Till the gods made Philomela a nightingale,<br /> +Lute of the rising moon, and Procne a swallow<br /> +Oh livers and artists of Hellas centuries gone,<br /> +Sealing in little thuribles dreams and wisdom,<br /> +Incense beyond all price, forever fragrant,<br /> +A breath whereof makes clear the eyes of the soul<br /> +How I inhaled its sweetness here in Spoon River!<br /> +The thurible opening when I had lived and learned<br /> +How all of us kill the children of love, and all of us,<br /> +Knowing not what we do, devour their flesh;<br /> +And all of us change to singers, although it be<br /> +But once in our lives, or change—alas!—to swallows,<br /> +To twitter amid cold winds and falling leaves! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS09"></a>Percival Sharp</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Observe the clasped hands!<br /> +Are they hands of farewell or greeting,<br /> +Hands that I helped or hands that helped me?<br /> +Would it not be well to carve a hand<br /> +With an inverted thumb, like Elagabalus?<br /> +And yonder is a broken chain,<br /> +The weakest-link idea perhaps—<br /> +But what was it?<br /> +And lambs, some lying down,<br /> +Others standing, as if listening to the shepherd—<br /> +Others bearing a cross, one foot lifted up—<br /> +Why not chisel a few shambles?<br /> +And fallen columns!<br /> +Carve the pedestal, please,<br /> +Or the foundations; let us see the cause of the fall.<br /> +And compasses and mathematical instruments,<br /> +In irony of the under tenants, ignorance<br /> +Of determinants and the calculus of variations.<br /> +And anchors, for those who never sailed.<br /> +And gates ajar—yes, so they were;<br /> +You left them open and stray goats entered your garden.<br /> +And an eye watching like one of the Arimaspi—<br /> +So did you—with one eye.<br /> +And angels blowing trumpets—you are heralded—<br /> +It is your horn and your angel and your family’s estimate.<br /> +It is all very well, but for myself<br /> +I know I stirred certain vibrations in Spoon River<br /> +Which are my true epitaph, more lasting than stone. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS02"></a>Hiram Scates</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I tried to win the nomination<br /> +For president of the County-board<br /> +And I made speeches all over the County<br /> +Denouncing Solomon Purple, my rival,<br /> +As an enemy of the people,<br /> +In league with the master-foes of man.<br /> +Young idealists, broken warriors,<br /> +Hobbling on one crutch of hope,<br /> +Souls that stake their all on the truth,<br /> +Losers of worlds at heaven’s bidding,<br /> +Flocked about me and followed my voice<br /> +As the savior of the County.<br /> +But Solomon won the nomination;<br /> +And then I faced about,<br /> +And rallied my followers to his standard,<br /> +And made him victor, made him King<br /> +Of the Golden Mountain with the door<br /> +Which closed on my heels just as I entered,<br /> +Flattered by Solomon’s invitation,<br /> +To be the County—board’s secretary.<br /> +And out in the cold stood all my followers:<br /> +Young idealists, broken warriors<br /> +Hobbling on one crutch of hope—<br /> +Souls that staked their all on the truth,<br /> +Losers of worlds at heaven’s bidding,<br /> +Watching the Devil kick the Millennium<br /> +Over the Golden Mountain. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP09"></a>Peleg Poague</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Horses and men are just alike.<br /> +There was my stallion, Billy Lee,<br /> +Black as a cat and trim as a deer,<br /> +With an eye of fire, keen to start,<br /> +And he could hit the fastest speed<br /> +Of any racer around Spoon River.<br /> +But just as you’d think he couldn’t lose,<br /> +With his lead of fifty yards or more,<br /> +He’d rear himself and throw the rider,<br /> +And fall back over, tangled up,<br /> +Completely gone to pieces.<br /> +You see he was a perfect fraud:<br /> +He couldn’t win, he couldn’t work,<br /> +He was too light to haul or plow with,<br /> +And no one wanted colts from him.<br /> +And when I tried to drive him—well,<br /> +He ran away and killed me. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH06"></a>Jeduthan Hawley</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +There would be a knock at the door<br /> +And I would arise at midnight and go to the shop,<br /> +Where belated travelers would hear me hammering<br /> +Sepulchral boards and tacking satin.<br /> +And often I wondered who would go with me<br /> +To the distant land, our names the theme<br /> +For talk, in the same week, for I’ve observed<br /> +Two always go together.<br /> +Chase Henry was paired with Edith Conant;<br /> +And Jonathan Somers with Willie Metcalf;<br /> +And Editor Hamblin with Francis Turner,<br /> +When he prayed to live longer than Editor Whedon,<br /> +And Thomas Rhodes with widow McFarlane;<br /> +And Emily Sparks with Barry Holden;<br /> +And Oscar Hummel with Davis Matlock;<br /> +And Editor Whedon with Fiddler Jones;<br /> +And Faith Matheny with Dorcas Gustine.<br /> +And I, the solemnest man in town,<br /> +Stepped off with Daisy Fraser. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM20"></a>Abel Melveny</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I bought every kind of machine that’s known—<br /> +Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers,<br /> +Mills and rakes and ploughs and threshers—<br /> +And all of them stood in the rain and sun,<br /> +Getting rusted, warped and battered,<br /> +For I had no sheds to store them in,<br /> +And no use for most of them.<br /> +And toward the last, when I thought it over,<br /> +There by my window, growing clearer<br /> +About myself, as my pulse slowed down,<br /> +And looked at one of the mills I bought—<br /> +Which I didn’t have the slightest need of,<br /> +As things turned out, and I never ran—<br /> +A fine machine, once brightly varnished,<br /> +And eager to do its work,<br /> +Now with its paint washed off—<br /> +I saw myself as a good machine<br /> +That Life had never used. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT14"></a>Oaks Tutt</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +My mother was for woman’s rights<br /> +And my father was the rich miller at London Mills.<br /> +I dreamed of the wrongs of the world and wanted to right them.<br /> +When my father died, I set out to see peoples and countries<br /> +In order to learn how to reform the world.<br /> +I traveled through many lands. I saw the ruins of Rome<br /> +And the ruins of Athens, And the ruins of Thebes.<br /> +And I sat by moonlight amid the necropolis of Memphis.<br /> +There I was caught up by wings of flame,<br /> +And a voice from heaven said to me:<br /> +“Injustice, Untruth destroyed them.<br /> +Go forth Preach Justice! Preach Truth!”<br /> +And I hastened back to Spoon River<br /> +To say farewell to my mother before beginning my work.<br /> +They all saw a strange light in my eye.<br /> +And by and by, when I talked, they discovered<br /> +What had come in my mind.<br /> +Then Jonathan Swift Somers challenged me to debate<br /> +The subject, (I taking the negative):<br /> +“Pontius Pilate, the Greatest Philosopher of the World.”<br /> +And he won the debate by saying at last,<br /> +“Before you reform the world, Mr. Tutt<br /> +Please answer the question of Pontius Pilate:<br /> +“What is Truth?” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH05"></a>Elliott Hawkins</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I looked like Abraham Lincoln.<br /> +I was one of you, Spoon River, in all fellowship,<br /> +But standing for the rights of property and for order.<br /> +A regular church attendant,<br /> +Sometimes appearing in your town meetings to warn you<br /> +Against the evils of discontent and envy<br /> +And to denounce those who tried to destroy the Union,<br /> +And to point to the peril of the Knights of Labor.<br /> +My success and my example are inevitable influences<br /> +In your young men and in generations to come,<br /> +In spite of attacks of newspapers like the <i>Clarion;</i><br /> +A regular visitor at Springfield<br /> +When the Legislature was in session<br /> +To prevent raids upon the railroads<br /> +And the men building up the state.<br /> +Trusted by them and by you, Spoon River, equally<br /> +In spite of the whispers that I was a lobbyist.<br /> +Moving quietly through the world, rich and courted.<br /> +Dying at last, of course, but lying here<br /> +Under a stone with an open book carved upon it<br /> +And the words <i>“Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”</i><br /> +And now, you world-savers, who reaped nothing in life<br /> +And in death have neither stones nor epitaphs,<br /> +How do you like your silence from mouths stopped<br /> +With the dust of my triumphant career? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapJ04"></a>Voltaire Johnson</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Why did you bruise me with your rough places<br /> +If you did not want me to tell you about them?<br /> +And stifle me with your stupidities,<br /> +If you did not want me to expose them?<br /> +And nail me with the nails of cruelty,<br /> +If you did not want me to pluck the nails forth<br /> +And fling them in your faces?<br /> +And starve me because I refused to obey you,<br /> +If you did not want me to undermine your tyranny?<br /> +I might have been as soul serene<br /> +As William Wordsworth except for you!<br /> +But what a coward you are, Spoon River,<br /> +When you drove me to stand in a magic circle<br /> +By the sword of Truth described!<br /> +And then to whine and curse your burns,<br /> +And curse my power who stood and laughed<br /> +Amid ironical lightning! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT04"></a>English Thornton</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Here! You sons of the men<br /> +Who fought with Washington at Valley Forge,<br /> +And whipped Black Hawk at Starved Rock,<br /> +Arise! Do battle with the descendants of those<br /> +Who bought land in the loop when it was waste sand,<br /> +And sold blankets and guns to the army of Grant,<br /> +And sat in legislatures in the early days,<br /> +Taking bribes from the railroads!<br /> +Arise! Do battle with the fops and bluffs,<br /> +The pretenders and figurantes of the society column<br /> +And the yokel souls whose daughters marry counts;<br /> +And the parasites on great ideas,<br /> +And the noisy riders of great causes,<br /> +And the heirs of ancient thefts.<br /> +Arise! And make the city yours,<br /> +And the State yours—<br /> +You who are sons of the hardy yeomanry of the forties!<br /> +By God! If you do not destroy these vermin<br /> +My avenging ghost will wipe out<br /> +Your city and your state. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapD08"></a>Enoch Dunlap</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +How many times, during the twenty years<br /> +I was your leader, friends of Spoon River,<br /> +Did you neglect the convention and caucus,<br /> +And leave the burden on my hands<br /> +Of guarding and saving the people’s cause?—<br /> +Sometimes because you were ill;<br /> +Or your grandmother was ill;<br /> +Or you drank too much and fell asleep;<br /> +Or else you said: “He is our leader,<br /> +All will be well; he fights for us;<br /> +We have nothing to do but follow.”<br /> +But oh, how you cursed me when I fell,<br /> +And cursed me, saying I had betrayed you,<br /> +In leaving the caucus room for a moment,<br /> +When the people’s enemies, there assembled,<br /> +Waited and watched for a chance to destroy<br /> +The Sacred Rights of the People.<br /> +You common rabble! I left the caucus<br /> +To go to the urinal. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF11"></a>Ida Frickey</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Nothing in life is alien to you:<br /> +I was a penniless girl from Summum<br /> +Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River.<br /> +All the houses stood before me with closed doors<br /> +And drawn shades—I was barred out;<br /> +I had no place or part in any of them.<br /> +And I walked past the old McNeely mansion,<br /> +A castle of stone ’mid walks and gardens<br /> +With workmen about the place on guard<br /> +And the County and State upholding it<br /> +For its lordly owner, full of pride.<br /> +I was so hungry I had a vision:<br /> +I saw a giant pair of scissors<br /> +Dip from the sky, like the beam of a dredge,<br /> +And cut the house in two like a curtain.<br /> +But at the “Commercial” I saw a man<br /> +Who winked at me as I asked for work—<br /> +It was Wash McNeely’s son.<br /> +He proved the link in the chain of title<br /> +To half my ownership of the mansion,<br /> +Through a breach of promise suit—the scissors.<br /> +So, you see, the house, from the day I was born,<br /> +Was only waiting for me. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC16"></a>Seth Compton</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +When I died, the circulating library<br /> +Which I built up for Spoon River,<br /> +And managed for the good of inquiring minds,<br /> +Was sold at auction on the public square,<br /> +As if to destroy the last vestige<br /> +Of my memory and influence.<br /> +For those of you who could not see the virtue<br /> +Of knowing Volney’s “Ruins” as well as Butler’s “Analogy”<br /> +And “Faust” as well as “Evangeline,”<br /> +Were really the power in the village,<br /> +And often you asked me<br /> +“What is the use of knowing the evil in the world?”<br /> +I am out of your way now, Spoon River,<br /> +Choose your own good and call it good.<br /> +For I could never make you see<br /> +That no one knows what is good<br /> +Who knows not what is evil;<br /> +And no one knows what is true<br /> +Who knows not what is false. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS04"></a>Felix Schmidt</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +It was only a little house of two rooms—<br /> +Almost like a child’s play-house—<br /> +With scarce five acres of ground around it;<br /> +And I had so many children to feed<br /> +And school and clothe, and a wife who was sick<br /> +From bearing children.<br /> +One day lawyer Whitney came along<br /> +And proved to me that Christian Dallman,<br /> +Who owned three thousand acres of land,<br /> +Had bought the eighty that adjoined me<br /> +In eighteen hundred and seventy-one<br /> +For eleven dollars, at a sale for taxes,<br /> +While my father lay in his mortal illness.<br /> +So the quarrel arose and I went to law.<br /> +But when we came to the proof,<br /> +A survey of the land showed clear as day<br /> +That Dallman’s tax deed covered my ground<br /> +And my little house of two rooms.<br /> +It served me right for stirring him up.<br /> +I lost my case and lost my place.<br /> +I left the court room and went to work<br /> +As Christian Dallman’s tenant. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS05"></a>Schrœder The Fisherman</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I sat on the bank above Bernadotte<br /> +And dropped crumbs in the water,<br /> +Just to see the minnows bump each other,<br /> +Until the strongest got the prize.<br /> +Or I went to my little pasture,<br /> +Where the peaceful swine were asleep in the wallow,<br /> +Or nosing each other lovingly,<br /> +And emptied a basket of yellow corn,<br /> +And watched them push and squeal and bite,<br /> +And trample each other to get the corn.<br /> +And I saw how Christian Dallman’s farm,<br /> +Of more than three thousand acres,<br /> +Swallowed the patch of Felix Schmidt,<br /> +As a bass will swallow a minnow<br /> +And I say if there’s anything in man—<br /> +Spirit, or conscience, or breath of God<br /> +That makes him different from fishes or hogs,<br /> +I’d like to see it work! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB13"></a>Richard Bone</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +When I first came to Spoon River<br /> +I did not know whether what they told me<br /> +Was true or false.<br /> +They would bring me the epitaph<br /> +And stand around the shop while I worked<br /> +And say “He was so kind,” “He was so wonderful,”<br /> +“She was the sweetest woman,” “He was a consistent Christian.”<br /> +And I chiseled for them whatever they wished,<br /> +All in ignorance of the truth.<br /> +But later, as I lived among the people here,<br /> +I knew how near to the life<br /> +Were the epitaphs that were ordered for them as they died.<br /> +But still I chiseled whatever they paid me to chisel<br /> +And made myself party to the false chronicles<br /> +Of the stones,<br /> +Even as the historian does who writes<br /> +Without knowing the truth,<br /> +Or because he is influenced to hide it. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapD02"></a>Silas Dement</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +It was moon-light, and the earth sparkled<br /> +With new-fallen frost.<br /> +It was midnight and not a soul abroad.<br /> +Out of the chimney of the court-house<br /> +A gray-hound of smoke leapt and chased<br /> +The northwest wind.<br /> +I carried a ladder to the landing of the stairs<br /> +And leaned it against the frame of the trap-door<br /> +In the ceiling of the portico,<br /> +And I crawled under the roof and amid the rafters<br /> +And flung among the seasoned timbers<br /> +A lighted handful of oil-soaked waste.<br /> +Then I came down and slunk away.<br /> +In a little while the fire-bell rang—<br /> +Clang! Clang! Clang!<br /> +And the Spoon River ladder company<br /> +Came with a dozen buckets and began to pour water<br /> +On the glorious bon-fire, growing hotter<br /> +Higher and brighter, till the walls fell in<br /> +And the limestone columns where Lincoln stood<br /> +Crashed like trees when the woodman fells them.<br /> +When I came back from Joliet<br /> +There was a new court house with a dome.<br /> +For I was punished like all who destroy<br /> +The past for the sake of the future. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS17"></a>Dillard Sissman</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The buzzards wheel slowly<br /> +In wide circles, in a sky<br /> +Faintly hazed as from dust from the road.<br /> +And a wind sweeps through the pasture where I lie<br /> +Beating the grass into long waves.<br /> +My kite is above the wind,<br /> +Though now and then it wobbles,<br /> +Like a man shaking his shoulders;<br /> +And the tail streams out momentarily,<br /> +Then sinks to rest.<br /> +And the buzzards wheel and wheel,<br /> +Sweeping the zenith with wide circles<br /> +Above my kite. And the hills sleep.<br /> +And a farm house, white as snow,<br /> +Peeps from green trees—far away.<br /> +And I watch my kite,<br /> +For the thin moon will kindle herself ere long,<br /> +Then she will swing like a pendulum dial<br /> +To the tail of my kite.<br /> +A spurt of flame like a water-dragon<br /> +Dazzles my eyes—<br /> +I am shaken as a banner! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH16"></a>Jonathan Houghton</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +There is the caw of a crow,<br /> +And the hesitant song of a thrush.<br /> +There is the tinkle of a cowbell far away,<br /> +And the voice of a plowman on Shipley’s hill.<br /> +The forest beyond the orchard is still<br /> +With midsummer stillness;<br /> +And along the road a wagon chuckles,<br /> +Loaded with corn, going to Atterbury.<br /> +And an old man sits under a tree asleep,<br /> +And an old woman crosses the road,<br /> +Coming from the orchard with a bucket of blackberries.<br /> +And a boy lies in the grass<br /> +Near the feet of the old man,<br /> +And looks up at the sailing clouds,<br /> +And longs, and longs, and longs<br /> +For what, he knows not:<br /> +For manhood, for life, for the unknown world!<br /> +Then thirty years passed,<br /> +And the boy returned worn out by life<br /> +And found the orchard vanished,<br /> +And the forest gone,<br /> +And the house made over,<br /> +And the roadway filled with dust from automobiles—<br /> +And himself desiring The Hill! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC18"></a>E. C. Culbertson</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Is it true, Spoon River,<br /> +That in the hall—way of the New Court House<br /> +There is a tablet of bronze<br /> +Containing the embossed faces<br /> +Of Editor Whedon and Thomas Rhodes?<br /> +And is it true that my successful labors<br /> +In the County Board, without which<br /> +Not one stone would have been placed on another,<br /> +And the contributions out of my own pocket<br /> +To build the temple, are but memories among the people,<br /> +Gradually fading away, and soon to descend<br /> +With them to this oblivion where I lie?<br /> +In truth, I can so believe.<br /> +For it is a law of the Kingdom of Heaven<br /> +That whoso enters the vineyard at the eleventh hour<br /> +Shall receive a full day’s pay.<br /> +And it is a law of the Kingdom of this World<br /> +That those who first oppose a good work<br /> +Seize it and make it their own,<br /> +When the corner—stone is laid,<br /> +And memorial tablets are erected. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapD09"></a>Shack Dye</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The white men played all sorts of jokes on me.<br /> +They took big fish off my hook<br /> +And put little ones on, while I was away<br /> +Getting a stringer, and made me believe<br /> +I hadn’t seen aright the fish I had caught.<br /> +When Burr Robbins circus came to town<br /> +They got the ring master to let a tame leopard<br /> +Into the ring, and made me believe<br /> +I was whipping a wild beast like Samson<br /> +When I, for an offer of fifty dollars,<br /> +Dragged him out to his cage.<br /> +One time I entered my blacksmith shop<br /> +And shook as I saw some horse-shoes crawling<br /> +Across the floor, as if alive—<br /> +Walter Simmons had put a magnet<br /> +Under the barrel of water.<br /> +Yet everyone of you, you white men,<br /> +Was fooled about fish and about leopards too,<br /> +And you didn’t know any more than the horse-shoes did<br /> +What moved you about Spoon River. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT12"></a>Hildrup Tubbs</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I made two fights for the people.<br /> +First I left my party, bearing the gonfalon<br /> +Of independence, for reform, and was defeated.<br /> +Next I used my rebel strength<br /> +To capture the standard of my old party—<br /> +And I captured it, but I was defeated.<br /> +Discredited and discarded, misanthropical,<br /> +I turned to the solace of gold<br /> +And I used my remnant of power<br /> +To fasten myself like a saprophyte<br /> +Upon the putrescent carcass<br /> +Of Thomas Rhodes, bankrupt bank,<br /> +As assignee of the fund.<br /> +Everyone now turned from me.<br /> +My hair grew white,<br /> +My purple lusts grew gray,<br /> +Tobacco and whisky lost their savor<br /> +And for years Death ignored me<br /> +As he does a hog. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT11"></a>Henry Tripp</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The bank broke and I lost my savings.<br /> +I was sick of the tiresome game in Spoon River<br /> +And I made up my mind to run away<br /> +And leave my place in life and my family;<br /> +But just as the midnight train pulled in,<br /> +Quick off the steps jumped Cully Green<br /> +And Martin Vise, and began to fight<br /> +To settle their ancient rivalry,<br /> +Striking each other with fists that sounded<br /> +Like the blows of knotted clubs.<br /> +Now it seemed to me that Cully was winning,<br /> +When his bloody face broke into a grin<br /> +Of sickly cowardice, leaning on Martin<br /> +And whining out “We’re good friends, Mart,<br /> +You know that I’m your friend.”<br /> +But a terrible punch from Martin knocked him<br /> +Around and around and into a heap.<br /> +And then they arrested me as a witness,<br /> +And I lost my train and staid in Spoon River<br /> +To wage my battle of life to the end.<br /> +Oh, Cully Green, you were my savior—<br /> +You, so ashamed and drooped for years,<br /> +Loitering listless about the streets,<br /> +And tying rags round your festering soul,<br /> +Who failed to fight it out. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC03"></a>Granville Calhoun</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I wanted to be County Judge<br /> +One more term, so as to round out a service<br /> +Of thirty years.<br /> +But my friends left me and joined my enemies,<br /> +And they elected a new man.<br /> +Then a spirit of revenge seized me,<br /> +And I infected my four sons with it,<br /> +And I brooded upon retaliation,<br /> +Until the great physician, Nature,<br /> +Smote me through with paralysis<br /> +To give my soul and body a rest.<br /> +Did my sons get power and money?<br /> +Did they serve the people or yoke them,<br /> +To till and harvest fields of self?<br /> +For how could they ever forget<br /> +My face at my bed-room window,<br /> +Sitting helpless amid my golden cages<br /> +Of singing canaries,<br /> +Looking at the old court-house? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC04"></a>Henry C. Calhoun</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I reached the highest place in Spoon River,<br /> +But through what bitterness of spirit!<br /> +The face of my father, sitting speechless,<br /> +Child-like, watching his canaries,<br /> +And looking at the court-house window<br /> +Of the county judge’s room,<br /> +And his admonitions to me to seek<br /> +My own in life, and punish Spoon River<br /> +To avenge the wrong the people did him,<br /> +Filled me with furious energy<br /> +To seek for wealth and seek for power.<br /> +But what did he do but send me along<br /> +The path that leads to the grove of the Furies?<br /> +I followed the path and I tell you this:<br /> +On the way to the grove you’ll pass the Fates,<br /> +Shadow-eyed, bent over their weaving.<br /> +Stop for a moment, and if you see<br /> +The thread of revenge leap out of the shuttle<br /> +Then quickly snatch from Atropos<br /> +The shears and cut it, lest your sons<br /> +And the children of them and their children<br /> +Wear the envenomed robe. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM30"></a>Alfred Moir</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Why was I not devoured by self-contempt,<br /> +And rotted down by indifference<br /> +And impotent revolt like Indignation Jones?<br /> +Why, with all of my errant steps<br /> +Did I miss the fate of Willard Fluke?<br /> +And why, though I stood at Burchard’s bar,<br /> +As a sort of decoy for the house to the boys<br /> +To buy the drinks, did the curse of drink<br /> +Fall on me like rain that runs off,<br /> +Leaving the soul of me dry and clean?<br /> +And why did I never kill a man<br /> +Like Jack McGuire?<br /> +But instead I mounted a little in life,<br /> +And I owe it all to a book I read.<br /> +But why did I go to Mason City,<br /> +Where I chanced to see the book in a window,<br /> +With its garish cover luring my eye?<br /> +And why did my soul respond to the book,<br /> +As I read it over and over? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapZ01"></a>Perry Zoll</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +My thanks, friends of the<br /> +County Scientific Association,<br /> +For this modest boulder,<br /> +And its little tablet of bronze.<br /> +Twice I tried to join your honored body,<br /> +And was rejected<br /> +And when my little brochure<br /> +On the intelligence of plants<br /> +Began to attract attention<br /> +You almost voted me in.<br /> +After that I grew beyond the need of you<br /> +And your recognition.<br /> +Yet I do not reject your memorial stone<br /> +Seeing that I should, in so doing,<br /> +Deprive you of honor to yourselves. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapD03"></a>Dippold the Optician</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +What do you see now?<br /> +Globes of red, yellow, purple.<br /> +Just a moment! And now?<br /> +My father and mother and sisters.<br /> +Yes! And now?<br /> +Knights at arms, beautiful women, kind faces.<br /> +Try this.<br /> +A field of grain—a city.<br /> +Very good! And now?<br /> +A young woman with angels bending over her.<br /> +A heavier lens! And now?<br /> +Many women with bright eyes and open lips.<br /> +Try this.<br /> +Just a goblet on a table.<br /> +Oh I see! Try this lens!<br /> +Just an open space—I see nothing in particular.<br /> +Well, now!<br /> +Pine trees, a lake, a summer sky.<br /> +That’s better. And now?<br /> +A book.<br /> +Read a page for me.<br /> +I can’t. My eyes are carried beyond the page.<br /> +Try this lens.<br /> +Depths of air.<br /> +Excellent! And now!<br /> +Light, just light making everything below it a toy world.<br /> +Very well, we’ll make the glasses accordingly. + +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG09"></a>Magrady Graham</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Tell me, was Altgeld elected Governor?<br /> +For when the returns began to come in<br /> +And Cleveland was sweeping the East<br /> +It was too much for you, poor old heart,<br /> +Who had striven for democracy<br /> +In the long, long years of defeat.<br /> +And like a watch that is worn<br /> +I felt you growing slower until you stopped.<br /> +Tell me, was Altgeld elected,<br /> +And what did he do?<br /> +Did they bring his head on a platter to a dancer,<br /> +Or did he triumph for the people?<br /> +For when I saw him<br /> +And took his hand,<br /> +The child-like blueness of his eyes<br /> +Moved me to tears,<br /> +And there was an air of eternity about him,<br /> +Like the cold, clear light that rests at dawn<br /> +On the hills! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH10"></a>Archibald Higbie</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I loathed you, Spoon River.<br /> +I tried to rise above you,<br /> +I was ashamed of you.<br /> +I despised you<br /> +As the place of my nativity.<br /> +And there in Rome, among the artists,<br /> +Speaking Italian, speaking French,<br /> +I seemed to myself at times to be free<br /> +Of every trace of my origin.<br /> +I seemed to be reaching the heights of art<br /> +And to breathe the air that the masters breathed<br /> +And to see the world with their eyes.<br /> +But still they’d pass my work and say:<br /> +“What are you driving at, my friend?<br /> +Sometimes the face looks like Apollo’s<br /> +At others it has a trace of Lincoln’s.”<br /> +There was no culture, you know, in Spoon River<br /> +And I burned with shame and held my peace.<br /> +And what could I do, all covered over<br /> +And weighted down with western soil<br /> +Except aspire, and pray for another<br /> +Birth in the world, with all of Spoon River<br /> +Rooted out of my soul? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM22"></a>Tom Merritt</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +At first I suspected something—<br /> +She acted so calm and absent-minded.<br /> +And one day I heard the back door shut<br /> +As I entered the front, and I saw him slink<br /> +Back of the smokehouse into the lot<br /> +And run across the field.<br /> +And I meant to kill him on sight.<br /> +But that day, walking near Fourth Bridge<br /> +Without a stick or a stone at hand,<br /> +All of a sudden I saw him standing<br /> +Scared to death, holding his rabbits,<br /> +And all I could say was, “Don’t, Don’t, Don’t,”<br /> +As he aimed and fired at my heart. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM21"></a>Mrs. Merritt</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Silent before the jury<br /> +Returning no word to the judge when he asked me<br /> +If I had aught to say against the sentence,<br /> +Only shaking my head.<br /> +What could I say to people who thought<br /> +That a woman of thirty-five was at fault<br /> +When her lover of nineteen killed her husband?<br /> +Even though she had said to him over and over,<br /> +“Go away, Elmer, go far away,<br /> +I have maddened your brain with the gift of my body:<br /> +You will do some terrible thing.”<br /> +And just as I feared, he killed my husband;<br /> +With which I had nothing to do, before<br /> +God Silent for thirty years in prison<br /> +And the iron gates of Joliet<br /> +Swung as the gray and silent trusties<br /> +Carried me out in a coffin. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK01"></a>Elmer Karr</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +What but the love of God could have softened<br /> +And made forgiving the people of Spoon River<br /> +Toward me who wronged the bed of Thomas Merritt<br /> +And murdered him beside?<br /> +Oh, loving hearts that took me in again<br /> +When I returned from fourteen years in prison!<br /> +Oh, helping hands that in the church received me<br /> +And heard with tears my penitent confession,<br /> +Who took the sacrament of bread and wine!<br /> +Repent, ye living ones, and rest with Jesus. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC10"></a>Elizabeth Childers</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Dust of my dust,<br /> +And dust with my dust,<br /> +O, child who died as you entered the world,<br /> +Dead with my death!<br /> +Not knowing<br /> +Breath, though you tried so hard,<br /> +With a heart that beat when you lived with me,<br /> +And stopped when you left me for Life.<br /> +It is well, my child.<br /> +For you never traveled<br /> +The long, long way that begins with school days,<br /> +When little fingers blur under the tears<br /> +That fall on the crooked letters.<br /> +And the earliest wound, when a little mate<br /> +Leaves you alone for another;<br /> +And sickness, and the face of<br /> +Fear by the bed;<br /> +The death of a father or mother;<br /> +Or shame for them, or poverty;<br /> +The maiden sorrow of school days ended;<br /> +And eyeless Nature that makes you drink<br /> +From the cup of Love, though you know it’s poisoned;<br /> +To whom would your flower-face have been lifted?<br /> +Botanist, weakling?<br /> +Cry of what blood to yours?—<br /> +Pure or foul, for it makes no matter,<br /> +It’s blood that calls to our blood.<br /> +And then your children—oh, what might they be?<br /> +And what your sorrow?<br /> +Child! Child Death is better than Life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC17"></a>Edith Conant</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +We stand about this place—we, the memories;<br /> +And shade our eyes because we dread to read:<br /> +“June 17th, 1884, aged 21 years and 3 days.”<br /> +And all things are changed.<br /> +And we—we, the memories, stand here for ourselves alone,<br /> +For no eye marks us, or would know why we are here.<br /> +Your husband is dead, your sister lives far away,<br /> +Your father is bent with age;<br /> +He has forgotten you, he scarcely leaves the house<br /> +Any more. No one remembers your exquisite face,<br /> +Your lyric voice!<br /> +How you sang, even on the morning you were stricken,<br /> +With piercing sweetness, with thrilling sorrow,<br /> +Before the advent of the child which died with you.<br /> +It is all forgotten, save by us, the memories,<br /> +Who are forgotten by the world.<br /> +All is changed, save the river and the hill—<br /> +Even they are changed.<br /> +Only the burning sun and the quiet stars are the same.<br /> +And we—we, the memories, stand here in awe,<br /> +Our eyes closed with the weariness of tears—<br /> +In immeasurable weariness +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW03"></a>Charles Webster</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The pine woods on the hill,<br /> +And the farmhouse miles away,<br /> +Showed clear as though behind a lens<br /> +Under a sky of peacock blue!<br /> +But a blanket of cloud by afternoon<br /> +Muffled the earth. And you walked the road<br /> +And the clover field, where the only sound<br /> +Was the cricket’s liquid tremolo.<br /> +Then the sun went down between great drifts<br /> +Of distant storms. For a rising wind<br /> +Swept clean the sky and blew the flames<br /> +Of the unprotected stars;<br /> +And swayed the russet moon,<br /> +Hanging between the rim of the hill<br /> +And the twinkling boughs of the apple orchard.<br /> +You walked the shore in thought<br /> +Where the throats of the waves were like whip-poor-wills<br /> +Singing beneath the water and crying<br /> +To the wash of the wind in the cedar trees,<br /> +Till you stood, too full for tears, by the cot,<br /> +And looking up saw Jupiter,<br /> +Tipping the spire of the giant pine,<br /> +And looking down saw my vacant chair,<br /> +Rocked by the wind on the lonely porch—<br /> +Be brave, Beloved! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM12"></a>Father Malloy</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +You are over there, Father Malloy,<br /> +Where holy ground is, and the cross marks every grave,<br /> +Not here with us on the hill—<br /> +Us of wavering faith, and clouded vision<br /> +And drifting hope, and unforgiven sins.<br /> +You were so human, Father Malloy,<br /> +Taking a friendly glass sometimes with us,<br /> +Siding with us who would rescue Spoon River<br /> +From the coldness and the dreariness of village morality.<br /> +You were like a traveler who brings a little box of sand<br /> +From the wastes about the pyramids<br /> +And makes them real and Egypt real.<br /> +You were a part of and related to a great past,<br /> +And yet you were so close to many of us.<br /> +You believed in the joy of life.<br /> +You did not seem to be ashamed of the flesh.<br /> +You faced life as it is,<br /> +And as it changes.<br /> +Some of us almost came to you, Father Malloy,<br /> +Seeing how your church had divined the heart,<br /> +And provided for it,<br /> +Through Peter the Flame,<br /> +Peter the Rock. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG11"></a>Ami Green</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Not “a youth with hoary head and haggard eye”,<br /> +But an old man with a smooth skin<br /> +And black hair! I had the face of a boy as long as I lived,<br /> +And for years a soul that was stiff and bent,<br /> +In a world which saw me just as a jest,<br /> +To be hailed familiarly when it chose,<br /> +And loaded up as a man when it chose,<br /> +Being neither man nor boy.<br /> +In truth it was soul as well as body<br /> +Which never matured, and I say to you<br /> +That the much-sought prize of eternal youth<br /> +Is just arrested growth. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC05"></a>Calvin Campbell</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Ye who are kicking against Fate,<br /> +Tell me how it is that on this hill-side<br /> +Running down to the river,<br /> +Which fronts the sun and the south-wind,<br /> +This plant draws from the air and soil<br /> +Poison and becomes poison ivy?<br /> +And this plant draws from the same air and soil<br /> +Sweet elixirs and colors and becomes arbutus?<br /> +And both flourish?<br /> +You may blame Spoon River for what it is,<br /> +But whom do you blame for the will in you<br /> +That feeds itself and makes you dock-weed,<br /> +Jimpson, dandelion or mullen<br /> +And which can never use any soil or air<br /> +So as to make you jessamine or wistaria? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapL01"></a>Henry Layton</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Whoever thou art who passest by<br /> +Know that my father was gentle,<br /> +And my mother was violent,<br /> +While I was born the whole of such hostile halves,<br /> +Not intermixed and fused,<br /> +But each distinct, feebly soldered together.<br /> +Some of you saw me as gentle,<br /> +Some as violent,<br /> +Some as both.<br /> +But neither half of me wrought my ruin.<br /> +It was the falling asunder of halves,<br /> +Never a part of each other,<br /> +That left me a lifeless soul. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS08"></a>Harlan Sewall</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +You never understood,<br /> +O unknown one,<br /> +Why it was I repaid<br /> +Your devoted friendship and delicate ministrations<br /> +First with diminished thanks,<br /> +Afterward by gradually withdrawing my presence from you,<br /> +So that I might not be compelled to thank you,<br /> +And then with silence which followed upon<br /> +Our final Separation.<br /> +You had cured my diseased soul.<br /> +But to cure it<br /> +You saw my disease, you knew my secret,<br /> +And that is why I fled from you.<br /> +For though when our bodies rise from pain<br /> +We kiss forever the watchful hands<br /> +That gave us wormwood, while we shudder<br /> +For thinking of the wormwood,<br /> +A soul that’s cured is a different matter,<br /> +For there we’d blot from memory<br /> +The soft-toned words, the searching eyes,<br /> +And stand forever oblivious,<br /> +Not so much of the sorrow itself<br /> +As of the hand that healed it. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK10"></a>Ippolit Konovaloff</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was a gun-smith in Odessa.<br /> +One night the police broke in the room<br /> +Where a group of us were reading Spencer.<br /> +And seized our books and arrested us.<br /> +But I escaped and came to New York<br /> +And thence to Chicago, and then to Spoon River,<br /> +Where I could study my Kant in peace<br /> +And eke out a living repairing guns<br /> +Look at my moulds! My architectonics<br /> +One for a barrel, one for a hammer<br /> +And others for other parts of a gun!<br /> +Well, now suppose no gun-smith living<br /> +Had anything else but duplicate moulds<br /> +Of these I show you—well, all guns<br /> +Would be just alike, with a hammer to hit<br /> +The cap and a barrel to carry the shot<br /> +All acting alike for themselves, and all<br /> +Acting against each other alike.<br /> +And there would be your world of guns!<br /> +Which nothing could ever free from itself<br /> +Except a Moulder with different moulds<br /> +To mould the metal over. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP08"></a>Henry Phipps</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was the Sunday-school superintendent,<br /> +The dummy president of the wagon works<br /> +And the canning factory,<br /> +Acting for Thomas Rhodes and the banking clique;<br /> +My son the cashier of the bank,<br /> +Wedded to Rhodes’ daughter,<br /> +My week days spent in making money,<br /> +My Sundays at church and in prayer.<br /> +In everything a cog in the wheel of things-as-they-are:<br /> +Of money, master and man, made white<br /> +With the paint of the Christian creed.<br /> +And then:<br /> +The bank collapsed.<br /> +I stood and hooked at the wrecked machine—<br /> +The wheels with blow-holes stopped with putty and painted;<br /> +The rotten bolts, the broken rods;<br /> +And only the hopper for souls fit to be used again<br /> +In a new devourer of life,<br /> +When newspapers, judges and money-magicians<br /> +Build over again.<br /> +I was stripped to the bone, but I lay in the Rock of Ages,<br /> +Seeing now through the game, no longer a dupe,<br /> +And knowing “the upright shall dwell in the land<br /> +But the years of the wicked shall be shortened.”<br /> +Then suddenly, Dr. Meyers discovered<br /> +A cancer in my liver.<br /> +I was not, after all, the particular care of God<br /> +Why, even thus standing on a peak<br /> +Above the mists through which I had climbed,<br /> +And ready for larger life in the world,<br /> +Eternal forces<br /> +Moved me on with a push. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW14"></a>Harry Wilmans</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was just turned twenty-one,<br /> +And Henry Phipps, the Sunday-school superintendent,<br /> +Made a speech in Bindle’s Opera House.<br /> +“The honor of the flag must be upheld,” he said,<br /> +“Whether it be assailed by a barbarous tribe of Tagalogs<br /> +Or the greatest power in Europe.”<br /> +And we cheered and cheered the speech and the flag he waved<br /> +As he spoke.<br /> +And I went to the war in spite of my father,<br /> +And followed the flag till I saw it raised<br /> +By our camp in a rice field near Manila,<br /> +And all of us cheered and cheered it.<br /> +But there were flies and poisonous things;<br /> +And there was the deadly water,<br /> +And the cruel heat,<br /> +And the sickening, putrid food;<br /> +And the smell of the trench just back of the tents<br /> +Where the soldiers went to empty themselves;<br /> +And there were the whores who followed us, full of syphilis;<br /> +And beastly acts between ourselves or alone,<br /> +With bullying, hatred, degradation among us,<br /> +And days of loathing and nights of fear<br /> +To the hour of the charge through the steaming swamp,<br /> +Following the flag,<br /> +Till I fell with a scream, shot through the guts.<br /> +Now there’s a flag over me in<br /> +Spoon River. A flag!<br /> +A flag! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW01"></a>John Wasson</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Oh! the dew-wet grass of the meadow in North Carolina<br /> +Through which Rebecca followed me wailing, wailing,<br /> +One child in her arms, and three that ran along wailing,<br /> +Lengthening out the farewell to me off to the war with the British,<br /> +And then the long, hard years down to the day of Yorktown.<br /> +And then my search for Rebecca,<br /> +Finding her at last in Virginia,<br /> +Two children dead in the meanwhile.<br /> +We went by oxen to Tennessee,<br /> +Thence after years to Illinois,<br /> +At last to Spoon River.<br /> +We cut the buffalo grass,<br /> +We felled the forests,<br /> +We built the school houses, built the bridges,<br /> +Leveled the roads and tilled the fields<br /> +Alone with poverty, scourges, death—<br /> +If Harry Wilmans who fought the Filipinos<br /> +Is to have a flag on his grave<br /> +Take it from mine. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS20"></a>Many Soldiers</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The idea danced before us as a flag;<br /> +The sound of martial music;<br /> +The thrill of carrying a gun;<br /> +Advancement in the world on coming home;<br /> +A glint of glory, wrath for foes;<br /> +A dream of duty to country or to God.<br /> +But these were things in ourselves, shining before us,<br /> +They were not the power behind us,<br /> +Which was the Almighty hand of Life,<br /> +Like fire at earth’s center making mountains,<br /> +Or pent up waters that cut them through.<br /> +Do you remember the iron band<br /> +The blacksmith, Shack Dye, welded<br /> +Around the oak on Bennet’s lawn,<br /> +From which to swing a hammock,<br /> +That daughter Janet might repose in, reading<br /> +On summer afternoons?<br /> +And that the growing tree at last<br /> +Sundered the iron band?<br /> +But not a cell in all the tree<br /> +Knew aught save that it thrilled with life,<br /> +Nor cared because the hammock fell<br /> +In the dust with Milton’s Poems. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapJ02"></a>Godwin James</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Harry Wilmans! You who fell in a swamp<br /> +Near Manila, following the flag<br /> +You were not wounded by the greatness of a dream,<br /> +Or destroyed by ineffectual work,<br /> +Or driven to madness by Satanic snags;<br /> +You were not torn by aching nerves,<br /> +Nor did you carry great wounds to your old age.<br /> +You did not starve, for the government fed you.<br /> +You did not suffer yet cry “forward”<br /> +To an army which you led<br /> +Against a foe with mocking smiles,<br /> +Sharper than bayonets.<br /> +You were not smitten down<br /> +By invisible bombs.<br /> +You were not rejected<br /> +By those for whom you were defeated.<br /> +You did not eat the savorless bread<br /> +Which a poor alchemy had made from ideals.<br /> +You went to Manila, Harry Wilmans,<br /> +While I enlisted in the bedraggled army<br /> +Of bright-eyed, divine youths,<br /> +Who surged forward, who were driven back and fell<br /> +Sick, broken, crying, shorn of faith,<br /> +Following the flag of the Kingdom of Heaven.<br /> +You and I, Harry Wilmans, have fallen<br /> +In our several ways, not knowing<br /> +Good from bad, defeat from victory,<br /> +Nor what face it is that smiles<br /> +Behind the demoniac mask. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK07"></a>Lyman King</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +You may think, passer-by, that Fate<br /> +Is a pit-fall outside of yourself,<br /> +Around which you may walk by the use of foresight<br /> +And wisdom.<br /> +Thus you believe, viewing the lives of other men,<br /> +As one who in God-like fashion bends over an anthill,<br /> +Seeing how their difficulties could be avoided.<br /> +But pass on into life:<br /> +In time you shall see Fate approach you<br /> +In the shape of your own image in the mirror;<br /> +Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth,<br /> +And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest,<br /> +And you shall know that guest<br /> +And read the authentic message of his eyes. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB14"></a>Caroline Branson</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked,<br /> +As often before, the April fields till star-light<br /> +Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness<br /> +Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood,<br /> +Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing<br /> +Like notes of music that run together, into winning,<br /> +In the inspired improvisation of love!<br /> +But to put back of us as a canticle ended<br /> +The rapt enchantment of the flesh,<br /> +In which our souls swooned, down, down,<br /> +Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves—<br /> +Annihilated in love!<br /> +To leave these behind for a room with lamps:<br /> +And to stand with our Secret mocking itself,<br /> +And hiding itself amid flowers and mandolins,<br /> +Stared at by all between salad and coffee.<br /> +And to see him tremble, and feel myself<br /> +Prescient, as one who signs a bond—<br /> +Not flaming with gifts and pledges heaped<br /> +With rosy hands over his brow.<br /> +And then, O night! deliberate! unlovely!<br /> +With all of our wooing blotted out by the winning,<br /> +In a chosen room in an hour that was known to all!<br /> +Next day he sat so listless, almost cold<br /> +So strangely changed, wondering why I wept,<br /> +Till a kind of sick despair and voluptuous madness<br /> +Seized us to make the pact of death.<br /> +<br /> +A stalk of the earth-sphere,<br /> +Frail as star-light;<br /> +Waiting to be drawn once again<br /> +Into creation’s stream.<br /> +But next time to be given birth<br /> +Gazed at by Raphael and St. Francis<br /> +Sometimes as they pass.<br /> +For I am their little brother,<br /> +To be known clearly face to face<br /> +Through a cycle of birth hereafter run.<br /> +You may know the seed and the soil;<br /> +You may feel the cold rain fall,<br /> +But only the earth-sphere, only heaven<br /> +Knows the secret of the seed<br /> +In the nuptial chamber under the soil.<br /> +Throw me into the stream again,<br /> +Give me another trial—<br /> +Save me, Shelley! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapR09"></a>Anne Rutledge</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Out of me unworthy and unknown<br /> +The vibrations of deathless music;<br /> +“With malice toward none, with charity for all.”<br /> +Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions,<br /> +And the beneficent face of a nation<br /> +Shining with justice and truth.<br /> +I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds,<br /> +Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln,<br /> +Wedded to him, not through union, But through separation.<br /> +Bloom forever, O Republic,<br /> +From the dust of my bosom! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM26"></a>Hamlet Micure</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +In a lingering fever many visions come to you:<br /> +I was in the little house again<br /> +With its great yard of clover<br /> +Running down to the board-fence,<br /> +Shadowed by the oak tree,<br /> +Where we children had our swing.<br /> +Yet the little house was a manor hall<br /> +Set in a lawn, and by the lawn was the sea.<br /> +I was in the room where little Paul<br /> +Strangled from diphtheria,<br /> +But yet it was not this room—<br /> +It was a sunny verandah enclosed<br /> +With mullioned windows<br /> +And in a chair sat a man in a dark cloak<br /> +With a face like Euripides.<br /> +He had come to visit me, or I had gone to visit him—I could not tell.<br /> +We could hear the beat of the sea, the clover nodded<br /> +Under a summer wind, and little Paul came<br /> +With clover blossoms to the window and smiled.<br /> +Then I said: “What is ‘divine despair,’ Alfred?”<br /> +“Have you read ‘Tears, Idle Tears’?” he asked.<br /> +“Yes, but you do not there express divine despair.”<br /> +“My poor friend,” he answered, “that was why the despair<br /> +Was divine.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapO01"></a>Mabel Osborne</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Your red blossoms amid green leaves<br /> +Are drooping, beautiful geranium!<br /> +But you do not ask for water.<br /> +You cannot speak!<br /> +You do not need to speak—<br /> +Everyone knows that you are dying of thirst,<br /> +Yet they do not bring water!<br /> +They pass on, saying:<br /> +“The geranium wants water.”<br /> +And I, who had happiness to share<br /> +And longed to share your happiness;<br /> +I who loved you, Spoon River,<br /> +And craved your love,<br /> +Withered before your eyes, Spoon River—<br /> +Thirsting, thirsting,<br /> +Voiceless from chasteness of soul to ask you for love,<br /> +You who knew and saw me perish before you,<br /> +Like this geranium which someone has planted over me,<br /> +And left to die. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH08"></a>William H. Herndon</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +There by the window in the old house<br /> +Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley,<br /> +My days of labor closed, sitting out life’s decline,<br /> +Day by day did I look in my memory,<br /> +As one who gazes in an enchantress’ crystal globe,<br /> +And I saw the figures of the past<br /> +As if in a pageant glassed by a shining dream,<br /> +Move through the incredible sphere of time.<br /> +And I saw a man arise from the soil like a fabled giant<br /> +And throw himself over a deathless destiny,<br /> +Master of great armies, head of the republic,<br /> +Bringing together into a dithyramb of recreative song<br /> +The epic hopes of a people;<br /> +At the same time Vulcan of sovereign fires,<br /> +Where imperishable shields and swords were beaten out<br /> +From spirits tempered in heaven.<br /> +Look in the crystal!<br /> +See how he hastens on<br /> +To the place where his path comes up to the path<br /> +Of a child of Plutarch and Shakespeare.<br /> +O Lincoln, actor indeed, playing well your part<br /> +And Booth, who strode in a mimic play within the play,<br /> +Often and often I saw you,<br /> +As the cawing crows winged their way to the wood<br /> +Over my house—top at solemn sunsets,<br /> +There by my window,<br /> +Alone. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW02"></a>Rebecca Wasson</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Spring and Summer, Fall and Winter and Spring,<br /> +After each other drifting, past my window drifting!<br /> +And I lay so many years watching them drift and counting<br /> +The years till a terror came in my heart at times,<br /> +With the feeling that I had become eternal; at last<br /> +My hundredth year was reached! And still I lay<br /> +Hearing the tick of the clock, and the low of cattle<br /> +And the scream of a jay flying through falling leaves!<br /> +Day after day alone in a room of the house<br /> +Of a daughter-in-law stricken with age and gray.<br /> +And by night, or looking out of the window by day<br /> +My thought ran back, it seemed, through infinite time<br /> +To North Carolina and all my girlhood days,<br /> +And John, my John, away to the war with the British,<br /> +And all the children, the deaths, and all the sorrows.<br /> +And that stretch of years like a prairie in Illinois<br /> +Through which great figures passed like hurrying horsemen,<br /> +Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Webster, Clay.<br /> +O beautiful young republic for whom my John and I<br /> +Gave all of our strength and love!<br /> +And O my John!<br /> +Why, when I lay so helpless in bed for years,<br /> +Praying for you to come, was your coming delayed?<br /> +Seeing that with a cry of rapture, like that I uttered<br /> +When you found me in old Virginia after the war,<br /> +I cried when I beheld you there by the bed,<br /> +As the sun stood low in the west growing smaller and fainter<br /> +In the light of your face! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM02"></a>Rutherford McDowell</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +They brought me ambrotypes<br /> +Of the old pioneers to enlarge.<br /> +And sometimes one sat for me—<br /> +Some one who was in being<br /> +When giant hands from the womb of the world<br /> +Tore the republic.<br /> +What was it in their eyes?—<br /> +For I could never fathom<br /> +That mystical pathos of drooped eyelids,<br /> +And the serene sorrow of their eyes.<br /> +It was like a pool of water,<br /> +Amid oak trees at the edge of a forest,<br /> +Where the leaves fall,<br /> +As you hear the crow of a cock<br /> +From a far-off farm house, seen near the hills<br /> +Where the third generation lives, and the strong men<br /> +And the strong women are gone and forgotten.<br /> +And these grand-children and great grand-children<br /> +Of the pioneers!<br /> +Truly did my camera record their faces, too,<br /> +With so much of the old strength gone,<br /> +And the old faith gone,<br /> +And the old mastery of life gone,<br /> +And the old courage gone,<br /> +Which labors and loves and suffers and sings<br /> +Under the sun! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapA02"></a>Hannah Armstrong</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I wrote him a letter asking him for old times’ sake<br /> +To discharge my sick boy from the army;<br /> +But maybe he couldn’t read it.<br /> +Then I went to town and had James Garber,<br /> +Who wrote beautifully, write him a letter.<br /> +But maybe that was lost in the mails.<br /> +So I traveled all the way to Washington.<br /> +I was more than an hour finding the White House.<br /> +And when I found it they turned me away,<br /> +Hiding their smiles.<br /> +Then I thought: “Oh, well, he ain’t the same as when I boarded him<br /> +And he and my husband worked together<br /> +And all of us called him Abe, there in Menard.”<br /> +As a last attempt I turned to a guard and said:<br /> +“Please say it’s old Aunt Hannah Armstrong<br /> +From Illinois, come to see him about her sick boy<br /> +In the army.”<br /> +Well, just in a moment they let me in!<br /> +And when he saw me he broke in a laugh,<br /> +And dropped his business as president,<br /> +And wrote in his own hand Doug’s discharge,<br /> +Talking the while of the early days,<br /> +And telling stories. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM19"></a>Lucinda Matlock</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I went to the dances at Chandlerville,<br /> +And played snap-out at Winchester.<br /> +One time we changed partners,<br /> +Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,<br /> +And then I found Davis.<br /> +We were married and lived together for seventy years,<br /> +Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,<br /> +Eight of whom we lost<br /> +Ere I had reached the age of sixty.<br /> +I spun,<br /> +I wove,<br /> +I kept the house,<br /> +I nursed the sick,<br /> +I made the garden, and for holiday<br /> +Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,<br /> +And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,<br /> +And many a flower and medicinal weed—<br /> +Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.<br /> +At ninety—six I had lived enough, that is all,<br /> +And passed to a sweet repose.<br /> +What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,<br /> +Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?<br /> +Degenerate sons and daughters,<br /> +Life is too strong for you—<br /> +It takes life to love Life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM18"></a>Davis Matlock</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Suppose it is nothing but the hive:<br /> +That there are drones and workers<br /> +And queens, and nothing but storing honey—<br /> +(Material things as well as culture and wisdom)—<br /> +For the next generation, this generation never living,<br /> +Except as it swarms in the sun-light of youth,<br /> +Strengthening its wings on what has been gathered,<br /> +And tasting, on the way to the hive<br /> +From the clover field, the delicate spoil.<br /> +Suppose all this, and suppose the truth:<br /> +That the nature of man is greater<br /> +Than nature’s need in the hive;<br /> +And you must bear the burden of life,<br /> +As well as the urge from your spirit’s excess—<br /> +Well, I say to live it out like a god<br /> +Sure of immortal life, though you are in doubt,<br /> +Is the way to live it.<br /> +If that doesn’t make God proud of you<br /> +Then God is nothing but gravitation<br /> +Or sleep is the golden goal. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapA01"></a>Herman Altman</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Did I follow Truth wherever she led,<br /> +And stand against the whole world for a cause,<br /> +And uphold the weak against the strong?<br /> +If I did I would be remembered among men<br /> +As I was known in life among the people,<br /> +And as I was hated and loved on earth,<br /> +Therefore, build no monument to me,<br /> +And carve no bust for me,<br /> +Lest, though I become not a demi-god,<br /> +The reality of my soul be lost,<br /> +So that thieves and liars,<br /> +Who were my enemies and destroyed me,<br /> +And the children of thieves and liars,<br /> +May claim me and affirm before my bust<br /> +That they stood with me in the days of my defeat.<br /> +Build me no monument<br /> +Lest my memory be perverted to the uses<br /> +Of lying and oppression.<br /> +My lovers and their children must not be dispossessed of me;<br /> +I would be the untarnished possession forever<br /> +Of those for whom I lived. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM06"></a>Jennie M’Grew</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Not, where the stairway turns in the dark<br /> +A hooded figure, shriveled under a flowing cloak!<br /> +Not yellow eyes in the room at night,<br /> +Staring out from a surface of cobweb gray!<br /> +And not the flap of a condor wing<br /> +When the roar of life in your ears begins<br /> +As a sound heard never before!<br /> +But on a sunny afternoon,<br /> +By a country road,<br /> +Where purple rag-weeds bloom along a straggling fence<br /> +And the field is gleaned, and the air is still<br /> +To see against the sun-light something black<br /> +Like a blot with an iris rim—<br /> +That is the sign to eyes of second sight. . .<br /> +And that I saw! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC08"></a>Columbus Cheney</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +This weeping willow!<br /> +Why do you not plant a few<br /> +For the millions of children not yet born,<br /> +As well as for us?<br /> +Are they not non-existent, or cells asleep<br /> +Without mind?<br /> +Or do they come to earth, their birth<br /> +Rupturing the memory of previous being?<br /> +Answer!<br /> +The field of unexplored intuition is yours.<br /> +But in any case why not plant willows for them,<br /> +As well as for us? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF03"></a>Wallace Ferguson</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +There at Geneva where Mt. Blanc floated above<br /> +The wine-hued lake like a cloud, when a breeze was blown<br /> +Out of an empty sky of blue, and the roaring Rhone<br /> +Hurried under the bridge through chasms of rock;<br /> +And the music along the cafés was part of the splendor<br /> +Of dancing water under a torrent of light;<br /> +And the purer part of the genius of Jean Rousseau<br /> +Was the silent music of all we saw or heard—<br /> +There at Geneva, I say, was the rapture less<br /> +Because I could not link myself with the I of yore,<br /> +When twenty years before I wandered about Spoon River?<br /> +Nor remember what I was nor what I felt?<br /> +We live in the hour all free of the hours gone by.<br /> +Therefore, O soul, if you lose yourself in death,<br /> +And wake in some Geneva by some Mt. Blanc,<br /> +What do you care if you know not yourself as the you<br /> +Who lived and loved in a little corner of earth<br /> +Known as Spoon River ages and ages vanished? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB05"></a>Marie Bateson</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +You observe the carven hand<br /> +With the index finger pointing heavenward.<br /> +That is the direction, no doubt.<br /> +But how shall one follow it?<br /> +It is well to abstain from murder and lust,<br /> +To forgive, do good to others, worship God<br /> +Without graven images.<br /> +But these are external means after all<br /> +By which you chiefly do good to yourself.<br /> +The inner kernel is freedom,<br /> +It is light, purity—<br /> +I can no more,<br /> +Find the goal or lose it, according to your vision. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS12"></a>Tennessee Claflin Shope</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was the laughing-stock of the village,<br /> +Chiefly of the people of good sense, as they call themselves—<br /> +Also of the learned, like Rev. Peet, who read Greek<br /> +The same as English.<br /> +For instead of talking free trade,<br /> +Or preaching some form of baptism;<br /> +Instead of believing in the efficacy<br /> +Of walking cracks, picking up pins the right way,<br /> +Seeing the new moon over the right shoulder,<br /> +Or curing rheumatism with blue glass,<br /> +I asserted the sovereignty of my own soul.<br /> +Before Mary Baker G. Eddy even got started<br /> +With what she called science I had mastered the “Bhagavad Gita,”<br /> +And cured my soul, before Mary<br /> +Began to cure bodies with souls—<br /> +Peace to all worlds! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapJ03"></a>Plymouth Rock Joe</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Why are you running so fast hither and thither<br /> +Chasing midges or butterflies?<br /> +Some of you are standing solemnly scratching for grubs;<br /> +Some of you are waiting for corn to be scattered.<br /> +This is life, is it?<br /> +Cock-a-doodle-do! Very well, Thomas Rhodes,<br /> +You are cock of the walk, no doubt.<br /> +But here comes Elliott Hawkins,<br /> +Gluck, Gluck, Gluck, attracting political followers.<br /> +Quah! quah! quah! why so poetical, Minerva,<br /> +This gray morning?<br /> +Kittie—quah—quah! for shame, Lucius Atherton,<br /> +The raucous squawk you evoked from the throat<br /> +Of Aner Clute will be taken up later<br /> +By Mrs. Benjamin Pantier as a cry<br /> +Of votes for women: Ka dook—dook!<br /> +What inspiration has come to you, Margaret Fuller Slack?<br /> +And why does your gooseberry eye<br /> +Flit so liquidly, Tennessee Claflin Shope?<br /> +Are you trying to fathom the esotericism of an egg?<br /> +Your voice is very metallic this morning, Hortense Robbins—<br /> +Almost like a guinea hen’s!<br /> +Quah! That was a guttural sigh, Isaiah Beethoven;<br /> +Did you see the shadow of the hawk,<br /> +Or did you step upon the drumsticks<br /> +Which the cook threw out this morning?<br /> +Be chivalric, heroic, or aspiring,<br /> +Metaphysical, religious, or rebellious,<br /> +You shall never get out of the barnyard<br /> +Except by way of over the fence<br /> +Mixed with potato peelings and such into the trough! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapE01"></a>Imanuel Ehrenhardt</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I began with Sir William Hamilton’s lectures.<br /> +Then studied Dugald Stewart;<br /> +And then John Locke on the Understanding,<br /> +And then Descartes, Fichte and Schelling,<br /> +Kant and then Schopenhauer—<br /> +Books I borrowed from old Judge Somers.<br /> +All read with rapturous industry<br /> +Hoping it was reserved to me<br /> +To grasp the tail of the ultimate secret,<br /> +And drag it out of its hole.<br /> +My soul flew up ten thousand miles<br /> +And only the moon looked a little bigger.<br /> +Then I fell back, how glad of the earth!<br /> +All through the soul of William Jones<br /> +Who showed me a letter of John Muir. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG02"></a>Samuel Gardner</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I who kept the greenhouse,<br /> +Lover of trees and flowers,<br /> +Oft in life saw this umbrageous elm,<br /> +Measuring its generous branches with my eye,<br /> +And listened to its rejoicing leaves<br /> +Lovingly patting each other<br /> +With sweet aeolian whispers.<br /> +And well they might:<br /> +For the roots had grown so wide and deep<br /> +That the soil of the hill could not withhold<br /> +Aught of its virtue, enriched by rain,<br /> +And warmed by the sun;<br /> +But yielded it all to the thrifty roots,<br /> +Through which it was drawn and whirled to the trunk,<br /> +And thence to the branches, and into the leaves,<br /> +Wherefrom the breeze took life and sang.<br /> +Now I, an under-tenant of the earth, can see<br /> +That the branches of a tree<br /> +Spread no wider than its roots.<br /> +And how shall the soul of a man<br /> +Be larger than the life he has lived? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK11"></a>Dow Kritt</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Samuel is forever talking of his elm—<br /> +But I did not need to die to learn about roots:<br /> +I, who dug all the ditches about Spoon River.<br /> +Look at my elm!<br /> +Sprung from as good a seed as his,<br /> +Sown at the same time,<br /> +It is dying at the top:<br /> +Not from lack of life, nor fungus,<br /> +Nor destroying insect, as the sexton thinks.<br /> +Look, Samuel, where the roots have struck rock,<br /> +And can no further spread.<br /> +And all the while the top of the tree<br /> +Is tiring itself out, and dying,<br /> +Trying to grow. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapJ09"></a>William Jones</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Once in a while a curious weed unknown to me,<br /> +Needing a name from my books;<br /> +Once in a while a letter from Yeomans.<br /> +Out of the mussel-shells gathered along the shore<br /> +Sometimes a pearl with a glint like meadow rue:<br /> +Then betimes a letter from Tyndall in England,<br /> +Stamped with the stamp of Spoon River.<br /> +I, lover of Nature, beloved for my love of her,<br /> +Held such converse afar with the great<br /> +Who knew her better than I.<br /> +Oh, there is neither lesser nor greater,<br /> +Save as we make her greater and win from her keener delight.<br /> +With shells from the river cover me, cover me.<br /> +I lived in wonder, worshipping earth and heaven.<br /> +I have passed on the march eternal of endless life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG06"></a>William Goode</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +To all in the village I seemed, no doubt,<br /> +To go this way and that way, aimlessly.<br /> +But here by the river you can see at twilight<br /> +The soft-winged bats fly zig-zag here and there—<br /> +They must fly so to catch their food.<br /> +And if you have ever lost your way at night,<br /> +In the deep wood near Miller’s Ford,<br /> +And dodged this way and now that,<br /> +Wherever the light of the Milky Way shone through,<br /> +Trying to find the path,<br /> +You should understand I sought the way<br /> +With earnest zeal, and all my wanderings<br /> +Were wanderings in the quest. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM27"></a>J. Milton Miles</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Whenever the Presbyterian bell<br /> +Was rung by itself, I knew it as the Presbyterian bell.<br /> +But when its sound was mingled<br /> +With the sound of the Methodist, the Christian,<br /> +The Baptist and the Congregational,<br /> +I could no longer distinguish it,<br /> +Nor any one from the others, or either of them.<br /> +And as many voices called to me in life<br /> +Marvel not that I could not tell<br /> +The true from the false,<br /> +Nor even, at last, the voice that<br /> +I should have known. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM17"></a>Faith Matheny</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +At first you will know not what they mean,<br /> +And you may never know,<br /> +And we may never tell you:—<br /> +These sudden flashes in your soul,<br /> +Like lambent lightning on snowy clouds<br /> +At midnight when the moon is full.<br /> +They come in solitude, or perhaps<br /> +You sit with your friend, and all at once<br /> +A silence falls on speech, and his eyes<br /> +Without a flicker glow at you:—<br /> +You two have seen the secret together,<br /> +He sees it in you, and you in him.<br /> +And there you sit thrilling lest the Mystery<br /> +Stand before you and strike you dead<br /> +With a splendor like the sun’s.<br /> +Be brave, all souls who have such visions<br /> +As your body’s alive as mine is dead,<br /> +You’re catching a little whiff of the ether<br /> +Reserved for God Himself. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH21"></a>Scholfield Hurley</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +God! ask me not to record your wonders,<br /> +I admit the stars and the suns<br /> +And the countless worlds.<br /> +But I have measured their distances<br /> +And weighed them and discovered their substances.<br /> +I have devised wings for the air,<br /> +And keels for water,<br /> +And horses of iron for the earth.<br /> +I have lengthened the vision you gave me a million times,<br /> +And the hearing you gave me a million times,<br /> +I have leaped over space with speech,<br /> +And taken fire for light out of the air.<br /> +I have built great cities and bored through the hills,<br /> +And bridged majestic waters.<br /> +I have written the Iliad and Hamlet;<br /> +And I have explored your mysteries,<br /> +And searched for you without ceasing,<br /> +And found you again after losing you<br /> +In hours of weariness—<br /> +And I ask you:<br /> +How would you like to create a sun<br /> +And the next day have the worms<br /> +Slipping in and out between your fingers? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM23"></a>Willie Metcalf</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was Willie Metcalf.<br /> +They used to call me “Doctor Meyers,”<br /> +Because, they said, I looked like him.<br /> +And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire.<br /> +I lived in the livery stable,<br /> +Sleeping on the floor<br /> +Side by side with Roger Baughman’s bulldog,<br /> +Or sometimes in a stall.<br /> +I could crawl between the legs of the wildest horses<br /> +Without getting kicked—we knew each other.<br /> +On spring days I tramped through the country<br /> +To get the feeling, which I sometimes lost,<br /> +That I was not a separate thing from the earth.<br /> +I used to lose myself, as if in sleep,<br /> +By lying with eyes half-open in the woods.<br /> +Sometimes I talked with animals—even toads and snakes—<br /> +Anything that had an eye to look into.<br /> +Once I saw a stone in the sunshine<br /> +Trying to turn into jelly.<br /> +In April days in this cemetery<br /> +The dead people gathered all about me,<br /> +And grew still, like a congregation in silent prayer.<br /> +I never knew whether I was a part of the earth<br /> +With flowers growing in me, or whether I walked—<br /> +Now I know. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP05"></a>Willie Pennington</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +They called me the weakling, the simpleton,<br /> +For my brothers were strong and beautiful,<br /> +While I, the last child of parents who had aged,<br /> +Inherited only their residue of power.<br /> +But they, my brothers, were eaten up<br /> +In the fury of the flesh, which I had not,<br /> +Made pulp in the activity of the senses, which I had not,<br /> +Hardened by the growth of the lusts, which I had not,<br /> +Though making names and riches for themselves.<br /> +Then I, the weak one, the simpleton,<br /> +Resting in a little corner of life,<br /> +Saw a vision, and through me many saw the vision,<br /> +Not knowing it was through me.<br /> +Thus a tree sprang<br /> +From me, a mustard seed. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapA05"></a>The Village Atheist</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Ye young debaters over the doctrine<br /> +Of the soul’s immortality<br /> +I who lie here was the village atheist,<br /> +Talkative, contentious, versed in the arguments<br /> +Of the infidels. But through a long sickness<br /> +Coughing myself to death I read the<br /> +Upanishads and the poetry of Jesus.<br /> +And they lighted a torch of hope and intuition<br /> +And desire which the Shadow<br /> +Leading me swiftly through the caverns of darkness,<br /> +Could not extinguish.<br /> +Listen to me, ye who live in the senses<br /> +And think through the senses only:<br /> +Immortality is not a gift,<br /> +Immortality is an achievement;<br /> +And only those who strive mightily<br /> +Shall possess it. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB01"></a>John Ballard</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +In the lust of my strength<br /> +I cursed God, but he paid no attention to me:<br /> +I might as well have cursed the stars.<br /> +In my last sickness I was in agony, but I was resolute<br /> +And I cursed God for my suffering;<br /> +Still He paid no attention to me;<br /> +He left me alone, as He had always done.<br /> +I might as well have cursed the Presbyterian steeple.<br /> +Then, as I grew weaker, a terror came over me:<br /> +Perhaps I had alienated God by cursing him.<br /> +One day Lydia Humphrey brought me a bouquet<br /> +And it occurred to me to try to make friends with God,<br /> +So I tried to make friends with Him;<br /> +But I might as well have tried to make friends with the bouquet.<br /> +Now I was very close to the secret,<br /> +For I really could make friends with the bouquet<br /> +By holding close to me the love in me for the bouquet<br /> +And so I was creeping upon the secret, but— +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS06"></a>Julian Scott</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Toward the last<br /> +The truth of others was untruth to me;<br /> +The justice of others injustice to me;<br /> +Their reasons for death, reasons with me for life;<br /> +Their reasons for life, reasons with me for death;<br /> +I would have killed those they saved,<br /> +And save those they killed.<br /> +And I saw how a god, if brought to earth,<br /> +Must act out what he saw and thought,<br /> +And could not live in this world of men<br /> +And act among them side by side<br /> +Without continual clashes.<br /> +The dust’s for crawling, heaven’s for flying—<br /> +Wherefore, O soul, whose wings are grown,<br /> +Soar upward to the sun! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC12"></a>Alfonso Churchill</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +They laughed at me as “Prof. Moon,”<br /> +As a boy in Spoon River, born with the thirst<br /> +Of knowing about the stars.<br /> +They jeered when I spoke of the lunar mountains,<br /> +And the thrilling heat and cold,<br /> +And the ebon valleys by silver peaks,<br /> +And Spica quadrillions of miles away,<br /> +And the littleness of man.<br /> +But now that my grave is honored, friends,<br /> +Let it not be because I taught<br /> +The lore of the stars in Knox College,<br /> +But rather for this: that through the stars<br /> +I preached the greatness of man,<br /> +Who is none the less a part of the scheme of things<br /> +For the distance of Spica or the Spiral Nebulae;<br /> +Nor any the less a part of the question<br /> +Of what the drama means. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM13"></a>Zilpha Marsh</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +At four o’clock in late October<br /> +I sat alone in the country school-house<br /> +Back from the road, mid stricken fields,<br /> +And an eddy of wind blew leaves on the pane,<br /> +And crooned in the flue of the cannon-stove,<br /> +With its open door blurring the shadows<br /> +With the spectral glow of a dying fire.<br /> +In an idle mood I was running the planchette—<br /> +All at once my wrist grew limp,<br /> +And my hand moved rapidly over the board,<br /> +’Till the name of “Charles Guiteau” was spelled,<br /> +Who threatened to materialize before me.<br /> +I rose and fled from the room bare-headed<br /> +Into the dusk, afraid of my gift.<br /> +And after that the spirits swarmed—<br /> +Chaucer, Caesar, Poe and Marlowe,<br /> +Cleopatra and Mrs. Surratt—<br /> +Wherever I went, with messages,—<br /> +Mere trifling twaddle, Spoon River agreed.<br /> +You talk nonsense to children, don’t you?<br /> +And suppose I see what you never saw<br /> +And never heard of and have no word for,<br /> +I must talk nonsense when you ask me<br /> +What it is I see! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG01"></a>James Garber</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Do you remember, passer-by, the path<br /> +I wore across the lot where now stands the opera house<br /> +Hasting with swift feet to work through many years?<br /> +Take its meaning to heart:<br /> +You too may walk, after the hills at Miller’s Ford<br /> +Seem no longer far away;<br /> +Long after you see them near at hand,<br /> +Beyond four miles of meadow;<br /> +And after woman’s love is silent<br /> +Saying no more: “I will save you.”<br /> +And after the faces of friends and kindred<br /> +Become as faded photographs, pitifully silent,<br /> +Sad for the look which means:<br /> +“We cannot help you.”<br /> +And after you no longer reproach mankind<br /> +With being in league against your soul’s uplifted hands—<br /> +Themselves compelled at midnight and at noon<br /> +To watch with steadfast eye their destinies;<br /> +After you have these understandings, think of me<br /> +And of my path, who walked therein and knew<br /> +That neither man nor woman, neither toil,<br /> +Nor duty, gold nor power<br /> +Can ease the longing of the soul,<br /> +The loneliness of the soul! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH20"></a>Lydia Humphrey</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Back and forth, back and forth, to and from the church,<br /> +With my Bible under my arm<br /> +’Till I was gray and old;<br /> +Unwedded, alone in the world,<br /> +Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation,<br /> +And children in the church.<br /> +I know they laughed and thought me queer.<br /> +I knew of the eagle souls that flew high in the sunlight,<br /> +Above the spire of the church, and laughed at the church,<br /> +Disdaining me, not seeing me.<br /> +But if the high air was sweet to them, sweet was the church to me.<br /> +It was the vision, vision, vision of the poets<br /> +Democratized! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG05"></a>Le Roy Goldman</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +“What will you do when you come to die,<br /> +If all your life long you have rejected Jesus,<br /> +And know as you lie there,<br /> +He is not your friend?”<br /> +Over and over I said, I, the revivalist.<br /> +Ah, yes! but there are friends and friends.<br /> +And blessed are you, say I, who know all now,<br /> +You who have lost ere you pass,<br /> +A father or mother, or old grandfather or mother<br /> +Some beautiful soul that lived life strongly<br /> +And knew you all through, and loved you ever,<br /> +Who would not fail to speak for you,<br /> +And give God an intimate view of your soul<br /> +As only one of your flesh could do it.<br /> +That is the hand your hand will reach for,<br /> +To lead you along the corridor<br /> +To the court where you are a stranger! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapR04"></a>Gustav Richter</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +After a long day of work in my hot—houses<br /> +Sleep was sweet, but if you sleep on your left side<br /> +Your dreams may be abruptly ended.<br /> +I was among my flowers where some one<br /> +Seemed to be raising them on trial,<br /> +As if after-while to be transplanted<br /> +To a larger garden of freer air.<br /> +And I was disembodied vision<br /> +Amid a light, as it were the sun<br /> +Had floated in and touched the roof of glass<br /> +Like a toy balloon and softly bursted,<br /> +And etherealized in golden air.<br /> +And all was silence, except the splendor<br /> +Was immanent with thought as clear<br /> +As a speaking voice, and I, as thought,<br /> +Could hear a Presence think as he walked<br /> +Between the boxes pinching off leaves,<br /> +Looking for bugs and noting values,<br /> +With an eye that saw it all:<br /> +“Homer, oh yes! Pericles, good.<br /> +Caesar Borgia, what shall be done with it?<br /> +Dante, too much manure, perhaps.<br /> +Napoleon, leave him awhile as yet.<br /> +Shelley, more soil. Shakespeare, needs spraying—”<br /> +Clouds, eh!— +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW10"></a>Arlo Will</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Did you ever see an alligator<br /> +Come up to the air from the mud,<br /> +Staring blindly under the full glare of noon?<br /> +Have you seen the stabled horses at night<br /> +Tremble and start back at the sight of a lantern?<br /> +Have you ever walked in darkness<br /> +When an unknown door was open before you<br /> +And you stood, it seemed, in the light of a thousand candles<br /> +Of delicate wax?<br /> +Have you walked with the wind in your ears<br /> +And the sunlight about you<br /> +And found it suddenly shine with an inner splendor?<br /> +Out of the mud many times<br /> +Before many doors of light<br /> +Through many fields of splendor,<br /> +Where around your steps a soundless glory scatters<br /> +Like new-fallen snow,<br /> +Will you go through earth, O strong of soul,<br /> +And through unnumbered heavens<br /> +To the final flame! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK05"></a>Captain Orlando Killion</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Oh, you young radicals and dreamers,<br /> +You dauntless fledglings<br /> +Who pass by my headstone,<br /> +Mock not its record of my captaincy in the army<br /> +And my faith in God!<br /> +They are not denials of each other.<br /> +Go by reverently, and read with sober care<br /> +How a great people, riding with defiant shouts<br /> +The centaur of Revolution,<br /> +Spurred and whipped to frenzy,<br /> +Shook with terror, seeing the mist of the sea<br /> +Over the precipice they were nearing,<br /> +And fell from his back in precipitate awe<br /> +To celebrate the Feast of the Supreme Being.<br /> +Moved by the same sense of vast reality<br /> +Of life and death, and burdened as they were<br /> +With the fate of a race,<br /> +How was I, a little blasphemer,<br /> +Caught in the drift of a nation’s unloosened flood,<br /> +To remain a blasphemer,<br /> +And a captain in the army? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC06"></a>Jeremy Carlisle</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Passer-by, sin beyond any sin<br /> +Is the sin of blindness of souls to other souls.<br /> +And joy beyond any joy is the joy<br /> +Of having the good in you seen, and seeing the good<br /> +At the miraculous moment!<br /> +Here I confess to a lofty scorn,<br /> +And an acrid skepticism.<br /> +But do you remember the liquid that Penniwit<br /> +Poured on tintypes making them blue<br /> +With a mist like hickory smoke?<br /> +Then how the picture began to clear<br /> +Till the face came forth like life?<br /> +So you appeared to me, neglected ones,<br /> +And enemies too, as I went along<br /> +With my face growing clearer to you as yours<br /> +Grew clearer to me.<br /> +We were ready then to walk together<br /> +And sing in chorus and chant the dawn<br /> +Of life that is wholly life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapD04"></a>Joseph Dixon</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Who carved this shattered harp on my stone?<br /> +I died to you, no doubt. But how many harps and pianos<br /> +Wired I and tightened and disentangled for you,<br /> +Making them sweet again—with tuning fork or without?<br /> +Oh well! A harp leaps out of the ear of a man, you say,<br /> +But whence the ear that orders the length of the strings<br /> +To a magic of numbers flying before your thought<br /> +Through a door that closes against your breathless wonder?<br /> +Is there no Ear round the ear of a man, that it senses<br /> +Through strings and columns of air the soul of sound?<br /> +I thrill as I call it a tuning fork that catches<br /> +The waves of mingled music and light from afar,<br /> +The antennæ of Thought that listens through utmost space.<br /> +Surely the concord that ruled my spirit is proof<br /> +Of an Ear that tuned me, able to tune me over<br /> +And use me again if I am worthy to use. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS28"></a>Judson Stoddard</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +On a mountain top above the clouds<br /> +That streamed like a sea below me<br /> +I said that peak is the thought of Budda,<br /> +And that one is the prayer of Jesus,<br /> +And this one is the dream of Plato,<br /> +And that one there the song of Dante,<br /> +And this is Kant and this is Newton,<br /> +And this is Milton and this is Shakespeare,<br /> +And this the hope of the Mother Church,<br /> +And this—why all these peaks are poems,<br /> +Poems and prayers that pierce the clouds.<br /> +And I said “What does God do with mountains<br /> +That rise almost to heaven?” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK06"></a>Russell Kincaid</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +In the last spring I ever knew,<br /> +In those last days, I sat in the forsaken orchard<br /> +Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered<br /> +The hills at Miller’s Ford;<br /> +Just to muse on the apple tree<br /> +With its ruined trunk and blasted branches,<br /> +And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms<br /> +Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle,<br /> +Never to grow in fruit.<br /> +And there was I with my spirit girded<br /> +By the flesh half dead, the senses numb<br /> +Yet thinking of youth and the earth in youth,—<br /> +Such phantom blossoms palely shining<br /> +Over the lifeless boughs of Time.<br /> +O earth that leaves us ere heaven takes us!<br /> +Had I been only a tree to shiver<br /> +With dreams of spring and a leafy youth,<br /> +Then I had fallen in the cyclone<br /> +Which swept me out of the soul’s suspense<br /> +Where it’s neither earth nor heaven. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH04"></a>Aaron Hatfield</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Better than granite, Spoon River,<br /> +Is the memory-picture you keep of me<br /> +Standing before the pioneer men and women<br /> +There at Concord Church on Communion day.<br /> +Speaking in broken voice of the peasant youth<br /> +Of Galilee who went to the city<br /> +And was killed by bankers and lawyers;<br /> +My voice mingling with the June wind<br /> +That blew over wheat fields from Atterbury;<br /> +While the white stones in the burying ground<br /> +Around the Church shimmered in the summer sun.<br /> +And there, though my own memories<br /> +Were too great to bear, were you, O pioneers,<br /> +With bowed heads breathing forth your sorrow<br /> +For the sons killed in battle and the daughters<br /> +And little children who vanished in life’s morning,<br /> +Or at the intolerable hour of noon.<br /> +But in those moments of tragic silence,<br /> +When the wine and bread were passed,<br /> +Came the reconciliation for us—<br /> +Us the ploughmen and the hewers of wood,<br /> +Us the peasants, brothers of the peasant of Galilee—<br /> +To us came the Comforter<br /> +And the consolation of tongues of flame! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB07"></a>Isaiah Beethoven</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +They told me I had three months to live,<br /> +So I crept to Bernadotte,<br /> +And sat by the mill for hours and hours<br /> +Where the gathered waters deeply moving<br /> +Seemed not to move:<br /> +O world, that’s you!<br /> +You are but a widened place in the river<br /> +Where Life looks down and we rejoice for her<br /> +Mirrored in us, and so we dream<br /> +And turn away, but when again<br /> +We look for the face, behold the low-lands<br /> +And blasted cotton-wood trees where we empty<br /> +Into the larger stream!<br /> +But here by the mill the castled clouds<br /> +Mocked themselves in the dizzy water;<br /> +And over its agate floor at night<br /> +The flame of the moon ran under my eyes<br /> +Amid a forest stillness broken<br /> +By a flute in a hut on the hill.<br /> +At last when I came to lie in bed<br /> +Weak and in pain, with the dreams about me,<br /> +The soul of the river had entered my soul,<br /> +And the gathered power of my soul was moving<br /> +So swiftly it seemed to be at rest<br /> +Under cities of cloud and under<br /> +Spheres of silver and changing worlds—<br /> +Until I saw a flash of trumpets<br /> +Above the battlements over Time. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB17"></a>Elijah Browning</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was among multitudes of children<br /> +Dancing at the foot of a mountain.<br /> +A breeze blew out of the east and swept them as leaves,<br /> +Driving some up the slopes. . . .<br /> +All was changed.<br /> +Here were flying lights, and mystic moons, and dream-music.<br /> +A cloud fell upon us.<br /> +When it lifted all was changed.<br /> +I was now amid multitudes who were wrangling.<br /> +Then a figure in shimmering gold, and one with a trumpet,<br /> +And one with a sceptre stood before me.<br /> +They mocked me and danced a rigadoon and vanished. . . .<br /> +All was changed again.<br /> +Out of a bower of poppies<br /> +A woman bared her breasts and lifted her open mouth to mine.<br /> +I kissed her.<br /> +The taste of her lips was like salt.<br /> +She left blood on my lips.<br /> +I fell exhausted.<br /> +I arose and ascended higher, but a mist as from an iceberg<br /> +Clouded my steps.<br /> +I was cold and in pain.<br /> +Then the sun streamed on me again,<br /> +And I saw the mists below me hiding all below them.<br /> +And I, bent over my staff, knew myself<br /> +Silhouetted against the snow. And above me<br /> +Was the soundless air, pierced by a cone of ice,<br /> +Over which hung a solitary star!<br /> +A shudder of ecstasy, a shudder of fear<br /> +Ran through me.<br /> +But I could not return to the slopes—<br /> +Nay, I wished not to return.<br /> +For the spent waves of the symphony of freedom<br /> +Lapped the ethereal cliffs about me.<br /> +Therefore I climbed to the pinnacle.<br /> +I flung away my staff.<br /> +I touched that star<br /> +With my outstretched hand.<br /> +I vanished utterly.<br /> +For the mountain delivers to Infinite Truth<br /> +Whosoever touches the star. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF07"></a>Webster Ford</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Do you remember, O Delphic Apollo,<br /> +The sunset hour by the river, when Mickey M’Grew<br /> +Cried, “There’s a ghost,” and I, “It’s Delphic Apollo”;<br /> +And the son of the banker derided us, saying, “It’s light<br /> +By the flags at the water’s edge, you half-witted fools.”<br /> +And from thence, as the wearisome years rolled on, long after<br /> +Poor Mickey fell down in the water tower to his death<br /> +Down, down, through bellowing darkness, I carried<br /> +The vision which perished with him like a rocket which falls<br /> +And quenches its light in earth, and hid it for fear<br /> +Of the son of the banker, calling on Plutus to save me?<br /> +Avenged were you for the shame of a fearful heart<br /> +Who left me alone till I saw you again in an hour<br /> +When I seemed to be turned to a tree with trunk and branches<br /> +Growing indurate, turning to stone, yet burgeoning<br /> +In laurel leaves, in hosts of lambent laurel,<br /> +Quivering, fluttering, shrinking, fighting the numbness<br /> +Creeping into their veins from the dying trunk and branches!<br /> +’Tis vain, O youth, to fly the call of Apollo.<br /> +Fling yourselves in the fire, die with a song of spring,<br /> +If die you must in the spring. For none shall look<br /> +On the face of Apollo and live, and choose you must<br /> +’Twixt death in the flame and death after years of sorrow,<br /> +Rooted fast in the earth, feeling the grisly hand,<br /> +Not so much in the trunk as in the terrible numbness<br /> +Creeping up to the laurel leaves that never cease<br /> +To flourish until you fall. O leaves of me<br /> +Too sere for coronal wreaths, and fit alone<br /> +For urns of memory, treasured, perhaps, as themes<br /> +For hearts heroic, fearless singers and livers—<br /> +Delphic Apollo! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS25"></a>The Spooniad</h2> + +<p class="letter"> +[<i>The late Mr. Jonathan Swift Somers, laureate of Spoon River (<a href="#chapS21">see page 111</a>), +planned The Spooniad as an epic in twenty-four books, but unfortunately did not +live to complete even the first book. The fragment was found among his papers +by William Marion Reedy and was for the first time published in Reedy’s +Mirror of December 18th, 1914.</i>] +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +Of John Cabanis’ wrath and of the strife<br /> +Of hostile parties, and his dire defeat<br /> +Who led the common people in the cause<br /> +Of freedom for Spoon River, and the fall<br /> +Of Rhodes, bank that brought unnumbered woes<br /> +And loss to many, with engendered hate<br /> +That flamed into the torch in Anarch hands<br /> +To burn the court-house, on whose blackened wreck<br /> +A fairer temple rose and Progress stood—<br /> +Sing, muse, that lit the Chian’s face with smiles<br /> +Who saw the ant-like Greeks and Trojans crawl<br /> +About Scamander, over walls, pursued<br /> +Or else pursuing, and the funeral pyres<br /> +And sacred hecatombs, and first because<br /> +Of Helen who with Paris fled to Troy<br /> +As soul-mate; and the wrath of Peleus, son,<br /> +Decreed to lose Chryseis, lovely spoil<br /> +Of war, and dearest concubine.<br /> +<br /> +Say first,<br /> +Thou son of night, called Momus, from whose eyes<br /> +No secret hides, and Thalia, smiling one,<br /> +What bred ’twixt Thomas Rhodes and John Cabanis<br /> +The deadly strife? His daughter Flossie, she,<br /> +Returning from her wandering with a troop<br /> +Of strolling players, walked the village streets,<br /> +Her bracelets tinkling and with sparkling rings<br /> +And words of serpent wisdom and a smile<br /> +Of cunning in her eyes. Then Thomas Rhodes,<br /> +Who ruled the church and ruled the bank as well,<br /> +Made known his disapproval of the maid;<br /> +And all Spoon River whispered and the eyes<br /> +Of all the church frowned on her, till she knew<br /> +They feared her and condemned.<br /> +<br /> +But them to flout<br /> +She gave a dance to viols and to flutes,<br /> +Brought from Peoria, and many youths,<br /> +But lately made regenerate through the prayers<br /> +Of zealous preachers and of earnest souls,<br /> +Danced merrily, and sought her in the dance,<br /> +Who wore a dress so low of neck that eyes<br /> +Down straying might survey the snowy swale<br /> +’Till it was lost in whiteness.<br /> +<br /> +With the dance<br /> +The village changed to merriment from gloom.<br /> +The milliner, Mrs. Williams, could not fill<br /> +Her orders for new hats, and every seamstress<br /> +Plied busy needles making gowns; old trunks<br /> +And chests were opened for their store of laces<br /> +And rings and trinkets were brought out of hiding<br /> +And all the youths fastidious grew of dress;<br /> +Notes passed, and many a fair one’s door at eve<br /> +Knew a bouquet, and strolling lovers thronged<br /> +About the hills that overlooked the river.<br /> +Then, since the mercy seats more empty showed,<br /> +One of God’s chosen lifted up his voice:<br /> +“The woman of Babylon is among us; rise<br /> +Ye sons of light and drive the wanton forth!”<br /> +So John Cabanis left the church and left<br /> +The hosts of law and order with his eyes<br /> +By anger cleared, and him the liberal cause<br /> +Acclaimed as nominee to the mayoralty<br /> +To vanquish A. D. Blood.<br /> +<br /> +But as the war<br /> +Waged bitterly for votes and rumors flew<br /> +About the bank, and of the heavy loans<br /> +Which Rhodes, son had made to prop his loss<br /> +In wheat, and many drew their coin and left<br /> +The bank of Rhodes more hollow, with the talk<br /> +Among the liberals of another bank<br /> +Soon to be chartered, lo, the bubble burst<br /> +’Mid cries and curses; but the liberals laughed<br /> +And in the hall of Nicholas Bindle held<br /> +Wise converse and inspiriting debate.<br /> +<br /> +High on a stage that overlooked the chairs<br /> +Where dozens sat, and where a pop-eyed daub<br /> +Of Shakespeare, very like the hired man<br /> +Of Christian Dallman, brow and pointed beard,<br /> +Upon a drab proscenium outward stared,<br /> +Sat Harmon Whitney, to that eminence,<br /> +By merit raised in ribaldry and guile,<br /> +And to the assembled rebels thus he spake:<br /> +“Whether to lie supine and let a clique<br /> +Cold-blooded, scheming, hungry, singing psalms,<br /> +Devour our substance, wreck our banks and drain<br /> +Our little hoards for hazards on the price<br /> +Of wheat or pork, or yet to cower beneath<br /> +The shadow of a spire upreared to curb<br /> +A breed of lackeys and to serve the bank<br /> +Coadjutor in greed, that is the question.<br /> +Shall we have music and the jocund dance,<br /> +Or tolling bells? Or shall young romance roam<br /> +These hills about the river, flowering now<br /> +To April’s tears, or shall they sit at home,<br /> +Or play croquet where Thomas Rhodes may see,<br /> +I ask you? If the blood of youth runs o’er<br /> +And riots ’gainst this regimen of gloom,<br /> +Shall we submit to have these youths and maids<br /> +Branded as libertines and wantons?”<br /> +<br /> +Ere<br /> +His words were done a woman’s voice called “No!”<br /> +Then rose a sound of moving chairs, as when<br /> +The numerous swine o’er-run the replenished troughs;<br /> +And every head was turned, as when a flock<br /> +Of geese back-turning to the hunter’s tread<br /> +Rise up with flapping wings; then rang the hall<br /> +With riotous laughter, for with battered hat<br /> +Tilted upon her saucy head, and fist<br /> +Raised in defiance, Daisy Fraser stood.<br /> +Headlong she had been hurled from out the hall<br /> +Save Wendell Bloyd, who spoke for woman’s rights,<br /> +Prevented, and the bellowing voice of Burchard.<br /> +Then, mid applause she hastened toward the stage<br /> +And flung both gold and silver to the cause<br /> +And swiftly left the hall.<br /> +Meantime upstood<br /> +A giant figure, bearded like the son<br /> +Of Alcmene, deep-chested, round of paunch,<br /> +And spoke in thunder: “Over there behold<br /> +A man who for the truth withstood his wife—<br /> +Such is our spirit—when that A. D. Blood<br /> +Compelled me to remove Dom Pedro—”<br /> +<br /> +Quick<br /> +Before Jim Brown could finish, Jefferson Howard<br /> +Obtained the floor and spake: “Ill suits the time<br /> +For clownish words, and trivial is our cause<br /> +If naught’s at stake but John Cabanis, wrath,<br /> +He who was erstwhile of the other side<br /> +And came to us for vengeance. More’s at stake<br /> +Than triumph for New England or Virginia.<br /> +And whether rum be sold, or for two years<br /> +As in the past two years, this town be dry<br /> +Matters but little— Oh yes, revenue<br /> +For sidewalks, sewers; that is well enough!<br /> +I wish to God this fight were now inspired<br /> +By other passion than to salve the pride<br /> +Of John Cabanis or his daughter. Why<br /> +Can never contests of great moment spring<br /> +From worthy things, not little? Still, if men<br /> +Must always act so, and if rum must be<br /> +The symbol and the medium to release<br /> +From life’s denial and from slavery,<br /> +Then give me rum!”<br /> +<br /> +Exultant cries arose.<br /> +Then, as George Trimble had o’ercome his fear<br /> +And vacillation and begun to speak,<br /> +The door creaked and the idiot, Willie Metcalf,<br /> +Breathless and hatless, whiter than a sheet,<br /> +Entered and cried: “The marshal’s on his way<br /> +To arrest you all. And if you only knew<br /> +Who’s coming here to-morrow; I was listening<br /> +Beneath the window where the other side<br /> +Are making plans.”<br /> +<br /> +So to a smaller room<br /> +To hear the idiot’s secret some withdrew<br /> +Selected by the Chair; the Chair himself<br /> +And Jefferson Howard, Benjamin Pantier,<br /> +And Wendell Bloyd, George Trimble, Adam Weirauch,<br /> +Imanuel Ehrenhardt, Seth Compton, Godwin James<br /> +And Enoch Dunlap, Hiram Scates, Roy Butler,<br /> +Carl Hamblin, Roger Heston, Ernest Hyde<br /> +And Penniwit, the artist, Kinsey Keene,<br /> +And E. C. Culbertson and Franklin Jones,<br /> +Benjamin Fraser, son of Benjamin Pantier<br /> +By Daisy Fraser, some of lesser note,<br /> +And secretly conferred.<br /> +<br /> +But in the hall<br /> +Disorder reigned and when the marshal came<br /> +And found it so, he marched the hoodlums out<br /> +And locked them up.<br /> +<br /> +Meanwhile within a room<br /> +Back in the basement of the church, with Blood<br /> +Counseled the wisest heads. Judge Somers first,<br /> +Deep learned in life, and next him, Elliott Hawkins<br /> +And Lambert Hutchins; next him Thomas Rhodes<br /> +And Editor Whedon; next him Garrison Standard,<br /> +A traitor to the liberals, who with lip<br /> +Upcurled in scorn and with a bitter sneer:<br /> +“Such strife about an insult to a woman—<br /> +A girl of eighteen” —Christian Dallman too,<br /> +And others unrecorded. Some there were<br /> +Who frowned not on the cup but loathed the rule<br /> +Democracy achieved thereby, the freedom<br /> +And lust of life it symbolized. +<br /> +Now morn with snowy fingers up the sky<br /> +Flung like an orange at a festival<br /> +The ruddy sun, when from their hasty beds<br /> +Poured forth the hostile forces, and the streets<br /> +Resounded to the rattle of the wheels<br /> +That drove this way and that to gather in<br /> +The tardy voters, and the cries of chieftains<br /> +Who manned the battle. But at ten o’clock<br /> +The liberals bellowed fraud, and at the polls<br /> +The rival candidates growled and came to blows.<br /> +Then proved the idiot’s tale of yester-eve<br /> +A word of warning. Suddenly on the streets<br /> +Walked hog-eyed Allen, terror of the hills<br /> +That looked on Bernadotte ten miles removed.<br /> +No man of this degenerate day could lift<br /> +The boulders which he threw, and when he spoke<br /> +The windows rattled, and beneath his brows<br /> +Thatched like a shed with bristling hair of black,<br /> +His small eyes glistened like a maddened boar.<br /> +And as he walked the boards creaked, as he walked<br /> +A song of menace rumbled. Thus he came,<br /> +The champion of A. D. Blood, commissioned<br /> +To terrify the liberals. Many fled<br /> +As when a hawk soars o’er the chicken yard.<br /> +He passed the polls and with a playful hand<br /> +Touched Brown, the giant, and he fell against,<br /> +As though he were a child, the wall; so strong<br /> +Was hog-eyed Allen. But the liberals smiled.<br /> +For soon as hog-eyed Allen reached the walk,<br /> +Close on his steps paced Bengal Mike, brought in<br /> +By Kinsey Keene, the subtle-witted one,<br /> +To match the hog-eyed Allen. He was scarce<br /> +Three-fourths the other’s bulk, but steel his arms,<br /> +And with a tiger’s heart. Two men he killed<br /> +And many wounded in the days before,<br /> +And no one feared.<br /> +<br /> +But when the hog-eyed one<br /> +Saw Bengal Mike his countenance grew dark,<br /> +The bristles o’er his red eyes twitched with rage,<br /> +The song he rumbled lowered. Round and round<br /> +The court-house paced he, followed stealthily<br /> +By Bengal Mike, who jeered him every step:<br /> +“Come, elephant, and fight! Come, hog-eyed coward!<br /> +Come, face about and fight me, lumbering sneak!<br /> +Come, beefy bully, hit me, if you can!<br /> +Take out your gun, you duffer, give me reason<br /> +To draw and kill you. Take your billy out.<br /> +I’ll crack your boar’s head with a piece of brick!”<br /> +But never a word the hog-eyed one returned<br /> +But trod about the court-house, followed both<br /> +By troops of boys and watched by all the men.<br /> +All day, they walked the square. But when Apollo<br /> +Stood with reluctant look above the hills<br /> +As fain to see the end, and all the votes<br /> +Were cast, and closed the polls, before the door<br /> +Of Trainor’s drug store Bengal Mike, in tones<br /> +That echoed through the village, bawled the taunt:<br /> +“Who was your mother, hog—eyed?” In a trice<br /> +As when a wild boar turns upon the hound<br /> +That through the brakes upon an August day<br /> +Has gashed him with its teeth, the hog-eyed one<br /> +Rushed with his giant arms on Bengal Mike<br /> +And grabbed him by the throat. Then rose to heaven<br /> +The frightened cries of boys, and yells of men<br /> +Forth rushing to the street. And Bengal Mike<br /> +Moved this way and now that, drew in his head<br /> +As if his neck to shorten, and bent down<br /> +To break the death grip of the hog-eyed one;<br /> +’Twixt guttural wrath and fast-expiring strength<br /> +Striking his fists against the invulnerable chest<br /> +Of hog-eyed Allen. Then, when some came in<br /> +To part them, others stayed them, and the fight<br /> +Spread among dozens; many valiant souls<br /> +Went down from clubs and bricks.<br /> +<br /> +But tell me, Muse,<br /> +What god or goddess rescued Bengal Mike?<br /> +With one last, mighty struggle did he grasp<br /> +The murderous hands and turning kick his foe.<br /> +Then, as if struck by lightning, vanished all<br /> +The strength from hog-eyed Allen, at his side<br /> +Sank limp those giant arms and o’er his face<br /> +Dread pallor and the sweat of anguish spread.<br /> +And those great knees, invincible but late,<br /> +Shook to his weight. And quickly as the lion<br /> +Leaps on its wounded prey, did Bengal Mike<br /> +Smite with a rock the temple of his foe,<br /> +And down he sank and darkness o’er his eyes<br /> +Passed like a cloud.<br /> +<br /> +As when the woodman fells<br /> +Some giant oak upon a summer’s day<br /> +And all the songsters of the forest shrill,<br /> +And one great hawk that has his nestling young<br /> +Amid the topmost branches croaks, as crash<br /> +The leafy branches through the tangled boughs<br /> +Of brother oaks, so fell the hog-eyed one<br /> +Amid the lamentations of the friends<br /> +Of A. D. Blood.<br /> +<br /> +Just then, four lusty men<br /> +Bore the town marshal, on whose iron face<br /> +The purple pall of death already lay,<br /> +To Trainor’s drug store, shot by Jack McGuire.<br /> +And cries went up of “Lynch him!” and the sound<br /> +Of running feet from every side was heard<br /> +Bent on the +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapE02"></a>Epilogue</h2> + +<p class="center"> +(THE GRAVEYARD OF SPOON RIVER. TWO VOICES ARE HEARD BEHIND A SCREEN DECORATED +WITH DIABOLICAL AND ANGELIC FIGURES IN VARIOUS ALLEGORICAL RELATIONS. A FAINT +LIGHT SHOWS DIMLY THROUGH THE SCREEN AS IF IT WERE WOVEN OF LEAVES, BRANCHES +AND SHADOWS.) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE.<br /> +A game of checkers? +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +Well, I don’t mind. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +I move the Will. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +You’re playing it blind. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +Then here’s the Soul. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +Checked by the Will. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +Eternal Good! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +And Eternal Ill. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +I haste for the King row. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +Save your breath. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +I was moving Life. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +You’re checked by Death. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +Very good, here’s Moses. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +And here’s the Jew. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +My next move is Jesus. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +St. Paul for you! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +Yes, but St. Peter— +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +You might have foreseen— +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +You’re in the King row— +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +With Constantine! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +I’ll go back to Athens. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +Well, here’s the Persian. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +All right, the Bible. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +Pray now, what version? +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +I take up Buddha. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +It never will work. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +From the corner Mahomet. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +I move the Turk. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +The game is tangled; where are we now? +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +You’re dreaming worlds. I’m in the King row.<br /> +Move as you will, if I can’t wreck you<br /> +I’ll thwart you, harry you, rout you, check you. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +I’m tired. I’ll send for my Son to play.<br /> +I think he can beat you finally— +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +Eh? +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +I must preside at the stars’ convention. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +Very well, my lord, but I beg to mention<br /> +I’ll give this game my direct +attention. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +A game indeed! But Truth is my quest. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +Beaten, you walk away with a jest.<br /> +I strike the table, I scatter the checkers.<br /> +(<i>A rattle of a falling table and checkers flying over a floor</i>.)<br /> +Aha! You armies and iron deckers,<br /> +Races and states in a cataclysm—<br /> +Now for a day of atheism! +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>The screen vanishes and</i> BEELZEBUB <i>steps forward carrying a trumpet, +which he blows faintly. Immediately</i> LOKI <i>and</i> YOCARINDRA <i>start up +from the shadows of night.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Good evening, Loki! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +LOKI<br /> +The same to you! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +And Yogarindra! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +YOGARINDRA<br /> +My greetings, too. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +LOKI<br /> +Whence came you, comrade? +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +From yonder screen. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +YOGARINDRA<br /> +And what were you doing? +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Stirring His spleen. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +LOKI<br /> +How did you do it? +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +I made it rough<br /> +In a game of checkers. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +LOKI<br /> +Good enough! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +YOGARINDRA<br /> +I thought I heard the sounds of a battle. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +No doubt! I made the checkers rattle,<br /> +Turning the table over and strewing<br /> +The bits of wood like an army pursuing. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +YOGARINDRA<br /> +I have a game! Let us make a man. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +LOKI<br /> +My net is waiting him, if you can. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +YOGARINDRA<br /> +And here’s my mirror to fool him with— +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Mystery, falsehood, creed and myth. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +LOKI<br /> +But no one can mold him, friend, but you. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Then to the sport without more ado. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +YOGARINDRA<br /> +Hurry the work ere it grow to day. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +I set me to it. Where is the clay?<br /> +(<i>He scrapes the earth with his hands and begins to model.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Out of the dust,<br /> +Out of the slime,<br /> +A little rust,<br /> +And a little lime.<br /> +Muscle and gristle,<br /> +Mucin, stone<br /> +Brayed with a pestle,<br /> +Fat and bone.<br /> +Out of the marshes,<br /> +Out of the vaults,<br /> +Matter crushes<br /> +Gas and salts.<br /> +What is this you call a mind,<br /> +Flitting, drifting, pale and blind,<br /> +Soul of the swamp that rides the wind?<br /> +Jack-o’-lantern, here you are!<br /> +Dream of heaven, pine for a star,<br /> +Chase your brothers to and fro,<br /> +Back to the swamp at last you’ll go.<br /> +Hilloo! Hilloo! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +THE VALLEY<br /> +Hilloo! Hilloo!<br /> +(<i>Beelzebub in scraping up the earth turns out a skull.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Old one, old one.<br /> +Now ere I break you<br /> +Crush you and make you<br /> +Clay for my use,<br /> +Let me observe you:<br /> +You were a bold one<br /> +Flat at the dome of you,<br /> +Heavy the base of you,<br /> +False to the home of you,<br /> +Strong was the face of you,<br /> +Strange to all fears.<br /> +Yet did the hair of you<br /> +Hide what you were.<br /> +Now to re-nerve you— +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>He crushes the skull between his hands and mixes it with the clay.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +Now you are dust,<br /> +Limestone and rust.<br /> +I mold and I stir<br /> +And make you again. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +THE VALLEY<br /> +Again? Again? +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>In the same manner</i> BEELZEBUB <i>has fashioned several figures, standing +them against the trees.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +LOKI<br /> +Now for the breath of life. As I remember<br /> +You have done right to mold your creatures first,<br /> +And stand them up. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +From gravitation<br /> +I make the will. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +YOGARINDRA<br /> +Out of sensation<br /> +Comes his ill.<br /> +Out of my mirror<br /> +Springs his error.<br /> +Who was so cruel<br /> +To make him the slave<br /> +Of me the sorceress, you the knave,<br /> +And you the plotter to catch his thought,<br /> +Whatever he did, whatever he sought?<br /> +With a nature dual<br /> +Of will and mind,<br /> +A thing that sees, and a thing that’s blind.<br /> +Come! to our dance! Something hated him<br /> +Made us over him, therefore fated him. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>They join hands and dance.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +LOKI<br /> +Passion, reason, custom, ruels,<br /> +Creeds of the churches, lore of the schools,<br /> +Taint in the blood and strength of soul.<br /> +Flesh too weak for the will’s control;<br /> +Poverty, riches, pride of birth,<br /> +Wailing, laughter, over the earth.<br /> +Here I have you caught again.<br /> +Enter my web, ye sons of men. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +YOGARINDRA<br /> +Look in my mirror! Isn’t it real?<br /> +What do you think now, what do you feel?<br /> +Here is treasure of gold heaped up;<br /> +Here is wine in the festal cup.<br /> +Tendrils blossoming, turned to whips,<br /> +Love with her breasts and scarlet lips.<br /> +Breathe in their nostrils. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Falsehood’s breath,<br /> +Out of nothingness into death.<br /> +Out of the mold, out of the rocks,<br /> +Wonder, mockery, paradox!<br /> +Soaring spirit, groveling flesh,<br /> +Bait the trap, and spread the mesh.<br /> +Give him hunger, lure him with truth,<br /> +Give him the iris hopes of Youth.<br /> +Starve him, shame him, fling him down,<br /> +Whirled in the vortex of the town.<br /> +Break him, age him, till he curse<br /> +The idiot face of the universe.<br /> +Over and over we mix the clay,—<br /> +What was dust is alive to-day. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +THE THREE<br /> +Thus is the hell-born tangle wound<br /> +Swiftly, swiftly round and round. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +(<i>Waving his trumpet.</i>)<br /> +You live! Away! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +ONE OF THE FIGURES<br /> +How strange and new!<br /> +I am I, and another, too. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +ANOTHER FIGURE<br /> +I was a sun-dew’s leaf, but now<br /> +What is this longing?— +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +ANOTHER FIGURE<br /> +Earth below<br /> +I was a seedling magnet-tipped<br /> +Drawn down earth— +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +ANOTHER FIGURE<br /> +And I was gripped<br /> +Electrons in a granite stone,<br /> +Now I think. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +ANOTHER FIGURE<br /> +Oh, how alone! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +ANOTHER FIGURE<br /> +My lips to thine. Through thee I find<br /> +Something alone by love divined! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Begone! No, wait. I have bethought me, friends;<br /> +Let s give a play. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>He waves his trumpet.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +To yonder green rooms go. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>The figures disappear.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +YOGARINDRA<br /> +Oh, yes, a play! That’s very well, I think,<br /> +But who will be the audience? I must throw<br /> +Illusion over all. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +LOKI<br /> +And I must shift<br /> +The scenery, and tangle up the plot. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Well, so you shall! Our audience shall come<br /> +From yonder graves. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>He blows his trumpet slightly louder than before. The scene changes. A +stage arises among the graves. The curtain is down, concealing the creatures +just created, illuminated halfway up by spectral lights.</i> BEELZEBUB +<i>stands before the curtain.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +(<i>A terrific blast of the trumpet.</i>)<br /> +Who-o-o-o-o-o! +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>Immediately there is a rustling as of the shells of grasshoppers stirred by +a wind; and hundreds of the dead, including those who have appeared in the +Anthology, hurry to the sound of the trumpet.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +A VOICE<br /> +Gabriel! Gabriel! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +MANY VOICES<br /> +The Judgment day! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Be quiet, if you please<br /> +At least until the stars fall and the moon. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +MANY VOICES<br /> +Save us! Save us! +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>Beelzebub extends his hands over the audience with a benedictory motion and +restores order.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Ladies and gentlemen, your kind attention<br /> +To my interpretation of the scene.<br /> +I rise to give your fancy comprehension,<br /> +And analyze the parts of the machine.<br /> +My mood is such that I would not deceive you,<br /> +Though still a liar and the father of it,<br /> +From judgment’s frailty I would retrieve you,<br /> +Though falsehood is my art and though I love it.<br /> +Down in the habitations whence I rise,<br /> +The roots of human sorrow boundless spread.<br /> +Long have I watched them draw the strength that lies<br /> +In clay made richer by the rotting dead.<br /> +Here is a blossom, here a twisted stalk,<br /> +Here fruit that sourly withers ere its prime;<br /> +And here a growth that sprawls across the walk,<br /> +Food for the green worm, which it turns to slime.<br /> +The ruddy apple with a core of cork<br /> +Springs from a root which in a hollow dangles,<br /> +Not skillful husbandry nor laborious work<br /> +Can save the tree which lightning breaks and tangles.<br /> +Why does the bright nasturtium scarcely flower<br /> +But that those insects multiply and grow,<br /> +Which make it food, and in the very hour<br /> +In which the veined leaves and blossoms blow?<br /> +Why does a goodly tree, while fast maturing,<br /> +Turn crooked branches covered o’er with scale?<br /> +Why does the tree whose youth was not assuring<br /> +Prosper and bear while all its fellows fail?<br /> +I under earth see much. I know the soil.<br /> +I know where mold is heavy and where thin.<br /> +I see the stones that thwart the plowman’s toil,<br /> +The crooked roots of what the priests call sin.<br /> +I know all secrets, even to the core,<br /> +What seedlings will be upas, pine or laurel;<br /> +It cannot change howe’er the field’s worked o’er.<br /> +Man’s what he is and that’s the devil’s moral.<br /> +So with the souls of the ensuing drama<br /> +They sprang from certain seed in certain earth.<br /> +Behold them in the devil’s cyclorama,<br /> +Shown in their proper light for all they’re worth.<br /> +Now to my task: I’ll give an exhibition<br /> +Of mixing the ingredients of spirit. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>He waves his hand.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +Come, crucible, perform your magic mission,<br /> +Come, recreative fire, and hover near it!<br /> +I’ll make a soul, or show how one is made. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>He waves his wand again. Parti-colored flames appear.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +This is the woman you shall see anon! +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>A red flame appears.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +This hectic flame makes all the world afraid:<br /> +It was a soldier’s scourge which ate the bone.<br /> +His daughter bore the lady of the action.<br /> +And died at thirty-nine of scrofula.<br /> +She was a creature of a sweet attraction,<br /> +Whose sex-obsession no one ever saw. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>A purple flame appears.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +Lo! this denotes aristocratic strains<br /> +Back in the centuries of France’s glory. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>A blue flame appears.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +And this the will that pulls against the chains<br /> +Her father strove until his hair was hoary.<br /> +Sorrow and failure made his nature cold.<br /> +He never loved the child whose woe is shown,<br /> +And hence her passion for the things which gold<br /> +Brings in this world of pride, and brings alone.<br /> +The human heart that’s famished from its birth<br /> +Turns to the grosser treasures, that is plain.<br /> +Thus aspiration fallen fills the earth<br /> +With jungle growths of bitterness and pain.<br /> +Of Celtic, Gallic fire our heroine!<br /> +Courageous, cruel, passionate and proud.<br /> +False, vengeful, cunning, without fear o’ sin.<br /> +A head that oft is bloody, but not bowed.<br /> +Now if she meet a man—suppose our hero,<br /> +With whom her chemistry shall war yet mix,<br /> +As if she were her Borgia to his Nero,<br /> +’Twill look like one of Satan’s little tricks!<br /> +However, it must be. The world’s great garden<br /> +Is not all mine. I only sow the tares.<br /> +Wheat should be made immune, or else the Warden<br /> +Should stop their coming in the world’s affairs.<br /> +But to our hero! Long ere he was born<br /> +I knew what would repel him and attract.<br /> +Such spirit mathematics, fig or thorn,<br /> +I can prognosticate before the fact. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>A yellow flame appears.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +This is a grandsire’s treason in an orchard<br /> +Against a maid whose nature with his mated. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>Lurid flames appear.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +And this his memory distrait and tortured,<br /> +Which marked the child with hate because she hated.<br /> +Our heroine’s grand dame was that maid’s own cousin—<br /> +But never this our man and woman knew.<br /> +The child, in time, of lovers had a dozen,<br /> +Then wed a gentleman upright and true.<br /> +And thus our hero had a double nature:<br /> +One half of him was bad, the other good.<br /> +The devil must exhaust his nomenclature<br /> +To make this puzzle rightly understood.<br /> +But when our hero and our heroine met<br /> +They were at once attracted, the repulsion<br /> +Was hidden under Passion, with her net<br /> +Which must enmesh you ere you feel revulsion.<br /> +The virus coursing in the soldier’s blood,<br /> +The orchard’s ghost, the unknown kinship ’twixt them,<br /> +Our hero’s mother’s lovers round them stood,<br /> +Shadows that smiled to see how Fate had fixed them.<br /> +This twain pledge vows and marry, that’s the play.<br /> +And then the tragic features rise and deepen.<br /> +He is a tender husband. When away<br /> +The serpents from the orchard slyly creep in.<br /> +Our heroine, born of spirit none too loyal,<br /> +Picks fruit of knowledge—leaves the tree of life.<br /> +Her fancy turns to France corrupt and royal,<br /> +Soon she forgets her duty as a wife.<br /> +You know the rest, so far as that’s concerned,<br /> +She met exposure and her husband slew her.<br /> +He lost his reason, for the love she spurned.<br /> +He prized her as his own—how slight he knew her.<br /> +(<i>He waves a wand, showing a man in a prison cell.</i>)<br /> +Now here he sits condemned to mount the gallows—<br /> +He could not tell his story—he is dumb.<br /> +Love, says your poets, is a grace that hallows,<br /> +I call it suffering and martyrdom.<br /> +The judge with pointed finger says, “You killed her.”<br /> +Well, so he did—but here’s the explanation;<br /> +He could not give it. I, the drama-builder,<br /> +Show you the various truths and their relation.<br /> +(<i>He waves his wand.</i>)<br /> +Now, to begin. The curtain is ascending,<br /> +They meet at tea upon a flowery lawn.<br /> +Fair, is it not? How sweet their souls are blending—<br /> +The author calls the play “Laocoon.” +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +A VOICE<br /> +Only an earth dream. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +ANOTHER VOICE<br /> +With which we are done.<br /> +A flash of a comet<br /> +Upon the earth stream. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +ANOTHER VOICE<br /> +A dream twrice removed,<br /> +A spectral confusion<br /> +Of earth’s dread illusion. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +A FAR VOICE<br /> +These are the ghosts<br /> +From the desolate coasts.<br /> +Would you go to them?<br /> +Only pursue them.<br /> +Whatever enshrined is<br /> +Within you is you.<br /> +In a place where no wind is,<br /> +Out of the damps,<br /> +Be ye as lamps.<br /> +Flame-like aspire,<br /> +To me alone true,<br /> +The Life and the Fire. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(BEELZEBUB, LOKI <i>and</i> YOGARINDRA <i>vanish. The phantasmagoria fades out. +Where the dead seemed to have assembled, only heaps of leaves appear. There is +the light as of dawn. Voices of Spring.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +The springtime is come, the winter departed.<br /> +She wakens from slumber and dances light-hearted.<br /> +The sun is returning,<br /> +We are done with alarms,<br /> +Earth lifts her face burning,<br /> +Held close in his arms.<br /> +The sun is an eagle<br /> +Who broods o’er his young,<br /> +The earth is his nursling<br /> +In whom he has flung<br /> +The life-flame in seed,<br /> +In blossom desire,<br /> +Till fire become life,<br /> +And life become fire. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +I slip and I vanish,<br /> +I baffle your eye;<br /> +I dive and I climb,<br /> +I change and I fly.<br /> +You have me, you lose me,<br /> +Who have me too well,<br /> +Now find me and use me—<br /> +I am here in a cell. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +THIRD VOICE<br /> +You are there in a cell?<br /> +Oh, now for a rod<br /> +With which to divine you— +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +Nay, child, I am God. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FOURTH VOICE<br /> +When the waking waters rise from their beds of snow, under the hill,<br /> +In little rooms of stone where they sleep when icicles reign,<br /> +The April breezes scurry through woodlands, saying “Fulfill!<br /> +Awaken roots under cover of soil—it is Spring again.”<br /> +Then the sun exults, the moon is at peace, and voices<br /> +Call to the silver shadows to lift the flowers from their dreams.<br /> +And a longing, longing enters my heart of sorrow, my heart that rejoices<br /> +In the fleeting glimpse of a shining face, and her hair that gleams.<br /> +I arise and follow alone for hours the winding way by the river.<br /> +Hunting a vanishing light, and a solace for joy too deep.<br /> +Where do you lead me, wild one, on and on forever?<br /> +Over the hill, over the hill, and down to the meadows of sleep. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +THE SUN<br /> +Over the soundless depths of space for a hundred million miles<br /> +Speeds the soul of me, silent thunder, struck from a harp of fire.<br /> +Before my eyes the planets wheel and a universe defiles,<br /> +I but a luminant speck of dust upborne in a vast desire.<br /> +What is my universe that obeys me—myself compelled to obey<br /> +A power that holds me and whirls me over a path that has no end?<br /> +And there are my children who call me great, the giver of life and day,<br /> +Myself a child who cry for life and know not whither I tend.<br /> +A million million suns above me, as if the curtain of night<br /> +Were hung before creation’s flame, that shone through the weave of the cloth,<br /> +Each with its worlds and worlds and worlds crying upward for light,<br /> +For each is drawn in its course to what?—as the candle draws the moth. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +THE MILKY WAY<br /> +Orbits unending,<br /> +Life never ending,<br /> +Power without end. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +A VOICE<br /> +Wouldst thou be lord,<br /> +Not peace but a sword.<br /> +Not heart’s desire—<br /> +Ever aspire.<br /> +Worship thy power,<br /> +Conquer thy hour,<br /> +Sleep not but strive,<br /> +So shalt thou live. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +INFINITE DEPTHS<br /> +Infinite Law,<br /> +Infinite Life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1280 ***</div> +</body> + +</html> + + diff --git a/1280-h/images/cover.jpg b/1280-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3ef42a6 --- /dev/null +++ b/1280-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..acf8866 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #1280 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1280) diff --git a/old/1280-0.txt b/old/1280-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6debb07 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/1280-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7957 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook of Spoon River Anthology, by Edgar Lee Masters + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you +will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before +using this eBook. + +Title: Spoon River Anthology + +Author: Edgar Lee Masters + +Release Date: April, 1998 [eBook #1280] +[Most recently updated: November 16, 2022] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +Produced by: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY *** + +[Illustration] + + + + +Spoon River Anthology + +by Edgar Lee Masters + + +Contents + +A + +Altman, Herman +Armstrong, Hannah +Arnett, Harold +Arnett, Justice +Atheist, The Village +Atherton, Lucius + +B + +Ballard, John +Barker, Amanda +Barrett, Pauline +Bartlett, Ezra +Bateson, Marie +Beatty, Tom +Beethoven, Isaiah +Bennett, Hon. Henry +Bindle, Nicholas +Bliss, Mrs. Charles +Blood, A. D. +Bloyd, Wendell P. +Bone, Richard +Branson, Caroline +Brown, Jim +Brown, Sarah +Browning, Elijah +Burke, Robert Southey +Burleson, John Horace +Butler, Roy + +C + +Cabanis, Flossie +Cabanis, John +Calhoun, Granville +Calhoun, Henry C. +Campbell, Calvin +Carlisle, Jeremy +Carman, Eugene +Cheney, Columbus +Chicken, Ida +Childers, Elizabeth +Church, John M. +Churchill, Alfonso +Clapp, Homer +Clark, Nellie +Clute, Aner +Compton, Seth +Conant, Edith +Culbertson, E. C. + +D + +Davidson, Robert +Dement, Silas +Dippold the Optician +Dixon, Joseph +Dobyns, Batterton +Drummer, Frank +Drummer, Hare +Dunlap, Enoch +Dye, Shack + +E + +Ehrenhardt, Imanuel +Epilogue + +F + +Fallas, State’s Attorney +Fawcett, Clarence +Ferguson, Wallace +Findlay, Anthony +Fluke, Willard +Foote, Searcy +Ford, Webster +Fraser, Benjamin +Fraser, Daisy +French, Charlie +Frickey, Ida + +G + +Garber, James +Gardner, Samuel +Garrick, Amelia +Godbey, Jacob +Goldman, Le Roy +Goode, William +Goodhue, Harry Carey +Goodpasture, Jacob +Graham, Magrady +Gray, George +Green, Ami +Greene, Hamilton +Griffy, The Cooper +Gustine, Dorcas + +H + +Hainsfeather, Barney +Hamblin, Carl +Hately, Constance +Hatfield, Aaron +Hawkins, Elliott +Hawley, Jeduthan +Henry, Chase +Herndon, William H. +Heston, Roger +Higbie, Archibald +Hill, Doc +Hill, The +Hoheimer, Knowlt +Holden, Barry +Hookey, Sam +Houghton, Jonathan +Howard, Jefferson +Hueffer, Cassius +Hummel, Oscar +Humphrey, Lydia +Hurley, Scholfield +Hutchins, Lambert +Hyde, Ernest + +I + +Iseman, Dr. Siegfried + +J + +Jack, Blind +James, Godwin +Joe, Plymouth Rock +Johnson, Voltaire +Jones, Fiddler +Jones, Franklin +Jones, Indignation +Jones, Minerva +Jones, William +Judge, The Circuit + +K + +Karr, Elmer +Keene, Jonas +Kessler, Bert +Kessler, Mrs. +Killion, Captain Orlando +Kincaid, Russell +King, Lyman +Keene, Kinsey +Knapp, Nancy +Konovaloff, Ippolit +Kritt, Dow + +L + +Layton, Henry +Lively, Judge Selah + +M + +M’Cumber, Daniel +McDowell, Rutherford +McFarlane, Widow +McGee, Fletcher +McGee, Ollie +M’Grew, Jennie +M’Grew, Mickey +McGuire, Jack +McNeely, Mary +McNeely, Paul +McNeely, Washington +Malloy, Father +Marsh, Zilpha +Marshal, The Town +Marshall, Herbert +Mason, Serepta +Matheny, Faith +Matlock, Davis +Matlock, Lucinda +Melveny, Abel +Merritt, Mrs. +Merritt, Tom +Metcalf, Willie +Meyers, Doctor +Meyers, Mrs. +Micure, Hamlet +Miles, J. Milton +Miller, Julia +Miner, Georgine Sand +Moir, Alfred + +N + +Newcomer, Professor +Night-Watch, Andy The +Nutter, Isa + +O + +Osborne, Mabel +Otis, John Hancock + +P + +Pantier, Benjamin +Pantier, Mrs. Benjamin +Pantier, Reuben +Peet, Rev. Abner +Pennington, Willie +Penniwit, the Artist +Petit, the Poet +Phipps, Henry +Poague, Peleg +Pollard, Edmund +Potter, Cooney +Puckett, Lydia +Purkapile, Mrs. +Purkapile, Roscoe +Putt, Hod + +R + +Reece, Mrs. George +Rhodes, Ralph +Rhodes, Thomas +Richter, Gustav +Robbins, Hortense +Roberts, Rosie +Ross, Thomas, Jr. +Russian Sonia +Rutledge, Anne + +S + +Sayre, Johnnie +Scates, Hiram +Schirding, Albert +Schmidt, Felix +Schrœder The Fisherman +Scott, Julian +Sersmith the Dentist +Sewall, Harlan +Sharp, Percival +Shaw, “Ace” +Shelley, Percy Bysshe +Shope, Tennessee Claflin +Sibley, Amos +Sibley, Mrs. +Siever, Conrad +Simmons, Walter +Sissman, Dillard +Slack, Margaret Fuller +Smith, Louise +Soldiers, Many +Somers, Jonathan Swift +Somers, Judge +Sparks, Emily +Spears, Lois +Spooniad, The +Standard, W. Lloyd Garrison +Stewart, Lillian +Stoddard, Judson + +T + +Tanner, Robert Fulton +Taylor, Deacon +Theodore, The Poet +Thornton, English +Throckmorton, Alexander +Todd, Eugenia +Tompkins, Josiah +Trainor, the Druggist +Trevelyan, Thomas +Trimble, George +Tripp, Henry +Tubbs, Hildrup +Turner, Francis +Tutt, Oaks + +U + +Unknown, The + +W + +Wasson, John +Wasson, Rebecca +Webster, Charles +Weirauch, Adam +Weldy, “Butch” +Wertman, Elsa +Whedon, Editor +Whitney, Harmon +Wiley, Rev. Lemuel +Will, Arlo +William and Emily +Williams, Dora +Williams, Mrs. +Wilmans, Harry +Witt, Zenas + +Y + +Yee Bow + +Z + +Zoll, Perry + + + + +The Hill + + +_Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley, +The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the +fighter? +All, all are sleeping on the hill. + +One passed in a fever, +One was burned in a mine, +One was killed in a brawl, +One died in a jail, +One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife— +All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill. + +Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith, +The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?— +All, all are sleeping on the hill. + +One died in shameful child-birth, +One of a thwarted love, +One at the hands of a brute in a brothel, +One of a broken pride, in the search for heart’s desire; +One after life in far-away London and Paris +Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag— +All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill. + +Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily, +And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton, +And Major Walker who had talked +With venerable men of the revolution?— +All, all are sleeping on the hill. + +They brought them dead sons from the war, +And daughters whom life had crushed, +And their children fatherless, crying— +All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill. + +Where is Old Fiddler Jones +Who played with life all his ninety years, +Braving the sleet with bared breast, +Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin, +Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven? +Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago, +Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary’s Grove, +Of what Abe Lincoln said +One time at Springfield._ + + + + +Hod Putt + + +Here I lie close to the grave +Of Old Bill Piersol, +Who grew rich trading with the Indians, and who +Afterwards took the Bankrupt Law +And emerged from it richer than ever +Myself grown tired of toil and poverty +And beholding how Old Bill and others grew in wealth +Robbed a traveler one Night near Proctor’s Grove, +Killing him unwittingly while doing so, +For which I was tried and hanged. +That was my way of going into bankruptcy. +Now we who took the bankrupt law in our respective ways +Sleep peacefully side by side. + + + + +Ollie McGee + + +Have you seen walking through the village +A man with downcast eyes and haggard face? +That is my husband who, by secret cruelty +Never to be told, robbed me of my youth and my beauty; +Till at last, wrinkled and with yellow teeth, +And with broken pride and shameful humility, +I sank into the grave. +But what think you gnaws at my husband’s heart? +The face of what I was, the face of what he made me! +These are driving him to the place where I lie. +In death, therefore, I am avenged. + + + + +Fletcher McGee + + +She took my strength by minutes, +She took my life by hours, +She drained me like a fevered moon +That saps the spinning world. +The days went by like shadows, +The minutes wheeled like stars. +She took the pity from my heart, +And made it into smiles. +She was a hunk of sculptor’s clay, +My secret thoughts were fingers: +They flew behind her pensive brow +And lined it deep with pain. +They set the lips, and sagged the cheeks, +And drooped the eye with sorrow. +My soul had entered in the clay, +Fighting like seven devils. +It was not mine, it was not hers; +She held it, but its struggles +Modeled a face she hated, +And a face I feared to see. +I beat the windows, shook the bolts. +I hid me in a corner +And then she died and haunted me, +And hunted me for life. + + + + +Robert Fulton Tanner + + +If a man could bite the giant hand +That catches and destroys him, +As I was bitten by a rat +While demonstrating my patent trap, +In my hardware store that day. +But a man can never avenge himself +On the monstrous ogre Life. +You enter the room—that’s being born; +And then you must live—work out your soul, +Aha! the bait that you crave is in view: +A woman with money you want to marry, +Prestige, place, or power in the world. +But there’s work to do and things to conquer— +Oh, yes! the wires that screen the bait. +At last you get in—but you hear a step: +The ogre, Life, comes into the room, +(He was waiting and heard the clang of the spring) +To watch you nibble the wondrous cheese, +And stare with his burning eyes at you, +And scowl and laugh, and mock and curse you, +Running up and down in the trap, +Until your misery bores him. + + + + +Cassius Hueffer + + +They have chiseled on my stone the words: +“His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him +That nature might stand up and say to all the world, +This was a man.” +Those who knew me smile +As they read this empty rhetoric. +My epitaph should have been: +“Life was not gentle to him, +And the elements so mixed in him +That he made warfare on life +In the which he was slain.” +While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues, +Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph +Graven by a fool! + + + + +Serepta Mason + + +My life’s blossom might have bloomed on all sides +Save for a bitter wind which stunted my petals +On the side of me which you in the village could see. +From the dust I lift a voice of protest: +My flowering side you never saw! +Ye living ones, ye are fools indeed +Who do not know the ways of the wind +And the unseen forces +That govern the processes of life. + + + + +Amanda Barker + + +Henry got me with child, +Knowing that I could not bring forth life +Without losing my own. +In my youth therefore I entered the portals of dust. +Traveler, it is believed in the village where I lived +That Henry loved me with a husband’s love +But I proclaim from the dust +That he slew me to gratify his hatred. + + + + +Constance Hately + + +You praise my self-sacrifice, Spoon River, +In rearing Irene and Mary, +Orphans of my older sister! +And you censure Irene and Mary +For their contempt for me! +But praise not my self-sacrifice. +And censure not their contempt; +I reared them, I cared for them, true enough!— +But I poisoned my benefactions +With constant reminders of their dependence. + + + + +Chase Henry + + +In life I was the town drunkard; +When I died the priest denied me burial +In holy ground. +The which redounded to my good fortune. +For the Protestants bought this lot, +And buried my body here, +Close to the grave of the banker Nicholas, +And of his wife Priscilla. +Take note, ye prudent and pious souls, +Of the cross—currents in life +Which bring honor to the dead, who lived in shame + + + + +Harry Carey Goodhue + + +You never marveled, dullards of Spoon River, +When Chase Henry voted against the saloons +To revenge himself for being shut off. +But none of you was keen enough +To follow my steps, or trace me home +As Chase’s spiritual brother. +Do you remember when I fought +The bank and the courthouse ring, +For pocketing the interest on public funds? +And when I fought our leading citizens +For making the poor the pack-horses of the taxes? +And when I fought the water works +For stealing streets and raising rates? +And when I fought the business men +Who fought me in these fights? +Then do you remember: +That staggering up from the wreck of defeat, +And the wreck of a ruined career, +I slipped from my cloak my last ideal, +Hidden from all eyes until then, +Like the cherished jawbone of an ass, +And smote the bank and the water works, +And the business men with prohibition, +And made Spoon River pay the cost +Of the fights that I had lost. + + + + +Judge Somers + + +How does it happen, tell me, +That I who was most erudite of lawyers, +Who knew Blackstone and Coke +Almost by heart, who made the greatest speech +The court-house ever heard, and wrote +A brief that won the praise of Justice Breese +How does it happen, tell me, +That I lie here unmarked, forgotten, +While Chase Henry, the town drunkard, +Has a marble block, topped by an urn +Wherein Nature, in a mood ironical, +Has sown a flowering weed? + + + + +Kinsey Keene + + +Your attention, Thomas Rhodes, president of the bank; +Coolbaugh Whedon, editor of the Argus; +Rev. Peet, pastor of the leading church; +A. D. Blood, several times Mayor of Spoon River; +And finally all of you, members of the Social Purity Club— +Your attention to Cambronne’s dying words, +Standing with the heroic remnant +Of Napoleon’s guard on Mount Saint Jean +At the battle field of Waterloo, +When Maitland, the Englishman, called to them: +“Surrender, brave Frenchmen!”— +There at close of day with the battle hopelessly lost, +And hordes of men no longer the army +Of the great Napoleon +Streamed from the field like ragged strips +Of thunder clouds in the storm. +Well, what Cambronne said to Maitland +Ere the English fire made smooth the brow of the hill +Against the sinking light of day +Say I to you, and all of you, +And to you, O world. +And I charge you to carve it +Upon my stone. + + + + +Benjamin Pantier + + +Together in this grave lie Benjamin Pantier, attorney at law, +And Nig, his dog, constant companion, solace and friend. +Down the gray road, friends, children, men and women, +Passing one by one out of life, left me till I was alone +With Nig for partner, bed-fellow; comrade in drink. +In the morning of life I knew aspiration and saw glory, +The she, who survives me, snared my soul +With a snare which bled me to death, +Till I, once strong of will, lay broken, indifferent, +Living with Nig in a room back of a dingy office. +Under my Jaw-bone is snuggled the bony nose of Nig +Our story is lost in silence. Go by, mad world! + + + + +Mrs. Benjamin Pantier + + +I know that he told that I snared his soul +With a snare which bled him to death. +And all the men loved him, +And most of the women pitied him. +But suppose you are really a lady, and have delicate tastes, +And loathe the smell of whiskey and onions, +And the rhythm of Wordsworth’s “Ode” runs in your ears, +While he goes about from morning till night +Repeating bits of that common thing; +“Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?” +And then, suppose; +You are a woman well endowed, +And the only man with whom the law and morality +Permit you to have the marital relation +Is the very man that fills you with disgust +Every time you think of it while you think of it +Every time you see him? +That’s why I drove him away from home +To live with his dog in a dingy room +Back of his office. + + + + +Reuben Pantier + + +Well, Emily Sparks, your prayers were not wasted, +Your love was not all in vain. +I owe whatever I was in life +To your hope that would not give me up, +To your love that saw me still as good. +Dear Emily Sparks, let me tell you the story. +I pass the effect of my father and mother; +The milliner’s daughter made me trouble +And out I went in the world, +Where I passed through every peril known +Of wine and women and joy of life. +One night, in a room in the Rue de Rivoli, +I was drinking wine with a black-eyed cocotte, +And the tears swam into my eyes. +She though they were amorous tears and smiled +For thought of her conquest over me. +But my soul was three thousand miles away, +In the days when you taught me in Spoon River. +And just because you no more could love me, +Nor pray for me, nor write me letters, +The eternal silence of you spoke instead. +And the Black-eyed cocotte took the tears for hers, +As well as the deceiving kisses I gave her. +Somehow, from that hour, I had a new vision +Dear Emily Sparks! + + + + +Emily Sparks + + +Where is my boy, my boy +In what far part of the world? +The boy I loved best of all in the school?— +I, the teacher, the old maid, the virgin heart, +Who made them all my children. +Did I know my boy aright, +Thinking of him as a spirit aflame, +Active, ever aspiring? +Oh, boy, boy, for whom I prayed and prayed +In many a watchful hour at night, +Do you remember the letter I wrote you +Of the beautiful love of Christ? +And whether you ever took it or not, +My, boy, wherever you are, +Work for your soul’s sake, +That all the clay of you, all of the dross of you, +May yield to the fire of you, +Till the fire is nothing but light!… +Nothing but light! + + + + +Trainor, the Druggist + + +Only the chemist can tell, and not always the chemist, +What will result from compounding +Fluids or solids. +And who can tell +How men and women will interact +On each other, or what children will result? +There were Benjamin Pantier and his wife, +Good in themselves, but evil toward each other; +He oxygen, she hydrogen, +Their son, a devastating fire. +I Trainor, the druggist, a miser of chemicals, +Killed while making an experiment, +Lived unwedded. + + + + +Daisy Fraser + + +Did you ever hear of Editor Whedon +Giving to the public treasury any of the money he received +For supporting candidates for office? +Or for writing up the canning factory +To get people to invest? +Or for suppressing the facts about the bank, +When it was rotten and ready to break? +Did you ever hear of the Circuit Judge +Helping anyone except the “Q” railroad, +Or the bankers? Or did Rev. Peet or Rev. Sibley +Give any part of their salary, earned by keeping still, +Or speaking out as the leaders wished them to do, +To the building of the water works? +But I—Daisy Fraser who always passed +Along the street through rows of nods and smiles, +And coughs and words such as “there she goes.” +Never was taken before Justice Arnett +Without contributing ten dollars and costs +To the school fund of Spoon River! + + + + +Benjamin Fraser + + +Their spirits beat upon mine +Like the wings of a thousand butterflies. +I closed my eyes and felt their spirits vibrating. +I closed my eyes, yet I knew when their lashes +Fringed their cheeks from downcast eyes, +And when they turned their heads; +And when their garments clung to them, +Or fell from them, in exquisite draperies. +Their spirits watched my ecstasy +With wide looks of starry unconcern. +Their spirits looked upon my torture; +They drank it as it were the water of life; +With reddened cheeks, brightened eyes, +The rising flame of my soul made their spirits gilt, +Like the wings of a butterfly drifting suddenly into sunlight. +And they cried to me for life, life, life. +But in taking life for myself, +In seizing and crushing their souls, +As a child crushes grapes and drinks +From its palms the purple juice, +I came to this wingless void, +Where neither red, nor gold, nor wine, +Nor the rhythm of life are known. + + + + +Minerva Jones + + +I am Minerva, the village poetess, +Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street +For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk, +And all the more when “Butch” Weldy +Captured me after a brutal hunt. +He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers; +And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up, +Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice. +Will some one go to the village newspaper, +And gather into a book the verses I wrote?— +I thirsted so for love +I hungered so for life! + + + + +“Indignation” Jones + + +You would not believe, would you +That I came from good Welsh stock? +That I was purer blooded than the white trash here? +And of more direct lineage than the +New Englanders And Virginians of Spoon River? +You would not believe that I had been to school +And read some books. +You saw me only as a run-down man +With matted hair and beard +And ragged clothes. +Sometimes a man’s life turns into a cancer +From being bruised and continually bruised, +And swells into a purplish mass +Like growths on stalks of corn. +Here was I, a carpenter, mired in a bog of life +Into which I walked, thinking it was a meadow, +With a slattern for a wife, and poor Minerva, my daughter, +Whom you tormented and drove to death. +So I crept, crept, like a snail through the days +Of my life. +No more you hear my footsteps in the morning, +Resounding on the hollow sidewalk +Going to the grocery store for a little corn meal +And a nickel’s worth of bacon. + + + + +“Butch” Weldy + + +After I got religion and steadied down +They gave me a job in the canning works, +And every morning I had to fill +The tank in the yard with gasoline, +That fed the blow-fires in the sheds +To heat the soldering irons. +And I mounted a rickety ladder to do it, +Carrying buckets full of the stuff. +One morning, as I stood there pouring, +The air grew still and seemed to heave, +And I shot up as the tank exploded, +And down I came with both legs broken, +And my eyes burned crisp as a couple of eggs. +For someone left a blow—fire going, +And something sucked the flame in the tank. +The Circuit Judge said whoever did it +Was a fellow-servant of mine, and so +Old Rhodes’ son didn’t have to pay me. +And I sat on the witness stand as blind +As Jack the Fiddler, saying over and over, +“I didn’t know him at all.” + + + + +Doctor Meyers + + +No other man, unless it was Doc Hill, +Did more for people in this town than I. +And all the weak, the halt, the improvident +And those who could not pay flocked to me. +I was good-hearted, easy Doctor Meyers. +I was healthy, happy, in comfortable fortune, +Blest with a congenial mate, my children raised, +All wedded, doing well in the world. +And then one night, Minerva, the poetess, +Came to me in her trouble, crying. +I tried to help her out—she died— +They indicted me, the newspapers disgraced me, +My wife perished of a broken heart. +And pneumonia finished me. + + + + +Mrs. Meyers + + +He protested all his life long +The newspapers lied about him villainously; +That he was not at fault for Minerva’s fall, +But only tried to help her. +Poor soul so sunk in sin he could not see +That even trying to help her, as he called it, +He had broken the law human and divine. +Passers by, an ancient admonition to you: +If your ways would be ways of pleasantness, +And all your pathways peace, +Love God and keep his commandments. + + + + +Knowlt Hoheimer + + +I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge. +When I felt the bullet enter my heart +I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail +For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary, +Instead of running away and joining the army. +Rather a thousand times the county jail +Than to lie under this marble figure with wings, +And this granite pedestal Bearing the words, “Pro Patria.” +What do they mean, anyway? + + + + +Lydia Puckett + + +Knowlt Hoheimer ran away to the war +The day before Curl Trenary +Swore out a warrant through Justice Arnett +For stealing hogs. +But that’s not the reason he turned a soldier. +He caught me running with Lucius Atherton. +We quarreled and I told him never again +To cross my path. +Then he stole the hogs and went to the war— +Back of every soldier is a woman. + + + + +Frank Drummer + + +Out of a cell into this darkened space— +The end at twenty-five! +My tongue could not speak what stirred within me, +And the village thought me a fool. +Yet at the start there was a clear vision, +A high and urgent purpose in my soul +Which drove me on trying to memorize +The Encyclopedia Britannica! + + + + +Hare Drummer + + +Do the boys and girls still go to Siever’s +For cider, after school, in late September? +Or gather hazel nuts among the thickets +On Aaron Hatfield’s farm when the frosts begin? +For many times with the laughing girls and boys +Played I along the road and over the hills +When the sun was low and the air was cool, +Stopping to club the walnut tree +Standing leafless against a flaming west. +Now, the smell of the autumn smoke, +And the dropping acorns, +And the echoes about the vales +Bring dreams of life. +They hover over me. +They question me: +Where are those laughing comrades? +How many are with me, how many +In the old orchards along the way to Siever’s, +And in the woods that overlook +The quiet water? + + + + +Conrad Siever + + +Not in that wasted garden +Where bodies are drawn into grass +That feeds no flocks, and into evergreens +That bear no fruit— +There where along the shaded walks +Vain sighs are heard, +And vainer dreams are dreamed +Of close communion with departed souls— +But here under the apple tree +I loved and watched and pruned +With gnarled hands +In the long, long years; +Here under the roots of this northern-spy +To move in the chemic change and circle of life, +Into the soil and into the flesh of the tree, +And into the living epitaphs +Of redder apples! + + + + +Doc Hill + + +I went up and down the streets +Here and there by day and night, +Through all hours of the night caring for the poor who were sick. +Do you know why? +My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs. +And I turned to the people and poured out my love to them. +Sweet it was to see the crowds about the lawns on the day of my +funeral, +And hear them murmur their love and sorrow. +But oh, dear God, my soul trembled, scarcely able +To hold to the railing of the new life +When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree +At the grave, +Hiding herself, and her grief! + + + + +Andy The Night-Watch + + +In my Spanish cloak, +And old slouch hat, +And overshoes of felt, +And Tyke, my faithful dog, +And my knotted hickory cane, +I slipped about with a bull’s-eye lantern +From door to door on the square, +As the midnight stars wheeled round, +And the bell in the steeple murmured +From the blowing of the wind; +And the weary steps of old Doc Hill +Sounded like one who walks in sleep, +And a far-off rooster crew. +And now another is watching Spoon River +As others watched before me. +And here we lie, Doc Hill and I +Where none breaks through and steals, +And no eye needs to guard. + + + + +Sarah Brown + + +Maurice, weep not, I am not here under this pine tree. +The balmy air of spring whispers through the sweet grass, +The stars sparkle, the whippoorwill calls, +But thou grievest, while my soul lies rapturous +In the blest Nirvana of eternal light! +Go to the good heart that is my husband +Who broods upon what he calls our guilty love:— +Tell him that my love for you, no less than my love for him +Wrought out my destiny—that through the flesh +I won spirit, and through spirit, peace. +There is no marriage in heaven +But there is love. + + + + +Percy Bysshe Shelley + + +My father who owned the wagon-shop +And grew rich shoeing horses +Sent me to the University of Montreal. +I learned nothing and returned home, +Roaming the fields with Bert Kessler, +Hunting quail and snipe. +At Thompson’s Lake the trigger of my gun +Caught in the side of the boat +And a great hole was shot through my heart. +Over me a fond father erected this marble shaft, +On which stands the figure of a woman +Carved by an Italian artist. +They say the ashes of my namesake +Were scattered near the pyramid of Caius Cestius +Somewhere near Rome. + + + + +Flossie Cabanis + + +From Bindle’s opera house in the village +To Broadway is a great step. +But I tried to take it, my ambition fired +When sixteen years of age, +Seeing “East Lynne,” played here in the village +By Ralph Barrett, the coming +Romantic actor, who enthralled my soul. +True, I trailed back home, a broken failure, +When Ralph disappeared in New York, +Leaving me alone in the city— +But life broke him also. +In all this place of silence +There are no kindred spirits. +How I wish Duse could stand amid the pathos +Of these quiet fields +And read these words. + + + + +Julia Miller + + +We quarreled that morning, +For he was sixty—five, and I was thirty, +And I was nervous and heavy with the child +Whose birth I dreaded. +I thought over the last letter written me +By that estranged young soul +Whose betrayal of me I had concealed +By marrying the old man. +Then I took morphine and sat down to read. +Across the blackness that came over my eyes +I see the flickering light of these words even now: +“And Jesus said unto him, Verily +I say unto thee, To-day thou shalt +Be with me in paradise.” + + + + +Johnnie Sayre + + +Father, thou canst never know +The anguish that smote my heart +For my disobedience, the moment I felt +The remorseless wheel of the engine +Sink into the crying flesh of my leg. +As they carried me to the home of widow Morris +I could see the school-house in the valley +To which I played truant to steal rides upon the trains. +I prayed to live until I could ask your forgiveness— +And then your tears, your broken words of comfort! +From the solace of that hour I have gained infinite happiness. +Thou wert wise to chisel for me: +“Taken from the evil to come.” + + + + +Charlie French + + +Did you ever find out +Which one of the O’Brien boys it was +Who snapped the toy pistol against my hand? +There when the flags were red and white +In the breeze and “Bucky” Estil +Was firing the cannon brought to Spoon River +From Vicksburg by Captain Harris; +And the lemonade stands were running +And the band was playing, +To have it all spoiled +By a piece of a cap shot under the skin of my hand, +And the boys all crowding about me saying: +“You’ll die of lock-jaw, Charlie, sure.” +Oh, dear! oh, dear! +What chum of mine could have done it? + + + + +Zenas Witt + + +I was sixteen, and I had the most terrible dreams, +And specks before my eyes, and nervous weakness. +And I couldn’t remember the books I read, +Like Frank Drummer who memorized page after page. +And my back was weak, and I worried and worried, +And I was embarrassed and stammered my lessons, +And when I stood up to recite I’d forget +Everything that I had studied. +Well, I saw Dr. Weese’s advertisement, +And there I read everything in print, +Just as if he had known me; +And about the dreams which I couldn’t help. +So I knew I was marked for an early grave. +And I worried until I had a cough +And then the dreams stopped. +And then I slept the sleep without dreams +Here on the hill by the river. + + + + +Theodore the Poet + + +As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours +On the shore of the turbid Spoon +With deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish’s burrow, +Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead, +First his waving antennæ, like straws of hay, +And soon his body, colored like soap-stone, +Gemmed with eyes of jet. +And you wondered in a trance of thought +What he knew, what he desired, and why he lived at all. +But later your vision watched for men and women +Hiding in burrows of fate amid great cities, +Looking for the souls of them to come out, +So that you could see +How they lived, and for what, +And why they kept crawling so busily +Along the sandy way where water fails +As the summer wanes. + + + + +The Town Marshal + + +The Prohibitionists made me Town Marshal +When the saloons were voted out, +Because when I was a drinking man, +Before I joined the church, I killed a Swede +At the saw-mill near Maple Grove. +And they wanted a terrible man, +Grim, righteous, strong, courageous, +And a hater of saloons and drinkers, +To keep law and order in the village. +And they presented me with a loaded cane +With which I struck Jack McGuire +Before he drew the gun with which he killed me. +The Prohibitionists spent their money in vain +To hang him, for in a dream +I appeared to one of the twelve jurymen +And told him the whole secret story. +Fourteen years were enough for killing me. + + + + +Jack McGuire + + +They would have lynched me +Had I not been secretly hurried away +To the jail at Peoria. +And yet I was going peacefully home, +Carrying my jug, a little drunk, +When Logan, the marshal, halted me +Called me a drunken hound and shook me +And, when I cursed him for it, struck me +With that Prohibition loaded cane— +All this before I shot him. +They would have hanged me except for this: +My lawyer, Kinsey Keene, was helping to land +Old Thomas Rhodes for wrecking the bank, +And the judge was a friend of +Rhodes And wanted him to escape, +And Kinsey offered to quit on Rhodes +For fourteen years for me. +And the bargain was made. +I served my time +And learned to read and write. + + + + +Jacob Goodpasture + + +When Fort Sumter fell and the war came +I cried out in bitterness of soul: +“O glorious republic now no more!” +When they buried my soldier son +To the call of trumpets and the sound of drums +My heart broke beneath the weight +Of eighty years, and I cried: +“Oh, son who died in a cause unjust! +In the strife of Freedom slain!” +And I crept here under the grass. +And now from the battlements of time, behold: +Thrice thirty million souls being bound together +In the love of larger truth, +Rapt in the expectation of the birth +Of a new Beauty, +Sprung from Brotherhood and Wisdom. +I with eyes of spirit see the Transfiguration +Before you see it. +But ye infinite brood of golden eagles nesting ever higher, +Wheeling ever higher, the sun-light wooing +Of lofty places of Thought, +Forgive the blindness of the departed owl. + + + + +Dorcas Gustine + + +I was not beloved of the villagers, +But all because I spoke my mind, +And met those who transgressed against me +With plain remonstrance, hiding nor nurturing +Nor secret griefs nor grudges. +That act of the Spartan boy is greatly praised, +Who hid the wolf under his cloak, +Letting it devour him, uncomplainingly. +It is braver, I think, to snatch the wolf forth +And fight him openly, even in the street, +Amid dust and howls of pain. +The tongue may be an unruly member— +But silence poisons the soul. +Berate me who will—I am content. + + + + +Nicholas Bindle + + +Were you not ashamed, fellow citizens, +When my estate was probated and everyone knew +How small a fortune I left?— +You who hounded me in life, +To give, give, give to the churches, to the poor, +To the village!—me who had already given much. +And think you not I did not know +That the pipe-organ, which I gave to the church, +Played its christening songs when Deacon Rhodes, +Who broke and all but ruined me, +Worshipped for the first time after his acquittal? + + + + +Harold Arnett + + +I leaned against the mantel, sick, sick, +Thinking of my failure, looking into the abysm, +Weak from the noon-day heat. +A church bell sounded mournfully far away, +I heard the cry of a baby, +And the coughing of John Yarnell, +Bed-ridden, feverish, feverish, dying, +Then the violent voice of my wife: +“Watch out, the potatoes are burning!” +I smelled them . . . then there was irresistible disgust. +I pulled the trigger . . . blackness . . . light . . . +Unspeakable regret . . . fumbling for the world again. +Too late! Thus I came here, +With lungs for breathing . . . one cannot breathe here with lungs, +Though one must breathe +Of what use is it To rid one’s self of the world, +When no soul may ever escape the eternal destiny of life? + + + + +Margaret Fuller Slack + + +I would have been as great as George Eliot +But for an untoward fate. +For look at the photograph of me made by Penniwit, +Chin resting on hand, and deep—set eyes— +Gray, too, and far-searching. +But there was the old, old problem: +Should it be celibacy, matrimony or unchastity? +Then John Slack, the rich druggist, wooed me, +Luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel, +And I married him, giving birth to eight children, +And had no time to write. +It was all over with me, anyway, +When I ran the needle in my hand +While washing the baby’s things, +And died from lock—jaw, an ironical death. +Hear me, ambitious souls, +Sex is the curse of life. + + + + +George Trimble + + +Do you remember when I stood on the steps +Of the Court House and talked free-silver, +And the single-tax of Henry George? +Then do you remember that, when the Peerless Leader +Lost the first battle, I began to talk prohibition, +And became active in the church? +That was due to my wife, +Who pictured to me my destruction +If I did not prove my morality to the people. +Well, she ruined me: +For the radicals grew suspicious of me, +And the conservatives were never sure of me— +And here I lie, unwept of all. + + + + +Dr. Siegfried Iseman + + +I said when they handed me my diploma, +I said to myself I will be good +And wise and brave and helpful to others; +I said I will carry the Christian creed +Into the practice of medicine! +Somehow the world and the other doctors +Know what’s in your heart as soon as you make +This high-souled resolution. +And the way of it is they starve you out. +And no one comes to you but the poor. +And you find too late that being a doctor +Is just a way of making a living. +And when you are poor and have to carry +The Christian creed and wife and children +All on your back, it is too much! +That’s why I made the Elixir of Youth, +Which landed me in the jail at Peoria +Branded a swindler and a crook +By the upright Federal Judge! + + + + +“Ace” Shaw + + +I never saw any difference +Between playing cards for money +And selling real estate, +Practicing law, banking, or anything else. +For everything is chance. +Nevertheless +Seest thou a man diligent in business? +He shall stand before Kings! + + + + +Lois Spears + + +Here lies the body of Lois Spears, +Born Lois Fluke, daughter of Willard Fluke, +Wife of Cyrus Spears, +Mother of Myrtle and Virgil Spears, +Children with clear eyes and sound limbs— +(I was born blind) +I was the happiest of women +As wife, mother and housekeeper. +Caring for my loved ones, +And making my home +A place of order and bounteous hospitality: +For I went about the rooms, +And about the garden +With an instinct as sure as sight, +As though there were eyes in my finger tips— +Glory to God in the highest. + + + + +Justice Arnett + + +It is true, fellow citizens, +That my old docket lying there for years +On a shelf above my head and over +The seat of justice, I say it is true +That docket had an iron rim +Which gashed my baldness when it fell— +(Somehow I think it was shaken loose +By the heave of the air all over town +When the gasoline tank at the canning works +Blew up and burned Butch Weldy)— +But let us argue points in order, +And reason the whole case carefully: +First I concede my head was cut, +But second the frightful thing was this: +The leaves of the docket shot and showered +Around me like a deck of cards +In the hands of a sleight of hand performer. +And up to the end I saw those leaves +Till I said at last, “Those are not leaves, +Why, can’t you see they are days and days +And the days and days of seventy years? +And why do you torture me with leaves +And the little entries on them? + + + + +Willard Fluke + + +My wife lost her health, +And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds. +Then that woman, whom the men +Styled Cleopatra, came along. +And we—we married ones +All broke our vows, myself among the rest. +Years passed and one by one +Death claimed them all in some hideous form +And I was borne along by dreams +Of God’s particular grace for me, +And I began to write, write, write, reams on reams +Of the second coming of Christ. +Then Christ came to me and said, +“Go into the church and stand before the congregation +And confess your sin.” +But just as I stood up and began to speak +I saw my little girl, who was sitting in the front seat— +My little girl who was born blind! +After that, all is blackness. + + + + +Aner Clute + + +Over and over they used to ask me, +While buying the wine or the beer, +In Peoria first, and later in Chicago, +Denver, Frisco, New York, wherever I lived +How I happened to lead the life, +And what was the start of it. +Well, I told them a silk dress, +And a promise of marriage from a rich man— +(It was Lucius Atherton). +But that was not really it at all. +Suppose a boy steals an apple +From the tray at the grocery store, +And they all begin to call him a thief, +The editor, minister, judge, and all the people— +“A thief,” “a thief,” “a thief,” wherever he goes +And he can’t get work, and he can’t get bread +Without stealing it, why the boy will steal. +It’s the way the people regard the theft of the apple +That makes the boy what he is. + + + + +Lucius Atherton + + +When my moustache curled, +And my hair was black, +And I wore tight trousers +And a diamond stud, +I was an excellent knave of hearts and took many a trick. +But when the gray hairs began to appear— +Lo! a new generation of girls +Laughed at me, not fearing me, +And I had no more exciting adventures +Wherein I was all but shot for a heartless devil, +But only drabby affairs, warmed-over affairs +Of other days and other men. +And time went on until I lived at +Mayer’s restaurant, +Partaking of short-orders, a gray, untidy, +Toothless, discarded, rural Don Juan. . . . +There is a mighty shade here who sings +Of one named Beatrice; +And I see now that the force that made him great +Drove me to the dregs of life. + + + + +Homer Clapp + + +Often Aner Clute at the gate +Refused me the parting kiss, +Saying we should be engaged before that; +And just with a distant clasp of the hand +She bade me good-night, as I brought her home +From the skating rink or the revival. +No sooner did my departing footsteps die away +Than Lucius Atherton, +(So I learned when Aner went to Peoria) +Stole in at her window, or took her riding +Behind his spanking team of bays +Into the country. +The shock of it made me settle down +And I put all the money I got from my father’s estate +Into the canning factory, to get the job +Of head accountant, and lost it all. +And then I knew I was one of Life’s fools, +Whom only death would treat as the equal +Of other men, making me feel like a man. + + + + +Deacon Taylor + + +I belonged to the church, +And to the party of prohibition; +And the villagers thought I died of eating watermelon. +In truth I had cirrhosis of the liver, +For every noon for thirty years, +I slipped behind the prescription partition +In Trainor’s drug store +And poured a generous drink +From the bottle marked “Spiritus frumenti.” + + + + +Sam Hookey + + +I ran away from home with the circus, +Having fallen in love with Mademoiselle Estralada, +The lion tamer. +One time, having starved the lions +For more than a day, +I entered the cage and began to beat Brutus +And Leo and Gypsy. +Whereupon Brutus sprang upon me, +And killed me. +On entering these regions +I met a shadow who cursed me, +And said it served me right. . . . +It was Robespierre! + + + + +Cooney Potter + + +I inherited forty acres from my Father +And, by working my wife, my two sons and two daughters +From dawn to dusk, I acquired +A thousand acres. +But not content, +Wishing to own two thousand acres, +I bustled through the years with axe and plow, +Toiling, denying myself, my wife, my sons, my daughters. +Squire Higbee wrongs me to say +That I died from smoking Red Eagle cigars. +Eating hot pie and gulping coffee +During the scorching hours of harvest time +Brought me here ere I had reached my sixtieth year. + + + + +Fiddler Jones + + +The earth keeps some vibration going +There in your heart, and that is you. +And if the people find you can fiddle, +Why, fiddle you must, for all your life. +What do you see, a harvest of clover? +Or a meadow to walk through to the river? +The wind’s in the corn; you rub your hands +For beeves hereafter ready for market; +Or else you hear the rustle of skirts +Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove. +To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust +Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth; +They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy +Stepping it off, to “Toor-a-Loor.” +How could I till my forty acres +Not to speak of getting more, +With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos +Stirred in my brain by crows and robins +And the creak of a wind-mill—only these? +And I never started to plow in my life +That some one did not stop in the road +And take me away to a dance or picnic. +I ended up with forty acres; +I ended up with a broken fiddle— +And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories, +And not a single regret. + + + + +Nellie Clark + + +I was only eight years old; +And before I grew up and knew what it meant +I had no words for it, except +That I was frightened and told my +Mother; And that my Father got a pistol +And would have killed Charlie, who was a big boy, +Fifteen years old, except for his Mother. +Nevertheless the story clung to me. +But the man who married me, a widower of thirty-five, +Was a newcomer and never heard it +’Till two years after we were married. +Then he considered himself cheated, +And the village agreed that I was not really a virgin. +Well, he deserted me, and I died +The following winter. + + + + +Louise Smith + + +Herbert broke our engagement of eight years +When Annabelle returned to the village From the +Seminary, ah me! +If I had let my love for him alone +It might have grown into a beautiful sorrow— +Who knows?—filling my life with healing fragrance. +But I tortured it, I poisoned it +I blinded its eyes, and it became hatred— +Deadly ivy instead of clematis. +And my soul fell from its support +Its tendrils tangled in decay. +Do not let the will play gardener to your soul +Unless you are sure +It is wiser than your soul’s nature. + + + + +Herbert Marshall + + +All your sorrow, Louise, and hatred of me +Sprang from your delusion that it was wantonness +Of spirit and contempt of your soul’s rights +Which made me turn to Annabelle and forsake you. +You really grew to hate me for love of me, +Because I was your soul’s happiness, +Formed and tempered +To solve your life for you, and would not. +But you were my misery. +If you had been +My happiness would I not have clung to you? +This is life’s sorrow: +That one can be happy only where two are; +And that our hearts are drawn to stars +Which want us not. + + + + +George Gray + + +I have studied many times +The marble which was chiseled for me— +A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor. +In truth it pictures not my destination +But my life. +For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment; +Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid; +Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances. +Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life. +And now I know that we must lift the sail +And catch the winds of destiny +Wherever they drive the boat. +To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness, +But life without meaning is the torture +Of restlessness and vague desire— +It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid. + + + + +Hon. Henry Bennett + + +It never came into my mind +Until I was ready to die +That Jenny had loved me to death, with malice of heart. +For I was seventy, she was thirty—five, +And I wore myself to a shadow trying to husband +Jenny, rosy Jenny full of the ardor of life. +For all my wisdom and grace of mind +Gave her no delight at all, in very truth, +But ever and anon she spoke of the giant strength +Of Willard Shafer, and of his wonderful feat +Of lifting a traction engine out of the ditch +One time at Georgie Kirby’s. +So Jenny inherited my fortune and married Willard— +That mount of brawn! That clownish soul! + + + + +Griffy the Cooper + + +The cooper should know about tubs. +But I learned about life as well, +And you who loiter around these graves +Think you know life. +You think your eye sweeps about a wide horizon, perhaps, +In truth you are only looking around the interior of your tub. +You cannot lift yourself to its rim +And see the outer world of things, +And at the same time see yourself. +You are submerged in the tub of yourself— +Taboos and rules and appearances, +Are the staves of your tub. +Break them and dispel the witchcraft +Of thinking your tub is life +And that you know life. + + + + +Sersmith the Dentist + + +Do you think that odes and sermons, +And the ringing of church bells, +And the blood of old men and young men, +Martyred for the truth they saw +With eyes made bright by faith in God, +Accomplished the world’s great reformations? +Do you think that the Battle Hymn of the Republic +Would have been heard if the chattel slave +Had crowned the dominant dollar, +In spite of Whitney’s cotton gin, +And steam and rolling mills and iron +And telegraphs and white free labor? +Do you think that Daisy Fraser +Had been put out and driven out +If the canning works had never needed +Her little house and lot? +Or do you think the poker room +Of Johnnie Taylor, and Burchard’s bar +Had been closed up if the money lost +And spent for beer had not been turned, +By closing them, to Thomas Rhodes +For larger sales of shoes and blankets, +And children’s cloaks and gold-oak cradles? +Why, a moral truth is a hollow tooth +Which must be propped with gold. + + + + +A. D. Blood + + +If you in the village think that my work was a good one, +Who closed the saloons and stopped all playing at cards, +And haled old Daisy Fraser before Justice Arnett, +In many a crusade to purge the people of sin; +Why do you let the milliner’s daughter Dora, +And the worthless son of Benjamin Pantier +Nightly make my grave their unholy pillow? + + + + +Robert Southey Burke + + +I spent my money trying to elect you Mayor +A. D. Blood. +I lavished my admiration upon you, +You were to my mind the almost perfect man. +You devoured my personality, +And the idealism of my youth, +And the strength of a high-souled fealty. +And all my hopes for the world, +And all my beliefs in Truth, +Were smelted up in the blinding heat +Of my devotion to you, +And molded into your image. +And then when I found what you were: +That your soul was small +And your words were false +As your blue-white porcelain teeth, +And your cuffs of celluloid, +I hated the love I had for you, +I hated myself, I hated you +For my wasted soul, and wasted youth. +And I say to all, beware of ideals, +Beware of giving your love away +To any man alive. + + + + +Dora Williams + + +When Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me +I went to Springfield. There I met a lush, +Whose father just deceased left him a fortune. +He married me when drunk. +My life was wretched. +A year passed and one day they found him dead. +That made me rich. I moved on to Chicago. +After a time met Tyler Rountree, villain. +I moved on to New York. A gray-haired magnate +Went mad about me—so another fortune. +He died one night right in my arms, you know. +(I saw his purple face for years thereafter. ) +There was almost a scandal. +I moved on, This time to Paris. I was now a woman, +Insidious, subtle, versed in the world and rich. +My sweet apartment near the Champs Elysees +Became a center for all sorts of people, +Musicians, poets, dandies, artists, nobles, +Where we spoke French and German, Italian, English. +I wed Count Navigato, native of Genoa. +We went to Rome. He poisoned me, I think. +Now in the Campo Santo overlooking +The sea where young Columbus dreamed new worlds, +See what they chiseled: “Contessa Navigato +Implora eterna quiete.” + + + + +Mrs. Williams + + +I was the milliner +Talked about, lied about, +Mother of Dora, +Whose strange disappearance +Was charged to her rearing. +My eye quick to beauty +Saw much beside ribbons +And buckles and feathers +And leghorns and felts, +To set off sweet faces, +And dark hair and gold. +One thing I will tell you +And one I will ask: +The stealers of husbands +Wear powder and trinkets, +And fashionable hats. +Wives, wear them yourselves. +Hats may make divorces— +They also prevent them. +Well now, let me ask you: +If all of the children, born here in Spoon River +Had been reared by the +County, somewhere on a farm; +And the fathers and mothers had been given their freedom +To live and enjoy, change mates if they wished, +Do you think that Spoon River +Had been any the worse? + + + + +William and Emily + + +There is something about Death +Like love itself! +If with some one with whom you have known passion +And the glow of youthful love, +You also, after years of life +Together, feel the sinking of the fire +And thus fade away together, +Gradually, faintly, delicately, +As it were in each other’s arms, +Passing from the familiar room— +That is a power of unison between souls +Like love itself! + + + + +The Circuit Judge + + +Take note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions +Eaten in my head-stone by the wind and rain— +Almost as if an intangible Nemesis or hatred +Were marking scores against me, +But to destroy, and not preserve, my memory. +I in life was the Circuit Judge, a maker of notches, +Deciding cases on the points the lawyers scored, +Not on the right of the matter. +O wind and rain, leave my head-stone alone +For worse than the anger of the wronged, +The curses of the poor, +Was to lie speechless, yet with vision clear, +Seeing that even Hod Putt, the murderer, +Hanged by my sentence, +Was innocent in soul compared with me. + + + + +Blind Jack + + +I had fiddled all day at the county fair. +But driving home “Butch” Weldy and Jack McGuire, +Who were roaring full, made me fiddle and fiddle +To the song of _Susie Skinner_, while whipping the horses +Till they ran away. Blind as I was, I tried to get out +As the carriage fell in the ditch, +And was caught in the wheels and killed. +There’s a blind man here with a brow +As big and white as a cloud. +And all we fiddlers, from highest to lowest, +Writers of music and tellers of stories +Sit at his feet, +And hear him sing of the fall of Troy. + + + + +John Horace Burleson + + +I won the prize essay at school +Here in the village, +And published a novel before I was twenty-five. +I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art; +There married the banker’s daughter, +And later became president of the bank— +Always looking forward to some leisure +To write an epic novel of the war. +Meanwhile friend of the great, and lover of letters, +And host to Matthew Arnold and to Emerson. +An after dinner speaker, writing essays +For local clubs. At last brought here— +My boyhood home, you know— +Not even a little tablet in Chicago +To keep my name alive. +How great it is to write the single line: +“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll!“ + + + + +Nancy Knapp + + +Well, don’t you see this was the way of it: +We bought the farm with what he inherited, +And his brothers and sisters accused him of poisoning +His father’s mind against the rest of them. +And we never had any peace with our treasure. +The murrain took the cattle, and the crops failed. +And lightning struck the granary. +So we mortgaged the farm to keep going. +And he grew silent and was worried all the time. +Then some of the neighbors refused to speak to us, +And took sides with his brothers and sisters. +And I had no place to turn, as one may say to himself, +At an earlier time in life; +“No matter, So and so is my friend, or I can shake this off +With a little trip to Decatur.” +Then the dreadfulest smells infested the rooms. +So I set fire to the beds and the old witch-house +Went up in a roar of flame, +As I danced in the yard with waving arms, +While he wept like a freezing steer. + + + + +Barry Holden + + +The very fall my sister Nancy Knapp +Set fire to the house +They were trying Dr. Duval +For the murder of Zora Clemens, +And I sat in the court two weeks +Listening to every witness. +It was clear he had got her in a family way; +And to let the child be born +Would not do. +Well, how about me with eight children, +And one coming, and the farm +Mortgaged to Thomas Rhodes? +And when I got home that night, +(After listening to the story of the buggy ride, +And the finding of Zora in the ditch,) +The first thing I saw, right there by the steps, +Where the boys had hacked for angle worms, +Was the hatchet! +And just as I entered there was my wife, +Standing before me, big with child. +She started the talk of the mortgaged farm, +And I killed her. + + + + +State’s Attorney Fallas + + +I, the scourge-wielder, balance-wrecker, +Smiter with whips and swords; +I, hater of the breakers of the law; +I, legalist, inexorable and bitter, +Driving the jury to hang the madman, Barry Holden, +Was made as one dead by light too bright for eyes, +And woke to face a Truth with bloody brow: +Steel forceps fumbled by a doctor’s hand +Against my boy’s head as he entered life +Made him an idiot. I turned to books of science +To care for him. +That’s how the world of those whose minds are sick +Became my work in life, and all my world. +Poor ruined boy! You were, at last, the potter +And I and all my deeds of charity +The vessels of your hand. + + + + +Wendell P. Bloyd + + +They first charged me with disorderly conduct, +There being no statute on blasphemy. +Later they locked me up as insane +Where I was beaten to death by a Catholic guard. +My offense was this: +I said God lied to Adam, and destined him +To lead the life of a fool, +Ignorant that there is evil in the world as well as good. +And when Adam outwitted God by eating the apple +And saw through the lie, +God drove him out of Eden to keep him from taking +The fruit of immortal life. +For Christ’s sake, you sensible people, +Here’s what God Himself says about it in the book of Genesis: +“And the Lord God said, behold the man +Is become as one of us” (a little envy, you see), +“To know good and evil” (The all-is-good lie exposed): +“And now lest he put forth his hand and take +Also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever: +Therefore the Lord God sent Him forth from the garden of Eden.” (The +reason I believe God crucified His Own Son +To get out of the wretched tangle is, because it sounds just like Him. +) + + + + +Francis Turner + + +I could not run or play +In boyhood. +In manhood I could only sip the cup, +Not drink—For scarlet-fever left my heart diseased. +Yet I lie here +Soothed by a secret none but Mary knows: +There is a garden of acacia, +Catalpa trees, and arbors sweet with vines— +There on that afternoon in June +By Mary’s side— +Kissing her with my soul upon my lips +It suddenly took flight. + + + + +Franklin Jones + + +If I could have lived another year +I could have finished my flying machine, +And become rich and famous. +Hence it is fitting the workman +Who tried to chisel a dove for me +Made it look more like a chicken. +For what is it all but being hatched, +And running about the yard, +To the day of the block? +Save that a man has an angel’s brain, +And sees the ax from the first! + + + + +John M. Church + + +I was attorney for the “Q” +And the Indemnity Company which insured +The owners of the mine. +I pulled the wires with judge and jury, +And the upper courts, to beat the claims +Of the crippled, the widow and orphan, +And made a fortune thereat. +The bar association sang my praises +In a high-flown resolution. +And the floral tributes were many— +But the rats devoured my heart +And a snake made a nest in my skull + + + + +Russian Sonia + + +I, born in Weimar +Of a mother who was French +And German father, a most learned professor, +Orphaned at fourteen years, +Became a dancer, known as Russian Sonia, +All up and down the boulevards of Paris, +Mistress betimes of sundry dukes and counts, +And later of poor artists and of poets. +At forty years, _passée_, I sought New York +And met old Patrick Hummer on the boat, +Red-faced and hale, though turned his sixtieth year, +Returning after having sold a ship-load +Of cattle in the German city, Hamburg. +He brought me to Spoon River and we lived here +For twenty years—they thought that we were married +This oak tree near me is the favorite haunt +Of blue jays chattering, chattering all the day. +And why not? for my very dust is laughing +For thinking of the humorous thing called life. + + + + +Isa Nutter + + +Doc Meyers said I had satyriasis, +And Doc Hill called it leucæmia— +But I know what brought me here: +I was sixty-four but strong as a man +Of thirty-five or forty. +And it wasn’t writing a letter a day, +And it wasn’t late hours seven nights a week, +And it wasn’t the strain of thinking of Minnie, +And it wasn’t fear or a jealous dread, +Or the endless task of trying to fathom +Her wonderful mind, or sympathy +For the wretched life she led +With her first and second husband— +It was none of these that laid me low— +But the clamor of daughters and threats of sons, +And the sneers and curses of all my kin +Right up to the day I sneaked to Peoria +And married Minnie in spite of them— +And why do you wonder my will was made +For the best and purest of women? + + + + +Barney Hainsfeather + + +If the excursion train to Peoria +Had just been wrecked, I might have escaped with my life— +Certainly I should have escaped this place. +But as it was burned as well, they mistook me +For John Allen who was sent to the Hebrew Cemetery +At Chicago, +And John for me, so I lie here. +It was bad enough to run a clothing store in this town, +But to be buried here—_ach!_ + + + + +Petit, the Poet + + +Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, +Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel— +Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens— +But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof. +Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus, +Ballades by the score with the same old thought: +The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished; +And what is love but a rose that fades? +Life all around me here in the village: +Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth, +Courage, constancy, heroism, failure— +All in the loom, and oh what patterns! +Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers— +Blind to all of it all my life long. +Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus, +Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little +iambics, +While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines? + + + + +Pauline Barrett + + +Almost the shell of a woman after the surgeon’s knife +And almost a year to creep back into strength, +Till the dawn of our wedding decennial +Found me my seeming self again. +We walked the forest together, +By a path of soundless moss and turf. +But I could not look in your eyes, +And you could not look in my eyes, +For such sorrow was ours—the beginning of gray in your hair. +And I but a shell of myself. +And what did we talk of?—sky and water, +Anything, ’most, to hide our thoughts. +And then your gift of wild roses, +Set on the table to grace our dinner. +Poor heart, how bravely you struggled +To imagine and live a remembered rapture! +Then my spirit drooped as the night came on, +And you left me alone in my room for a while, +As you did when I was a bride, poor heart. +And I looked in the mirror and something said: +“One should be all dead when one is half-dead—” +Nor ever mock life, nor ever cheat love.” +And I did it looking there in the mirror— +Dear, have you ever understood? + + + + +Mrs. Charles Bliss + + +Reverend Wiley advised me not to divorce him +For the sake of the children, +And Judge Somers advised him the same. +So we stuck to the end of the path. +But two of the children thought he was right, +And two of the children thought I was right. +And the two who sided with him blamed me, +And the two who sided with me blamed him, +And they grieved for the one they sided with. +And all were torn with the guilt of judging, +And tortured in soul because they could not admire +Equally him and me. +Now every gardener knows that plants grown in cellars +Or under stones are twisted and yellow and weak. +And no mother would let her baby suck +Diseased milk from her breast. +Yet preachers and judges advise the raising of souls +Where there is no sunlight, but only twilight, +No warmth, but only dampness and cold— +Preachers and judges! + + + + +Mrs. George Reece + + +To this generation I would say: +Memorize some bit of verse of truth or beauty. +It may serve a turn in your life. +My husband had nothing to do +With the fall of the bank—he was only cashier. +The wreck was due to the president, Thomas Rhodes, +And his vain, unscrupulous son. +Yet my husband was sent to prison, +And I was left with the children, +To feed and clothe and school them. +And I did it, and sent them forth +Into the world all clean and strong, +And all through the wisdom of Pope, the poet: +“Act well your part, there all the honor lies.” + + + + +Rev. Lemuel Wiley + + +I preached four thousand sermons, +I conducted forty revivals, +And baptized many converts. +Yet no deed of mine +Shines brighter in the memory of the world, +And none is treasured more by me: +Look how I saved the Blisses from divorce, +And kept the children free from that disgrace, +To grow up into moral men and women, +Happy themselves, a credit to the village. + + + + +Thomas Ross, Jr. + + +This I saw with my own eyes: A cliff—swallow +Made her nest in a hole of the high clay-bank +There near Miller’s Ford. +But no sooner were the young hatched +Than a snake crawled up to the nest +To devour the brood. +Then the mother swallow with swift flutterings +And shrill cries +Fought at the snake, +Blinding him with the beat of her wings, +Until he, wriggling and rearing his head, +Fell backward down the bank +Into Spoon River and was drowned. +Scarcely an hour passed +Until a shrike +Impaled the mother swallow on a thorn. +As for myself I overcame my lower nature +Only to be destroyed by my brother’s ambition. + + + + +Rev. Abner Peet + + +I had no objection at all +To selling my household effects at auction +On the village square. +It gave my beloved flock the chance +To get something which had belonged to me +For a memorial. +But that trunk which was struck off +To Burchard, the grog-keeper! +Did you know it contained the manuscripts +Of a lifetime of sermons? +And he burned them as waste paper. + + + + +Jefferson Howard + + +My valiant fight! For I call it valiant, +With my father’s beliefs from old Virginia: +Hating slavery, but no less war. +I, full of spirit, audacity, courage +Thrown into life here in Spoon River, +With its dominant forces drawn from +New England, Republicans, Calvinists, merchants, bankers, +Hating me, yet fearing my arm. +With wife and children heavy to carry— +Yet fruits of my very zest of life. +Stealing odd pleasures that cost me prestige, +And reaping evils I had not sown; +Foe of the church with its charnel dankness, +Friend of the human touch of the tavern; +Tangled with fates all alien to me, +Deserted by hands I called my own. +Then just as I felt my giant strength +Short of breath, behold my children +Had wound their lives in stranger gardens— +And I stood alone, as I started alone +My valiant life! I died on my feet, +Facing the silence—facing the prospect +That no one would know of the fight I made. + + + + +Judge Selah Lively + + +Suppose you stood just five feet two, +And had worked your way as a grocery clerk, +Studying law by candle light +Until you became an attorney at law? +And then suppose through your diligence, +And regular church attendance, +You became attorney for Thomas Rhodes, +Collecting notes and mortgages, +And representing all the widows +In the Probate Court? And through it all +They jeered at your size, and laughed at your clothes +And your polished boots? And then suppose +You became the County Judge? +And Jefferson Howard and Kinsey Keene, +And Harmon Whitney, and all the giants +Who had sneered at you, were forced to stand +Before the bar and say “Your Honor”— +Well, don’t you think it was natural +That I made it hard for them? + + + + +Albert Schirding + + +Jonas Keene thought his lot a hard one +Because his children were all failures. +But I know of a fate more trying than that: +It is to be a failure while your children are successes. +For I raised a brood of eagles +Who flew away at last, leaving me +A crow on the abandoned bough. +Then, with the ambition to prefix +Honorable to my name, +And thus to win my children’s admiration, +I ran for County Superintendent of Schools, +Spending my accumulations to win—and lost. +That fall my daughter received first prize in Paris +For her picture, entitled, “The Old Mill”— +(It was of the water mill before Henry Wilkin put in steam.) +The feeling that I was not worthy of her finished me. + + + + +Jonas Keene + + +Why did Albert Schirding kill himself +Trying to be County Superintendent of Schools, +Blest as he was with the means of life +And wonderful children, bringing him honor +Ere he was sixty? +If even one of my boys could have run a news-stand, +Or one of my girls could have married a decent man, +I should not have walked in the rain +And jumped into bed with clothes all wet, +Refusing medical aid. + + + + +Eugenia Todd + + +Have any of you, passers-by, +Had an old tooth that was an unceasing discomfort? +Or a pain in the side that never quite left you? +Or a malignant growth that grew with time? +So that even in profoundest slumber +There was shadowy consciousness or the phantom of thought +Of the tooth, the side, the growth? +Even so thwarted love, or defeated ambition, +Or a blunder in life which mixed your life +Hopelessly to the end, +Will like a tooth, or a pain in the side, +Float through your dreams in the final sleep +Till perfect freedom from the earth-sphere +Comes to you as one who wakes +Healed and glad in the morning! + + + + +Yee Bow + + +They got me into the Sunday-school +In Spoon River +And tried to get me to drop Confucius for Jesus. +I could have been no worse off +If I had tried to get them to drop Jesus for Confucius. +For, without any warning, as if it were a prank, +And sneaking up behind me, Harry Wiley, +The minister’s son, caved my ribs into my lungs, +With a blow of his fist. +Now I shall never sleep with my ancestors in Pekin, +And no children shall worship at my grave. + + + + +Washington McNeely + + +Rich, honored by my fellow citizens, +The father of many children, born of a noble mother, +All raised there +In the great mansion—house, at the edge of town. +Note the cedar tree on the lawn! +I sent all the boys to Ann Arbor, all of the girls to Rockford, +The while my life went on, getting more riches and honors— +Resting under my cedar tree at evening. +The years went on. +I sent the girls to Europe; +I dowered them when married. +I gave the boys money to start in business. +They were strong children, promising as apples +Before the bitten places show. +But John fled the country in disgrace. +Jenny died in child-birth— +I sat under my cedar tree. +Harry killed himself after a debauch, +Susan was divorced— +I sat under my cedar tree. +Paul was invalided from over study, +Mary became a recluse at home for love of a man— +I sat under my cedar tree. +All were gone, or broken-winged or devoured by life— +I sat under my cedar tree. +My mate, the mother of them, was taken— +I sat under my cedar tree, +Till ninety years were tolled. +O maternal Earth, which rocks the fallen leaf to sleep. + + + + +Paul McNeely + + +Dear Jane! dear winsome Jane! +How you stole in the room (where I lay so ill) +In your nurse’s cap and linen cuffs, +And took my hand and said with a smile: +“You are not so ill—you’ll soon be well.” +And how the liquid thought of your eyes +Sank in my eyes like dew that slips +Into the heart of a flower. +Dear Jane! the whole McNeely fortune +Could not have bought your care of me, +By day and night, and night and day; +Nor paid for your smile, nor the warmth of your soul, +In your little hands laid on my brow. +Jane, till the flame of life went out +In the dark above the disk of night +I longed and hoped to be well again +To pillow my head on your little breasts, +And hold you fast in a clasp of love— +Did my father provide for you when he died, +Jane, dear Jane? + + + + +Mary McNeely + + +Passer-by, +To love is to find your own soul +Through the soul of the beloved one. +When the beloved one withdraws itself from your soul +Then you have lost your soul. +It is written: “l have a friend, +But my sorrow has no friend.” +Hence my long years of solitude at the home of my father, +Trying to get myself back, +And to turn my sorrow into a supremer self. +But there was my father with his sorrows, +Sitting under the cedar tree, +A picture that sank into my heart at last +Bringing infinite repose. +Oh, ye souls who have made life +Fragrant and white as tube roses +From earth’s dark soil, +Eternal peace! + + + + +Daniel M’Cumber + + +When I went to the city, Mary McNeely, +I meant to return for you, yes I did. +But Laura, my landlady’s daughter, +Stole into my life somehow, and won me away. +Then after some years whom should I meet +But Georgine Miner from Niles—a sprout +Of the free love, Fourierist gardens that flourished +Before the war all over Ohio. +Her dilettante lover had tired of her, +And she turned to me for strength and solace. +She was some kind of a crying thing +One takes in one’s arms, and all at once +It slimes your face with its running nose, +And voids its essence all over you; +Then bites your hand and springs away. +And there you stand bleeding and smelling to heaven +Why, Mary McNeely, I was not worthy +To kiss the hem of your robe! + + + + +Georgine Sand Miner + + +A stepmother drove me from home, embittering me. +A squaw-man, a flaneur and dilettante took my virtue. +For years I was his mistress—no one knew. +I learned from him the parasite cunning +With which I moved with the bluffs, like a flea on a dog. +All the time I was nothing but “very private,” with different men. +Then Daniel, the radical, had me for years. +His sister called me his mistress; +And Daniel wrote me: +“Shameful word, soiling our beautiful love!” +But my anger coiled, preparing its fangs. +My Lesbian friend next took a hand. +She hated Daniel’s sister. +And Daniel despised her midget husband. +And she saw a chance for a poisonous thrust: +I must complain to the wife of Daniel’s pursuit! +But before I did that I begged him to fly to London with me. +“Why not stay in the city just as we have?” he asked. +Then I turned submarine and revenged his repulse +In the arms of my dilettante friend. +Then up to the surface, Bearing the letter that Daniel wrote me +To prove my honor was all intact, showing it to his wife, +My Lesbian friend and everyone. +If Daniel had only shot me dead! +Instead of stripping me naked of lies +A harlot in body and soul. + + + + +Thomas Rhodes + + +Very well, you liberals, +And navigators into realms intellectual, +You sailors through heights imaginative, +Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets, +You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits, +And Tennessee Claflin Shopes— +You found with all your boasted wisdom +How hard at the last it is +To keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms. +While we, seekers of earth’s treasures +Getters and hoarders of gold, +Are self-contained, compact, harmonized, +Even to the end. + + + + +Ida Chicken + + +After I had attended lectures +At our Chautauqua, and studied French +For twenty years, committing the grammar +Almost by heart, +I thought I’d take a trip to Paris +To give my culture a final polish. +So I went to Peoria for a passport— +(Thomas Rhodes was on the train that morning.) +And there the clerk of the district Court +Made me swear to support and defend +The constitution—yes, even me— +Who couldn’t defend or support it at all! +And what do you think? That very morning +The Federal Judge, in the very next room +To the room where I took the oath, +Decided the constitution +Exempted Rhodes from paying taxes +For the water works of Spoon River! + + + + +Penniwit, the Artist + + +I lost my patronage in Spoon River +From trying to put my mind in the camera +To catch the soul of the person. +The very best picture I ever took +Was of Judge Somers, attorney at law. +He sat upright and had me pause +Till he got his cross-eye straight. +Then when he was ready he said “all right.” +And I yelled “overruled” and his eye turned up. +And I caught him just as he used to look +When saying “I except.” + + + + +Jim Brown + + +While I was handling Dom Pedro +I got at the thing that divides the race between men who are +For singing “Turkey in the straw” or +“There is a fountain filled with blood”— +(Like Rile Potter used to sing it over at Concord). +For cards, or for Rev. Peet’s lecture on the holy land; +For skipping the light fantastic, or passing the plate; +For Pinafore, or a Sunday school cantata; +For men, or for money; +For the people or against them. +This was it: Rev. Peet and the Social Purity Club, +Headed by Ben Pantier’s wife, +Went to the Village trustees, +And asked them to make me take Dom Pedro +From the barn of Wash McNeely, there at the edge of town, +To a barn outside of the corporation, +On the ground that it corrupted public morals. +Well, Ben Pantier and Fiddler Jones saved the day— +They thought it a slam on colts. + + + + +Robert Davidson + + +I grew spiritually fat living off the souls of men. +If I saw a soul that was strong +I wounded its pride and devoured its strength. +The shelters of friendship knew my cunning +For where I could steal a friend I did so. +And wherever I could enlarge my power +By undermining ambition, I did so, +Thus to make smooth my own. +And to triumph over other souls, +Just to assert and prove my superior strength, +Was with me a delight, +The keen exhilaration of soul gymnastics. +Devouring souls, I should have lived forever. +But their undigested remains bred in me a deadly nephritis, +With fear, restlessness, sinking spirits, +Hatred, suspicion, vision disturbed. +I collapsed at last with a shriek. +Remember the acorn; +It does not devour other acorns. + + + + +Elsa Wertman + + +I was a peasant girl from Germany, +Blue-eyed, rosy, happy and strong. +And the first place I worked was at Thomas Greene’s. +On a summer’s day when she was away +He stole into the kitchen and took me +Right in his arms and kissed me on my throat, +I turning my head. Then neither of us +Seemed to know what happened. +And I cried for what would become of me. +And cried and cried as my secret began to show. +One day Mrs. Greene said she understood, +And would make no trouble for me, +And, being childless, would adopt it. +(He had given her a farm to be still.) +So she hid in the house and sent out rumors, +As if it were going to happen to her. +And all went well and the child was born— +They were so kind to me. +Later I married Gus Wertman, and years passed. +But—at political rallies when sitters-by thought I was crying +At the eloquence of Hamilton Greene— +That was not it. No! I wanted to say: +That’s my son! +That’s my son. + + + + +Hamilton Greene + + +I was the only child of Frances Harris of Virginia +And Thomas Greene of Kentucky, +Of valiant and honorable blood both. +To them I owe all that I became, +Judge, member of Congress, leader in the State. +From my mother I inherited +Vivacity, fancy, language; +From my father will, judgment, logic. +All honor to them +For what service I was to the people! + + + + +Ernest Hyde + + +My mind was a mirror: +It saw what it saw, it knew what it knew. +In youth my mind was just a mirror +In a rapidly flying car, +Which catches and loses bits of the landscape. +Then in time +Great scratches were made on the mirror, +Letting the outside world come in, +And letting my inner self look out. +For this is the birth of the soul in sorrow, +A birth with gains and losses. +The mind sees the world as a thing apart, +And the soul makes the world at one with itself. +A mirror scratched reflects no image— +And this is the silence of wisdom. + + + + +Roger Heston + + +Oh many times did Ernest Hyde and I +Argue about the freedom of the will. +My favorite metaphor was Prickett’s cow +Roped out to grass, and free you know as far +As the length of the rope. +One day while arguing so, watching the cow +Pull at the rope to get beyond the circle +Which she had eaten bare, +Out came the stake, and tossing up her head, +She ran for us. +“What’s that, free-will or what?” said Ernest, running. +I fell just as she gored me to my death. + + + + +Amos Sibley + + +Not character, not fortitude, not patience +Were mine, the which the village thought I had +In bearing with my wife, while preaching on, +Doing the work God chose for me. +I loathed her as a termagant, as a wanton. +I knew of her adulteries, every one. +But even so, if I divorced the woman +I must forsake the ministry. +Therefore to do God’s work and have it crop, +I bore with her +So lied I to myself +So lied I to Spoon River! +Yet I tried lecturing, ran for the legislature, +Canvassed for books, with just the thought in mind: +If I make money thus, +I will divorce her. + + + + +Mrs. Sibley + + +The secret of the stars—gravitation. +The secret of the earth—layers of rock. +The secret of the soil—to receive seed. +The secret of the seed—the germ. +The secret of man—the sower. +The secret of woman—the soil. +My secret: Under a mound that you shall never find. + + + + +Adam Weirauch + + +I was crushed between Altgeld and Armour. +I lost many friends, much time and money +Fighting for Altgeld whom Editor Whedon +Denounced as the candidate of gamblers and anarchists. +Then Armour started to ship dressed meat to Spoon River, +Forcing me to shut down my slaughter-house +And my butcher shop went all to pieces. +The new forces of Altgeld and Armour caught me +At the same time. I thought it due me, to recoup the money I lost +And to make good the friends that left me, +For the Governor to appoint me Canal Commissioner. +Instead he appointed Whedon of the Spoon River Argus, +So I ran for the legislature and was elected. +I said to hell with principle and sold my vote +On Charles T. Yerkes’ street-car franchise. +Of course I was one of the fellows they caught. +Who was it, Armour, Altgeld or myself +That ruined me? + + + + +Ezra Bartlett + + +A chaplain in the army, +A chaplain in the prisons, +An exhorter in Spoon River, +Drunk with divinity, Spoon River— +Yet bringing poor Eliza Johnson to shame, +And myself to scorn and wretchedness. +But why will you never see that love of women, +And even love of wine, +Are the stimulants by which the soul, hungering for divinity, +Reaches the ecstatic vision +And sees the celestial outposts? +Only after many trials for strength, +Only when all stimulants fail, +Does the aspiring soul +By its own sheer power +Find the divine +By resting upon itself. + + + + +Amelia Garrick + + +Yes, here I lie close to a stunted rose bush +In a forgotten place near the fence +Where the thickets from Siever’s woods +Have crept over, growing sparsely. +And you, you are a leader in New York, +The wife of a noted millionaire, +A name in the society columns, +Beautiful, admired, magnified perhaps +By the mirage of distance. +You have succeeded, I have failed +In the eyes of the world. +You are alive, I am dead. +Yet I know that I vanquished your spirit; +And I know that lying here far from you, +Unheard of among your great friends +In the brilliant world where you move, +I am really the unconquerable power over your life +That robs it of complete triumph. + + + + +John Hancock Otis + + +As to democracy, fellow citizens, +Are you not prepared to admit +That I, who inherited riches and was to the manor born, +Was second to none in Spoon River +In my devotion to the cause of Liberty? +While my contemporary, Anthony Findlay, +Born in a shanty and beginning life +As a water carrier to the section hands, +Then becoming a section hand when he was grown, +Afterwards foreman of the gang, until he rose +To the superintendency of the railroad, +Living in Chicago, +Was a veritable slave driver, +Grinding the faces of labor, +And a bitter enemy of democracy. +And I say to you, Spoon River, +And to you, O republic, +Beware of the man who rises to power +From one suspender. + + + + +Anthony Findlay + + +Both for the country and for the man, +And for a country as well as a man, +’Tis better to be feared than loved. +And if this country would rather part +With the friendship of every nation +Than surrender its wealth, +I say of a man ’tis worse to lose +Money than friends. +And I rend the curtain that hides the soul +Of an ancient aspiration: +When the people clamor for freedom +They really seek for power o’er the strong. +I, Anthony Findlay, rising to greatness +From a humble water carrier, +Until I could say to thousands “Come,” +And say to thousands “Go,” +Affirm that a nation can never be good. +Or achieve the good, +Where the strong and the wise have not the rod +To use on the dull and weak. + + + + +John Cabanis + + +Neither spite, fellow citizens, +Nor forgetfulness of the shiftlessness. +And the lawlessness and waste +Under democracy’s rule in Spoon River +Made me desert the party of law and order +And lead the liberal party. +Fellow citizens! I saw as one with second sight +That every man of the millions of men +Who give themselves to Freedom, +And fail while Freedom fails, +Enduring waste and lawlessness, +And the rule of the weak and the blind, +Dies in the hope of building earth, +Like the coral insect, for the temple +To stand on at the last. +And I swear that Freedom will wage to the end +The war for making every soul +Wise and strong and as fit to rule +As Plato’s lofty guardians +In a world republic girdled! + + + + +The Unknown + + +Ye aspiring ones, listen to the story of the unknown +Who lies here with no stone to mark the place. +As a boy reckless and wanton, +Wandering with gun in hand through the forest +Near the mansion of Aaron Hatfield, +I shot a hawk perched on the top +Of a dead tree. He fell with guttural cry +At my feet, his wing broken. +Then I put him in a cage +Where he lived many days cawing angrily at me +When I offered him food. +Daily I search the realms of Hades +For the soul of the hawk, +That I may offer him the friendship +Of one whom life wounded and caged. + + + + +Alexander Throckmorton + + +In youth my wings were strong and tireless, +But I did not know the mountains. +In age I knew the mountains +But my weary wings could not follow my vision— +Genius is wisdom and youth. + + + + +Jonathan Swift Somers (Author of the Spooniad) + + +After you have enriched your soul +To the highest point, +With books, thought, suffering, +The understanding of many personalities, +The power to interpret glances, silences, +The pauses in momentous transformations, +The genius of divination and prophecy; +So that you feel able at times to hold the world +In the hollow of your hand; +Then, if, by the crowding of so many powers +Into the compass of your soul, +Your soul takes fire, +And in the conflagration of your soul +The evil of the world is lighted up and made clear— +Be thankful if in that hour of supreme vision +Life does not fiddle. + + + + +Widow McFarlane + + +I was the Widow McFarlane, +Weaver of carpets for all the village. +And I pity you still at the loom of life, +You who are singing to the shuttle +And lovingly watching the work of your hands, +If you reach the day of hate, of terrible truth. +For the cloth of life is woven, you know, +To a pattern hidden under the loom— +A pattern you never see! +And you weave high-hearted, singing, singing, +You guard the threads of love and friendship +For noble figures in gold and purple. +And long after other eyes can see +You have woven a moon-white strip of cloth, +You laugh in your strength, for Hope overlays it +With shapes of love and beauty. +The loom stops short! +The pattern’s out +You’re alone in the room! +You have woven a shroud +And hate of it lays you in it. + + + + +Carl Hamblin + + +The press of the Spoon River _Clarion_ was wrecked, +And I was tarred and feathered, +For publishing this on the day the +Anarchists were hanged in Chicago: +“I saw a beautiful woman with bandaged eyes +Standing on the steps of a marble temple. +Great multitudes passed in front of her, +Lifting their faces to her imploringly. +In her left hand she held a sword. +She was brandishing the sword, +Sometimes striking a child, again a laborer, +Again a slinking woman, again a lunatic. +In her right hand she held a scale; +Into the scale pieces of gold were tossed +By those who dodged the strokes of the sword. +A man in a black gown read from a manuscript: +“She is no respecter of persons.” +Then a youth wearing a red cap +Leaped to her side and snatched away the bandage. +And lo, the lashes had been eaten away +From the oozy eye-lids; +The eye-balls were seared with a milky mucus; +The madness of a dying soul +Was written on her face— +But the multitude saw why she wore the bandage.” + + + + +Editor Whedon + + +To be able to see every side of every question; +To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long; +To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose, +To use great feelings and passions of the human family +For base designs, for cunning ends, +To wear a mask like the Greek actors— +Your eight-page paper—behind which you huddle, +Bawling through the megaphone of big type: +“This is I, the giant.” +Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief, +Poisoned with the anonymous words +Of your clandestine soul. +To scratch dirt over scandal for money, +And exhume it to the winds for revenge, +Or to sell papers, +Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be, +To win at any cost, save your own life. +To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization, +As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track +And derails the express train. +To be an editor, as I was. +Then to lie here close by the river over the place +Where the sewage flows from the village, +And the empty cans and garbage are dumped, +And abortions are hidden. + + + + +Eugene Carman + + +Rhodes’ slave! Selling shoes and gingham, +Flour and bacon, overalls, clothing, all day long +For fourteen hours a day for three hundred and thirteen days +For more than twenty years. +Saying “Yes’m” and “Yes, sir”, and “Thank you” +A thousand times a day, and all for fifty dollars a month. +Living in this stinking room in the rattle-trap “Commercial.” +And compelled to go to Sunday School, and to listen +To the Rev. Abner Peet one hundred and four times a year +For more than an hour at a time, +Because Thomas Rhodes ran the church +As well as the store and the bank. +So while I was tying my neck-tie that morning +I suddenly saw myself in the glass: +My hair all gray, my face like a sodden pie. +So I cursed and cursed: You damned old thing +You cowardly dog! You rotten pauper! +You Rhodes’ slave! Till Roger Baughman +Thought I was having a fight with some one, +And looked through the transom just in time +To see me fall on the floor in a heap +From a broken vein in my head. + + + + +Clarence Fawcett + + +The sudden death of Eugene Carman +Put me in line to be promoted to fifty dollars a month, +And I told my wife and children that night. +But it didn’t come, and so I thought +Old Rhodes suspected me of stealing +The blankets I took and sold on the side +For money to pay a doctor’s bill for my little girl. +Then like a bolt old Rhodes accused me, +And promised me mercy for my family’s sake +If I confessed, and so I confessed, +And begged him to keep it out of the papers, +And I asked the editors, too. +That night at home the constable took me +And every paper, except the Clarion, +Wrote me up as a thief +Because old Rhodes was an advertiser +And wanted to make an example of me. +Oh! well, you know how the children cried, +And how my wife pitied and hated me, +And how I came to lie here. + + + + +W. Lloyd Garrison Standard + + +Vegetarian, non-resistant, free-thinker, in ethics a Christian; +Orator apt at the rhine-stone rhythm of Ingersoll. +Carnivorous, avenger, believer and pagan. +Continent, promiscuous, changeable, treacherous, vain, +Proud, with the pride that makes struggle a thing for laughter; +With heart cored out by the worm of theatric despair. +Wearing the coat of indifference to hide the shame of defeat; +I, child of the abolitionist idealism— +A sort of _Brand_ in a birth of half-and-half. +What other thing could happen when I defended +The patriot scamps who burned the court house +That Spoon River might have a new one +Than plead them guilty? +When Kinsey Keene drove through +The card-board mask of my life with a spear of light, +What could I do but slink away, like the beast of myself +Which I raised from a whelp, to a corner and growl? +The pyramid of my life was nought but a dune, +Barren and formless, spoiled at last by the storm. + + + + +Professor Newcomer + + +Everyone laughed at Col. Prichard +For buying an engine so powerful +That it wrecked itself, and wrecked the grinder +He ran it with. +But here is a joke of cosmic size: +The urge of nature that made a man +Evolve from his brain a spiritual life— +Oh miracle of the world!— +The very same brain with which the ape and wolf +Get food and shelter and procreate themselves. +Nature has made man do this, +In a world where she gives him nothing to do +After all—(though the strength of his soul goes round +In a futile waste of power. +To gear itself to the mills of the gods)— +But get food and shelter and procreate himself! + + + + +Ralph Rhodes + + +All they said was true: +I wrecked my father’s bank with my loans +To dabble in wheat; but this was true— +I was buying wheat for him as well, +Who couldn’t margin the deal in his name +Because of his church relationship. +And while George Reece was serving his term +I chased the will-o-the-wisp of women +And the mockery of wine in New York. +It’s deathly to sicken of wine and women +When nothing else is left in life. +But suppose your head is gray, and bowed +On a table covered with acrid stubs +Of cigarettes and empty glasses, +And a knock is heard, and you know it’s the knock +So long drowned out by popping corks +And the pea-cock screams of demireps— +And you look up, and there’s your Theft, +Who waited until your head was gray, +And your heart skipped beats to say to you: +The game is ended. I’ve called for you, +Go out on Broadway and be run over, +They’ll ship you back to Spoon River. + + + + +Mickey M’Grew + + +It was just like everything else in life: +Something outside myself drew me down, +My own strength never failed me. +Why, there was the time I earned the money +With which to go away to school, +And my father suddenly needed help +And I had to give him all of it. +Just so it went till I ended up +A man-of-all-work in Spoon River. +Thus when I got the water-tower cleaned, +And they hauled me up the seventy feet, +I unhooked the rope from my waist, +And laughingly flung my giant arms +Over the smooth steel lips of the top of the tower— +But they slipped from the treacherous slime, +And down, down, down, I plunged +Through bellowing darkness! + + + + +Rosie Roberts + + +I was sick, but more than that, I was mad +At the crooked police, and the crooked game of life. +So I wrote to the Chief of Police at Peoria: +“I am here in my girlhood home in Spoon River, +Gradually wasting away. +But come and take me, I killed the son +Of the merchant prince, in Madam Lou’s +And the papers that said he killed himself +In his home while cleaning a hunting gun— +Lied like the devil to hush up scandal +For the bribe of advertising. +In my room I shot him, at Madam Lou’s, +Because he knocked me down when I said +That, in spite of all the money he had, +I’d see my lover that night.” + + + + +Oscar Hummel + + +I staggered on through darkness, +There was a hazy sky, a few stars +Which I followed as best I could. +It was nine o’clock, I was trying to get home. +But somehow I was lost, +Though really keeping the road. +Then I reeled through a gate and into a yard, +And called at the top of my voice: +“Oh, Fiddler! Oh, Mr. Jones!” +(I thought it was his house and he would show me the way home. ) +But who should step out but A. D. Blood, +In his night shirt, waving a stick of wood, +And roaring about the cursed saloons, +And the criminals they made? +“You drunken Oscar Hummel,” he said, +As I stood there weaving to and fro, +Taking the blows from the stick in his hand +Till I dropped down dead at his feet. + + + + +Josiah Tompkins + + +I was well known and much beloved +And rich, as fortunes are reckoned +In Spoon River, where I had lived and worked. +That was the home for me, +Though all my children had flown afar— +Which is the way of Nature—all but one. +The boy, who was the baby, stayed at home, +To be my help in my failing years +And the solace of his mother. +But I grew weaker, as he grew stronger, +And he quarreled with me about the business, +And his wife said I was a hindrance to it; +And he won his mother to see as he did, +Till they tore me up to be transplanted +With them to her girlhood home in Missouri. +And so much of my fortune was gone at last, +Though I made the will just as he drew it, +He profited little by it. + + + + +Roscoe Purkapile + + +She loved me. +Oh! how she loved me I never had a chance to escape +From the day she first saw me. +But then after we were married I thought +She might prove her mortality and let me out, +Or she might divorce me. But few die, none resign. +Then I ran away and was gone a year on a lark. +But she never complained. She said all would be well +That I would return. And I did return. +I told her that while taking a row in a boat +I had been captured near Van Buren Street +By pirates on Lake Michigan, +And kept in chains, so I could not write her. +She cried and kissed me, and said it was cruel, +Outrageous, inhuman! I then concluded our marriage +Was a divine dispensation +And could not be dissolved, +Except by death. +I was right. + + + + +Mrs. Purkapile + + +He ran away and was gone for a year. +When he came home he told me the silly story +Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan +And kept in chains so he could not write me. +I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well +What he was doing, and that he met +The milliner, Mrs. Williams, now and then +When she went to the city to buy goods, as she said. +But a promise is a promise +And marriage is marriage, +And out of respect for my own character +I refused to be drawn into a divorce +By the scheme of a husband who had merely grown tired +Of his marital vow and duty. + + + + +Mrs. Kessler + + +Mr. Kessler, you know, was in the army, +And he drew six dollars a month as a pension, +And stood on the corner talking politics, +Or sat at home reading Grant’s Memoirs; +And I supported the family by washing, +Learning the secrets of all the people +From their curtains, counterpanes, shirts and skirts. +For things that are new grow old at length, +They’re replaced with better or none at all: +People are prospering or falling back. +And rents and patches widen with time; +No thread or needle can pace decay, +And there are stains that baffle soap, +And there are colors that run in spite of you, +Blamed though you are for spoiling a dress. +Handkerchiefs, napery, have their secrets— +The laundress, Life, knows all about it. +And I, who went to all the funerals +Held in Spoon River, swear I never +Saw a dead face without thinking it looked +Like something washed and ironed. + + + + +Harmon Whitney + + +Out of the lights and roar of cities, +Drifting down like a spark in Spoon River, +Burnt out with the fire of drink, and broken, +The paramour of a woman I took in self-contempt, +But to hide a wounded pride as well. +To be judged and loathed by a village of little minds— +I, gifted with tongues and wisdom, +Sunk here to the dust of the justice court, +A picker of rags in the rubbage of spites and wrongs,— +I, whom fortune smiled on! +I in a village, +Spouting to gaping yokels pages of verse, +Out of the lore of golden years, +Or raising a laugh with a flash of filthy wit +When they bought the drinks to kindle my dying mind. +To be judged by you, +The soul of me hidden from you, +With its wound gangrened +By love for a wife who made the wound, +With her cold white bosom, treasonous, pure and hard, +Relentless to the last, when the touch of her hand, +At any time, might have cured me of the typhus, +Caught in the jungle of life where many are lost. +And only to think that my soul could not react, +Like Byron’s did, in song, in something noble, +But turned on itself like a tortured snake—judge me this way, +O world. + + + + +Bert Kessler + + +I winged my bird, +Though he flew toward the setting sun; +But just as the shot rang out, he soared +Up and up through the splinters of golden light, +Till he turned right over, feathers ruffled, +With some of the down of him floating near, +And fell like a plummet into the grass. +I tramped about, parting the tangles, +Till I saw a splash of blood on a stump, +And the quail lying close to the rotten roots. +I reached my hand, but saw no brier, +But something pricked and stung and numbed it. +And then, in a second, I spied the rattler— +The shutters wide in his yellow eyes, +The head of him arched, sunk back in the rings of him, +A circle of filth, the color of ashes, +Or oak leaves bleached under layers of leaves. +I stood like a stone as he shrank and uncoiled +And started to crawl beneath the stump, +When I fell limp in the grass. + + + + +Lambert Hutchins + + +I have two monuments besides this granite obelisk: +One, the house I built on the hill, +With its spires, bay windows, and roof of slate. +The other, the lake-front in Chicago, +Where the railroad keeps a switching yard, +With whistling engines and crunching wheels +And smoke and soot thrown over the city, +And the crash of cars along the boulevard,— +A blot like a hog-pen on the harbor +Of a great metropolis, foul as a sty. +I helped to give this heritage +To generations yet unborn, with my vote +In the House of Representatives, +And the lure of the thing was to be at rest +From the never—ending fright of need, +And to give my daughters gentle breeding, +And a sense of security in life. +But, you see, though I had the mansion house +And traveling passes and local distinction, +I could hear the whispers, whispers, whispers, +Wherever I went, and my daughters grew up +With a look as if some one were about to strike them; +And they married madly, helter-skelter, +Just to get out and have a change. +And what was the whole of the business worth? +Why, it wasn’t worth a damn! + + + + +Lillian Stewart + + +I was the daughter of Lambert Hutchins, +Born in a cottage near the grist-mill, +Reared in the mansion there on the hill, +With its spires, bay-windows, and roof of slate. +How proud my mother was of the mansion +How proud of father’s rise in the world! +And how my father loved and watched us, +And guarded our happiness. +But I believe the house was a curse, +For father’s fortune was little beside it; +And when my husband found he had married +A girl who was really poor, +He taunted me with the spires, +And called the house a fraud on the world, +A treacherous lure to young men, raising hopes +Of a dowry not to be had; +And a man while selling his vote +Should get enough from the people’s betrayal +To wall the whole of his family in. +He vexed my life till I went back home +And lived like an old maid till I died, +Keeping house for father. + + + + +Hortense Robbins + + +My name used to be in the papers daily +As having dined somewhere, +Or traveled somewhere, +Or rented a house in Paris, +Where I entertained the nobility. +I was forever eating or traveling, +Or taking the cure at Baden-Baden. +Now I am here to do honor +To Spoon River, here beside the family whence I sprang. +No one cares now where I dined, +Or lived, or whom I entertained, +Or how often I took the cure at Baden-Baden. + + + + +Batterton Dobyns + + +Did my widow flit about +From Mackinac to Los Angeles, +Resting and bathing and sitting an hour +Or more at the table over soup and meats +And delicate sweets and coffee? +I was cut down in my prime +From overwork and anxiety. +But I thought all along, whatever happens +I’ve kept my insurance up, +And there’s something in the bank, +And a section of land in Manitoba. +But just as I slipped I had a vision +In a last delirium: +I saw myself lying nailed in a box +With a white lawn tie and a boutonnière, +And my wife was sitting by a window +Some place afar overlooking the sea; +She seemed so rested, ruddy and fat, +Although her hair was white. +And she smiled and said to a colored waiter: +“Another slice of roast beef, George. +Here’s a nickel for your trouble.” + + + + +Jacob Godbey + + +How did you feel, you libertarians, +Who spent your talents rallying noble reasons +Around the saloon, as if Liberty +Was not to be found anywhere except at the bar +Or at a table, guzzling? +How did you feel, Ben Pantier, and the rest of you, +Who almost stoned me for a tyrant +Garbed as a moralist, +And as a wry-faced ascetic frowning upon Yorkshire pudding, +Roast beef and ale and good will and rosy cheer— +Things you never saw in a grog-shop in your life? +How did you feel after I was dead and gone, +And your goddess, Liberty, unmasked as a strumpet, +Selling out the streets of Spoon River +To the insolent giants +Who manned the saloons from afar? +Did it occur to you that personal liberty +Is liberty of the mind, +Rather than of the belly? + + + + +Walter Simmons + + +My parents thought that I would be +As great as Edison or greater: +For as a boy I made balloons +And wondrous kites and toys with clocks +And little engines with tracks to run on +And telephones of cans and thread. +I played the cornet and painted pictures, +Modeled in clay and took the part +Of the villain in the “Octoroon.” +But then at twenty-one I married +And had to live, and so, to live +I learned the trade of making watches +And kept the jewelry store on the square, +Thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking,— +Not of business, but of the engine +I studied the calculus to build. +And all Spoon River watched and waited +To see it work, but it never worked. +And a few kind souls believed my genius +Was somehow hampered by the store. +It wasn’t true. +The truth was this: +I did not have the brains. + + + + +Tom Beatty + + +I was a lawyer like Harmon Whitney +Or Kinsey Keene or Garrison Standard, +For I tried the rights of property, +Although by lamp-light, for thirty years, +In that poker room in the opera house. +And I say to you that Life’s a gambler +Head and shoulders above us all. +No mayor alive can close the house. +And if you lose, you can squeal as you will; +You’ll not get back your money. +He makes the percentage hard to conquer; +He stacks the cards to catch your weakness +And not to meet your strength. +And he gives you seventy years to play: +For if you cannot win in seventy +You cannot win at all. +So, if you lose, get out of the room— +Get out of the room when your time is up. +It’s mean to sit and fumble the cards +And curse your losses, leaden-eyed, +Whining to try and try. + + + + +Roy Butler + + +If the learned Supreme Court of Illinois +Got at the secret of every case +As well as it does a case of rape +It would be the greatest court in the world. +A jury, of neighbors mostly, with “Butch” Weldy +As foreman, found me guilty in ten minutes +And two ballots on a case like this: +Richard Bandle and I had trouble over a fence +And my wife and Mrs. Bandle quarreled +As to whether Ipava was a finer town than Table Grove. +I awoke one morning with the love of God +Brimming over my heart, so I went to see Richard +To settle the fence in the spirit of Jesus Christ. +I knocked on the door, and his wife opened; +She smiled and asked me in. +I entered— She slammed the door and began to scream, +“Take your hands off, you low down varlet!” +Just then her husband entered. +I waved my hands, choked up with words. +He went for his gun, and I ran out. +But neither the Supreme Court nor my wife +Believed a word she said. + + + + +Searcy Foote + + +I wanted to go away to college +But rich Aunt Persis wouldn’t help me. +So I made gardens and raked the lawns +And bought John Alden’s books with my earnings +And toiled for the very means of life. +I wanted to marry Delia Prickett, +But how could I do it with what I earned? +And there was Aunt Persis more than seventy +Who sat in a wheel-chair half alive +With her throat so paralyzed, when she swallowed +The soup ran out of her mouth like a duck— +A gourmand yet, investing her income +In mortgages, fretting all the time +About her notes and rents and papers. +That day I was sawing wood for her, +And reading Proudhon in between. +I went in the house for a drink of water, +And there she sat asleep in her chair, +And Proudhon lying on the table, +And a bottle of chloroform on the book, +She used sometimes for an aching tooth! +I poured the chloroform on a handkerchief +And held it to her nose till she died.— +Oh Delia, Delia, you and Proudhon +Steadied my hand, and the coroner +Said she died of heart failure. +I married Delia and got the money— +A joke on you, Spoon River? + + + + +Edmund Pollard + + +I would I had thrust my hands of flesh +Into the disk-flowers bee-infested, +Into the mirror-like core of fire +Of the light of life, the sun of delight. +For what are anthers worth or petals +Or halo-rays? Mockeries, shadows +Of the heart of the flower, the central flame +All is yours, young passer-by; +Enter the banquet room with the thought; +Don’t sidle in as if you were doubtful +Whether you’re welcome—the feast is yours! +Nor take but a little, refusing more +With a bashful “Thank you”, when you’re hungry. +Is your soul alive? Then let it feed! +Leave no balconies where you can climb; +Nor milk-white bosoms where you can rest; +Nor golden heads with pillows to share; +Nor wine cups while the wine is sweet; +Nor ecstasies of body or soul, +You will die, no doubt, but die while living +In depths of azure, rapt and mated, +Kissing the queen-bee, Life! + + + + +Thomas Trevelyan + + +Reading in Ovid the sorrowful story of Itys, +Son of the love of Tereus and Procne, slain +For the guilty passion of Tereus for Philomela, +The flesh of him served to Tereus by Procne, +And the wrath of Tereus, the murderess pursuing +Till the gods made Philomela a nightingale, +Lute of the rising moon, and Procne a swallow +Oh livers and artists of Hellas centuries gone, +Sealing in little thuribles dreams and wisdom, +Incense beyond all price, forever fragrant, +A breath whereof makes clear the eyes of the soul +How I inhaled its sweetness here in Spoon River! +The thurible opening when I had lived and learned +How all of us kill the children of love, and all of us, +Knowing not what we do, devour their flesh; +And all of us change to singers, although it be +But once in our lives, or change—alas!—to swallows, +To twitter amid cold winds and falling leaves! + + + + +Percival Sharp + + +Observe the clasped hands! +Are they hands of farewell or greeting, +Hands that I helped or hands that helped me? +Would it not be well to carve a hand +With an inverted thumb, like Elagabalus? +And yonder is a broken chain, +The weakest-link idea perhaps— +But what was it? +And lambs, some lying down, +Others standing, as if listening to the shepherd— +Others bearing a cross, one foot lifted up— +Why not chisel a few shambles? +And fallen columns! +Carve the pedestal, please, +Or the foundations; let us see the cause of the fall. +And compasses and mathematical instruments, +In irony of the under tenants, ignorance +Of determinants and the calculus of variations. +And anchors, for those who never sailed. +And gates ajar—yes, so they were; +You left them open and stray goats entered your garden. +And an eye watching like one of the Arimaspi— +So did you—with one eye. +And angels blowing trumpets—you are heralded— +It is your horn and your angel and your family’s estimate. +It is all very well, but for myself +I know I stirred certain vibrations in Spoon River +Which are my true epitaph, more lasting than stone. + + + + +Hiram Scates + + +I tried to win the nomination +For president of the County-board +And I made speeches all over the County +Denouncing Solomon Purple, my rival, +As an enemy of the people, +In league with the master-foes of man. +Young idealists, broken warriors, +Hobbling on one crutch of hope, +Souls that stake their all on the truth, +Losers of worlds at heaven’s bidding, +Flocked about me and followed my voice +As the savior of the County. +But Solomon won the nomination; +And then I faced about, +And rallied my followers to his standard, +And made him victor, made him King +Of the Golden Mountain with the door +Which closed on my heels just as I entered, +Flattered by Solomon’s invitation, +To be the County—board’s secretary. +And out in the cold stood all my followers: +Young idealists, broken warriors +Hobbling on one crutch of hope— +Souls that staked their all on the truth, +Losers of worlds at heaven’s bidding, +Watching the Devil kick the Millennium +Over the Golden Mountain. + + + + +Peleg Poague + + +Horses and men are just alike. +There was my stallion, Billy Lee, +Black as a cat and trim as a deer, +With an eye of fire, keen to start, +And he could hit the fastest speed +Of any racer around Spoon River. +But just as you’d think he couldn’t lose, +With his lead of fifty yards or more, +He’d rear himself and throw the rider, +And fall back over, tangled up, +Completely gone to pieces. +You see he was a perfect fraud: +He couldn’t win, he couldn’t work, +He was too light to haul or plow with, +And no one wanted colts from him. +And when I tried to drive him—well, +He ran away and killed me. + + + + +Jeduthan Hawley + + +There would be a knock at the door +And I would arise at midnight and go to the shop, +Where belated travelers would hear me hammering +Sepulchral boards and tacking satin. +And often I wondered who would go with me +To the distant land, our names the theme +For talk, in the same week, for I’ve observed +Two always go together. +Chase Henry was paired with Edith Conant; +And Jonathan Somers with Willie Metcalf; +And Editor Hamblin with Francis Turner, +When he prayed to live longer than Editor Whedon, +And Thomas Rhodes with widow McFarlane; +And Emily Sparks with Barry Holden; +And Oscar Hummel with Davis Matlock; +And Editor Whedon with Fiddler Jones; +And Faith Matheny with Dorcas Gustine. +And I, the solemnest man in town, +Stepped off with Daisy Fraser. + + + + +Abel Melveny + + +I bought every kind of machine that’s known— +Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers, +Mills and rakes and ploughs and threshers— +And all of them stood in the rain and sun, +Getting rusted, warped and battered, +For I had no sheds to store them in, +And no use for most of them. +And toward the last, when I thought it over, +There by my window, growing clearer +About myself, as my pulse slowed down, +And looked at one of the mills I bought— +Which I didn’t have the slightest need of, +As things turned out, and I never ran— +A fine machine, once brightly varnished, +And eager to do its work, +Now with its paint washed off— +I saw myself as a good machine +That Life had never used. + + + + +Oaks Tutt + + +My mother was for woman’s rights +And my father was the rich miller at London Mills. +I dreamed of the wrongs of the world and wanted to right them. +When my father died, I set out to see peoples and countries +In order to learn how to reform the world. +I traveled through many lands. I saw the ruins of Rome +And the ruins of Athens, And the ruins of Thebes. +And I sat by moonlight amid the necropolis of Memphis. +There I was caught up by wings of flame, +And a voice from heaven said to me: +“Injustice, Untruth destroyed them. +Go forth Preach Justice! Preach Truth!” +And I hastened back to Spoon River +To say farewell to my mother before beginning my work. +They all saw a strange light in my eye. +And by and by, when I talked, they discovered +What had come in my mind. +Then Jonathan Swift Somers challenged me to debate +The subject, (I taking the negative): +“Pontius Pilate, the Greatest Philosopher of the World.” +And he won the debate by saying at last, +“Before you reform the world, Mr. Tutt +Please answer the question of Pontius Pilate: +“What is Truth?” + + + + +Elliott Hawkins + + +I looked like Abraham Lincoln. +I was one of you, Spoon River, in all fellowship, +But standing for the rights of property and for order. +A regular church attendant, +Sometimes appearing in your town meetings to warn you +Against the evils of discontent and envy +And to denounce those who tried to destroy the Union, +And to point to the peril of the Knights of Labor. +My success and my example are inevitable influences +In your young men and in generations to come, +In spite of attacks of newspapers like the _Clarion;_ +A regular visitor at Springfield +When the Legislature was in session +To prevent raids upon the railroads +And the men building up the state. +Trusted by them and by you, Spoon River, equally +In spite of the whispers that I was a lobbyist. +Moving quietly through the world, rich and courted. +Dying at last, of course, but lying here +Under a stone with an open book carved upon it +And the words _“Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”_ +And now, you world-savers, who reaped nothing in life +And in death have neither stones nor epitaphs, +How do you like your silence from mouths stopped +With the dust of my triumphant career? + + + + +Voltaire Johnson + + +Why did you bruise me with your rough places +If you did not want me to tell you about them? +And stifle me with your stupidities, +If you did not want me to expose them? +And nail me with the nails of cruelty, +If you did not want me to pluck the nails forth +And fling them in your faces? +And starve me because I refused to obey you, +If you did not want me to undermine your tyranny? +I might have been as soul serene +As William Wordsworth except for you! +But what a coward you are, Spoon River, +When you drove me to stand in a magic circle +By the sword of Truth described! +And then to whine and curse your burns, +And curse my power who stood and laughed +Amid ironical lightning! + + + + +English Thornton + + +Here! You sons of the men +Who fought with Washington at Valley Forge, +And whipped Black Hawk at Starved Rock, +Arise! Do battle with the descendants of those +Who bought land in the loop when it was waste sand, +And sold blankets and guns to the army of Grant, +And sat in legislatures in the early days, +Taking bribes from the railroads! +Arise! Do battle with the fops and bluffs, +The pretenders and figurantes of the society column +And the yokel souls whose daughters marry counts; +And the parasites on great ideas, +And the noisy riders of great causes, +And the heirs of ancient thefts. +Arise! And make the city yours, +And the State yours— +You who are sons of the hardy yeomanry of the forties! +By God! If you do not destroy these vermin +My avenging ghost will wipe out +Your city and your state. + + + + +Enoch Dunlap + + +How many times, during the twenty years +I was your leader, friends of Spoon River, +Did you neglect the convention and caucus, +And leave the burden on my hands +Of guarding and saving the people’s cause?— +Sometimes because you were ill; +Or your grandmother was ill; +Or you drank too much and fell asleep; +Or else you said: “He is our leader, +All will be well; he fights for us; +We have nothing to do but follow.” +But oh, how you cursed me when I fell, +And cursed me, saying I had betrayed you, +In leaving the caucus room for a moment, +When the people’s enemies, there assembled, +Waited and watched for a chance to destroy +The Sacred Rights of the People. +You common rabble! I left the caucus +To go to the urinal. + + + + +Ida Frickey + + +Nothing in life is alien to you: +I was a penniless girl from Summum +Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River. +All the houses stood before me with closed doors +And drawn shades—I was barred out; +I had no place or part in any of them. +And I walked past the old McNeely mansion, +A castle of stone ’mid walks and gardens +With workmen about the place on guard +And the County and State upholding it +For its lordly owner, full of pride. +I was so hungry I had a vision: +I saw a giant pair of scissors +Dip from the sky, like the beam of a dredge, +And cut the house in two like a curtain. +But at the “Commercial” I saw a man +Who winked at me as I asked for work— +It was Wash McNeely’s son. +He proved the link in the chain of title +To half my ownership of the mansion, +Through a breach of promise suit—the scissors. +So, you see, the house, from the day I was born, +Was only waiting for me. + + + + +Seth Compton + + +When I died, the circulating library +Which I built up for Spoon River, +And managed for the good of inquiring minds, +Was sold at auction on the public square, +As if to destroy the last vestige +Of my memory and influence. +For those of you who could not see the virtue +Of knowing Volney’s “Ruins” as well as Butler’s “Analogy” +And “Faust” as well as “Evangeline,” +Were really the power in the village, +And often you asked me +“What is the use of knowing the evil in the world?” +I am out of your way now, Spoon River, +Choose your own good and call it good. +For I could never make you see +That no one knows what is good +Who knows not what is evil; +And no one knows what is true +Who knows not what is false. + + + + +Felix Schmidt + + +It was only a little house of two rooms— +Almost like a child’s play-house— +With scarce five acres of ground around it; +And I had so many children to feed +And school and clothe, and a wife who was sick +From bearing children. +One day lawyer Whitney came along +And proved to me that Christian Dallman, +Who owned three thousand acres of land, +Had bought the eighty that adjoined me +In eighteen hundred and seventy-one +For eleven dollars, at a sale for taxes, +While my father lay in his mortal illness. +So the quarrel arose and I went to law. +But when we came to the proof, +A survey of the land showed clear as day +That Dallman’s tax deed covered my ground +And my little house of two rooms. +It served me right for stirring him up. +I lost my case and lost my place. +I left the court room and went to work +As Christian Dallman’s tenant. + + + + +Schrœder The Fisherman + + +I sat on the bank above Bernadotte +And dropped crumbs in the water, +Just to see the minnows bump each other, +Until the strongest got the prize. +Or I went to my little pasture, +Where the peaceful swine were asleep in the wallow, +Or nosing each other lovingly, +And emptied a basket of yellow corn, +And watched them push and squeal and bite, +And trample each other to get the corn. +And I saw how Christian Dallman’s farm, +Of more than three thousand acres, +Swallowed the patch of Felix Schmidt, +As a bass will swallow a minnow +And I say if there’s anything in man— +Spirit, or conscience, or breath of God +That makes him different from fishes or hogs, +I’d like to see it work! + + + + +Richard Bone + + +When I first came to Spoon River +I did not know whether what they told me +Was true or false. +They would bring me the epitaph +And stand around the shop while I worked +And say “He was so kind,” “He was so wonderful,” +“She was the sweetest woman,” “He was a consistent Christian.” +And I chiseled for them whatever they wished, +All in ignorance of the truth. +But later, as I lived among the people here, +I knew how near to the life +Were the epitaphs that were ordered for them as they died. +But still I chiseled whatever they paid me to chisel +And made myself party to the false chronicles +Of the stones, +Even as the historian does who writes +Without knowing the truth, +Or because he is influenced to hide it. + + + + +Silas Dement + + +It was moon-light, and the earth sparkled +With new-fallen frost. +It was midnight and not a soul abroad. +Out of the chimney of the court-house +A gray-hound of smoke leapt and chased +The northwest wind. +I carried a ladder to the landing of the stairs +And leaned it against the frame of the trap-door +In the ceiling of the portico, +And I crawled under the roof and amid the rafters +And flung among the seasoned timbers +A lighted handful of oil-soaked waste. +Then I came down and slunk away. +In a little while the fire-bell rang— +Clang! Clang! Clang! +And the Spoon River ladder company +Came with a dozen buckets and began to pour water +On the glorious bon-fire, growing hotter +Higher and brighter, till the walls fell in +And the limestone columns where Lincoln stood +Crashed like trees when the woodman fells them. +When I came back from Joliet +There was a new court house with a dome. +For I was punished like all who destroy +The past for the sake of the future. + + + + +Dillard Sissman + + +The buzzards wheel slowly +In wide circles, in a sky +Faintly hazed as from dust from the road. +And a wind sweeps through the pasture where I lie +Beating the grass into long waves. +My kite is above the wind, +Though now and then it wobbles, +Like a man shaking his shoulders; +And the tail streams out momentarily, +Then sinks to rest. +And the buzzards wheel and wheel, +Sweeping the zenith with wide circles +Above my kite. And the hills sleep. +And a farm house, white as snow, +Peeps from green trees—far away. +And I watch my kite, +For the thin moon will kindle herself ere long, +Then she will swing like a pendulum dial +To the tail of my kite. +A spurt of flame like a water-dragon +Dazzles my eyes— +I am shaken as a banner! + + + + +Jonathan Houghton + + +There is the caw of a crow, +And the hesitant song of a thrush. +There is the tinkle of a cowbell far away, +And the voice of a plowman on Shipley’s hill. +The forest beyond the orchard is still +With midsummer stillness; +And along the road a wagon chuckles, +Loaded with corn, going to Atterbury. +And an old man sits under a tree asleep, +And an old woman crosses the road, +Coming from the orchard with a bucket of blackberries. +And a boy lies in the grass +Near the feet of the old man, +And looks up at the sailing clouds, +And longs, and longs, and longs +For what, he knows not: +For manhood, for life, for the unknown world! +Then thirty years passed, +And the boy returned worn out by life +And found the orchard vanished, +And the forest gone, +And the house made over, +And the roadway filled with dust from automobiles— +And himself desiring The Hill! + + + + +E. C. Culbertson + + +Is it true, Spoon River, +That in the hall—way of the New Court House +There is a tablet of bronze +Containing the embossed faces +Of Editor Whedon and Thomas Rhodes? +And is it true that my successful labors +In the County Board, without which +Not one stone would have been placed on another, +And the contributions out of my own pocket +To build the temple, are but memories among the people, +Gradually fading away, and soon to descend +With them to this oblivion where I lie? +In truth, I can so believe. +For it is a law of the Kingdom of Heaven +That whoso enters the vineyard at the eleventh hour +Shall receive a full day’s pay. +And it is a law of the Kingdom of this World +That those who first oppose a good work +Seize it and make it their own, +When the corner—stone is laid, +And memorial tablets are erected. + + + + +Shack Dye + + +The white men played all sorts of jokes on me. +They took big fish off my hook +And put little ones on, while I was away +Getting a stringer, and made me believe +I hadn’t seen aright the fish I had caught. +When Burr Robbins circus came to town +They got the ring master to let a tame leopard +Into the ring, and made me believe +I was whipping a wild beast like Samson +When I, for an offer of fifty dollars, +Dragged him out to his cage. +One time I entered my blacksmith shop +And shook as I saw some horse-shoes crawling +Across the floor, as if alive— +Walter Simmons had put a magnet +Under the barrel of water. +Yet everyone of you, you white men, +Was fooled about fish and about leopards too, +And you didn’t know any more than the horse-shoes did +What moved you about Spoon River. + + + + +Hildrup Tubbs + + +I made two fights for the people. +First I left my party, bearing the gonfalon +Of independence, for reform, and was defeated. +Next I used my rebel strength +To capture the standard of my old party— +And I captured it, but I was defeated. +Discredited and discarded, misanthropical, +I turned to the solace of gold +And I used my remnant of power +To fasten myself like a saprophyte +Upon the putrescent carcass +Of Thomas Rhodes, bankrupt bank, +As assignee of the fund. +Everyone now turned from me. +My hair grew white, +My purple lusts grew gray, +Tobacco and whisky lost their savor +And for years Death ignored me +As he does a hog. + + + + +Henry Tripp + + +The bank broke and I lost my savings. +I was sick of the tiresome game in Spoon River +And I made up my mind to run away +And leave my place in life and my family; +But just as the midnight train pulled in, +Quick off the steps jumped Cully Green +And Martin Vise, and began to fight +To settle their ancient rivalry, +Striking each other with fists that sounded +Like the blows of knotted clubs. +Now it seemed to me that Cully was winning, +When his bloody face broke into a grin +Of sickly cowardice, leaning on Martin +And whining out “We’re good friends, Mart, +You know that I’m your friend.” +But a terrible punch from Martin knocked him +Around and around and into a heap. +And then they arrested me as a witness, +And I lost my train and staid in Spoon River +To wage my battle of life to the end. +Oh, Cully Green, you were my savior— +You, so ashamed and drooped for years, +Loitering listless about the streets, +And tying rags round your festering soul, +Who failed to fight it out. + + + + +Granville Calhoun + + +I wanted to be County Judge +One more term, so as to round out a service +Of thirty years. +But my friends left me and joined my enemies, +And they elected a new man. +Then a spirit of revenge seized me, +And I infected my four sons with it, +And I brooded upon retaliation, +Until the great physician, Nature, +Smote me through with paralysis +To give my soul and body a rest. +Did my sons get power and money? +Did they serve the people or yoke them, +To till and harvest fields of self? +For how could they ever forget +My face at my bed-room window, +Sitting helpless amid my golden cages +Of singing canaries, +Looking at the old court-house? + + + + +Henry C. Calhoun + + +I reached the highest place in Spoon River, +But through what bitterness of spirit! +The face of my father, sitting speechless, +Child-like, watching his canaries, +And looking at the court-house window +Of the county judge’s room, +And his admonitions to me to seek +My own in life, and punish Spoon River +To avenge the wrong the people did him, +Filled me with furious energy +To seek for wealth and seek for power. +But what did he do but send me along +The path that leads to the grove of the Furies? +I followed the path and I tell you this: +On the way to the grove you’ll pass the Fates, +Shadow-eyed, bent over their weaving. +Stop for a moment, and if you see +The thread of revenge leap out of the shuttle +Then quickly snatch from Atropos +The shears and cut it, lest your sons +And the children of them and their children +Wear the envenomed robe. + + + + +Alfred Moir + + +Why was I not devoured by self-contempt, +And rotted down by indifference +And impotent revolt like Indignation Jones? +Why, with all of my errant steps +Did I miss the fate of Willard Fluke? +And why, though I stood at Burchard’s bar, +As a sort of decoy for the house to the boys +To buy the drinks, did the curse of drink +Fall on me like rain that runs off, +Leaving the soul of me dry and clean? +And why did I never kill a man +Like Jack McGuire? +But instead I mounted a little in life, +And I owe it all to a book I read. +But why did I go to Mason City, +Where I chanced to see the book in a window, +With its garish cover luring my eye? +And why did my soul respond to the book, +As I read it over and over? + + + + +Perry Zoll + + +My thanks, friends of the +County Scientific Association, +For this modest boulder, +And its little tablet of bronze. +Twice I tried to join your honored body, +And was rejected +And when my little brochure +On the intelligence of plants +Began to attract attention +You almost voted me in. +After that I grew beyond the need of you +And your recognition. +Yet I do not reject your memorial stone +Seeing that I should, in so doing, +Deprive you of honor to yourselves. + + + + +Dippold the Optician + + +What do you see now? +Globes of red, yellow, purple. +Just a moment! And now? +My father and mother and sisters. +Yes! And now? +Knights at arms, beautiful women, kind faces. +Try this. +A field of grain—a city. +Very good! And now? +A young woman with angels bending over her. +A heavier lens! And now? +Many women with bright eyes and open lips. +Try this. +Just a goblet on a table. +Oh I see! Try this lens! +Just an open space—I see nothing in particular. +Well, now! +Pine trees, a lake, a summer sky. +That’s better. And now? +A book. +Read a page for me. +I can’t. My eyes are carried beyond the page. +Try this lens. +Depths of air. +Excellent! And now! +Light, just light making everything below it a toy world. +Very well, we’ll make the glasses accordingly. + + + + +Magrady Graham + + +Tell me, was Altgeld elected Governor? +For when the returns began to come in +And Cleveland was sweeping the East +It was too much for you, poor old heart, +Who had striven for democracy +In the long, long years of defeat. +And like a watch that is worn +I felt you growing slower until you stopped. +Tell me, was Altgeld elected, +And what did he do? +Did they bring his head on a platter to a dancer, +Or did he triumph for the people? +For when I saw him +And took his hand, +The child-like blueness of his eyes +Moved me to tears, +And there was an air of eternity about him, +Like the cold, clear light that rests at dawn +On the hills! + + + + +Archibald Higbie + + +I loathed you, Spoon River. +I tried to rise above you, +I was ashamed of you. +I despised you +As the place of my nativity. +And there in Rome, among the artists, +Speaking Italian, speaking French, +I seemed to myself at times to be free +Of every trace of my origin. +I seemed to be reaching the heights of art +And to breathe the air that the masters breathed +And to see the world with their eyes. +But still they’d pass my work and say: +“What are you driving at, my friend? +Sometimes the face looks like Apollo’s +At others it has a trace of Lincoln’s.” +There was no culture, you know, in Spoon River +And I burned with shame and held my peace. +And what could I do, all covered over +And weighted down with western soil +Except aspire, and pray for another +Birth in the world, with all of Spoon River +Rooted out of my soul? + + + + +Tom Merritt + + +At first I suspected something— +She acted so calm and absent-minded. +And one day I heard the back door shut +As I entered the front, and I saw him slink +Back of the smokehouse into the lot +And run across the field. +And I meant to kill him on sight. +But that day, walking near Fourth Bridge +Without a stick or a stone at hand, +All of a sudden I saw him standing +Scared to death, holding his rabbits, +And all I could say was, “Don’t, Don’t, Don’t,” +As he aimed and fired at my heart. + + + + +Mrs. Merritt + + +Silent before the jury +Returning no word to the judge when he asked me +If I had aught to say against the sentence, +Only shaking my head. +What could I say to people who thought +That a woman of thirty-five was at fault +When her lover of nineteen killed her husband? +Even though she had said to him over and over, +“Go away, Elmer, go far away, +I have maddened your brain with the gift of my body: +You will do some terrible thing.” +And just as I feared, he killed my husband; +With which I had nothing to do, before +God Silent for thirty years in prison +And the iron gates of Joliet +Swung as the gray and silent trusties +Carried me out in a coffin. + + + + +Elmer Karr + + +What but the love of God could have softened +And made forgiving the people of Spoon River +Toward me who wronged the bed of Thomas Merritt +And murdered him beside? +Oh, loving hearts that took me in again +When I returned from fourteen years in prison! +Oh, helping hands that in the church received me +And heard with tears my penitent confession, +Who took the sacrament of bread and wine! +Repent, ye living ones, and rest with Jesus. + + + + +Elizabeth Childers + + +Dust of my dust, +And dust with my dust, +O, child who died as you entered the world, +Dead with my death! +Not knowing +Breath, though you tried so hard, +With a heart that beat when you lived with me, +And stopped when you left me for Life. +It is well, my child. +For you never traveled +The long, long way that begins with school days, +When little fingers blur under the tears +That fall on the crooked letters. +And the earliest wound, when a little mate +Leaves you alone for another; +And sickness, and the face of +Fear by the bed; +The death of a father or mother; +Or shame for them, or poverty; +The maiden sorrow of school days ended; +And eyeless Nature that makes you drink +From the cup of Love, though you know it’s poisoned; +To whom would your flower-face have been lifted? +Botanist, weakling? +Cry of what blood to yours?— +Pure or foul, for it makes no matter, +It’s blood that calls to our blood. +And then your children—oh, what might they be? +And what your sorrow? +Child! Child Death is better than Life. + + + + +Edith Conant + + +We stand about this place—we, the memories; +And shade our eyes because we dread to read: +“June 17th, 1884, aged 21 years and 3 days.” +And all things are changed. +And we—we, the memories, stand here for ourselves alone, +For no eye marks us, or would know why we are here. +Your husband is dead, your sister lives far away, +Your father is bent with age; +He has forgotten you, he scarcely leaves the house +Any more. No one remembers your exquisite face, +Your lyric voice! +How you sang, even on the morning you were stricken, +With piercing sweetness, with thrilling sorrow, +Before the advent of the child which died with you. +It is all forgotten, save by us, the memories, +Who are forgotten by the world. +All is changed, save the river and the hill— +Even they are changed. +Only the burning sun and the quiet stars are the same. +And we—we, the memories, stand here in awe, +Our eyes closed with the weariness of tears— +In immeasurable weariness + + + + +Charles Webster + + +The pine woods on the hill, +And the farmhouse miles away, +Showed clear as though behind a lens +Under a sky of peacock blue! +But a blanket of cloud by afternoon +Muffled the earth. And you walked the road +And the clover field, where the only sound +Was the cricket’s liquid tremolo. +Then the sun went down between great drifts +Of distant storms. For a rising wind +Swept clean the sky and blew the flames +Of the unprotected stars; +And swayed the russet moon, +Hanging between the rim of the hill +And the twinkling boughs of the apple orchard. +You walked the shore in thought +Where the throats of the waves were like whip-poor-wills +Singing beneath the water and crying +To the wash of the wind in the cedar trees, +Till you stood, too full for tears, by the cot, +And looking up saw Jupiter, +Tipping the spire of the giant pine, +And looking down saw my vacant chair, +Rocked by the wind on the lonely porch— +Be brave, Beloved! + + + + +Father Malloy + + +You are over there, Father Malloy, +Where holy ground is, and the cross marks every grave, +Not here with us on the hill— +Us of wavering faith, and clouded vision +And drifting hope, and unforgiven sins. +You were so human, Father Malloy, +Taking a friendly glass sometimes with us, +Siding with us who would rescue Spoon River +From the coldness and the dreariness of village morality. +You were like a traveler who brings a little box of sand +From the wastes about the pyramids +And makes them real and Egypt real. +You were a part of and related to a great past, +And yet you were so close to many of us. +You believed in the joy of life. +You did not seem to be ashamed of the flesh. +You faced life as it is, +And as it changes. +Some of us almost came to you, Father Malloy, +Seeing how your church had divined the heart, +And provided for it, +Through Peter the Flame, +Peter the Rock. + + + + +Ami Green + + +Not “a youth with hoary head and haggard eye”, +But an old man with a smooth skin +And black hair! I had the face of a boy as long as I lived, +And for years a soul that was stiff and bent, +In a world which saw me just as a jest, +To be hailed familiarly when it chose, +And loaded up as a man when it chose, +Being neither man nor boy. +In truth it was soul as well as body +Which never matured, and I say to you +That the much-sought prize of eternal youth +Is just arrested growth. + + + + +Calvin Campbell + + +Ye who are kicking against Fate, +Tell me how it is that on this hill-side +Running down to the river, +Which fronts the sun and the south-wind, +This plant draws from the air and soil +Poison and becomes poison ivy? +And this plant draws from the same air and soil +Sweet elixirs and colors and becomes arbutus? +And both flourish? +You may blame Spoon River for what it is, +But whom do you blame for the will in you +That feeds itself and makes you dock-weed, +Jimpson, dandelion or mullen +And which can never use any soil or air +So as to make you jessamine or wistaria? + + + + +Henry Layton + + +Whoever thou art who passest by +Know that my father was gentle, +And my mother was violent, +While I was born the whole of such hostile halves, +Not intermixed and fused, +But each distinct, feebly soldered together. +Some of you saw me as gentle, +Some as violent, +Some as both. +But neither half of me wrought my ruin. +It was the falling asunder of halves, +Never a part of each other, +That left me a lifeless soul. + + + + +Harlan Sewall + + +You never understood, +O unknown one, +Why it was I repaid +Your devoted friendship and delicate ministrations +First with diminished thanks, +Afterward by gradually withdrawing my presence from you, +So that I might not be compelled to thank you, +And then with silence which followed upon +Our final Separation. +You had cured my diseased soul. +But to cure it +You saw my disease, you knew my secret, +And that is why I fled from you. +For though when our bodies rise from pain +We kiss forever the watchful hands +That gave us wormwood, while we shudder +For thinking of the wormwood, +A soul that’s cured is a different matter, +For there we’d blot from memory +The soft-toned words, the searching eyes, +And stand forever oblivious, +Not so much of the sorrow itself +As of the hand that healed it. + + + + +Ippolit Konovaloff + + +I was a gun-smith in Odessa. +One night the police broke in the room +Where a group of us were reading Spencer. +And seized our books and arrested us. +But I escaped and came to New York +And thence to Chicago, and then to Spoon River, +Where I could study my Kant in peace +And eke out a living repairing guns +Look at my moulds! My architectonics +One for a barrel, one for a hammer +And others for other parts of a gun! +Well, now suppose no gun-smith living +Had anything else but duplicate moulds +Of these I show you—well, all guns +Would be just alike, with a hammer to hit +The cap and a barrel to carry the shot +All acting alike for themselves, and all +Acting against each other alike. +And there would be your world of guns! +Which nothing could ever free from itself +Except a Moulder with different moulds +To mould the metal over. + + + + +Henry Phipps + + +I was the Sunday-school superintendent, +The dummy president of the wagon works +And the canning factory, +Acting for Thomas Rhodes and the banking clique; +My son the cashier of the bank, +Wedded to Rhodes’ daughter, +My week days spent in making money, +My Sundays at church and in prayer. +In everything a cog in the wheel of things-as-they-are: +Of money, master and man, made white +With the paint of the Christian creed. +And then: +The bank collapsed. +I stood and hooked at the wrecked machine— +The wheels with blow-holes stopped with putty and painted; +The rotten bolts, the broken rods; +And only the hopper for souls fit to be used again +In a new devourer of life, +When newspapers, judges and money-magicians +Build over again. +I was stripped to the bone, but I lay in the Rock of Ages, +Seeing now through the game, no longer a dupe, +And knowing “the upright shall dwell in the land +But the years of the wicked shall be shortened.” +Then suddenly, Dr. Meyers discovered +A cancer in my liver. +I was not, after all, the particular care of God +Why, even thus standing on a peak +Above the mists through which I had climbed, +And ready for larger life in the world, +Eternal forces +Moved me on with a push. + + + + +Harry Wilmans + + +I was just turned twenty-one, +And Henry Phipps, the Sunday-school superintendent, +Made a speech in Bindle’s Opera House. +“The honor of the flag must be upheld,” he said, +“Whether it be assailed by a barbarous tribe of Tagalogs +Or the greatest power in Europe.” +And we cheered and cheered the speech and the flag he waved +As he spoke. +And I went to the war in spite of my father, +And followed the flag till I saw it raised +By our camp in a rice field near Manila, +And all of us cheered and cheered it. +But there were flies and poisonous things; +And there was the deadly water, +And the cruel heat, +And the sickening, putrid food; +And the smell of the trench just back of the tents +Where the soldiers went to empty themselves; +And there were the whores who followed us, full of syphilis; +And beastly acts between ourselves or alone, +With bullying, hatred, degradation among us, +And days of loathing and nights of fear +To the hour of the charge through the steaming swamp, +Following the flag, +Till I fell with a scream, shot through the guts. +Now there’s a flag over me in +Spoon River. A flag! +A flag! + + + + +John Wasson + + +Oh! the dew-wet grass of the meadow in North Carolina +Through which Rebecca followed me wailing, wailing, +One child in her arms, and three that ran along wailing, +Lengthening out the farewell to me off to the war with the British, +And then the long, hard years down to the day of Yorktown. +And then my search for Rebecca, +Finding her at last in Virginia, +Two children dead in the meanwhile. +We went by oxen to Tennessee, +Thence after years to Illinois, +At last to Spoon River. +We cut the buffalo grass, +We felled the forests, +We built the school houses, built the bridges, +Leveled the roads and tilled the fields +Alone with poverty, scourges, death— +If Harry Wilmans who fought the Filipinos +Is to have a flag on his grave +Take it from mine. + + + + +Many Soldiers + + +The idea danced before us as a flag; +The sound of martial music; +The thrill of carrying a gun; +Advancement in the world on coming home; +A glint of glory, wrath for foes; +A dream of duty to country or to God. +But these were things in ourselves, shining before us, +They were not the power behind us, +Which was the Almighty hand of Life, +Like fire at earth’s center making mountains, +Or pent up waters that cut them through. +Do you remember the iron band +The blacksmith, Shack Dye, welded +Around the oak on Bennet’s lawn, +From which to swing a hammock, +That daughter Janet might repose in, reading +On summer afternoons? +And that the growing tree at last +Sundered the iron band? +But not a cell in all the tree +Knew aught save that it thrilled with life, +Nor cared because the hammock fell +In the dust with Milton’s Poems. + + + + +Godwin James + + +Harry Wilmans! You who fell in a swamp +Near Manila, following the flag +You were not wounded by the greatness of a dream, +Or destroyed by ineffectual work, +Or driven to madness by Satanic snags; +You were not torn by aching nerves, +Nor did you carry great wounds to your old age. +You did not starve, for the government fed you. +You did not suffer yet cry “forward” +To an army which you led +Against a foe with mocking smiles, +Sharper than bayonets. +You were not smitten down +By invisible bombs. +You were not rejected +By those for whom you were defeated. +You did not eat the savorless bread +Which a poor alchemy had made from ideals. +You went to Manila, Harry Wilmans, +While I enlisted in the bedraggled army +Of bright-eyed, divine youths, +Who surged forward, who were driven back and fell +Sick, broken, crying, shorn of faith, +Following the flag of the Kingdom of Heaven. +You and I, Harry Wilmans, have fallen +In our several ways, not knowing +Good from bad, defeat from victory, +Nor what face it is that smiles +Behind the demoniac mask. + + + + +Lyman King + + +You may think, passer-by, that Fate +Is a pit-fall outside of yourself, +Around which you may walk by the use of foresight +And wisdom. +Thus you believe, viewing the lives of other men, +As one who in God-like fashion bends over an anthill, +Seeing how their difficulties could be avoided. +But pass on into life: +In time you shall see Fate approach you +In the shape of your own image in the mirror; +Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth, +And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest, +And you shall know that guest +And read the authentic message of his eyes. + + + + +Caroline Branson + + +With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked, +As often before, the April fields till star-light +Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness +Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood, +Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing +Like notes of music that run together, into winning, +In the inspired improvisation of love! +But to put back of us as a canticle ended +The rapt enchantment of the flesh, +In which our souls swooned, down, down, +Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves— +Annihilated in love! +To leave these behind for a room with lamps: +And to stand with our Secret mocking itself, +And hiding itself amid flowers and mandolins, +Stared at by all between salad and coffee. +And to see him tremble, and feel myself +Prescient, as one who signs a bond— +Not flaming with gifts and pledges heaped +With rosy hands over his brow. +And then, O night! deliberate! unlovely! +With all of our wooing blotted out by the winning, +In a chosen room in an hour that was known to all! +Next day he sat so listless, almost cold +So strangely changed, wondering why I wept, +Till a kind of sick despair and voluptuous madness +Seized us to make the pact of death. + +A stalk of the earth-sphere, +Frail as star-light; +Waiting to be drawn once again +Into creation’s stream. +But next time to be given birth +Gazed at by Raphael and St. Francis +Sometimes as they pass. +For I am their little brother, +To be known clearly face to face +Through a cycle of birth hereafter run. +You may know the seed and the soil; +You may feel the cold rain fall, +But only the earth-sphere, only heaven +Knows the secret of the seed +In the nuptial chamber under the soil. +Throw me into the stream again, +Give me another trial— +Save me, Shelley! + + + + +Anne Rutledge + + +Out of me unworthy and unknown +The vibrations of deathless music; +“With malice toward none, with charity for all.” +Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions, +And the beneficent face of a nation +Shining with justice and truth. +I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds, +Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln, +Wedded to him, not through union, But through separation. +Bloom forever, O Republic, +From the dust of my bosom! + + + + +Hamlet Micure + + +In a lingering fever many visions come to you: +I was in the little house again +With its great yard of clover +Running down to the board-fence, +Shadowed by the oak tree, +Where we children had our swing. +Yet the little house was a manor hall +Set in a lawn, and by the lawn was the sea. +I was in the room where little Paul +Strangled from diphtheria, +But yet it was not this room— +It was a sunny verandah enclosed +With mullioned windows +And in a chair sat a man in a dark cloak +With a face like Euripides. +He had come to visit me, or I had gone to visit him—I could not tell. +We could hear the beat of the sea, the clover nodded +Under a summer wind, and little Paul came +With clover blossoms to the window and smiled. +Then I said: “What is ‘divine despair,’ Alfred?” +“Have you read ‘Tears, Idle Tears’?” he asked. +“Yes, but you do not there express divine despair.” +“My poor friend,” he answered, “that was why the despair +Was divine.” + + + + +Mabel Osborne + + +Your red blossoms amid green leaves +Are drooping, beautiful geranium! +But you do not ask for water. +You cannot speak! +You do not need to speak— +Everyone knows that you are dying of thirst, +Yet they do not bring water! +They pass on, saying: +“The geranium wants water.” +And I, who had happiness to share +And longed to share your happiness; +I who loved you, Spoon River, +And craved your love, +Withered before your eyes, Spoon River— +Thirsting, thirsting, +Voiceless from chasteness of soul to ask you for love, +You who knew and saw me perish before you, +Like this geranium which someone has planted over me, +And left to die. + + + + +William H. Herndon + + +There by the window in the old house +Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley, +My days of labor closed, sitting out life’s decline, +Day by day did I look in my memory, +As one who gazes in an enchantress’ crystal globe, +And I saw the figures of the past +As if in a pageant glassed by a shining dream, +Move through the incredible sphere of time. +And I saw a man arise from the soil like a fabled giant +And throw himself over a deathless destiny, +Master of great armies, head of the republic, +Bringing together into a dithyramb of recreative song +The epic hopes of a people; +At the same time Vulcan of sovereign fires, +Where imperishable shields and swords were beaten out +From spirits tempered in heaven. +Look in the crystal! +See how he hastens on +To the place where his path comes up to the path +Of a child of Plutarch and Shakespeare. +O Lincoln, actor indeed, playing well your part +And Booth, who strode in a mimic play within the play, +Often and often I saw you, +As the cawing crows winged their way to the wood +Over my house—top at solemn sunsets, +There by my window, +Alone. + + + + +Rebecca Wasson + + +Spring and Summer, Fall and Winter and Spring, +After each other drifting, past my window drifting! +And I lay so many years watching them drift and counting +The years till a terror came in my heart at times, +With the feeling that I had become eternal; at last +My hundredth year was reached! And still I lay +Hearing the tick of the clock, and the low of cattle +And the scream of a jay flying through falling leaves! +Day after day alone in a room of the house +Of a daughter-in-law stricken with age and gray. +And by night, or looking out of the window by day +My thought ran back, it seemed, through infinite time +To North Carolina and all my girlhood days, +And John, my John, away to the war with the British, +And all the children, the deaths, and all the sorrows. +And that stretch of years like a prairie in Illinois +Through which great figures passed like hurrying horsemen, +Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Webster, Clay. +O beautiful young republic for whom my John and I +Gave all of our strength and love! +And O my John! +Why, when I lay so helpless in bed for years, +Praying for you to come, was your coming delayed? +Seeing that with a cry of rapture, like that I uttered +When you found me in old Virginia after the war, +I cried when I beheld you there by the bed, +As the sun stood low in the west growing smaller and fainter +In the light of your face! + + + + +Rutherford McDowell + + +They brought me ambrotypes +Of the old pioneers to enlarge. +And sometimes one sat for me— +Some one who was in being +When giant hands from the womb of the world +Tore the republic. +What was it in their eyes?— +For I could never fathom +That mystical pathos of drooped eyelids, +And the serene sorrow of their eyes. +It was like a pool of water, +Amid oak trees at the edge of a forest, +Where the leaves fall, +As you hear the crow of a cock +From a far-off farm house, seen near the hills +Where the third generation lives, and the strong men +And the strong women are gone and forgotten. +And these grand-children and great grand-children +Of the pioneers! +Truly did my camera record their faces, too, +With so much of the old strength gone, +And the old faith gone, +And the old mastery of life gone, +And the old courage gone, +Which labors and loves and suffers and sings +Under the sun! + + + + +Hannah Armstrong + + +I wrote him a letter asking him for old times’ sake +To discharge my sick boy from the army; +But maybe he couldn’t read it. +Then I went to town and had James Garber, +Who wrote beautifully, write him a letter. +But maybe that was lost in the mails. +So I traveled all the way to Washington. +I was more than an hour finding the White House. +And when I found it they turned me away, +Hiding their smiles. +Then I thought: “Oh, well, he ain’t the same as when I boarded him +And he and my husband worked together +And all of us called him Abe, there in Menard.” +As a last attempt I turned to a guard and said: +“Please say it’s old Aunt Hannah Armstrong +From Illinois, come to see him about her sick boy +In the army.” +Well, just in a moment they let me in! +And when he saw me he broke in a laugh, +And dropped his business as president, +And wrote in his own hand Doug’s discharge, +Talking the while of the early days, +And telling stories. + + + + +Lucinda Matlock + + +I went to the dances at Chandlerville, +And played snap-out at Winchester. +One time we changed partners, +Driving home in the moonlight of middle June, +And then I found Davis. +We were married and lived together for seventy years, +Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children, +Eight of whom we lost +Ere I had reached the age of sixty. +I spun, +I wove, +I kept the house, +I nursed the sick, +I made the garden, and for holiday +Rambled over the fields where sang the larks, +And by Spoon River gathering many a shell, +And many a flower and medicinal weed— +Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys. +At ninety—six I had lived enough, that is all, +And passed to a sweet repose. +What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness, +Anger, discontent and drooping hopes? +Degenerate sons and daughters, +Life is too strong for you— +It takes life to love Life. + + + + +Davis Matlock + + +Suppose it is nothing but the hive: +That there are drones and workers +And queens, and nothing but storing honey— +(Material things as well as culture and wisdom)— +For the next generation, this generation never living, +Except as it swarms in the sun-light of youth, +Strengthening its wings on what has been gathered, +And tasting, on the way to the hive +From the clover field, the delicate spoil. +Suppose all this, and suppose the truth: +That the nature of man is greater +Than nature’s need in the hive; +And you must bear the burden of life, +As well as the urge from your spirit’s excess— +Well, I say to live it out like a god +Sure of immortal life, though you are in doubt, +Is the way to live it. +If that doesn’t make God proud of you +Then God is nothing but gravitation +Or sleep is the golden goal. + + + + +Herman Altman + + +Did I follow Truth wherever she led, +And stand against the whole world for a cause, +And uphold the weak against the strong? +If I did I would be remembered among men +As I was known in life among the people, +And as I was hated and loved on earth, +Therefore, build no monument to me, +And carve no bust for me, +Lest, though I become not a demi-god, +The reality of my soul be lost, +So that thieves and liars, +Who were my enemies and destroyed me, +And the children of thieves and liars, +May claim me and affirm before my bust +That they stood with me in the days of my defeat. +Build me no monument +Lest my memory be perverted to the uses +Of lying and oppression. +My lovers and their children must not be dispossessed of me; +I would be the untarnished possession forever +Of those for whom I lived. + + + + +Jennie M’Grew + + +Not, where the stairway turns in the dark +A hooded figure, shriveled under a flowing cloak! +Not yellow eyes in the room at night, +Staring out from a surface of cobweb gray! +And not the flap of a condor wing +When the roar of life in your ears begins +As a sound heard never before! +But on a sunny afternoon, +By a country road, +Where purple rag-weeds bloom along a straggling fence +And the field is gleaned, and the air is still +To see against the sun-light something black +Like a blot with an iris rim— +That is the sign to eyes of second sight. . . +And that I saw! + + + + +Columbus Cheney + + +This weeping willow! +Why do you not plant a few +For the millions of children not yet born, +As well as for us? +Are they not non-existent, or cells asleep +Without mind? +Or do they come to earth, their birth +Rupturing the memory of previous being? +Answer! +The field of unexplored intuition is yours. +But in any case why not plant willows for them, +As well as for us? + + + + +Wallace Ferguson + + +There at Geneva where Mt. Blanc floated above +The wine-hued lake like a cloud, when a breeze was blown +Out of an empty sky of blue, and the roaring Rhone +Hurried under the bridge through chasms of rock; +And the music along the cafés was part of the splendor +Of dancing water under a torrent of light; +And the purer part of the genius of Jean Rousseau +Was the silent music of all we saw or heard— +There at Geneva, I say, was the rapture less +Because I could not link myself with the I of yore, +When twenty years before I wandered about Spoon River? +Nor remember what I was nor what I felt? +We live in the hour all free of the hours gone by. +Therefore, O soul, if you lose yourself in death, +And wake in some Geneva by some Mt. Blanc, +What do you care if you know not yourself as the you +Who lived and loved in a little corner of earth +Known as Spoon River ages and ages vanished? + + + + +Marie Bateson + + +You observe the carven hand +With the index finger pointing heavenward. +That is the direction, no doubt. +But how shall one follow it? +It is well to abstain from murder and lust, +To forgive, do good to others, worship God +Without graven images. +But these are external means after all +By which you chiefly do good to yourself. +The inner kernel is freedom, +It is light, purity— +I can no more, +Find the goal or lose it, according to your vision. + + + + +Tennessee Claflin Shope + + +I was the laughing-stock of the village, +Chiefly of the people of good sense, as they call themselves— +Also of the learned, like Rev. Peet, who read Greek +The same as English. +For instead of talking free trade, +Or preaching some form of baptism; +Instead of believing in the efficacy +Of walking cracks, picking up pins the right way, +Seeing the new moon over the right shoulder, +Or curing rheumatism with blue glass, +I asserted the sovereignty of my own soul. +Before Mary Baker G. Eddy even got started +With what she called science I had mastered the “Bhagavad Gita,” +And cured my soul, before Mary +Began to cure bodies with souls— +Peace to all worlds! + + + + +Plymouth Rock Joe + + +Why are you running so fast hither and thither +Chasing midges or butterflies? +Some of you are standing solemnly scratching for grubs; +Some of you are waiting for corn to be scattered. +This is life, is it? +Cock-a-doodle-do! Very well, Thomas Rhodes, +You are cock of the walk, no doubt. +But here comes Elliott Hawkins, +Gluck, Gluck, Gluck, attracting political followers. +Quah! quah! quah! why so poetical, Minerva, +This gray morning? +Kittie—quah—quah! for shame, Lucius Atherton, +The raucous squawk you evoked from the throat +Of Aner Clute will be taken up later +By Mrs. Benjamin Pantier as a cry +Of votes for women: Ka dook—dook! +What inspiration has come to you, Margaret Fuller Slack? +And why does your gooseberry eye +Flit so liquidly, Tennessee Claflin Shope? +Are you trying to fathom the esotericism of an egg? +Your voice is very metallic this morning, Hortense Robbins— +Almost like a guinea hen’s! +Quah! That was a guttural sigh, Isaiah Beethoven; +Did you see the shadow of the hawk, +Or did you step upon the drumsticks +Which the cook threw out this morning? +Be chivalric, heroic, or aspiring, +Metaphysical, religious, or rebellious, +You shall never get out of the barnyard +Except by way of over the fence +Mixed with potato peelings and such into the trough! + + + + +Imanuel Ehrenhardt + + +I began with Sir William Hamilton’s lectures. +Then studied Dugald Stewart; +And then John Locke on the Understanding, +And then Descartes, Fichte and Schelling, +Kant and then Schopenhauer— +Books I borrowed from old Judge Somers. +All read with rapturous industry +Hoping it was reserved to me +To grasp the tail of the ultimate secret, +And drag it out of its hole. +My soul flew up ten thousand miles +And only the moon looked a little bigger. +Then I fell back, how glad of the earth! +All through the soul of William Jones +Who showed me a letter of John Muir. + + + + +Samuel Gardner + + +I who kept the greenhouse, +Lover of trees and flowers, +Oft in life saw this umbrageous elm, +Measuring its generous branches with my eye, +And listened to its rejoicing leaves +Lovingly patting each other +With sweet aeolian whispers. +And well they might: +For the roots had grown so wide and deep +That the soil of the hill could not withhold +Aught of its virtue, enriched by rain, +And warmed by the sun; +But yielded it all to the thrifty roots, +Through which it was drawn and whirled to the trunk, +And thence to the branches, and into the leaves, +Wherefrom the breeze took life and sang. +Now I, an under-tenant of the earth, can see +That the branches of a tree +Spread no wider than its roots. +And how shall the soul of a man +Be larger than the life he has lived? + + + + +Dow Kritt + + +Samuel is forever talking of his elm— +But I did not need to die to learn about roots: +I, who dug all the ditches about Spoon River. +Look at my elm! +Sprung from as good a seed as his, +Sown at the same time, +It is dying at the top: +Not from lack of life, nor fungus, +Nor destroying insect, as the sexton thinks. +Look, Samuel, where the roots have struck rock, +And can no further spread. +And all the while the top of the tree +Is tiring itself out, and dying, +Trying to grow. + + + + +William Jones + + +Once in a while a curious weed unknown to me, +Needing a name from my books; +Once in a while a letter from Yeomans. +Out of the mussel-shells gathered along the shore +Sometimes a pearl with a glint like meadow rue: +Then betimes a letter from Tyndall in England, +Stamped with the stamp of Spoon River. +I, lover of Nature, beloved for my love of her, +Held such converse afar with the great +Who knew her better than I. +Oh, there is neither lesser nor greater, +Save as we make her greater and win from her keener delight. +With shells from the river cover me, cover me. +I lived in wonder, worshipping earth and heaven. +I have passed on the march eternal of endless life. + + + + +William Goode + + +To all in the village I seemed, no doubt, +To go this way and that way, aimlessly. +But here by the river you can see at twilight +The soft-winged bats fly zig-zag here and there— +They must fly so to catch their food. +And if you have ever lost your way at night, +In the deep wood near Miller’s Ford, +And dodged this way and now that, +Wherever the light of the Milky Way shone through, +Trying to find the path, +You should understand I sought the way +With earnest zeal, and all my wanderings +Were wanderings in the quest. + + + + +J. Milton Miles + + +Whenever the Presbyterian bell +Was rung by itself, I knew it as the Presbyterian bell. +But when its sound was mingled +With the sound of the Methodist, the Christian, +The Baptist and the Congregational, +I could no longer distinguish it, +Nor any one from the others, or either of them. +And as many voices called to me in life +Marvel not that I could not tell +The true from the false, +Nor even, at last, the voice that +I should have known. + + + + +Faith Matheny + + +At first you will know not what they mean, +And you may never know, +And we may never tell you:— +These sudden flashes in your soul, +Like lambent lightning on snowy clouds +At midnight when the moon is full. +They come in solitude, or perhaps +You sit with your friend, and all at once +A silence falls on speech, and his eyes +Without a flicker glow at you:— +You two have seen the secret together, +He sees it in you, and you in him. +And there you sit thrilling lest the Mystery +Stand before you and strike you dead +With a splendor like the sun’s. +Be brave, all souls who have such visions +As your body’s alive as mine is dead, +You’re catching a little whiff of the ether +Reserved for God Himself. + + + + +Scholfield Hurley + + +God! ask me not to record your wonders, +I admit the stars and the suns +And the countless worlds. +But I have measured their distances +And weighed them and discovered their substances. +I have devised wings for the air, +And keels for water, +And horses of iron for the earth. +I have lengthened the vision you gave me a million times, +And the hearing you gave me a million times, +I have leaped over space with speech, +And taken fire for light out of the air. +I have built great cities and bored through the hills, +And bridged majestic waters. +I have written the Iliad and Hamlet; +And I have explored your mysteries, +And searched for you without ceasing, +And found you again after losing you +In hours of weariness— +And I ask you: +How would you like to create a sun +And the next day have the worms +Slipping in and out between your fingers? + + + + +Willie Metcalf + + +I was Willie Metcalf. +They used to call me “Doctor Meyers,” +Because, they said, I looked like him. +And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire. +I lived in the livery stable, +Sleeping on the floor +Side by side with Roger Baughman’s bulldog, +Or sometimes in a stall. +I could crawl between the legs of the wildest horses +Without getting kicked—we knew each other. +On spring days I tramped through the country +To get the feeling, which I sometimes lost, +That I was not a separate thing from the earth. +I used to lose myself, as if in sleep, +By lying with eyes half-open in the woods. +Sometimes I talked with animals—even toads and snakes— +Anything that had an eye to look into. +Once I saw a stone in the sunshine +Trying to turn into jelly. +In April days in this cemetery +The dead people gathered all about me, +And grew still, like a congregation in silent prayer. +I never knew whether I was a part of the earth +With flowers growing in me, or whether I walked— +Now I know. + + + + +Willie Pennington + + +They called me the weakling, the simpleton, +For my brothers were strong and beautiful, +While I, the last child of parents who had aged, +Inherited only their residue of power. +But they, my brothers, were eaten up +In the fury of the flesh, which I had not, +Made pulp in the activity of the senses, which I had not, +Hardened by the growth of the lusts, which I had not, +Though making names and riches for themselves. +Then I, the weak one, the simpleton, +Resting in a little corner of life, +Saw a vision, and through me many saw the vision, +Not knowing it was through me. +Thus a tree sprang +From me, a mustard seed. + + + + +The Village Atheist + + +Ye young debaters over the doctrine +Of the soul’s immortality +I who lie here was the village atheist, +Talkative, contentious, versed in the arguments +Of the infidels. But through a long sickness +Coughing myself to death I read the +Upanishads and the poetry of Jesus. +And they lighted a torch of hope and intuition +And desire which the Shadow +Leading me swiftly through the caverns of darkness, +Could not extinguish. +Listen to me, ye who live in the senses +And think through the senses only: +Immortality is not a gift, +Immortality is an achievement; +And only those who strive mightily +Shall possess it. + + + + +John Ballard + + +In the lust of my strength +I cursed God, but he paid no attention to me: +I might as well have cursed the stars. +In my last sickness I was in agony, but I was resolute +And I cursed God for my suffering; +Still He paid no attention to me; +He left me alone, as He had always done. +I might as well have cursed the Presbyterian steeple. +Then, as I grew weaker, a terror came over me: +Perhaps I had alienated God by cursing him. +One day Lydia Humphrey brought me a bouquet +And it occurred to me to try to make friends with God, +So I tried to make friends with Him; +But I might as well have tried to make friends with the bouquet. +Now I was very close to the secret, +For I really could make friends with the bouquet +By holding close to me the love in me for the bouquet +And so I was creeping upon the secret, but— + + + + +Julian Scott + + +Toward the last +The truth of others was untruth to me; +The justice of others injustice to me; +Their reasons for death, reasons with me for life; +Their reasons for life, reasons with me for death; +I would have killed those they saved, +And save those they killed. +And I saw how a god, if brought to earth, +Must act out what he saw and thought, +And could not live in this world of men +And act among them side by side +Without continual clashes. +The dust’s for crawling, heaven’s for flying— +Wherefore, O soul, whose wings are grown, +Soar upward to the sun! + + + + +Alfonso Churchill + + +They laughed at me as “Prof. Moon,” +As a boy in Spoon River, born with the thirst +Of knowing about the stars. +They jeered when I spoke of the lunar mountains, +And the thrilling heat and cold, +And the ebon valleys by silver peaks, +And Spica quadrillions of miles away, +And the littleness of man. +But now that my grave is honored, friends, +Let it not be because I taught +The lore of the stars in Knox College, +But rather for this: that through the stars +I preached the greatness of man, +Who is none the less a part of the scheme of things +For the distance of Spica or the Spiral Nebulae; +Nor any the less a part of the question +Of what the drama means. + + + + +Zilpha Marsh + + +At four o’clock in late October +I sat alone in the country school-house +Back from the road, mid stricken fields, +And an eddy of wind blew leaves on the pane, +And crooned in the flue of the cannon-stove, +With its open door blurring the shadows +With the spectral glow of a dying fire. +In an idle mood I was running the planchette— +All at once my wrist grew limp, +And my hand moved rapidly over the board, +’Till the name of “Charles Guiteau” was spelled, +Who threatened to materialize before me. +I rose and fled from the room bare-headed +Into the dusk, afraid of my gift. +And after that the spirits swarmed— +Chaucer, Caesar, Poe and Marlowe, +Cleopatra and Mrs. Surratt— +Wherever I went, with messages,— +Mere trifling twaddle, Spoon River agreed. +You talk nonsense to children, don’t you? +And suppose I see what you never saw +And never heard of and have no word for, +I must talk nonsense when you ask me +What it is I see! + + + + +James Garber + + +Do you remember, passer-by, the path +I wore across the lot where now stands the opera house +Hasting with swift feet to work through many years? +Take its meaning to heart: +You too may walk, after the hills at Miller’s Ford +Seem no longer far away; +Long after you see them near at hand, +Beyond four miles of meadow; +And after woman’s love is silent +Saying no more: “I will save you.” +And after the faces of friends and kindred +Become as faded photographs, pitifully silent, +Sad for the look which means: +“We cannot help you.” +And after you no longer reproach mankind +With being in league against your soul’s uplifted hands— +Themselves compelled at midnight and at noon +To watch with steadfast eye their destinies; +After you have these understandings, think of me +And of my path, who walked therein and knew +That neither man nor woman, neither toil, +Nor duty, gold nor power +Can ease the longing of the soul, +The loneliness of the soul! + + + + +Lydia Humphrey + + +Back and forth, back and forth, to and from the church, +With my Bible under my arm +’Till I was gray and old; +Unwedded, alone in the world, +Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation, +And children in the church. +I know they laughed and thought me queer. +I knew of the eagle souls that flew high in the sunlight, +Above the spire of the church, and laughed at the church, +Disdaining me, not seeing me. +But if the high air was sweet to them, sweet was the church to me. +It was the vision, vision, vision of the poets +Democratized! + + + + +Le Roy Goldman + + +“What will you do when you come to die, +If all your life long you have rejected Jesus, +And know as you lie there, +He is not your friend?” +Over and over I said, I, the revivalist. +Ah, yes! but there are friends and friends. +And blessed are you, say I, who know all now, +You who have lost ere you pass, +A father or mother, or old grandfather or mother +Some beautiful soul that lived life strongly +And knew you all through, and loved you ever, +Who would not fail to speak for you, +And give God an intimate view of your soul +As only one of your flesh could do it. +That is the hand your hand will reach for, +To lead you along the corridor +To the court where you are a stranger! + + + + +Gustav Richter + + +After a long day of work in my hot—houses +Sleep was sweet, but if you sleep on your left side +Your dreams may be abruptly ended. +I was among my flowers where some one +Seemed to be raising them on trial, +As if after-while to be transplanted +To a larger garden of freer air. +And I was disembodied vision +Amid a light, as it were the sun +Had floated in and touched the roof of glass +Like a toy balloon and softly bursted, +And etherealized in golden air. +And all was silence, except the splendor +Was immanent with thought as clear +As a speaking voice, and I, as thought, +Could hear a Presence think as he walked +Between the boxes pinching off leaves, +Looking for bugs and noting values, +With an eye that saw it all: +“Homer, oh yes! Pericles, good. +Caesar Borgia, what shall be done with it? +Dante, too much manure, perhaps. +Napoleon, leave him awhile as yet. +Shelley, more soil. Shakespeare, needs spraying—” +Clouds, eh!— + + + + +Arlo Will + + +Did you ever see an alligator +Come up to the air from the mud, +Staring blindly under the full glare of noon? +Have you seen the stabled horses at night +Tremble and start back at the sight of a lantern? +Have you ever walked in darkness +When an unknown door was open before you +And you stood, it seemed, in the light of a thousand candles +Of delicate wax? +Have you walked with the wind in your ears +And the sunlight about you +And found it suddenly shine with an inner splendor? +Out of the mud many times +Before many doors of light +Through many fields of splendor, +Where around your steps a soundless glory scatters +Like new-fallen snow, +Will you go through earth, O strong of soul, +And through unnumbered heavens +To the final flame! + + + + +Captain Orlando Killion + + +Oh, you young radicals and dreamers, +You dauntless fledglings +Who pass by my headstone, +Mock not its record of my captaincy in the army +And my faith in God! +They are not denials of each other. +Go by reverently, and read with sober care +How a great people, riding with defiant shouts +The centaur of Revolution, +Spurred and whipped to frenzy, +Shook with terror, seeing the mist of the sea +Over the precipice they were nearing, +And fell from his back in precipitate awe +To celebrate the Feast of the Supreme Being. +Moved by the same sense of vast reality +Of life and death, and burdened as they were +With the fate of a race, +How was I, a little blasphemer, +Caught in the drift of a nation’s unloosened flood, +To remain a blasphemer, +And a captain in the army? + + + + +Jeremy Carlisle + + +Passer-by, sin beyond any sin +Is the sin of blindness of souls to other souls. +And joy beyond any joy is the joy +Of having the good in you seen, and seeing the good +At the miraculous moment! +Here I confess to a lofty scorn, +And an acrid skepticism. +But do you remember the liquid that Penniwit +Poured on tintypes making them blue +With a mist like hickory smoke? +Then how the picture began to clear +Till the face came forth like life? +So you appeared to me, neglected ones, +And enemies too, as I went along +With my face growing clearer to you as yours +Grew clearer to me. +We were ready then to walk together +And sing in chorus and chant the dawn +Of life that is wholly life. + + + + +Joseph Dixon + + +Who carved this shattered harp on my stone? +I died to you, no doubt. But how many harps and pianos +Wired I and tightened and disentangled for you, +Making them sweet again—with tuning fork or without? +Oh well! A harp leaps out of the ear of a man, you say, +But whence the ear that orders the length of the strings +To a magic of numbers flying before your thought +Through a door that closes against your breathless wonder? +Is there no Ear round the ear of a man, that it senses +Through strings and columns of air the soul of sound? +I thrill as I call it a tuning fork that catches +The waves of mingled music and light from afar, +The antennæ of Thought that listens through utmost space. +Surely the concord that ruled my spirit is proof +Of an Ear that tuned me, able to tune me over +And use me again if I am worthy to use. + + + + +Judson Stoddard + + +On a mountain top above the clouds +That streamed like a sea below me +I said that peak is the thought of Budda, +And that one is the prayer of Jesus, +And this one is the dream of Plato, +And that one there the song of Dante, +And this is Kant and this is Newton, +And this is Milton and this is Shakespeare, +And this the hope of the Mother Church, +And this—why all these peaks are poems, +Poems and prayers that pierce the clouds. +And I said “What does God do with mountains +That rise almost to heaven?” + + + + +Russell Kincaid + + +In the last spring I ever knew, +In those last days, I sat in the forsaken orchard +Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered +The hills at Miller’s Ford; +Just to muse on the apple tree +With its ruined trunk and blasted branches, +And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms +Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle, +Never to grow in fruit. +And there was I with my spirit girded +By the flesh half dead, the senses numb +Yet thinking of youth and the earth in youth,— +Such phantom blossoms palely shining +Over the lifeless boughs of Time. +O earth that leaves us ere heaven takes us! +Had I been only a tree to shiver +With dreams of spring and a leafy youth, +Then I had fallen in the cyclone +Which swept me out of the soul’s suspense +Where it’s neither earth nor heaven. + + + + +Aaron Hatfield + + +Better than granite, Spoon River, +Is the memory-picture you keep of me +Standing before the pioneer men and women +There at Concord Church on Communion day. +Speaking in broken voice of the peasant youth +Of Galilee who went to the city +And was killed by bankers and lawyers; +My voice mingling with the June wind +That blew over wheat fields from Atterbury; +While the white stones in the burying ground +Around the Church shimmered in the summer sun. +And there, though my own memories +Were too great to bear, were you, O pioneers, +With bowed heads breathing forth your sorrow +For the sons killed in battle and the daughters +And little children who vanished in life’s morning, +Or at the intolerable hour of noon. +But in those moments of tragic silence, +When the wine and bread were passed, +Came the reconciliation for us— +Us the ploughmen and the hewers of wood, +Us the peasants, brothers of the peasant of Galilee— +To us came the Comforter +And the consolation of tongues of flame! + + + + +Isaiah Beethoven + + +They told me I had three months to live, +So I crept to Bernadotte, +And sat by the mill for hours and hours +Where the gathered waters deeply moving +Seemed not to move: +O world, that’s you! +You are but a widened place in the river +Where Life looks down and we rejoice for her +Mirrored in us, and so we dream +And turn away, but when again +We look for the face, behold the low-lands +And blasted cotton-wood trees where we empty +Into the larger stream! +But here by the mill the castled clouds +Mocked themselves in the dizzy water; +And over its agate floor at night +The flame of the moon ran under my eyes +Amid a forest stillness broken +By a flute in a hut on the hill. +At last when I came to lie in bed +Weak and in pain, with the dreams about me, +The soul of the river had entered my soul, +And the gathered power of my soul was moving +So swiftly it seemed to be at rest +Under cities of cloud and under +Spheres of silver and changing worlds— +Until I saw a flash of trumpets +Above the battlements over Time. + + + + +Elijah Browning + + +I was among multitudes of children +Dancing at the foot of a mountain. +A breeze blew out of the east and swept them as leaves, +Driving some up the slopes. . . . +All was changed. +Here were flying lights, and mystic moons, and dream-music. +A cloud fell upon us. +When it lifted all was changed. +I was now amid multitudes who were wrangling. +Then a figure in shimmering gold, and one with a trumpet, +And one with a sceptre stood before me. +They mocked me and danced a rigadoon and vanished. . . . +All was changed again. +Out of a bower of poppies +A woman bared her breasts and lifted her open mouth to mine. +I kissed her. +The taste of her lips was like salt. +She left blood on my lips. +I fell exhausted. +I arose and ascended higher, but a mist as from an iceberg +Clouded my steps. +I was cold and in pain. +Then the sun streamed on me again, +And I saw the mists below me hiding all below them. +And I, bent over my staff, knew myself +Silhouetted against the snow. And above me +Was the soundless air, pierced by a cone of ice, +Over which hung a solitary star! +A shudder of ecstasy, a shudder of fear +Ran through me. +But I could not return to the slopes— +Nay, I wished not to return. +For the spent waves of the symphony of freedom +Lapped the ethereal cliffs about me. +Therefore I climbed to the pinnacle. +I flung away my staff. +I touched that star +With my outstretched hand. +I vanished utterly. +For the mountain delivers to Infinite Truth +Whosoever touches the star. + + + + +Webster Ford + + +Do you remember, O Delphic Apollo, +The sunset hour by the river, when Mickey M’Grew +Cried, “There’s a ghost,” and I, “It’s Delphic Apollo”; +And the son of the banker derided us, saying, “It’s light +By the flags at the water’s edge, you half-witted fools.” +And from thence, as the wearisome years rolled on, long after +Poor Mickey fell down in the water tower to his death +Down, down, through bellowing darkness, I carried +The vision which perished with him like a rocket which falls +And quenches its light in earth, and hid it for fear +Of the son of the banker, calling on Plutus to save me? +Avenged were you for the shame of a fearful heart +Who left me alone till I saw you again in an hour +When I seemed to be turned to a tree with trunk and branches +Growing indurate, turning to stone, yet burgeoning +In laurel leaves, in hosts of lambent laurel, +Quivering, fluttering, shrinking, fighting the numbness +Creeping into their veins from the dying trunk and branches! +’Tis vain, O youth, to fly the call of Apollo. +Fling yourselves in the fire, die with a song of spring, +If die you must in the spring. For none shall look +On the face of Apollo and live, and choose you must +’Twixt death in the flame and death after years of sorrow, +Rooted fast in the earth, feeling the grisly hand, +Not so much in the trunk as in the terrible numbness +Creeping up to the laurel leaves that never cease +To flourish until you fall. O leaves of me +Too sere for coronal wreaths, and fit alone +For urns of memory, treasured, perhaps, as themes +For hearts heroic, fearless singers and livers— +Delphic Apollo! + + + + +The Spooniad + + +[_The late Mr. Jonathan Swift Somers, laureate of Spoon River (see page +111), planned The Spooniad as an epic in twenty-four books, but +unfortunately did not live to complete even the first book. The +fragment was found among his papers by William Marion Reedy and was for +the first time published in Reedy’s Mirror of December 18th, 1914._] + + +Of John Cabanis’ wrath and of the strife +Of hostile parties, and his dire defeat +Who led the common people in the cause +Of freedom for Spoon River, and the fall +Of Rhodes, bank that brought unnumbered woes +And loss to many, with engendered hate +That flamed into the torch in Anarch hands +To burn the court-house, on whose blackened wreck +A fairer temple rose and Progress stood— +Sing, muse, that lit the Chian’s face with smiles +Who saw the ant-like Greeks and Trojans crawl +About Scamander, over walls, pursued +Or else pursuing, and the funeral pyres +And sacred hecatombs, and first because +Of Helen who with Paris fled to Troy +As soul-mate; and the wrath of Peleus, son, +Decreed to lose Chryseis, lovely spoil +Of war, and dearest concubine. + +Say first, +Thou son of night, called Momus, from whose eyes +No secret hides, and Thalia, smiling one, +What bred ’twixt Thomas Rhodes and John Cabanis +The deadly strife? His daughter Flossie, she, +Returning from her wandering with a troop +Of strolling players, walked the village streets, +Her bracelets tinkling and with sparkling rings +And words of serpent wisdom and a smile +Of cunning in her eyes. Then Thomas Rhodes, +Who ruled the church and ruled the bank as well, +Made known his disapproval of the maid; +And all Spoon River whispered and the eyes +Of all the church frowned on her, till she knew +They feared her and condemned. + +But them to flout +She gave a dance to viols and to flutes, +Brought from Peoria, and many youths, +But lately made regenerate through the prayers +Of zealous preachers and of earnest souls, +Danced merrily, and sought her in the dance, +Who wore a dress so low of neck that eyes +Down straying might survey the snowy swale +’Till it was lost in whiteness. + +With the dance +The village changed to merriment from gloom. +The milliner, Mrs. Williams, could not fill +Her orders for new hats, and every seamstress +Plied busy needles making gowns; old trunks +And chests were opened for their store of laces +And rings and trinkets were brought out of hiding +And all the youths fastidious grew of dress; +Notes passed, and many a fair one’s door at eve +Knew a bouquet, and strolling lovers thronged +About the hills that overlooked the river. +Then, since the mercy seats more empty showed, +One of God’s chosen lifted up his voice: +“The woman of Babylon is among us; rise +Ye sons of light and drive the wanton forth!” +So John Cabanis left the church and left +The hosts of law and order with his eyes +By anger cleared, and him the liberal cause +Acclaimed as nominee to the mayoralty +To vanquish A. D. Blood. + +But as the war +Waged bitterly for votes and rumors flew +About the bank, and of the heavy loans +Which Rhodes, son had made to prop his loss +In wheat, and many drew their coin and left +The bank of Rhodes more hollow, with the talk +Among the liberals of another bank +Soon to be chartered, lo, the bubble burst +’Mid cries and curses; but the liberals laughed +And in the hall of Nicholas Bindle held +Wise converse and inspiriting debate. + +High on a stage that overlooked the chairs +Where dozens sat, and where a pop-eyed daub +Of Shakespeare, very like the hired man +Of Christian Dallman, brow and pointed beard, +Upon a drab proscenium outward stared, +Sat Harmon Whitney, to that eminence, +By merit raised in ribaldry and guile, +And to the assembled rebels thus he spake: +“Whether to lie supine and let a clique +Cold-blooded, scheming, hungry, singing psalms, +Devour our substance, wreck our banks and drain +Our little hoards for hazards on the price +Of wheat or pork, or yet to cower beneath +The shadow of a spire upreared to curb +A breed of lackeys and to serve the bank +Coadjutor in greed, that is the question. +Shall we have music and the jocund dance, +Or tolling bells? Or shall young romance roam +These hills about the river, flowering now +To April’s tears, or shall they sit at home, +Or play croquet where Thomas Rhodes may see, +I ask you? If the blood of youth runs o’er +And riots ’gainst this regimen of gloom, +Shall we submit to have these youths and maids +Branded as libertines and wantons?” + +Ere +His words were done a woman’s voice called “No!” +Then rose a sound of moving chairs, as when +The numerous swine o’er-run the replenished troughs; +And every head was turned, as when a flock +Of geese back-turning to the hunter’s tread +Rise up with flapping wings; then rang the hall +With riotous laughter, for with battered hat +Tilted upon her saucy head, and fist +Raised in defiance, Daisy Fraser stood. +Headlong she had been hurled from out the hall +Save Wendell Bloyd, who spoke for woman’s rights, +Prevented, and the bellowing voice of Burchard. +Then, mid applause she hastened toward the stage +And flung both gold and silver to the cause +And swiftly left the hall. +Meantime upstood +A giant figure, bearded like the son +Of Alcmene, deep-chested, round of paunch, +And spoke in thunder: “Over there behold +A man who for the truth withstood his wife— +Such is our spirit—when that A. D. Blood +Compelled me to remove Dom Pedro—” + +Quick +Before Jim Brown could finish, Jefferson Howard +Obtained the floor and spake: “Ill suits the time +For clownish words, and trivial is our cause +If naught’s at stake but John Cabanis, wrath, +He who was erstwhile of the other side +And came to us for vengeance. More’s at stake +Than triumph for New England or Virginia. +And whether rum be sold, or for two years +As in the past two years, this town be dry +Matters but little— Oh yes, revenue +For sidewalks, sewers; that is well enough! +I wish to God this fight were now inspired +By other passion than to salve the pride +Of John Cabanis or his daughter. Why +Can never contests of great moment spring +From worthy things, not little? Still, if men +Must always act so, and if rum must be +The symbol and the medium to release +From life’s denial and from slavery, +Then give me rum!” + +Exultant cries arose. +Then, as George Trimble had o’ercome his fear +And vacillation and begun to speak, +The door creaked and the idiot, Willie Metcalf, +Breathless and hatless, whiter than a sheet, +Entered and cried: “The marshal’s on his way +To arrest you all. And if you only knew +Who’s coming here to-morrow; I was listening +Beneath the window where the other side +Are making plans.” + +So to a smaller room +To hear the idiot’s secret some withdrew +Selected by the Chair; the Chair himself +And Jefferson Howard, Benjamin Pantier, +And Wendell Bloyd, George Trimble, Adam Weirauch, +Imanuel Ehrenhardt, Seth Compton, Godwin James +And Enoch Dunlap, Hiram Scates, Roy Butler, +Carl Hamblin, Roger Heston, Ernest Hyde +And Penniwit, the artist, Kinsey Keene, +And E. C. Culbertson and Franklin Jones, +Benjamin Fraser, son of Benjamin Pantier +By Daisy Fraser, some of lesser note, +And secretly conferred. + +But in the hall +Disorder reigned and when the marshal came +And found it so, he marched the hoodlums out +And locked them up. + +Meanwhile within a room +Back in the basement of the church, with Blood +Counseled the wisest heads. Judge Somers first, +Deep learned in life, and next him, Elliott Hawkins +And Lambert Hutchins; next him Thomas Rhodes +And Editor Whedon; next him Garrison Standard, +A traitor to the liberals, who with lip +Upcurled in scorn and with a bitter sneer: +“Such strife about an insult to a woman— +A girl of eighteen” —Christian Dallman too, +And others unrecorded. Some there were +Who frowned not on the cup but loathed the rule +Democracy achieved thereby, the freedom +And lust of life it symbolized. + +Now morn with snowy fingers up the sky +Flung like an orange at a festival +The ruddy sun, when from their hasty beds +Poured forth the hostile forces, and the streets +Resounded to the rattle of the wheels +That drove this way and that to gather in +The tardy voters, and the cries of chieftains +Who manned the battle. But at ten o’clock +The liberals bellowed fraud, and at the polls +The rival candidates growled and came to blows. +Then proved the idiot’s tale of yester-eve +A word of warning. Suddenly on the streets +Walked hog-eyed Allen, terror of the hills +That looked on Bernadotte ten miles removed. +No man of this degenerate day could lift +The boulders which he threw, and when he spoke +The windows rattled, and beneath his brows +Thatched like a shed with bristling hair of black, +His small eyes glistened like a maddened boar. +And as he walked the boards creaked, as he walked +A song of menace rumbled. Thus he came, +The champion of A. D. Blood, commissioned +To terrify the liberals. Many fled +As when a hawk soars o’er the chicken yard. +He passed the polls and with a playful hand +Touched Brown, the giant, and he fell against, +As though he were a child, the wall; so strong +Was hog-eyed Allen. But the liberals smiled. +For soon as hog-eyed Allen reached the walk, +Close on his steps paced Bengal Mike, brought in +By Kinsey Keene, the subtle-witted one, +To match the hog-eyed Allen. He was scarce +Three-fourths the other’s bulk, but steel his arms, +And with a tiger’s heart. Two men he killed +And many wounded in the days before, +And no one feared. + +But when the hog-eyed one +Saw Bengal Mike his countenance grew dark, +The bristles o’er his red eyes twitched with rage, +The song he rumbled lowered. Round and round +The court-house paced he, followed stealthily +By Bengal Mike, who jeered him every step: +“Come, elephant, and fight! Come, hog-eyed coward! +Come, face about and fight me, lumbering sneak! +Come, beefy bully, hit me, if you can! +Take out your gun, you duffer, give me reason +To draw and kill you. Take your billy out. +I’ll crack your boar’s head with a piece of brick!” +But never a word the hog-eyed one returned +But trod about the court-house, followed both +By troops of boys and watched by all the men. +All day, they walked the square. But when Apollo +Stood with reluctant look above the hills +As fain to see the end, and all the votes +Were cast, and closed the polls, before the door +Of Trainor’s drug store Bengal Mike, in tones +That echoed through the village, bawled the taunt: +“Who was your mother, hog—eyed?” In a trice +As when a wild boar turns upon the hound +That through the brakes upon an August day +Has gashed him with its teeth, the hog-eyed one +Rushed with his giant arms on Bengal Mike +And grabbed him by the throat. Then rose to heaven +The frightened cries of boys, and yells of men +Forth rushing to the street. And Bengal Mike +Moved this way and now that, drew in his head +As if his neck to shorten, and bent down +To break the death grip of the hog-eyed one; +’Twixt guttural wrath and fast-expiring strength +Striking his fists against the invulnerable chest +Of hog-eyed Allen. Then, when some came in +To part them, others stayed them, and the fight +Spread among dozens; many valiant souls +Went down from clubs and bricks. + +But tell me, Muse, +What god or goddess rescued Bengal Mike? +With one last, mighty struggle did he grasp +The murderous hands and turning kick his foe. +Then, as if struck by lightning, vanished all +The strength from hog-eyed Allen, at his side +Sank limp those giant arms and o’er his face +Dread pallor and the sweat of anguish spread. +And those great knees, invincible but late, +Shook to his weight. And quickly as the lion +Leaps on its wounded prey, did Bengal Mike +Smite with a rock the temple of his foe, +And down he sank and darkness o’er his eyes +Passed like a cloud. + +As when the woodman fells +Some giant oak upon a summer’s day +And all the songsters of the forest shrill, +And one great hawk that has his nestling young +Amid the topmost branches croaks, as crash +The leafy branches through the tangled boughs +Of brother oaks, so fell the hog-eyed one +Amid the lamentations of the friends +Of A. D. Blood. + +Just then, four lusty men +Bore the town marshal, on whose iron face +The purple pall of death already lay, +To Trainor’s drug store, shot by Jack McGuire. +And cries went up of “Lynch him!” and the sound +Of running feet from every side was heard +Bent on the + + + + +Epilogue + + +(THE GRAVEYARD OF SPOON RIVER. TWO VOICES ARE HEARD BEHIND A SCREEN +DECORATED WITH DIABOLICAL AND ANGELIC FIGURES IN VARIOUS ALLEGORICAL +RELATIONS. A FAINT LIGHT SHOWS DIMLY THROUGH THE SCREEN AS IF IT WERE +WOVEN OF LEAVES, BRANCHES AND SHADOWS.) + + +FIRST VOICE. +A game of checkers? + +SECOND VOICE +Well, I don’t mind. + +FIRST VOICE +I move the Will. + +SECOND VOICE +You’re playing it blind. + +FIRST VOICE +Then here’s the Soul. + +SECOND VOICE +Checked by the Will. + +FIRST VOICE +Eternal Good! + +SECOND VOICE +And Eternal Ill. + +FIRST VOICE +I haste for the King row. + +SECOND VOICE +Save your breath. + +FIRST VOICE +I was moving Life. + +SECOND VOICE +You’re checked by Death. + +FIRST VOICE +Very good, here’s Moses. + +SECOND VOICE +And here’s the Jew. + +FIRST VOICE +My next move is Jesus. + +SECOND VOICE +St. Paul for you! + +FIRST VOICE +Yes, but St. Peter— + +SECOND VOICE +You might have foreseen— + +FIRST VOICE +You’re in the King row— + +SECOND VOICE +With Constantine! + +FIRST VOICE +I’ll go back to Athens. + +SECOND VOICE +Well, here’s the Persian. + +FIRST VOICE +All right, the Bible. + +SECOND VOICE +Pray now, what version? + +FIRST VOICE +I take up Buddha. + +SECOND VOICE +It never will work. + +FIRST VOICE +From the corner Mahomet. + +SECOND VOICE +I move the Turk. + +FIRST VOICE +The game is tangled; where are we now? + +SECOND VOICE +You’re dreaming worlds. I’m in the King row. +Move as you will, if I can’t wreck you +I’ll thwart you, harry you, rout you, check you. + +FIRST VOICE +I’m tired. I’ll send for my Son to play. +I think he can beat you finally— + +SECOND VOICE +Eh? + +FIRST VOICE +I must preside at the stars’ convention. + +SECOND VOICE +Very well, my lord, but I beg to mention +I’ll give this game my direct attention. + +FIRST VOICE +A game indeed! But Truth is my quest. + +SECOND VOICE +Beaten, you walk away with a jest. +I strike the table, I scatter the checkers. +(_A rattle of a falling table and checkers flying over a floor_.) +Aha! You armies and iron deckers, +Races and states in a cataclysm— +Now for a day of atheism! + + +(_The screen vanishes and_ BEELZEBUB _steps forward carrying a trumpet, +which he blows faintly. Immediately_ LOKI _and_ YOCARINDRA _start up +from the shadows of night._) + + +BEELZEBUB +Good evening, Loki! + +LOKI +The same to you! + +BEELZEBUB +And Yogarindra! + +YOGARINDRA +My greetings, too. + +LOKI +Whence came you, comrade? + +BEELZEBUB +From yonder screen. + +YOGARINDRA +And what were you doing? + +BEELZEBUB +Stirring His spleen. + +LOKI +How did you do it? + +BEELZEBUB +I made it rough +In a game of checkers. + +LOKI +Good enough! + +YOGARINDRA +I thought I heard the sounds of a battle. + +BEELZEBUB +No doubt! I made the checkers rattle, +Turning the table over and strewing +The bits of wood like an army pursuing. + +YOGARINDRA +I have a game! Let us make a man. + +LOKI +My net is waiting him, if you can. + +YOGARINDRA +And here’s my mirror to fool him with— + +BEELZEBUB +Mystery, falsehood, creed and myth. + +LOKI +But no one can mold him, friend, but you. + +BEELZEBUB +Then to the sport without more ado. + +YOGARINDRA +Hurry the work ere it grow to day. + +BEELZEBUB +I set me to it. Where is the clay? +(_He scrapes the earth with his hands and begins to model._) + +BEELZEBUB +Out of the dust, +Out of the slime, +A little rust, +And a little lime. +Muscle and gristle, +Mucin, stone +Brayed with a pestle, +Fat and bone. +Out of the marshes, +Out of the vaults, +Matter crushes +Gas and salts. +What is this you call a mind, +Flitting, drifting, pale and blind, +Soul of the swamp that rides the wind? +Jack-o’-lantern, here you are! +Dream of heaven, pine for a star, +Chase your brothers to and fro, +Back to the swamp at last you’ll go. +Hilloo! Hilloo! + +THE VALLEY +Hilloo! Hilloo! +(_Beelzebub in scraping up the earth turns out a skull._) + +BEELZEBUB +Old one, old one. +Now ere I break you +Crush you and make you +Clay for my use, +Let me observe you: +You were a bold one +Flat at the dome of you, +Heavy the base of you, +False to the home of you, +Strong was the face of you, +Strange to all fears. +Yet did the hair of you +Hide what you were. +Now to re-nerve you— + +(_He crushes the skull between his hands and mixes it with the clay._) + + +Now you are dust, +Limestone and rust. +I mold and I stir +And make you again. + +THE VALLEY +Again? Again? + +(_In the same manner_ BEELZEBUB _has fashioned several figures, +standing them against the trees._) + + +LOKI +Now for the breath of life. As I remember +You have done right to mold your creatures first, +And stand them up. + +BEELZEBUB +From gravitation +I make the will. + +YOGARINDRA +Out of sensation +Comes his ill. +Out of my mirror +Springs his error. +Who was so cruel +To make him the slave +Of me the sorceress, you the knave, +And you the plotter to catch his thought, +Whatever he did, whatever he sought? +With a nature dual +Of will and mind, +A thing that sees, and a thing that’s blind. +Come! to our dance! Something hated him +Made us over him, therefore fated him. + +(_They join hands and dance._) + + +LOKI +Passion, reason, custom, ruels, +Creeds of the churches, lore of the schools, +Taint in the blood and strength of soul. +Flesh too weak for the will’s control; +Poverty, riches, pride of birth, +Wailing, laughter, over the earth. +Here I have you caught again. +Enter my web, ye sons of men. + +YOGARINDRA +Look in my mirror! Isn’t it real? +What do you think now, what do you feel? +Here is treasure of gold heaped up; +Here is wine in the festal cup. +Tendrils blossoming, turned to whips, +Love with her breasts and scarlet lips. +Breathe in their nostrils. + +BEELZEBUB +Falsehood’s breath, +Out of nothingness into death. +Out of the mold, out of the rocks, +Wonder, mockery, paradox! +Soaring spirit, groveling flesh, +Bait the trap, and spread the mesh. +Give him hunger, lure him with truth, +Give him the iris hopes of Youth. +Starve him, shame him, fling him down, +Whirled in the vortex of the town. +Break him, age him, till he curse +The idiot face of the universe. +Over and over we mix the clay,— +What was dust is alive to-day. + +THE THREE +Thus is the hell-born tangle wound +Swiftly, swiftly round and round. + +BEELZEBUB +(_Waving his trumpet._) +You live! Away! + +ONE OF THE FIGURES +How strange and new! +I am I, and another, too. + +ANOTHER FIGURE +I was a sun-dew’s leaf, but now +What is this longing?— + +ANOTHER FIGURE +Earth below +I was a seedling magnet-tipped +Drawn down earth— + +ANOTHER FIGURE +And I was gripped +Electrons in a granite stone, +Now I think. + +ANOTHER FIGURE +Oh, how alone! + +ANOTHER FIGURE +My lips to thine. Through thee I find +Something alone by love divined! + +BEELZEBUB +Begone! No, wait. I have bethought me, friends; +Let s give a play. + +(_He waves his trumpet._) + + +To yonder green rooms go. + +(_The figures disappear._) + + +YOGARINDRA +Oh, yes, a play! That’s very well, I think, +But who will be the audience? I must throw +Illusion over all. + +LOKI +And I must shift +The scenery, and tangle up the plot. + +BEELZEBUB +Well, so you shall! Our audience shall come +From yonder graves. + +(_He blows his trumpet slightly louder than before. The scene changes. +A stage arises among the graves. The curtain is down, concealing the +creatures just created, illuminated halfway up by spectral lights._ +BEELZEBUB _stands before the curtain._) + + +BEELZEBUB +(_A terrific blast of the trumpet._) +Who-o-o-o-o-o! + +(_Immediately there is a rustling as of the shells of grasshoppers +stirred by a wind; and hundreds of the dead, including those who have +appeared in the Anthology, hurry to the sound of the trumpet._) + + +A VOICE +Gabriel! Gabriel! + +MANY VOICES +The Judgment day! + +BEELZEBUB +Be quiet, if you please +At least until the stars fall and the moon. + +MANY VOICES +Save us! Save us! + +(_Beelzebub extends his hands over the audience with a benedictory +motion and restores order._) + + +BEELZEBUB +Ladies and gentlemen, your kind attention +To my interpretation of the scene. +I rise to give your fancy comprehension, +And analyze the parts of the machine. +My mood is such that I would not deceive you, +Though still a liar and the father of it, +From judgment’s frailty I would retrieve you, +Though falsehood is my art and though I love it. +Down in the habitations whence I rise, +The roots of human sorrow boundless spread. +Long have I watched them draw the strength that lies +In clay made richer by the rotting dead. +Here is a blossom, here a twisted stalk, +Here fruit that sourly withers ere its prime; +And here a growth that sprawls across the walk, +Food for the green worm, which it turns to slime. +The ruddy apple with a core of cork +Springs from a root which in a hollow dangles, +Not skillful husbandry nor laborious work +Can save the tree which lightning breaks and tangles. +Why does the bright nasturtium scarcely flower +But that those insects multiply and grow, +Which make it food, and in the very hour +In which the veined leaves and blossoms blow? +Why does a goodly tree, while fast maturing, +Turn crooked branches covered o’er with scale? +Why does the tree whose youth was not assuring +Prosper and bear while all its fellows fail? +I under earth see much. I know the soil. +I know where mold is heavy and where thin. +I see the stones that thwart the plowman’s toil, +The crooked roots of what the priests call sin. +I know all secrets, even to the core, +What seedlings will be upas, pine or laurel; +It cannot change howe’er the field’s worked o’er. +Man’s what he is and that’s the devil’s moral. +So with the souls of the ensuing drama +They sprang from certain seed in certain earth. +Behold them in the devil’s cyclorama, +Shown in their proper light for all they’re worth. +Now to my task: I’ll give an exhibition +Of mixing the ingredients of spirit. + +(_He waves his hand._) + + +Come, crucible, perform your magic mission, +Come, recreative fire, and hover near it! +I’ll make a soul, or show how one is made. + +(_He waves his wand again. Parti-colored flames appear._) + + +This is the woman you shall see anon! + +(_A red flame appears._) + + +This hectic flame makes all the world afraid: +It was a soldier’s scourge which ate the bone. +His daughter bore the lady of the action. +And died at thirty-nine of scrofula. +She was a creature of a sweet attraction, +Whose sex-obsession no one ever saw. + +(_A purple flame appears._) + + +Lo! this denotes aristocratic strains +Back in the centuries of France’s glory. + +(_A blue flame appears._) + + +And this the will that pulls against the chains +Her father strove until his hair was hoary. +Sorrow and failure made his nature cold. +He never loved the child whose woe is shown, +And hence her passion for the things which gold +Brings in this world of pride, and brings alone. +The human heart that’s famished from its birth +Turns to the grosser treasures, that is plain. +Thus aspiration fallen fills the earth +With jungle growths of bitterness and pain. +Of Celtic, Gallic fire our heroine! +Courageous, cruel, passionate and proud. +False, vengeful, cunning, without fear o’ sin. +A head that oft is bloody, but not bowed. +Now if she meet a man—suppose our hero, +With whom her chemistry shall war yet mix, +As if she were her Borgia to his Nero, +’Twill look like one of Satan’s little tricks! +However, it must be. The world’s great garden +Is not all mine. I only sow the tares. +Wheat should be made immune, or else the Warden +Should stop their coming in the world’s affairs. +But to our hero! Long ere he was born +I knew what would repel him and attract. +Such spirit mathematics, fig or thorn, +I can prognosticate before the fact. + +(_A yellow flame appears._) + + +This is a grandsire’s treason in an orchard +Against a maid whose nature with his mated. + +(_Lurid flames appear._) + + +And this his memory distrait and tortured, +Which marked the child with hate because she hated. +Our heroine’s grand dame was that maid’s own cousin— +But never this our man and woman knew. +The child, in time, of lovers had a dozen, +Then wed a gentleman upright and true. +And thus our hero had a double nature: +One half of him was bad, the other good. +The devil must exhaust his nomenclature +To make this puzzle rightly understood. +But when our hero and our heroine met +They were at once attracted, the repulsion +Was hidden under Passion, with her net +Which must enmesh you ere you feel revulsion. +The virus coursing in the soldier’s blood, +The orchard’s ghost, the unknown kinship ’twixt them, +Our hero’s mother’s lovers round them stood, +Shadows that smiled to see how Fate had fixed them. +This twain pledge vows and marry, that’s the play. +And then the tragic features rise and deepen. +He is a tender husband. When away +The serpents from the orchard slyly creep in. +Our heroine, born of spirit none too loyal, +Picks fruit of knowledge—leaves the tree of life. +Her fancy turns to France corrupt and royal, +Soon she forgets her duty as a wife. +You know the rest, so far as that’s concerned, +She met exposure and her husband slew her. +He lost his reason, for the love she spurned. +He prized her as his own—how slight he knew her. +(_He waves a wand, showing a man in a prison cell._) +Now here he sits condemned to mount the gallows— +He could not tell his story—he is dumb. +Love, says your poets, is a grace that hallows, +I call it suffering and martyrdom. +The judge with pointed finger says, “You killed her.” +Well, so he did—but here’s the explanation; +He could not give it. I, the drama-builder, +Show you the various truths and their relation. +(_He waves his wand._) +Now, to begin. The curtain is ascending, +They meet at tea upon a flowery lawn. +Fair, is it not? How sweet their souls are blending— +The author calls the play “Laocoon.” + +A VOICE +Only an earth dream. + +ANOTHER VOICE +With which we are done. +A flash of a comet +Upon the earth stream. + +ANOTHER VOICE +A dream twrice removed, +A spectral confusion +Of earth’s dread illusion. + +A FAR VOICE +These are the ghosts +From the desolate coasts. +Would you go to them? +Only pursue them. +Whatever enshrined is +Within you is you. +In a place where no wind is, +Out of the damps, +Be ye as lamps. +Flame-like aspire, +To me alone true, +The Life and the Fire. + +(BEELZEBUB, LOKI _and_ YOGARINDRA _vanish. The phantasmagoria fades +out. Where the dead seemed to have assembled, only heaps of leaves +appear. There is the light as of dawn. Voices of Spring._) + + +FIRST VOICE +The springtime is come, the winter departed. +She wakens from slumber and dances light-hearted. +The sun is returning, +We are done with alarms, +Earth lifts her face burning, +Held close in his arms. +The sun is an eagle +Who broods o’er his young, +The earth is his nursling +In whom he has flung +The life-flame in seed, +In blossom desire, +Till fire become life, +And life become fire. + +SECOND VOICE +I slip and I vanish, +I baffle your eye; +I dive and I climb, +I change and I fly. +You have me, you lose me, +Who have me too well, +Now find me and use me— +I am here in a cell. + +THIRD VOICE +You are there in a cell? +Oh, now for a rod +With which to divine you— + +SECOND VOICE +Nay, child, I am God. + +FOURTH VOICE +When the waking waters rise from their beds of snow, under the hill, +In little rooms of stone where they sleep when icicles reign, +The April breezes scurry through woodlands, saying “Fulfill! +Awaken roots under cover of soil—it is Spring again.” +Then the sun exults, the moon is at peace, and voices +Call to the silver shadows to lift the flowers from their dreams. +And a longing, longing enters my heart of sorrow, my heart that rejoices +In the fleeting glimpse of a shining face, and her hair that gleams. +I arise and follow alone for hours the winding way by the river. +Hunting a vanishing light, and a solace for joy too deep. +Where do you lead me, wild one, on and on forever? +Over the hill, over the hill, and down to the meadows of sleep. + +THE SUN +Over the soundless depths of space for a hundred million miles +Speeds the soul of me, silent thunder, struck from a harp of fire. +Before my eyes the planets wheel and a universe defiles, +I but a luminant speck of dust upborne in a vast desire. +What is my universe that obeys me—myself compelled to obey +A power that holds me and whirls me over a path that has no end? +And there are my children who call me great, the giver of life and day, +Myself a child who cry for life and know not whither I tend. +A million million suns above me, as if the curtain of night +Were hung before creation’s flame, that shone through the weave of the cloth, +Each with its worlds and worlds and worlds crying upward for light, +For each is drawn in its course to what?—as the candle draws the moth. + + +THE MILKY WAY +Orbits unending, +Life never ending, +Power without end. + +A VOICE +Wouldst thou be lord, +Not peace but a sword. +Not heart’s desire— +Ever aspire. +Worship thy power, +Conquer thy hour, +Sleep not but strive, +So shalt thou live. + +INFINITE DEPTHS +Infinite Law, +Infinite Life. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY *** + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the +United States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Spoon River Anthology</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Edgar Lee Masters</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: April, 1998 [eBook #1280]<br /> +[Most recently updated: November 16, 2022]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY ***</div> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="437" height="650" alt="[Illustration]" /> +</div> + +<h1>Spoon River Anthology</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">by Edgar Lee Masters</h2> + +<hr /> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<p class="center"> +A +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapA01">Altman, Herman</a><br /> +<a href="#chapA02">Armstrong, Hannah</a><br /> +<a href="#chapA03">Arnett, Harold</a><br /> +<a href="#chapA04">Arnett, Justice</a><br /> +<a href="#chapA05">Atheist, The Village</a><br /> +<a href="#chapA06">Atherton, Lucius</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +B +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapB01">Ballard, John</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB02">Barker, Amanda</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB03">Barrett, Pauline</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB04">Bartlett, Ezra</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB05">Bateson, Marie</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB06">Beatty, Tom</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB07">Beethoven, Isaiah</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB08">Bennett, Hon. Henry</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB09">Bindle, Nicholas</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB10">Bliss, Mrs. Charles</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB11">Blood, A. D.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB12">Bloyd, Wendell P.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB13">Bone, Richard</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB14">Branson, Caroline</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB15">Brown, Jim</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB16">Brown, Sarah</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB17">Browning, Elijah</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB18">Burke, Robert Southey</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB19">Burleson, John Horace</a><br /> +<a href="#chapB20">Butler, Roy</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +C +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapC01">Cabanis, Flossie</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC02">Cabanis, John</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC03">Calhoun, Granville</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC04">Calhoun, Henry C.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC05">Campbell, Calvin</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC06">Carlisle, Jeremy</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC07">Carman, Eugene</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC08">Cheney, Columbus</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC09">Chicken, Ida</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC10">Childers, Elizabeth</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC11">Church, John M.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC12">Churchill, Alfonso</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC13">Clapp, Homer</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC14">Clark, Nellie</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC15">Clute, Aner</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC16">Compton, Seth</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC17">Conant, Edith</a><br /> +<a href="#chapC18">Culbertson, E. C.</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +D +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapD01">Davidson, Robert</a><br /> +<a href="#chapD02">Dement, Silas</a><br /> +<a href="#chapD03">Dippold the Optician</a><br /> +<a href="#chapD04">Dixon, Joseph</a><br /> +<a href="#chapD05">Dobyns, Batterton</a><br /> +<a href="#chapD06">Drummer, Frank</a><br /> +<a href="#chapD07">Drummer, Hare</a><br /> +<a href="#chapD08">Dunlap, Enoch</a><br /> +<a href="#chapD09">Dye, Shack</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +E +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapE01">Ehrenhardt, Imanuel</a><br /> +<a href="#chapE02">Epilogue</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +F +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapF01">Fallas, State’s Attorney</a><br /> +<a href="#chapF02">Fawcett, Clarence</a><br /> +<a href="#chapF03">Ferguson, Wallace</a><br /> +<a href="#chapF04">Findlay, Anthony</a><br /> +<a href="#chapF05">Fluke, Willard</a><br /> +<a href="#chapF06">Foote, Searcy</a><br /> +<a href="#chapF07">Ford, Webster</a><br /> +<a href="#chapF08">Fraser, Benjamin</a><br /> +<a href="#chapF09">Fraser, Daisy</a><br /> +<a href="#chapF10">French, Charlie</a><br /> +<a href="#chapF11">Frickey, Ida</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +G +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapG01">Garber, James</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG02">Gardner, Samuel</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG03">Garrick, Amelia</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG04">Godbey, Jacob</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG05">Goldman, Le Roy</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG06">Goode, William</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG07">Goodhue, Harry Carey</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG08">Goodpasture, Jacob</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG09">Graham, Magrady</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG10">Gray, George</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG11">Green, Ami</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG12">Greene, Hamilton</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG13">Griffy, The Cooper</a><br /> +<a href="#chapG14">Gustine, Dorcas</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +H +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapH01">Hainsfeather, Barney</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH02">Hamblin, Carl</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH03">Hately, Constance</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH04">Hatfield, Aaron</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH05">Hawkins, Elliott</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH06">Hawley, Jeduthan</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH07">Henry, Chase</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH08">Herndon, William H.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH09">Heston, Roger</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH10">Higbie, Archibald</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH11">Hill, Doc</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH12">Hill, The</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH13">Hoheimer, Knowlt</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH14">Holden, Barry</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH15">Hookey, Sam</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH16">Houghton, Jonathan</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH17">Howard, Jefferson</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH18">Hueffer, Cassius</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH19">Hummel, Oscar</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH20">Humphrey, Lydia</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH21">Hurley, Scholfield</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH22">Hutchins, Lambert</a><br /> +<a href="#chapH23">Hyde, Ernest</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +I +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapI01">Iseman, Dr. Siegfried</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +J +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapJ01">Jack, Blind</a><br /> +<a href="#chapJ02">James, Godwin</a><br /> +<a href="#chapJ03">Joe, Plymouth Rock</a><br /> +<a href="#chapJ04">Johnson, Voltaire</a><br /> +<a href="#chapJ05">Jones, Fiddler</a><br /> +<a href="#chapJ06">Jones, Franklin</a><br /> +<a href="#chapJ07">Jones, Indignation</a><br /> +<a href="#chapJ08">Jones, Minerva</a><br /> +<a href="#chapJ09">Jones, William</a><br /> +<a href="#chapJ10">Judge, The Circuit</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +K +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapK01">Karr, Elmer</a><br /> +<a href="#chapK02">Keene, Jonas</a><br /> +<a href="#chapK03">Kessler, Bert</a><br /> +<a href="#chapK04">Kessler, Mrs.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapK05">Killion, Captain Orlando</a><br /> +<a href="#chapK06">Kincaid, Russell</a><br /> +<a href="#chapK07">King, Lyman</a><br /> +<a href="#chapK08">Keene, Kinsey</a><br /> +<a href="#chapK09">Knapp, Nancy</a><br /> +<a href="#chapK10">Konovaloff, Ippolit</a><br /> +<a href="#chapK11">Kritt, Dow</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +L +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapL01">Layton, Henry</a><br /> +<a href="#chapL02">Lively, Judge Selah</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +M +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapM01">M’Cumber, Daniel</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM02">McDowell, Rutherford</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM03">McFarlane, Widow</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM04">McGee, Fletcher</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM05">McGee, Ollie</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM06">M’Grew, Jennie</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM07">M’Grew, Mickey</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM08">McGuire, Jack</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM09">McNeely, Mary</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM10">McNeely, Paul</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM11">McNeely, Washington</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM12">Malloy, Father</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM13">Marsh, Zilpha</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM14">Marshal, The Town</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM15">Marshall, Herbert</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM16">Mason, Serepta</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM17">Matheny, Faith</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM18">Matlock, Davis</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM19">Matlock, Lucinda</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM20">Melveny, Abel</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM21">Merritt, Mrs.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM22">Merritt, Tom</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM23">Metcalf, Willie</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM24">Meyers, Doctor</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM25">Meyers, Mrs.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM26">Micure, Hamlet</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM27">Miles, J. Milton</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM28">Miller, Julia</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM29">Miner, Georgine Sand</a><br /> +<a href="#chapM30">Moir, Alfred</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +N +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapN01">Newcomer, Professor</a><br /> +<a href="#chapN02">Night-Watch, Andy The</a><br /> +<a href="#chapN03">Nutter, Isa</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +O +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapO01">Osborne, Mabel</a><br /> +<a href="#chapO02">Otis, John Hancock</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +P +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapP01">Pantier, Benjamin</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP02">Pantier, Mrs. Benjamin</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP03">Pantier, Reuben</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP04">Peet, Rev. Abner</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP05">Pennington, Willie</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP06">Penniwit, the Artist</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP07">Petit, the Poet</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP08">Phipps, Henry</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP09">Poague, Peleg</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP10">Pollard, Edmund</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP11">Potter, Cooney</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP12">Puckett, Lydia</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP13">Purkapile, Mrs.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP14">Purkapile, Roscoe</a><br /> +<a href="#chapP15">Putt, Hod</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +R +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapR01">Reece, Mrs. George</a><br /> +<a href="#chapR02">Rhodes, Ralph</a><br /> +<a href="#chapR03">Rhodes, Thomas</a><br /> +<a href="#chapR04">Richter, Gustav</a><br /> +<a href="#chapR05">Robbins, Hortense</a><br /> +<a href="#chapR06">Roberts, Rosie</a><br /> +<a href="#chapR07">Ross, Thomas, Jr.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapR08">Russian Sonia</a><br /> +<a href="#chapR09">Rutledge, Anne</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +S +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapS01">Sayre, Johnnie</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS02">Scates, Hiram</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS03">Schirding, Albert</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS04">Schmidt, Felix</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS05">Schrœder The Fisherman</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS06">Scott, Julian</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS07">Sersmith the Dentist</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS08">Sewall, Harlan</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS09">Sharp, Percival</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS10">Shaw, “Ace”</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS11">Shelley, Percy Bysshe</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS12">Shope, Tennessee Claflin</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS13">Sibley, Amos</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS14">Sibley, Mrs.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS15">Siever, Conrad</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS16">Simmons, Walter</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS17">Sissman, Dillard</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS18">Slack, Margaret Fuller</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS19">Smith, Louise</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS20">Soldiers, Many</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS21">Somers, Jonathan Swift</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS22">Somers, Judge</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS23">Sparks, Emily</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS24">Spears, Lois</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS25">Spooniad, The</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS26">Standard, W. Lloyd Garrison</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS27">Stewart, Lillian</a><br /> +<a href="#chapS28">Stoddard, Judson</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +T +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapT01">Tanner, Robert Fulton</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT02">Taylor, Deacon</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT03">Theodore, The Poet</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT04">Thornton, English</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT05">Throckmorton, Alexander</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT06">Todd, Eugenia</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT07">Tompkins, Josiah</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT08">Trainor, the Druggist</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT09">Trevelyan, Thomas</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT10">Trimble, George</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT11">Tripp, Henry</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT12">Tubbs, Hildrup</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT13">Turner, Francis</a><br /> +<a href="#chapT14">Tutt, Oaks</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +U +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapU01">Unknown, The</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +W +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapW01">Wasson, John</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW02">Wasson, Rebecca</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW03">Webster, Charles</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW04">Weirauch, Adam</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW05">Weldy, “Butch”</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW06">Wertman, Elsa</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW07">Whedon, Editor</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW08">Whitney, Harmon</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW09">Wiley, Rev. Lemuel</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW10">Will, Arlo</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW11">William and Emily</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW12">Williams, Dora</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW13">Williams, Mrs.</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW14">Wilmans, Harry</a><br /> +<a href="#chapW15">Witt, Zenas</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +Y +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapY01">Yee Bow</a> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +Z +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chapZ01">Zoll, Perry</a> +</p> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH12"></a>The Hill</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +<i>Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley,<br /> +The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?<br /> +All, all are sleeping on the hill.<br /> +<br /> +One passed in a fever,<br /> +One was burned in a mine,<br /> +One was killed in a brawl,<br /> +One died in a jail,<br /> +One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife—<br /> +All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.<br /> +<br /> +Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith,<br /> +The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?—<br /> +All, all are sleeping on the hill.<br /> +<br /> +One died in shameful child-birth,<br /> +One of a thwarted love,<br /> +One at the hands of a brute in a brothel,<br /> +One of a broken pride, in the search for heart’s desire;<br /> +One after life in far-away London and Paris<br /> +Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag—<br /> +All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.<br /> +<br /> +Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily,<br /> +And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton,<br /> +And Major Walker who had talked<br /> +With venerable men of the revolution?—<br /> +All, all are sleeping on the hill.<br /> +<br /> +They brought them dead sons from the war,<br /> +And daughters whom life had crushed,<br /> +And their children fatherless, crying—<br /> +All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.<br /> +<br /> +Where is Old Fiddler Jones<br /> +Who played with life all his ninety years,<br /> +Braving the sleet with bared breast,<br /> +Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin,<br /> +Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven?<br /> +Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago,<br /> +Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary’s Grove,<br /> +Of what Abe Lincoln said<br /> +One time at Springfield.</i> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP15"></a>Hod Putt</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Here I lie close to the grave<br /> +Of Old Bill Piersol,<br /> +Who grew rich trading with the Indians, and who<br /> +Afterwards took the Bankrupt Law<br /> +And emerged from it richer than ever<br /> +Myself grown tired of toil and poverty<br /> +And beholding how Old Bill and others grew in wealth<br /> +Robbed a traveler one Night near Proctor’s Grove,<br /> +Killing him unwittingly while doing so,<br /> +For which I was tried and hanged.<br /> +That was my way of going into bankruptcy.<br /> +Now we who took the bankrupt law in our respective ways<br /> +Sleep peacefully side by side. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM05"></a>Ollie McGee</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Have you seen walking through the village<br /> +A man with downcast eyes and haggard face?<br /> +That is my husband who, by secret cruelty<br /> +Never to be told, robbed me of my youth and my beauty;<br /> +Till at last, wrinkled and with yellow teeth,<br /> +And with broken pride and shameful humility,<br /> +I sank into the grave.<br /> +But what think you gnaws at my husband’s heart?<br /> +The face of what I was, the face of what he made me!<br /> +These are driving him to the place where I lie.<br /> +In death, therefore, I am avenged. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM04"></a>Fletcher McGee</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +She took my strength by minutes,<br /> +She took my life by hours,<br /> +She drained me like a fevered moon<br /> +That saps the spinning world.<br /> +The days went by like shadows,<br /> +The minutes wheeled like stars.<br /> +She took the pity from my heart,<br /> +And made it into smiles.<br /> +She was a hunk of sculptor’s clay,<br /> +My secret thoughts were fingers:<br /> +They flew behind her pensive brow<br /> +And lined it deep with pain.<br /> +They set the lips, and sagged the cheeks,<br /> +And drooped the eye with sorrow.<br /> +My soul had entered in the clay,<br /> +Fighting like seven devils.<br /> +It was not mine, it was not hers;<br /> +She held it, but its struggles<br /> +Modeled a face she hated,<br /> +And a face I feared to see.<br /> +I beat the windows, shook the bolts.<br /> +I hid me in a corner<br /> +And then she died and haunted me,<br /> +And hunted me for life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT01"></a>Robert Fulton Tanner</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +If a man could bite the giant hand<br /> +That catches and destroys him,<br /> +As I was bitten by a rat<br /> +While demonstrating my patent trap,<br /> +In my hardware store that day.<br /> +But a man can never avenge himself<br /> +On the monstrous ogre Life.<br /> +You enter the room—that’s being born;<br /> +And then you must live—work out your soul,<br /> +Aha! the bait that you crave is in view:<br /> +A woman with money you want to marry,<br /> +Prestige, place, or power in the world.<br /> +But there’s work to do and things to conquer—<br /> +Oh, yes! the wires that screen the bait.<br /> +At last you get in—but you hear a step:<br /> +The ogre, Life, comes into the room,<br /> +(He was waiting and heard the clang of the spring)<br /> +To watch you nibble the wondrous cheese,<br /> +And stare with his burning eyes at you,<br /> +And scowl and laugh, and mock and curse you,<br /> +Running up and down in the trap,<br /> +Until your misery bores him. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH18"></a>Cassius Hueffer</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +They have chiseled on my stone the words:<br /> +“His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him<br /> +That nature might stand up and say to all the world,<br /> +This was a man.”<br /> +Those who knew me smile<br /> +As they read this empty rhetoric.<br /> +My epitaph should have been:<br /> +“Life was not gentle to him,<br /> +And the elements so mixed in him<br /> +That he made warfare on life<br /> +In the which he was slain.”<br /> +While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues,<br /> +Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph<br /> +Graven by a fool! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM16"></a>Serepta Mason</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +My life’s blossom might have bloomed on all sides<br /> +Save for a bitter wind which stunted my petals<br /> +On the side of me which you in the village could see.<br /> +From the dust I lift a voice of protest:<br /> +My flowering side you never saw!<br /> +Ye living ones, ye are fools indeed<br /> +Who do not know the ways of the wind<br /> +And the unseen forces<br /> +That govern the processes of life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB02"></a>Amanda Barker</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Henry got me with child,<br /> +Knowing that I could not bring forth life<br /> +Without losing my own.<br /> +In my youth therefore I entered the portals of dust.<br /> +Traveler, it is believed in the village where I lived<br /> +That Henry loved me with a husband’s love<br /> +But I proclaim from the dust<br /> +That he slew me to gratify his hatred. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH03"></a>Constance Hately</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +You praise my self-sacrifice, Spoon River,<br /> +In rearing Irene and Mary,<br /> +Orphans of my older sister!<br /> +And you censure Irene and Mary<br /> +For their contempt for me!<br /> +But praise not my self-sacrifice.<br /> +And censure not their contempt;<br /> +I reared them, I cared for them, true enough!—<br /> +But I poisoned my benefactions<br /> +With constant reminders of their dependence. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH07"></a>Chase Henry</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +In life I was the town drunkard;<br /> +When I died the priest denied me burial<br /> +In holy ground.<br /> +The which redounded to my good fortune.<br /> +For the Protestants bought this lot,<br /> +And buried my body here,<br /> +Close to the grave of the banker Nicholas,<br /> +And of his wife Priscilla.<br /> +Take note, ye prudent and pious souls,<br /> +Of the cross—currents in life<br /> +Which bring honor to the dead, who lived in shame +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG07"></a>Harry Carey Goodhue</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +You never marveled, dullards of Spoon River,<br /> +When Chase Henry voted against the saloons<br /> +To revenge himself for being shut off.<br /> +But none of you was keen enough<br /> +To follow my steps, or trace me home<br /> +As Chase’s spiritual brother.<br /> +Do you remember when I fought<br /> +The bank and the courthouse ring,<br /> +For pocketing the interest on public funds?<br /> +And when I fought our leading citizens<br /> +For making the poor the pack-horses of the taxes?<br /> +And when I fought the water works<br /> +For stealing streets and raising rates?<br /> +And when I fought the business men<br /> +Who fought me in these fights?<br /> +Then do you remember:<br /> +That staggering up from the wreck of defeat,<br /> +And the wreck of a ruined career,<br /> +I slipped from my cloak my last ideal,<br /> +Hidden from all eyes until then,<br /> +Like the cherished jawbone of an ass,<br /> +And smote the bank and the water works,<br /> +And the business men with prohibition,<br /> +And made Spoon River pay the cost<br /> +Of the fights that I had lost. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS22"></a>Judge Somers</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +How does it happen, tell me,<br /> +That I who was most erudite of lawyers,<br /> +Who knew Blackstone and Coke<br /> +Almost by heart, who made the greatest speech<br /> +The court-house ever heard, and wrote<br /> +A brief that won the praise of Justice Breese<br /> +How does it happen, tell me,<br /> +That I lie here unmarked, forgotten,<br /> +While Chase Henry, the town drunkard,<br /> +Has a marble block, topped by an urn<br /> +Wherein Nature, in a mood ironical,<br /> +Has sown a flowering weed? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK08"></a>Kinsey Keene</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Your attention, Thomas Rhodes, president of the bank;<br /> +Coolbaugh Whedon, editor of the Argus;<br /> +Rev. Peet, pastor of the leading church;<br /> +A. D. Blood, several times Mayor of Spoon River;<br /> +And finally all of you, members of the Social Purity Club—<br /> +Your attention to Cambronne’s dying words,<br /> +Standing with the heroic remnant<br /> +Of Napoleon’s guard on Mount Saint Jean<br /> +At the battle field of Waterloo,<br /> +When Maitland, the Englishman, called to them:<br /> +“Surrender, brave Frenchmen!”—<br /> +There at close of day with the battle hopelessly lost,<br /> +And hordes of men no longer the army<br /> +Of the great Napoleon<br /> +Streamed from the field like ragged strips<br /> +Of thunder clouds in the storm.<br /> +Well, what Cambronne said to Maitland<br /> +Ere the English fire made smooth the brow of the hill<br /> +Against the sinking light of day<br /> +Say I to you, and all of you,<br /> +And to you, O world.<br /> +And I charge you to carve it<br /> +Upon my stone. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP01"></a>Benjamin Pantier</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Together in this grave lie Benjamin Pantier, attorney at law,<br /> +And Nig, his dog, constant companion, solace and friend.<br /> +Down the gray road, friends, children, men and women,<br /> +Passing one by one out of life, left me till I was alone<br /> +With Nig for partner, bed-fellow; comrade in drink.<br /> +In the morning of life I knew aspiration and saw glory,<br /> +The she, who survives me, snared my soul<br /> +With a snare which bled me to death,<br /> +Till I, once strong of will, lay broken, indifferent,<br /> +Living with Nig in a room back of a dingy office.<br /> +Under my Jaw-bone is snuggled the bony nose of Nig<br /> +Our story is lost in silence. Go by, mad world! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP02"></a>Mrs. Benjamin Pantier</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I know that he told that I snared his soul<br /> +With a snare which bled him to death.<br /> +And all the men loved him,<br /> +And most of the women pitied him.<br /> +But suppose you are really a lady, and have delicate tastes,<br /> +And loathe the smell of whiskey and onions,<br /> +And the rhythm of Wordsworth’s “Ode” runs in your ears,<br /> +While he goes about from morning till night<br /> +Repeating bits of that common thing;<br /> +“Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?”<br /> +And then, suppose;<br /> +You are a woman well endowed,<br /> +And the only man with whom the law and morality<br /> +Permit you to have the marital relation<br /> +Is the very man that fills you with disgust<br /> +Every time you think of it while you think of it<br /> +Every time you see him?<br /> +That’s why I drove him away from home<br /> +To live with his dog in a dingy room<br /> +Back of his office. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP03"></a>Reuben Pantier</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Well, Emily Sparks, your prayers were not wasted,<br /> +Your love was not all in vain.<br /> +I owe whatever I was in life<br /> +To your hope that would not give me up,<br /> +To your love that saw me still as good.<br /> +Dear Emily Sparks, let me tell you the story.<br /> +I pass the effect of my father and mother;<br /> +The milliner’s daughter made me trouble<br /> +And out I went in the world,<br /> +Where I passed through every peril known<br /> +Of wine and women and joy of life.<br /> +One night, in a room in the Rue de Rivoli,<br /> +I was drinking wine with a black-eyed cocotte,<br /> +And the tears swam into my eyes.<br /> +She though they were amorous tears and smiled<br /> +For thought of her conquest over me.<br /> +But my soul was three thousand miles away,<br /> +In the days when you taught me in Spoon River.<br /> +And just because you no more could love me,<br /> +Nor pray for me, nor write me letters,<br /> +The eternal silence of you spoke instead.<br /> +And the Black-eyed cocotte took the tears for hers,<br /> +As well as the deceiving kisses I gave her.<br /> +Somehow, from that hour, I had a new vision<br /> +Dear Emily Sparks! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS23"></a>Emily Sparks</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Where is my boy, my boy<br /> +In what far part of the world?<br /> +The boy I loved best of all in the school?—<br /> +I, the teacher, the old maid, the virgin heart,<br /> +Who made them all my children.<br /> +Did I know my boy aright,<br /> +Thinking of him as a spirit aflame,<br /> +Active, ever aspiring?<br /> +Oh, boy, boy, for whom I prayed and prayed<br /> +In many a watchful hour at night,<br /> +Do you remember the letter I wrote you<br /> +Of the beautiful love of Christ?<br /> +And whether you ever took it or not,<br /> +My, boy, wherever you are,<br /> +Work for your soul’s sake,<br /> +That all the clay of you, all of the dross of you,<br /> +May yield to the fire of you,<br /> +Till the fire is nothing but light!…<br /> +Nothing but light! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT08"></a>Trainor, the Druggist</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Only the chemist can tell, and not always the chemist,<br /> +What will result from compounding<br /> +Fluids or solids.<br /> +And who can tell<br /> +How men and women will interact<br /> +On each other, or what children will result?<br /> +There were Benjamin Pantier and his wife,<br /> +Good in themselves, but evil toward each other;<br /> +He oxygen, she hydrogen,<br /> +Their son, a devastating fire.<br /> +I Trainor, the druggist, a miser of chemicals,<br /> +Killed while making an experiment,<br /> +Lived unwedded. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF09"></a>Daisy Fraser</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Did you ever hear of Editor Whedon<br /> +Giving to the public treasury any of the money he received<br /> +For supporting candidates for office?<br /> +Or for writing up the canning factory<br /> +To get people to invest?<br /> +Or for suppressing the facts about the bank,<br /> +When it was rotten and ready to break?<br /> +Did you ever hear of the Circuit Judge<br /> +Helping anyone except the “Q” railroad,<br /> +Or the bankers? Or did Rev. Peet or Rev. Sibley<br /> +Give any part of their salary, earned by keeping still,<br /> +Or speaking out as the leaders wished them to do,<br /> +To the building of the water works?<br /> +But I—Daisy Fraser who always passed<br /> +Along the street through rows of nods and smiles,<br /> +And coughs and words such as “there she goes.”<br /> +Never was taken before Justice Arnett<br /> +Without contributing ten dollars and costs<br /> +To the school fund of Spoon River! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF08"></a>Benjamin Fraser</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Their spirits beat upon mine<br /> +Like the wings of a thousand butterflies.<br /> +I closed my eyes and felt their spirits vibrating.<br /> +I closed my eyes, yet I knew when their lashes<br /> +Fringed their cheeks from downcast eyes,<br /> +And when they turned their heads;<br /> +And when their garments clung to them,<br /> +Or fell from them, in exquisite draperies.<br /> +Their spirits watched my ecstasy<br /> +With wide looks of starry unconcern.<br /> +Their spirits looked upon my torture;<br /> +They drank it as it were the water of life;<br /> +With reddened cheeks, brightened eyes,<br /> +The rising flame of my soul made their spirits gilt,<br /> +Like the wings of a butterfly drifting suddenly into sunlight.<br /> +And they cried to me for life, life, life.<br /> +But in taking life for myself,<br /> +In seizing and crushing their souls,<br /> +As a child crushes grapes and drinks<br /> +From its palms the purple juice,<br /> +I came to this wingless void,<br /> +Where neither red, nor gold, nor wine,<br /> +Nor the rhythm of life are known. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapJ08"></a>Minerva Jones</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I am Minerva, the village poetess,<br /> +Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street<br /> +For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk,<br /> +And all the more when “Butch” Weldy<br /> +Captured me after a brutal hunt.<br /> +He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers;<br /> +And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up,<br /> +Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice.<br /> +Will some one go to the village newspaper,<br /> +And gather into a book the verses I wrote?—<br /> +I thirsted so for love<br /> +I hungered so for life! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapJ07"></a>“Indignation” Jones</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +You would not believe, would you<br /> +That I came from good Welsh stock?<br /> +That I was purer blooded than the white trash here?<br /> +And of more direct lineage than the<br /> +New Englanders And Virginians of Spoon River?<br /> +You would not believe that I had been to school<br /> +And read some books.<br /> +You saw me only as a run-down man<br /> +With matted hair and beard<br /> +And ragged clothes.<br /> +Sometimes a man’s life turns into a cancer<br /> +From being bruised and continually bruised,<br /> +And swells into a purplish mass<br /> +Like growths on stalks of corn.<br /> +Here was I, a carpenter, mired in a bog of life<br /> +Into which I walked, thinking it was a meadow,<br /> +With a slattern for a wife, and poor Minerva, my daughter,<br /> +Whom you tormented and drove to death.<br /> +So I crept, crept, like a snail through the days<br /> +Of my life.<br /> +No more you hear my footsteps in the morning,<br /> +Resounding on the hollow sidewalk<br /> +Going to the grocery store for a little corn meal<br /> +And a nickel’s worth of bacon. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW05"></a>“Butch” Weldy</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +After I got religion and steadied down<br /> +They gave me a job in the canning works,<br /> +And every morning I had to fill<br /> +The tank in the yard with gasoline,<br /> +That fed the blow-fires in the sheds<br /> +To heat the soldering irons.<br /> +And I mounted a rickety ladder to do it,<br /> +Carrying buckets full of the stuff.<br /> +One morning, as I stood there pouring,<br /> +The air grew still and seemed to heave,<br /> +And I shot up as the tank exploded,<br /> +And down I came with both legs broken,<br /> +And my eyes burned crisp as a couple of eggs.<br /> +For someone left a blow—fire going,<br /> +And something sucked the flame in the tank.<br /> +The Circuit Judge said whoever did it<br /> +Was a fellow-servant of mine, and so<br /> +Old Rhodes’ son didn’t have to pay me.<br /> +And I sat on the witness stand as blind<br /> +As Jack the Fiddler, saying over and over,<br /> +“I didn’t know him at all.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM24"></a>Doctor Meyers</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +No other man, unless it was Doc Hill,<br /> +Did more for people in this town than I.<br /> +And all the weak, the halt, the improvident<br /> +And those who could not pay flocked to me.<br /> +I was good-hearted, easy Doctor Meyers.<br /> +I was healthy, happy, in comfortable fortune,<br /> +Blest with a congenial mate, my children raised,<br /> +All wedded, doing well in the world.<br /> +And then one night, Minerva, the poetess,<br /> +Came to me in her trouble, crying.<br /> +I tried to help her out—she died—<br /> +They indicted me, the newspapers disgraced me,<br /> +My wife perished of a broken heart.<br /> +And pneumonia finished me. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM25"></a>Mrs. Meyers</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +He protested all his life long<br /> +The newspapers lied about him villainously;<br /> +That he was not at fault for Minerva’s fall,<br /> +But only tried to help her.<br /> +Poor soul so sunk in sin he could not see<br /> +That even trying to help her, as he called it,<br /> +He had broken the law human and divine.<br /> +Passers by, an ancient admonition to you:<br /> +If your ways would be ways of pleasantness,<br /> +And all your pathways peace,<br /> +Love God and keep his commandments. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH13"></a>Knowlt Hoheimer</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.<br /> +When I felt the bullet enter my heart<br /> +I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail<br /> +For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary,<br /> +Instead of running away and joining the army.<br /> +Rather a thousand times the county jail<br /> +Than to lie under this marble figure with wings,<br /> +And this granite pedestal Bearing the words, “Pro Patria.”<br /> +What do they mean, anyway? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP12"></a>Lydia Puckett</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Knowlt Hoheimer ran away to the war<br /> +The day before Curl Trenary<br /> +Swore out a warrant through Justice Arnett<br /> +For stealing hogs.<br /> +But that’s not the reason he turned a soldier.<br /> +He caught me running with Lucius Atherton.<br /> +We quarreled and I told him never again<br /> +To cross my path.<br /> +Then he stole the hogs and went to the war—<br /> +Back of every soldier is a woman. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapD06"></a>Frank Drummer</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Out of a cell into this darkened space—<br /> +The end at twenty-five!<br /> +My tongue could not speak what stirred within me,<br /> +And the village thought me a fool.<br /> +Yet at the start there was a clear vision,<br /> +A high and urgent purpose in my soul<br /> +Which drove me on trying to memorize<br /> +The Encyclopedia Britannica! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapD07"></a>Hare Drummer</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Do the boys and girls still go to Siever’s<br /> +For cider, after school, in late September?<br /> +Or gather hazel nuts among the thickets<br /> +On Aaron Hatfield’s farm when the frosts begin?<br /> +For many times with the laughing girls and boys<br /> +Played I along the road and over the hills<br /> +When the sun was low and the air was cool,<br /> +Stopping to club the walnut tree<br /> +Standing leafless against a flaming west.<br /> +Now, the smell of the autumn smoke,<br /> +And the dropping acorns,<br /> +And the echoes about the vales<br /> +Bring dreams of life.<br /> +They hover over me.<br /> +They question me:<br /> +Where are those laughing comrades?<br /> +How many are with me, how many<br /> +In the old orchards along the way to Siever’s,<br /> +And in the woods that overlook<br /> +The quiet water? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS15"></a>Conrad Siever</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Not in that wasted garden<br /> +Where bodies are drawn into grass<br /> +That feeds no flocks, and into evergreens<br /> +That bear no fruit—<br /> +There where along the shaded walks<br /> +Vain sighs are heard,<br /> +And vainer dreams are dreamed<br /> +Of close communion with departed souls—<br /> +But here under the apple tree<br /> +I loved and watched and pruned<br /> +With gnarled hands<br /> +In the long, long years;<br /> +Here under the roots of this northern-spy<br /> +To move in the chemic change and circle of life,<br /> +Into the soil and into the flesh of the tree,<br /> +And into the living epitaphs<br /> +Of redder apples! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH11"></a>Doc Hill</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I went up and down the streets<br /> +Here and there by day and night,<br /> +Through all hours of the night caring for the poor who were sick.<br /> +Do you know why?<br /> +My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs.<br /> +And I turned to the people and poured out my love to them.<br /> +Sweet it was to see the crowds about the lawns on the day of my funeral,<br /> +And hear them murmur their love and sorrow.<br /> +But oh, dear God, my soul trembled, scarcely able<br /> +To hold to the railing of the new life<br /> +When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree<br /> +At the grave,<br /> +Hiding herself, and her grief! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapN02"></a>Andy The Night-Watch</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +In my Spanish cloak,<br /> +And old slouch hat,<br /> +And overshoes of felt,<br /> +And Tyke, my faithful dog,<br /> +And my knotted hickory cane,<br /> +I slipped about with a bull’s-eye lantern<br /> +From door to door on the square,<br /> +As the midnight stars wheeled round,<br /> +And the bell in the steeple murmured<br /> +From the blowing of the wind;<br /> +And the weary steps of old Doc Hill<br /> +Sounded like one who walks in sleep,<br /> +And a far-off rooster crew.<br /> +And now another is watching Spoon River<br /> +As others watched before me.<br /> +And here we lie, Doc Hill and I<br /> +Where none breaks through and steals,<br /> +And no eye needs to guard. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB16"></a>Sarah Brown</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Maurice, weep not, I am not here under this pine tree.<br /> +The balmy air of spring whispers through the sweet grass,<br /> +The stars sparkle, the whippoorwill calls,<br /> +But thou grievest, while my soul lies rapturous<br /> +In the blest Nirvana of eternal light!<br /> +Go to the good heart that is my husband<br /> +Who broods upon what he calls our guilty love:—<br /> +Tell him that my love for you, no less than my love for him<br /> +Wrought out my destiny—that through the flesh<br /> +I won spirit, and through spirit, peace.<br /> +There is no marriage in heaven<br /> +But there is love. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS11"></a>Percy Bysshe Shelley</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +My father who owned the wagon-shop<br /> +And grew rich shoeing horses<br /> +Sent me to the University of Montreal.<br /> +I learned nothing and returned home,<br /> +Roaming the fields with Bert Kessler,<br /> +Hunting quail and snipe.<br /> +At Thompson’s Lake the trigger of my gun<br /> +Caught in the side of the boat<br /> +And a great hole was shot through my heart.<br /> +Over me a fond father erected this marble shaft,<br /> +On which stands the figure of a woman<br /> +Carved by an Italian artist.<br /> +They say the ashes of my namesake<br /> +Were scattered near the pyramid of Caius Cestius<br /> +Somewhere near Rome. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC01"></a>Flossie Cabanis</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +From Bindle’s opera house in the village<br /> +To Broadway is a great step.<br /> +But I tried to take it, my ambition fired<br /> +When sixteen years of age,<br /> +Seeing “East Lynne,” played here in the village<br /> +By Ralph Barrett, the coming<br /> +Romantic actor, who enthralled my soul.<br /> +True, I trailed back home, a broken failure,<br /> +When Ralph disappeared in New York,<br /> +Leaving me alone in the city—<br /> +But life broke him also.<br /> +In all this place of silence<br /> +There are no kindred spirits.<br /> +How I wish Duse could stand amid the pathos<br /> +Of these quiet fields<br /> +And read these words. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM28"></a>Julia Miller</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +We quarreled that morning,<br /> +For he was sixty—five, and I was thirty,<br /> +And I was nervous and heavy with the child<br /> +Whose birth I dreaded.<br /> +I thought over the last letter written me<br /> +By that estranged young soul<br /> +Whose betrayal of me I had concealed<br /> +By marrying the old man.<br /> +Then I took morphine and sat down to read.<br /> +Across the blackness that came over my eyes<br /> +I see the flickering light of these words even now:<br /> +“And Jesus said unto him, Verily<br /> +I say unto thee, To-day thou shalt<br /> +Be with me in paradise.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS01"></a>Johnnie Sayre</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Father, thou canst never know<br /> +The anguish that smote my heart<br /> +For my disobedience, the moment I felt<br /> +The remorseless wheel of the engine<br /> +Sink into the crying flesh of my leg.<br /> +As they carried me to the home of widow Morris<br /> +I could see the school-house in the valley<br /> +To which I played truant to steal rides upon the trains.<br /> +I prayed to live until I could ask your forgiveness—<br /> +And then your tears, your broken words of comfort!<br /> +From the solace of that hour I have gained infinite happiness.<br /> +Thou wert wise to chisel for me:<br /> +“Taken from the evil to come.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF10"></a>Charlie French</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Did you ever find out<br /> +Which one of the O’Brien boys it was<br /> +Who snapped the toy pistol against my hand?<br /> +There when the flags were red and white<br /> +In the breeze and “Bucky” Estil<br /> +Was firing the cannon brought to Spoon River<br /> +From Vicksburg by Captain Harris;<br /> +And the lemonade stands were running<br /> +And the band was playing,<br /> +To have it all spoiled<br /> +By a piece of a cap shot under the skin of my hand,<br /> +And the boys all crowding about me saying:<br /> +“You’ll die of lock-jaw, Charlie, sure.”<br /> +Oh, dear! oh, dear!<br /> +What chum of mine could have done it? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW15"></a>Zenas Witt</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was sixteen, and I had the most terrible dreams,<br /> +And specks before my eyes, and nervous weakness.<br /> +And I couldn’t remember the books I read,<br /> +Like Frank Drummer who memorized page after page.<br /> +And my back was weak, and I worried and worried,<br /> +And I was embarrassed and stammered my lessons,<br /> +And when I stood up to recite I’d forget<br /> +Everything that I had studied.<br /> +Well, I saw Dr. Weese’s advertisement,<br /> +And there I read everything in print,<br /> +Just as if he had known me;<br /> +And about the dreams which I couldn’t help.<br /> +So I knew I was marked for an early grave.<br /> +And I worried until I had a cough<br /> +And then the dreams stopped.<br /> +And then I slept the sleep without dreams<br /> +Here on the hill by the river. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT03"></a>Theodore the Poet</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours<br /> +On the shore of the turbid Spoon<br /> +With deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish’s burrow,<br /> +Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead,<br /> +First his waving antennæ, like straws of hay,<br /> +And soon his body, colored like soap-stone,<br /> +Gemmed with eyes of jet.<br /> +And you wondered in a trance of thought<br /> +What he knew, what he desired, and why he lived at all.<br /> +But later your vision watched for men and women<br /> +Hiding in burrows of fate amid great cities,<br /> +Looking for the souls of them to come out,<br /> +So that you could see<br /> +How they lived, and for what,<br /> +And why they kept crawling so busily<br /> +Along the sandy way where water fails<br /> +As the summer wanes. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM14"></a>The Town Marshal</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The Prohibitionists made me Town Marshal<br /> +When the saloons were voted out,<br /> +Because when I was a drinking man,<br /> +Before I joined the church, I killed a Swede<br /> +At the saw-mill near Maple Grove.<br /> +And they wanted a terrible man,<br /> +Grim, righteous, strong, courageous,<br /> +And a hater of saloons and drinkers,<br /> +To keep law and order in the village.<br /> +And they presented me with a loaded cane<br /> +With which I struck Jack McGuire<br /> +Before he drew the gun with which he killed me.<br /> +The Prohibitionists spent their money in vain<br /> +To hang him, for in a dream<br /> +I appeared to one of the twelve jurymen<br /> +And told him the whole secret story.<br /> +Fourteen years were enough for killing me. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM08"></a>Jack McGuire</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +They would have lynched me<br /> +Had I not been secretly hurried away<br /> +To the jail at Peoria.<br /> +And yet I was going peacefully home,<br /> +Carrying my jug, a little drunk,<br /> +When Logan, the marshal, halted me<br /> +Called me a drunken hound and shook me<br /> +And, when I cursed him for it, struck me<br /> +With that Prohibition loaded cane—<br /> +All this before I shot him.<br /> +They would have hanged me except for this:<br /> +My lawyer, Kinsey Keene, was helping to land<br /> +Old Thomas Rhodes for wrecking the bank,<br /> +And the judge was a friend of<br /> +Rhodes And wanted him to escape,<br /> +And Kinsey offered to quit on Rhodes<br /> +For fourteen years for me.<br /> +And the bargain was made.<br /> +I served my time<br /> +And learned to read and write. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG08"></a>Jacob Goodpasture</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +When Fort Sumter fell and the war came<br /> +I cried out in bitterness of soul:<br /> +“O glorious republic now no more!”<br /> +When they buried my soldier son<br /> +To the call of trumpets and the sound of drums<br /> +My heart broke beneath the weight<br /> +Of eighty years, and I cried:<br /> +“Oh, son who died in a cause unjust!<br /> +In the strife of Freedom slain!”<br /> +And I crept here under the grass.<br /> +And now from the battlements of time, behold:<br /> +Thrice thirty million souls being bound together<br /> +In the love of larger truth,<br /> +Rapt in the expectation of the birth<br /> +Of a new Beauty,<br /> +Sprung from Brotherhood and Wisdom.<br /> +I with eyes of spirit see the Transfiguration<br /> +Before you see it.<br /> +But ye infinite brood of golden eagles nesting ever higher,<br /> +Wheeling ever higher, the sun-light wooing<br /> +Of lofty places of Thought,<br /> +Forgive the blindness of the departed owl. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG14"></a>Dorcas Gustine</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was not beloved of the villagers,<br /> +But all because I spoke my mind,<br /> +And met those who transgressed against me<br /> +With plain remonstrance, hiding nor nurturing<br /> +Nor secret griefs nor grudges.<br /> +That act of the Spartan boy is greatly praised,<br /> +Who hid the wolf under his cloak,<br /> +Letting it devour him, uncomplainingly.<br /> +It is braver, I think, to snatch the wolf forth<br /> +And fight him openly, even in the street,<br /> +Amid dust and howls of pain.<br /> +The tongue may be an unruly member—<br /> +But silence poisons the soul.<br /> +Berate me who will—I am content. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB09"></a>Nicholas Bindle</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Were you not ashamed, fellow citizens,<br /> +When my estate was probated and everyone knew<br /> +How small a fortune I left?—<br /> +You who hounded me in life,<br /> +To give, give, give to the churches, to the poor,<br /> +To the village!—me who had already given much.<br /> +And think you not I did not know<br /> +That the pipe-organ, which I gave to the church,<br /> +Played its christening songs when Deacon Rhodes,<br /> +Who broke and all but ruined me,<br /> +Worshipped for the first time after his acquittal? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapA03"></a>Harold Arnett</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I leaned against the mantel, sick, sick,<br /> +Thinking of my failure, looking into the abysm,<br /> +Weak from the noon-day heat.<br /> +A church bell sounded mournfully far away,<br /> +I heard the cry of a baby,<br /> +And the coughing of John Yarnell,<br /> +Bed-ridden, feverish, feverish, dying,<br /> +Then the violent voice of my wife:<br /> +“Watch out, the potatoes are burning!”<br /> +I smelled them . . . then there was irresistible disgust.<br /> +I pulled the trigger . . . blackness . . . light . . .<br /> +Unspeakable regret . . . fumbling for the world again.<br /> +Too late! Thus I came here,<br /> +With lungs for breathing . . . one cannot breathe here with lungs,<br /> +Though one must breathe<br /> +Of what use is it To rid one’s self of the world,<br /> +When no soul may ever escape the eternal destiny of life? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS18"></a>Margaret Fuller Slack</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I would have been as great as George Eliot<br /> +But for an untoward fate.<br /> +For look at the photograph of me made by Penniwit,<br /> +Chin resting on hand, and deep—set eyes—<br /> +Gray, too, and far-searching.<br /> +But there was the old, old problem:<br /> +Should it be celibacy, matrimony or unchastity?<br /> +Then John Slack, the rich druggist, wooed me,<br /> +Luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel,<br /> +And I married him, giving birth to eight children,<br /> +And had no time to write.<br /> +It was all over with me, anyway,<br /> +When I ran the needle in my hand<br /> +While washing the baby’s things,<br /> +And died from lock—jaw, an ironical death.<br /> +Hear me, ambitious souls,<br /> +Sex is the curse of life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT10"></a>George Trimble</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Do you remember when I stood on the steps<br /> +Of the Court House and talked free-silver,<br /> +And the single-tax of Henry George?<br /> +Then do you remember that, when the Peerless Leader<br /> +Lost the first battle, I began to talk prohibition,<br /> +And became active in the church?<br /> +That was due to my wife,<br /> +Who pictured to me my destruction<br /> +If I did not prove my morality to the people.<br /> +Well, she ruined me:<br /> +For the radicals grew suspicious of me,<br /> +And the conservatives were never sure of me—<br /> +And here I lie, unwept of all. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapI01"></a>Dr. Siegfried Iseman</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I said when they handed me my diploma,<br /> +I said to myself I will be good<br /> +And wise and brave and helpful to others;<br /> +I said I will carry the Christian creed<br /> +Into the practice of medicine!<br /> +Somehow the world and the other doctors<br /> +Know what’s in your heart as soon as you make<br /> +This high-souled resolution.<br /> +And the way of it is they starve you out.<br /> +And no one comes to you but the poor.<br /> +And you find too late that being a doctor<br /> +Is just a way of making a living.<br /> +And when you are poor and have to carry<br /> +The Christian creed and wife and children<br /> +All on your back, it is too much!<br /> +That’s why I made the Elixir of Youth,<br /> +Which landed me in the jail at Peoria<br /> +Branded a swindler and a crook<br /> +By the upright Federal Judge! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS10"></a>“Ace” Shaw</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I never saw any difference<br /> +Between playing cards for money<br /> +And selling real estate,<br /> +Practicing law, banking, or anything else.<br /> +For everything is chance.<br /> +Nevertheless<br /> +Seest thou a man diligent in business?<br /> +He shall stand before Kings! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS24"></a>Lois Spears</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Here lies the body of Lois Spears,<br /> +Born Lois Fluke, daughter of Willard Fluke,<br /> +Wife of Cyrus Spears,<br /> +Mother of Myrtle and Virgil Spears,<br /> +Children with clear eyes and sound limbs—<br /> +(I was born blind)<br /> +I was the happiest of women<br /> +As wife, mother and housekeeper.<br /> +Caring for my loved ones,<br /> +And making my home<br /> +A place of order and bounteous hospitality:<br /> +For I went about the rooms,<br /> +And about the garden<br /> +With an instinct as sure as sight,<br /> +As though there were eyes in my finger tips—<br /> +Glory to God in the highest. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapA04"></a>Justice Arnett</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +It is true, fellow citizens,<br /> +That my old docket lying there for years<br /> +On a shelf above my head and over<br /> +The seat of justice, I say it is true<br /> +That docket had an iron rim<br /> +Which gashed my baldness when it fell—<br /> +(Somehow I think it was shaken loose<br /> +By the heave of the air all over town<br /> +When the gasoline tank at the canning works<br /> +Blew up and burned Butch Weldy)—<br /> +But let us argue points in order,<br /> +And reason the whole case carefully:<br /> +First I concede my head was cut,<br /> +But second the frightful thing was this:<br /> +The leaves of the docket shot and showered<br /> +Around me like a deck of cards<br /> +In the hands of a sleight of hand performer.<br /> +And up to the end I saw those leaves<br /> +Till I said at last, “Those are not leaves,<br /> +Why, can’t you see they are days and days<br /> +And the days and days of seventy years?<br /> +And why do you torture me with leaves<br /> +And the little entries on them? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF05"></a>Willard Fluke</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +My wife lost her health,<br /> +And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds.<br /> +Then that woman, whom the men<br /> +Styled Cleopatra, came along.<br /> +And we—we married ones<br /> +All broke our vows, myself among the rest.<br /> +Years passed and one by one<br /> +Death claimed them all in some hideous form<br /> +And I was borne along by dreams<br /> +Of God’s particular grace for me,<br /> +And I began to write, write, write, reams on reams<br /> +Of the second coming of Christ.<br /> +Then Christ came to me and said,<br /> +“Go into the church and stand before the congregation<br /> +And confess your sin.”<br /> +But just as I stood up and began to speak<br /> +I saw my little girl, who was sitting in the front seat—<br /> +My little girl who was born blind!<br /> +After that, all is blackness. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC15"></a>Aner Clute</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Over and over they used to ask me,<br /> +While buying the wine or the beer,<br /> +In Peoria first, and later in Chicago,<br /> +Denver, Frisco, New York, wherever I lived<br /> +How I happened to lead the life,<br /> +And what was the start of it.<br /> +Well, I told them a silk dress,<br /> +And a promise of marriage from a rich man—<br /> +(It was Lucius Atherton).<br /> +But that was not really it at all.<br /> +Suppose a boy steals an apple<br /> +From the tray at the grocery store,<br /> +And they all begin to call him a thief,<br /> +The editor, minister, judge, and all the people—<br /> +“A thief,” “a thief,” “a thief,” wherever he goes<br /> +And he can’t get work, and he can’t get bread<br /> +Without stealing it, why the boy will steal.<br /> +It’s the way the people regard the theft of the apple<br /> +That makes the boy what he is. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapA06"></a>Lucius Atherton</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +When my moustache curled,<br /> +And my hair was black,<br /> +And I wore tight trousers<br /> +And a diamond stud,<br /> +I was an excellent knave of hearts and took many a trick.<br /> +But when the gray hairs began to appear—<br /> +Lo! a new generation of girls<br /> +Laughed at me, not fearing me,<br /> +And I had no more exciting adventures<br /> +Wherein I was all but shot for a heartless devil,<br /> +But only drabby affairs, warmed-over affairs<br /> +Of other days and other men.<br /> +And time went on until I lived at<br /> +Mayer’s restaurant,<br /> +Partaking of short-orders, a gray, untidy,<br /> +Toothless, discarded, rural Don Juan. . . .<br /> +There is a mighty shade here who sings<br /> +Of one named Beatrice;<br /> +And I see now that the force that made him great<br /> +Drove me to the dregs of life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC13"></a>Homer Clapp</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Often Aner Clute at the gate<br /> +Refused me the parting kiss,<br /> +Saying we should be engaged before that;<br /> +And just with a distant clasp of the hand<br /> +She bade me good-night, as I brought her home<br /> +From the skating rink or the revival.<br /> +No sooner did my departing footsteps die away<br /> +Than Lucius Atherton,<br /> +(So I learned when Aner went to Peoria)<br /> +Stole in at her window, or took her riding<br /> +Behind his spanking team of bays<br /> +Into the country.<br /> +The shock of it made me settle down<br /> +And I put all the money I got from my father’s estate<br /> +Into the canning factory, to get the job<br /> +Of head accountant, and lost it all.<br /> +And then I knew I was one of Life’s fools,<br /> +Whom only death would treat as the equal<br /> +Of other men, making me feel like a man. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT02"></a>Deacon Taylor</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I belonged to the church,<br /> +And to the party of prohibition;<br /> +And the villagers thought I died of eating watermelon.<br /> +In truth I had cirrhosis of the liver,<br /> +For every noon for thirty years,<br /> +I slipped behind the prescription partition<br /> +In Trainor’s drug store<br /> +And poured a generous drink<br /> +From the bottle marked “Spiritus frumenti.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH15"></a>Sam Hookey</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I ran away from home with the circus,<br /> +Having fallen in love with Mademoiselle Estralada,<br /> +The lion tamer.<br /> +One time, having starved the lions<br /> +For more than a day,<br /> +I entered the cage and began to beat Brutus<br /> +And Leo and Gypsy.<br /> +Whereupon Brutus sprang upon me,<br /> +And killed me.<br /> +On entering these regions<br /> +I met a shadow who cursed me,<br /> +And said it served me right. . . .<br /> +It was Robespierre! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP11"></a>Cooney Potter</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I inherited forty acres from my Father<br /> +And, by working my wife, my two sons and two daughters<br /> +From dawn to dusk, I acquired<br /> +A thousand acres.<br /> +But not content,<br /> +Wishing to own two thousand acres,<br /> +I bustled through the years with axe and plow,<br /> +Toiling, denying myself, my wife, my sons, my daughters.<br /> +Squire Higbee wrongs me to say<br /> +That I died from smoking Red Eagle cigars.<br /> +Eating hot pie and gulping coffee<br /> +During the scorching hours of harvest time<br /> +Brought me here ere I had reached my sixtieth year. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapJ05"></a>Fiddler Jones</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The earth keeps some vibration going<br /> +There in your heart, and that is you.<br /> +And if the people find you can fiddle,<br /> +Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.<br /> +What do you see, a harvest of clover?<br /> +Or a meadow to walk through to the river?<br /> +The wind’s in the corn; you rub your hands<br /> +For beeves hereafter ready for market;<br /> +Or else you hear the rustle of skirts<br /> +Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.<br /> +To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust<br /> +Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;<br /> +They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy<br /> +Stepping it off, to “Toor-a-Loor.”<br /> +How could I till my forty acres<br /> +Not to speak of getting more,<br /> +With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos<br /> +Stirred in my brain by crows and robins<br /> +And the creak of a wind-mill—only these?<br /> +And I never started to plow in my life<br /> +That some one did not stop in the road<br /> +And take me away to a dance or picnic.<br /> +I ended up with forty acres;<br /> +I ended up with a broken fiddle—<br /> +And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,<br /> +And not a single regret. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC14"></a>Nellie Clark</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was only eight years old;<br /> +And before I grew up and knew what it meant<br /> +I had no words for it, except<br /> +That I was frightened and told my<br /> +Mother; And that my Father got a pistol<br /> +And would have killed Charlie, who was a big boy,<br /> +Fifteen years old, except for his Mother.<br /> +Nevertheless the story clung to me.<br /> +But the man who married me, a widower of thirty-five,<br /> +Was a newcomer and never heard it<br /> +’Till two years after we were married.<br /> +Then he considered himself cheated,<br /> +And the village agreed that I was not really a virgin.<br /> +Well, he deserted me, and I died<br /> +The following winter. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS19"></a>Louise Smith</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Herbert broke our engagement of eight years<br /> +When Annabelle returned to the village From the<br /> +Seminary, ah me!<br /> +If I had let my love for him alone<br /> +It might have grown into a beautiful sorrow—<br /> +Who knows?—filling my life with healing fragrance.<br /> +But I tortured it, I poisoned it<br /> +I blinded its eyes, and it became hatred—<br /> +Deadly ivy instead of clematis.<br /> +And my soul fell from its support<br /> +Its tendrils tangled in decay.<br /> +Do not let the will play gardener to your soul<br /> +Unless you are sure<br /> +It is wiser than your soul’s nature. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM15"></a>Herbert Marshall</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +All your sorrow, Louise, and hatred of me<br /> +Sprang from your delusion that it was wantonness<br /> +Of spirit and contempt of your soul’s rights<br /> +Which made me turn to Annabelle and forsake you.<br /> +You really grew to hate me for love of me,<br /> +Because I was your soul’s happiness,<br /> +Formed and tempered<br /> +To solve your life for you, and would not.<br /> +But you were my misery.<br /> +If you had been<br /> +My happiness would I not have clung to you?<br /> +This is life’s sorrow:<br /> +That one can be happy only where two are;<br /> +And that our hearts are drawn to stars<br /> +Which want us not. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG10"></a>George Gray</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I have studied many times<br /> +The marble which was chiseled for me—<br /> +A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.<br /> +In truth it pictures not my destination<br /> +But my life.<br /> +For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;<br /> +Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;<br /> +Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.<br /> +Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.<br /> +And now I know that we must lift the sail<br /> +And catch the winds of destiny<br /> +Wherever they drive the boat.<br /> +To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,<br /> +But life without meaning is the torture<br /> +Of restlessness and vague desire—<br /> +It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB08"></a>Hon. Henry Bennett</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +It never came into my mind<br /> +Until I was ready to die<br /> +That Jenny had loved me to death, with malice of heart.<br /> +For I was seventy, she was thirty—five,<br /> +And I wore myself to a shadow trying to husband<br /> +Jenny, rosy Jenny full of the ardor of life.<br /> +For all my wisdom and grace of mind<br /> +Gave her no delight at all, in very truth,<br /> +But ever and anon she spoke of the giant strength<br /> +Of Willard Shafer, and of his wonderful feat<br /> +Of lifting a traction engine out of the ditch<br /> +One time at Georgie Kirby’s.<br /> +So Jenny inherited my fortune and married Willard—<br /> +That mount of brawn! That clownish soul! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG13"></a>Griffy the Cooper</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The cooper should know about tubs.<br /> +But I learned about life as well,<br /> +And you who loiter around these graves<br /> +Think you know life.<br /> +You think your eye sweeps about a wide horizon, perhaps,<br /> +In truth you are only looking around the interior of your tub.<br /> +You cannot lift yourself to its rim<br /> +And see the outer world of things,<br /> +And at the same time see yourself.<br /> +You are submerged in the tub of yourself—<br /> +Taboos and rules and appearances,<br /> +Are the staves of your tub.<br /> +Break them and dispel the witchcraft<br /> +Of thinking your tub is life<br /> +And that you know life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS07"></a>Sersmith the Dentist</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Do you think that odes and sermons,<br /> +And the ringing of church bells,<br /> +And the blood of old men and young men,<br /> +Martyred for the truth they saw<br /> +With eyes made bright by faith in God,<br /> +Accomplished the world’s great reformations?<br /> +Do you think that the Battle Hymn of the Republic<br /> +Would have been heard if the chattel slave<br /> +Had crowned the dominant dollar,<br /> +In spite of Whitney’s cotton gin,<br /> +And steam and rolling mills and iron<br /> +And telegraphs and white free labor?<br /> +Do you think that Daisy Fraser<br /> +Had been put out and driven out<br /> +If the canning works had never needed<br /> +Her little house and lot?<br /> +Or do you think the poker room<br /> +Of Johnnie Taylor, and Burchard’s bar<br /> +Had been closed up if the money lost<br /> +And spent for beer had not been turned,<br /> +By closing them, to Thomas Rhodes<br /> +For larger sales of shoes and blankets,<br /> +And children’s cloaks and gold-oak cradles?<br /> +Why, a moral truth is a hollow tooth<br /> +Which must be propped with gold. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB11"></a>A. D. Blood</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +If you in the village think that my work was a good one,<br /> +Who closed the saloons and stopped all playing at cards,<br /> +And haled old Daisy Fraser before Justice Arnett,<br /> +In many a crusade to purge the people of sin;<br /> +Why do you let the milliner’s daughter Dora,<br /> +And the worthless son of Benjamin Pantier<br /> +Nightly make my grave their unholy pillow? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB18"></a>Robert Southey Burke</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I spent my money trying to elect you Mayor<br /> +A. D. Blood.<br /> +I lavished my admiration upon you,<br /> +You were to my mind the almost perfect man.<br /> +You devoured my personality,<br /> +And the idealism of my youth,<br /> +And the strength of a high-souled fealty.<br /> +And all my hopes for the world,<br /> +And all my beliefs in Truth,<br /> +Were smelted up in the blinding heat<br /> +Of my devotion to you,<br /> +And molded into your image.<br /> +And then when I found what you were:<br /> +That your soul was small<br /> +And your words were false<br /> +As your blue-white porcelain teeth,<br /> +And your cuffs of celluloid,<br /> +I hated the love I had for you,<br /> +I hated myself, I hated you<br /> +For my wasted soul, and wasted youth.<br /> +And I say to all, beware of ideals,<br /> +Beware of giving your love away<br /> +To any man alive. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW12"></a>Dora Williams</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +When Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me<br /> +I went to Springfield. There I met a lush,<br /> +Whose father just deceased left him a fortune.<br /> +He married me when drunk.<br /> +My life was wretched.<br /> +A year passed and one day they found him dead.<br /> +That made me rich. I moved on to Chicago.<br /> +After a time met Tyler Rountree, villain.<br /> +I moved on to New York. A gray-haired magnate<br /> +Went mad about me—so another fortune.<br /> +He died one night right in my arms, you know.<br /> +(I saw his purple face for years thereafter. )<br /> +There was almost a scandal.<br /> +I moved on, This time to Paris. I was now a woman,<br /> +Insidious, subtle, versed in the world and rich.<br /> +My sweet apartment near the Champs Elysees<br /> +Became a center for all sorts of people,<br /> +Musicians, poets, dandies, artists, nobles,<br /> +Where we spoke French and German, Italian, English.<br /> +I wed Count Navigato, native of Genoa.<br /> +We went to Rome. He poisoned me, I think.<br /> +Now in the Campo Santo overlooking<br /> +The sea where young Columbus dreamed new worlds,<br /> +See what they chiseled: “Contessa Navigato<br /> +Implora eterna quiete.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW13"></a>Mrs. Williams</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was the milliner<br /> +Talked about, lied about,<br /> +Mother of Dora,<br /> +Whose strange disappearance<br /> +Was charged to her rearing.<br /> +My eye quick to beauty<br /> +Saw much beside ribbons<br /> +And buckles and feathers<br /> +And leghorns and felts,<br /> +To set off sweet faces,<br /> +And dark hair and gold.<br /> +One thing I will tell you<br /> +And one I will ask:<br /> +The stealers of husbands<br /> +Wear powder and trinkets,<br /> +And fashionable hats.<br /> +Wives, wear them yourselves.<br /> +Hats may make divorces—<br /> +They also prevent them.<br /> +Well now, let me ask you:<br /> +If all of the children, born here in Spoon River<br /> +Had been reared by the<br /> +County, somewhere on a farm;<br /> +And the fathers and mothers had been given their freedom<br /> +To live and enjoy, change mates if they wished,<br /> +Do you think that Spoon River<br /> +Had been any the worse? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW11"></a>William and Emily</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +There is something about Death<br /> +Like love itself!<br /> +If with some one with whom you have known passion<br /> +And the glow of youthful love,<br /> +You also, after years of life<br /> +Together, feel the sinking of the fire<br /> +And thus fade away together,<br /> +Gradually, faintly, delicately,<br /> +As it were in each other’s arms,<br /> +Passing from the familiar room—<br /> +That is a power of unison between souls<br /> +Like love itself! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapJ10"></a>The Circuit Judge</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Take note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions<br /> +Eaten in my head-stone by the wind and rain—<br /> +Almost as if an intangible Nemesis or hatred<br /> +Were marking scores against me,<br /> +But to destroy, and not preserve, my memory.<br /> +I in life was the Circuit Judge, a maker of notches,<br /> +Deciding cases on the points the lawyers scored,<br /> +Not on the right of the matter.<br /> +O wind and rain, leave my head-stone alone<br /> +For worse than the anger of the wronged,<br /> +The curses of the poor,<br /> +Was to lie speechless, yet with vision clear,<br /> +Seeing that even Hod Putt, the murderer,<br /> +Hanged by my sentence,<br /> +Was innocent in soul compared with me. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapJ01"></a>Blind Jack</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I had fiddled all day at the county fair.<br /> +But driving home “Butch” Weldy and Jack McGuire,<br /> +Who were roaring full, made me fiddle and fiddle<br /> +To the song of <i>Susie Skinner</i>, while whipping the horses<br /> +Till they ran away. Blind as I was, I tried to get out<br /> +As the carriage fell in the ditch,<br /> +And was caught in the wheels and killed.<br /> +There’s a blind man here with a brow<br /> +As big and white as a cloud.<br /> +And all we fiddlers, from highest to lowest,<br /> +Writers of music and tellers of stories<br /> +Sit at his feet,<br /> +And hear him sing of the fall of Troy. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB19"></a>John Horace Burleson</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I won the prize essay at school<br /> +Here in the village,<br /> +And published a novel before I was twenty-five.<br /> +I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art;<br /> +There married the banker’s daughter,<br /> +And later became president of the bank—<br /> +Always looking forward to some leisure<br /> +To write an epic novel of the war.<br /> +Meanwhile friend of the great, and lover of letters,<br /> +And host to Matthew Arnold and to Emerson.<br /> +An after dinner speaker, writing essays<br /> +For local clubs. At last brought here—<br /> +My boyhood home, you know—<br /> +Not even a little tablet in Chicago<br /> +To keep my name alive.<br /> +How great it is to write the single line:<br /> +“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll!“ +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK09"></a>Nancy Knapp</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Well, don’t you see this was the way of it:<br /> +We bought the farm with what he inherited,<br /> +And his brothers and sisters accused him of poisoning<br /> +His father’s mind against the rest of them.<br /> +And we never had any peace with our treasure.<br /> +The murrain took the cattle, and the crops failed.<br /> +And lightning struck the granary.<br /> +So we mortgaged the farm to keep going.<br /> +And he grew silent and was worried all the time.<br /> +Then some of the neighbors refused to speak to us,<br /> +And took sides with his brothers and sisters.<br /> +And I had no place to turn, as one may say to himself,<br /> +At an earlier time in life;<br /> +“No matter, So and so is my friend, or I can shake this off<br /> +With a little trip to Decatur.”<br /> +Then the dreadfulest smells infested the rooms.<br /> +So I set fire to the beds and the old witch-house<br /> +Went up in a roar of flame,<br /> +As I danced in the yard with waving arms,<br /> +While he wept like a freezing steer. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH14"></a>Barry Holden</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The very fall my sister Nancy Knapp<br /> +Set fire to the house<br /> +They were trying Dr. Duval<br /> +For the murder of Zora Clemens,<br /> +And I sat in the court two weeks<br /> +Listening to every witness.<br /> +It was clear he had got her in a family way;<br /> +And to let the child be born<br /> +Would not do.<br /> +Well, how about me with eight children,<br /> +And one coming, and the farm<br /> +Mortgaged to Thomas Rhodes?<br /> +And when I got home that night,<br /> +(After listening to the story of the buggy ride,<br /> +And the finding of Zora in the ditch,)<br /> +The first thing I saw, right there by the steps,<br /> +Where the boys had hacked for angle worms,<br /> +Was the hatchet!<br /> +And just as I entered there was my wife,<br /> +Standing before me, big with child.<br /> +She started the talk of the mortgaged farm,<br /> +And I killed her. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF01"></a>State’s Attorney Fallas</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I, the scourge-wielder, balance-wrecker,<br /> +Smiter with whips and swords;<br /> +I, hater of the breakers of the law;<br /> +I, legalist, inexorable and bitter,<br /> +Driving the jury to hang the madman, Barry Holden,<br /> +Was made as one dead by light too bright for eyes,<br /> +And woke to face a Truth with bloody brow:<br /> +Steel forceps fumbled by a doctor’s hand<br /> +Against my boy’s head as he entered life<br /> +Made him an idiot. I turned to books of science<br /> +To care for him.<br /> +That’s how the world of those whose minds are sick<br /> +Became my work in life, and all my world.<br /> +Poor ruined boy! You were, at last, the potter<br /> +And I and all my deeds of charity<br /> +The vessels of your hand. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB12"></a>Wendell P. Bloyd</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +They first charged me with disorderly conduct,<br /> +There being no statute on blasphemy.<br /> +Later they locked me up as insane<br /> +Where I was beaten to death by a Catholic guard.<br /> +My offense was this:<br /> +I said God lied to Adam, and destined him<br /> +To lead the life of a fool,<br /> +Ignorant that there is evil in the world as well as good.<br /> +And when Adam outwitted God by eating the apple<br /> +And saw through the lie,<br /> +God drove him out of Eden to keep him from taking<br /> +The fruit of immortal life.<br /> +For Christ’s sake, you sensible people,<br /> +Here’s what God Himself says about it in the book of Genesis:<br /> +“And the Lord God said, behold the man<br /> +Is become as one of us” (a little envy, you see),<br /> +“To know good and evil” (The all-is-good lie exposed):<br /> +“And now lest he put forth his hand and take<br /> +Also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever:<br /> +Therefore the Lord God sent Him forth from the garden of Eden.” (The<br /> +reason I believe God crucified His Own Son<br /> +To get out of the wretched tangle is, because it sounds just like Him. ) +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT13"></a>Francis Turner</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I could not run or play<br /> +In boyhood.<br /> +In manhood I could only sip the cup,<br /> +Not drink—For scarlet-fever left my heart diseased.<br /> +Yet I lie here<br /> +Soothed by a secret none but Mary knows:<br /> +There is a garden of acacia,<br /> +Catalpa trees, and arbors sweet with vines—<br /> +There on that afternoon in June<br /> +By Mary’s side—<br /> +Kissing her with my soul upon my lips<br /> +It suddenly took flight. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapJ06"></a>Franklin Jones</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +If I could have lived another year<br /> +I could have finished my flying machine,<br /> +And become rich and famous.<br /> +Hence it is fitting the workman<br /> +Who tried to chisel a dove for me<br /> +Made it look more like a chicken.<br /> +For what is it all but being hatched,<br /> +And running about the yard,<br /> +To the day of the block?<br /> +Save that a man has an angel’s brain,<br /> +And sees the ax from the first! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC11"></a>John M. Church</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was attorney for the “Q”<br /> +And the Indemnity Company which insured<br /> +The owners of the mine.<br /> +I pulled the wires with judge and jury,<br /> +And the upper courts, to beat the claims<br /> +Of the crippled, the widow and orphan,<br /> +And made a fortune thereat.<br /> +The bar association sang my praises<br /> +In a high-flown resolution.<br /> +And the floral tributes were many—<br /> +But the rats devoured my heart<br /> +And a snake made a nest in my skull +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapR08"></a>Russian Sonia</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I, born in Weimar<br /> +Of a mother who was French<br /> +And German father, a most learned professor,<br /> +Orphaned at fourteen years,<br /> +Became a dancer, known as Russian Sonia,<br /> +All up and down the boulevards of Paris,<br /> +Mistress betimes of sundry dukes and counts,<br /> +And later of poor artists and of poets.<br /> +At forty years, <i>passée</i>, I sought New York<br /> +And met old Patrick Hummer on the boat,<br /> +Red-faced and hale, though turned his sixtieth year,<br /> +Returning after having sold a ship-load<br /> +Of cattle in the German city, Hamburg.<br /> +He brought me to Spoon River and we lived here<br /> +For twenty years—they thought that we were married<br /> +This oak tree near me is the favorite haunt<br /> +Of blue jays chattering, chattering all the day.<br /> +And why not? for my very dust is laughing<br /> +For thinking of the humorous thing called life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapN03"></a>Isa Nutter</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Doc Meyers said I had satyriasis,<br /> +And Doc Hill called it leucæmia—<br /> +But I know what brought me here:<br /> +I was sixty-four but strong as a man<br /> +Of thirty-five or forty.<br /> +And it wasn’t writing a letter a day,<br /> +And it wasn’t late hours seven nights a week,<br /> +And it wasn’t the strain of thinking of Minnie,<br /> +And it wasn’t fear or a jealous dread,<br /> +Or the endless task of trying to fathom<br /> +Her wonderful mind, or sympathy<br /> +For the wretched life she led<br /> +With her first and second husband—<br /> +It was none of these that laid me low—<br /> +But the clamor of daughters and threats of sons,<br /> +And the sneers and curses of all my kin<br /> +Right up to the day I sneaked to Peoria<br /> +And married Minnie in spite of them—<br /> +And why do you wonder my will was made<br /> +For the best and purest of women? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH01"></a>Barney Hainsfeather</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +If the excursion train to Peoria<br /> +Had just been wrecked, I might have escaped with my life—<br /> +Certainly I should have escaped this place.<br /> +But as it was burned as well, they mistook me<br /> +For John Allen who was sent to the Hebrew Cemetery<br /> +At Chicago,<br /> +And John for me, so I lie here.<br /> +It was bad enough to run a clothing store in this town,<br /> +But to be buried here—<i>ach!</i> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP07"></a>Petit, the Poet</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,<br /> +Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel—<br /> +Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens—<br /> +But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.<br /> +Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,<br /> +Ballades by the score with the same old thought:<br /> +The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;<br /> +And what is love but a rose that fades?<br /> +Life all around me here in the village:<br /> +Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,<br /> +Courage, constancy, heroism, failure—<br /> +All in the loom, and oh what patterns!<br /> +Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers—<br /> +Blind to all of it all my life long.<br /> +Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,<br /> +Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics,<br /> +While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB03"></a>Pauline Barrett</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Almost the shell of a woman after the surgeon’s knife<br /> +And almost a year to creep back into strength,<br /> +Till the dawn of our wedding decennial<br /> +Found me my seeming self again.<br /> +We walked the forest together,<br /> +By a path of soundless moss and turf.<br /> +But I could not look in your eyes,<br /> +And you could not look in my eyes,<br /> +For such sorrow was ours—the beginning of gray in your hair.<br /> +And I but a shell of myself.<br /> +And what did we talk of?—sky and water,<br /> +Anything, ’most, to hide our thoughts.<br /> +And then your gift of wild roses,<br /> +Set on the table to grace our dinner.<br /> +Poor heart, how bravely you struggled<br /> +To imagine and live a remembered rapture!<br /> +Then my spirit drooped as the night came on,<br /> +And you left me alone in my room for a while,<br /> +As you did when I was a bride, poor heart.<br /> +And I looked in the mirror and something said:<br /> +“One should be all dead when one is half-dead—”<br /> +Nor ever mock life, nor ever cheat love.”<br /> +And I did it looking there in the mirror—<br /> +Dear, have you ever understood? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB10"></a>Mrs. Charles Bliss</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Reverend Wiley advised me not to divorce him<br /> +For the sake of the children,<br /> +And Judge Somers advised him the same.<br /> +So we stuck to the end of the path.<br /> +But two of the children thought he was right,<br /> +And two of the children thought I was right.<br /> +And the two who sided with him blamed me,<br /> +And the two who sided with me blamed him,<br /> +And they grieved for the one they sided with.<br /> +And all were torn with the guilt of judging,<br /> +And tortured in soul because they could not admire<br /> +Equally him and me.<br /> +Now every gardener knows that plants grown in cellars<br /> +Or under stones are twisted and yellow and weak.<br /> +And no mother would let her baby suck<br /> +Diseased milk from her breast.<br /> +Yet preachers and judges advise the raising of souls<br /> +Where there is no sunlight, but only twilight,<br /> +No warmth, but only dampness and cold—<br /> +Preachers and judges! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapR01"></a>Mrs. George Reece</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +To this generation I would say:<br /> +Memorize some bit of verse of truth or beauty.<br /> +It may serve a turn in your life.<br /> +My husband had nothing to do<br /> +With the fall of the bank—he was only cashier.<br /> +The wreck was due to the president, Thomas Rhodes,<br /> +And his vain, unscrupulous son.<br /> +Yet my husband was sent to prison,<br /> +And I was left with the children,<br /> +To feed and clothe and school them.<br /> +And I did it, and sent them forth<br /> +Into the world all clean and strong,<br /> +And all through the wisdom of Pope, the poet:<br /> +“Act well your part, there all the honor lies.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW09"></a>Rev. Lemuel Wiley</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I preached four thousand sermons,<br /> +I conducted forty revivals,<br /> +And baptized many converts.<br /> +Yet no deed of mine<br /> +Shines brighter in the memory of the world,<br /> +And none is treasured more by me:<br /> +Look how I saved the Blisses from divorce,<br /> +And kept the children free from that disgrace,<br /> +To grow up into moral men and women,<br /> +Happy themselves, a credit to the village. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapR07"></a>Thomas Ross, Jr.</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +This I saw with my own eyes: A cliff—swallow<br /> +Made her nest in a hole of the high clay-bank<br /> +There near Miller’s Ford.<br /> +But no sooner were the young hatched<br /> +Than a snake crawled up to the nest<br /> +To devour the brood.<br /> +Then the mother swallow with swift flutterings<br /> +And shrill cries<br /> +Fought at the snake,<br /> +Blinding him with the beat of her wings,<br /> +Until he, wriggling and rearing his head,<br /> +Fell backward down the bank<br /> +Into Spoon River and was drowned.<br /> +Scarcely an hour passed<br /> +Until a shrike<br /> +Impaled the mother swallow on a thorn.<br /> +As for myself I overcame my lower nature<br /> +Only to be destroyed by my brother’s ambition. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP04"></a>Rev. Abner Peet</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I had no objection at all<br /> +To selling my household effects at auction<br /> +On the village square.<br /> +It gave my beloved flock the chance<br /> +To get something which had belonged to me<br /> +For a memorial.<br /> +But that trunk which was struck off<br /> +To Burchard, the grog-keeper!<br /> +Did you know it contained the manuscripts<br /> +Of a lifetime of sermons?<br /> +And he burned them as waste paper. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH17"></a>Jefferson Howard</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +My valiant fight! For I call it valiant,<br /> +With my father’s beliefs from old Virginia:<br /> +Hating slavery, but no less war.<br /> +I, full of spirit, audacity, courage<br /> +Thrown into life here in Spoon River,<br /> +With its dominant forces drawn from<br /> +New England, Republicans, Calvinists, merchants, bankers,<br /> +Hating me, yet fearing my arm.<br /> +With wife and children heavy to carry—<br /> +Yet fruits of my very zest of life.<br /> +Stealing odd pleasures that cost me prestige,<br /> +And reaping evils I had not sown;<br /> +Foe of the church with its charnel dankness,<br /> +Friend of the human touch of the tavern;<br /> +Tangled with fates all alien to me,<br /> +Deserted by hands I called my own.<br /> +Then just as I felt my giant strength<br /> +Short of breath, behold my children<br /> +Had wound their lives in stranger gardens—<br /> +And I stood alone, as I started alone<br /> +My valiant life! I died on my feet,<br /> +Facing the silence—facing the prospect<br /> +That no one would know of the fight I made. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapL02"></a>Judge Selah Lively</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Suppose you stood just five feet two,<br /> +And had worked your way as a grocery clerk,<br /> +Studying law by candle light<br /> +Until you became an attorney at law?<br /> +And then suppose through your diligence,<br /> +And regular church attendance,<br /> +You became attorney for Thomas Rhodes,<br /> +Collecting notes and mortgages,<br /> +And representing all the widows<br /> +In the Probate Court? And through it all<br /> +They jeered at your size, and laughed at your clothes<br /> +And your polished boots? And then suppose<br /> +You became the County Judge?<br /> +And Jefferson Howard and Kinsey Keene,<br /> +And Harmon Whitney, and all the giants<br /> +Who had sneered at you, were forced to stand<br /> +Before the bar and say “Your Honor”—<br /> +Well, don’t you think it was natural<br /> +That I made it hard for them? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS03"></a>Albert Schirding</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Jonas Keene thought his lot a hard one<br /> +Because his children were all failures.<br /> +But I know of a fate more trying than that:<br /> +It is to be a failure while your children are successes.<br /> +For I raised a brood of eagles<br /> +Who flew away at last, leaving me<br /> +A crow on the abandoned bough.<br /> +Then, with the ambition to prefix<br /> +Honorable to my name,<br /> +And thus to win my children’s admiration,<br /> +I ran for County Superintendent of Schools,<br /> +Spending my accumulations to win—and lost.<br /> +That fall my daughter received first prize in Paris<br /> +For her picture, entitled, “The Old Mill”—<br /> +(It was of the water mill before Henry Wilkin put in steam.)<br /> +The feeling that I was not worthy of her finished me. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK02"></a>Jonas Keene</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Why did Albert Schirding kill himself<br /> +Trying to be County Superintendent of Schools,<br /> +Blest as he was with the means of life<br /> +And wonderful children, bringing him honor<br /> +Ere he was sixty?<br /> +If even one of my boys could have run a news-stand,<br /> +Or one of my girls could have married a decent man,<br /> +I should not have walked in the rain<br /> +And jumped into bed with clothes all wet,<br /> +Refusing medical aid. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT06"></a>Eugenia Todd</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Have any of you, passers-by,<br /> +Had an old tooth that was an unceasing discomfort?<br /> +Or a pain in the side that never quite left you?<br /> +Or a malignant growth that grew with time?<br /> +So that even in profoundest slumber<br /> +There was shadowy consciousness or the phantom of thought<br /> +Of the tooth, the side, the growth?<br /> +Even so thwarted love, or defeated ambition,<br /> +Or a blunder in life which mixed your life<br /> +Hopelessly to the end,<br /> +Will like a tooth, or a pain in the side,<br /> +Float through your dreams in the final sleep<br /> +Till perfect freedom from the earth-sphere<br /> +Comes to you as one who wakes<br /> +Healed and glad in the morning! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapY01"></a>Yee Bow</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +They got me into the Sunday-school<br /> +In Spoon River<br /> +And tried to get me to drop Confucius for Jesus.<br /> +I could have been no worse off<br /> +If I had tried to get them to drop Jesus for Confucius.<br /> +For, without any warning, as if it were a prank,<br /> +And sneaking up behind me, Harry Wiley,<br /> +The minister’s son, caved my ribs into my lungs,<br /> +With a blow of his fist.<br /> +Now I shall never sleep with my ancestors in Pekin,<br /> +And no children shall worship at my grave. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM11"></a>Washington McNeely</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Rich, honored by my fellow citizens,<br /> +The father of many children, born of a noble mother,<br /> +All raised there<br /> +In the great mansion—house, at the edge of town.<br /> +Note the cedar tree on the lawn!<br /> +I sent all the boys to Ann Arbor, all of the girls to Rockford,<br /> +The while my life went on, getting more riches and honors—<br /> +Resting under my cedar tree at evening.<br /> +The years went on.<br /> +I sent the girls to Europe;<br /> +I dowered them when married.<br /> +I gave the boys money to start in business.<br /> +They were strong children, promising as apples<br /> +Before the bitten places show.<br /> +But John fled the country in disgrace.<br /> +Jenny died in child-birth—<br /> +I sat under my cedar tree.<br /> +Harry killed himself after a debauch,<br /> +Susan was divorced—<br /> +I sat under my cedar tree.<br /> +Paul was invalided from over study,<br /> +Mary became a recluse at home for love of a man—<br /> +I sat under my cedar tree.<br /> +All were gone, or broken-winged or devoured by life—<br /> +I sat under my cedar tree.<br /> +My mate, the mother of them, was taken—<br /> +I sat under my cedar tree,<br /> +Till ninety years were tolled.<br /> +O maternal Earth, which rocks the fallen leaf to sleep. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM10"></a>Paul McNeely</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Dear Jane! dear winsome Jane!<br /> +How you stole in the room (where I lay so ill)<br /> +In your nurse’s cap and linen cuffs,<br /> +And took my hand and said with a smile:<br /> +“You are not so ill—you’ll soon be well.”<br /> +And how the liquid thought of your eyes<br /> +Sank in my eyes like dew that slips<br /> +Into the heart of a flower.<br /> +Dear Jane! the whole McNeely fortune<br /> +Could not have bought your care of me,<br /> +By day and night, and night and day;<br /> +Nor paid for your smile, nor the warmth of your soul,<br /> +In your little hands laid on my brow.<br /> +Jane, till the flame of life went out<br /> +In the dark above the disk of night<br /> +I longed and hoped to be well again<br /> +To pillow my head on your little breasts,<br /> +And hold you fast in a clasp of love—<br /> +Did my father provide for you when he died,<br /> +Jane, dear Jane? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM09"></a>Mary McNeely</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Passer-by,<br /> +To love is to find your own soul<br /> +Through the soul of the beloved one.<br /> +When the beloved one withdraws itself from your soul<br /> +Then you have lost your soul.<br /> +It is written: “l have a friend,<br /> +But my sorrow has no friend.”<br /> +Hence my long years of solitude at the home of my father,<br /> +Trying to get myself back,<br /> +And to turn my sorrow into a supremer self.<br /> +But there was my father with his sorrows,<br /> +Sitting under the cedar tree,<br /> +A picture that sank into my heart at last<br /> +Bringing infinite repose.<br /> +Oh, ye souls who have made life<br /> +Fragrant and white as tube roses<br /> +From earth’s dark soil,<br /> +Eternal peace! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM01"></a>Daniel M’Cumber</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +When I went to the city, Mary McNeely,<br /> +I meant to return for you, yes I did.<br /> +But Laura, my landlady’s daughter,<br /> +Stole into my life somehow, and won me away.<br /> +Then after some years whom should I meet<br /> +But Georgine Miner from Niles—a sprout<br /> +Of the free love, Fourierist gardens that flourished<br /> +Before the war all over Ohio.<br /> +Her dilettante lover had tired of her,<br /> +And she turned to me for strength and solace.<br /> +She was some kind of a crying thing<br /> +One takes in one’s arms, and all at once<br /> +It slimes your face with its running nose,<br /> +And voids its essence all over you;<br /> +Then bites your hand and springs away.<br /> +And there you stand bleeding and smelling to heaven<br /> +Why, Mary McNeely, I was not worthy<br /> +To kiss the hem of your robe! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM29"></a>Georgine Sand Miner</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +A stepmother drove me from home, embittering me.<br /> +A squaw-man, a flaneur and dilettante took my virtue.<br /> +For years I was his mistress—no one knew.<br /> +I learned from him the parasite cunning<br /> +With which I moved with the bluffs, like a flea on a dog.<br /> +All the time I was nothing but “very private,” with different men.<br /> +Then Daniel, the radical, had me for years.<br /> +His sister called me his mistress;<br /> +And Daniel wrote me:<br /> +“Shameful word, soiling our beautiful love!”<br /> +But my anger coiled, preparing its fangs.<br /> +My Lesbian friend next took a hand.<br /> +She hated Daniel’s sister.<br /> +And Daniel despised her midget husband.<br /> +And she saw a chance for a poisonous thrust:<br /> +I must complain to the wife of Daniel’s pursuit!<br /> +But before I did that I begged him to fly to London with me.<br /> +“Why not stay in the city just as we have?” he asked.<br /> +Then I turned submarine and revenged his repulse<br /> +In the arms of my dilettante friend.<br /> +Then up to the surface, Bearing the letter that Daniel wrote me<br /> +To prove my honor was all intact, showing it to his wife,<br /> +My Lesbian friend and everyone.<br /> +If Daniel had only shot me dead!<br /> +Instead of stripping me naked of lies<br /> +A harlot in body and soul. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapR03"></a>Thomas Rhodes</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Very well, you liberals,<br /> +And navigators into realms intellectual,<br /> +You sailors through heights imaginative,<br /> +Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets,<br /> +You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits,<br /> +And Tennessee Claflin Shopes—<br /> +You found with all your boasted wisdom<br /> +How hard at the last it is<br /> +To keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms.<br /> +While we, seekers of earth’s treasures<br /> +Getters and hoarders of gold,<br /> +Are self-contained, compact, harmonized,<br /> +Even to the end. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC09"></a>Ida Chicken</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +After I had attended lectures<br /> +At our Chautauqua, and studied French<br /> +For twenty years, committing the grammar<br /> +Almost by heart,<br /> +I thought I’d take a trip to Paris<br /> +To give my culture a final polish.<br /> +So I went to Peoria for a passport—<br /> +(Thomas Rhodes was on the train that morning.)<br /> +And there the clerk of the district Court<br /> +Made me swear to support and defend<br /> +The constitution—yes, even me—<br /> +Who couldn’t defend or support it at all!<br /> +And what do you think? That very morning<br /> +The Federal Judge, in the very next room<br /> +To the room where I took the oath,<br /> +Decided the constitution<br /> +Exempted Rhodes from paying taxes<br /> +For the water works of Spoon River! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP06"></a>Penniwit, the Artist</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I lost my patronage in Spoon River<br /> +From trying to put my mind in the camera<br /> +To catch the soul of the person.<br /> +The very best picture I ever took<br /> +Was of Judge Somers, attorney at law.<br /> +He sat upright and had me pause<br /> +Till he got his cross-eye straight.<br /> +Then when he was ready he said “all right.”<br /> +And I yelled “overruled” and his eye turned up.<br /> +And I caught him just as he used to look<br /> +When saying “I except.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB15"></a>Jim Brown</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +While I was handling Dom Pedro<br /> +I got at the thing that divides the race between men who are<br /> +For singing “Turkey in the straw” or<br /> +“There is a fountain filled with blood”—<br /> +(Like Rile Potter used to sing it over at Concord).<br /> +For cards, or for Rev. Peet’s lecture on the holy land;<br /> +For skipping the light fantastic, or passing the plate;<br /> +For Pinafore, or a Sunday school cantata;<br /> +For men, or for money;<br /> +For the people or against them.<br /> +This was it: Rev. Peet and the Social Purity Club,<br /> +Headed by Ben Pantier’s wife,<br /> +Went to the Village trustees,<br /> +And asked them to make me take Dom Pedro<br /> +From the barn of Wash McNeely, there at the edge of town,<br /> +To a barn outside of the corporation,<br /> +On the ground that it corrupted public morals.<br /> +Well, Ben Pantier and Fiddler Jones saved the day—<br /> +They thought it a slam on colts. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapD01"></a>Robert Davidson</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I grew spiritually fat living off the souls of men.<br /> +If I saw a soul that was strong<br /> +I wounded its pride and devoured its strength.<br /> +The shelters of friendship knew my cunning<br /> +For where I could steal a friend I did so.<br /> +And wherever I could enlarge my power<br /> +By undermining ambition, I did so,<br /> +Thus to make smooth my own.<br /> +And to triumph over other souls,<br /> +Just to assert and prove my superior strength,<br /> +Was with me a delight,<br /> +The keen exhilaration of soul gymnastics.<br /> +Devouring souls, I should have lived forever.<br /> +But their undigested remains bred in me a deadly nephritis,<br /> +With fear, restlessness, sinking spirits,<br /> +Hatred, suspicion, vision disturbed.<br /> +I collapsed at last with a shriek.<br /> +Remember the acorn;<br /> +It does not devour other acorns. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW06"></a>Elsa Wertman</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was a peasant girl from Germany,<br /> +Blue-eyed, rosy, happy and strong.<br /> +And the first place I worked was at Thomas Greene’s.<br /> +On a summer’s day when she was away<br /> +He stole into the kitchen and took me<br /> +Right in his arms and kissed me on my throat,<br /> +I turning my head. Then neither of us<br /> +Seemed to know what happened.<br /> +And I cried for what would become of me.<br /> +And cried and cried as my secret began to show.<br /> +One day Mrs. Greene said she understood,<br /> +And would make no trouble for me,<br /> +And, being childless, would adopt it.<br /> +(He had given her a farm to be still.)<br /> +So she hid in the house and sent out rumors,<br /> +As if it were going to happen to her.<br /> +And all went well and the child was born—<br /> +They were so kind to me.<br /> +Later I married Gus Wertman, and years passed.<br /> +But—at political rallies when sitters-by thought I was crying<br /> +At the eloquence of Hamilton Greene—<br /> +That was not it. No! I wanted to say:<br /> +That’s my son!<br /> +That’s my son. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG12"></a>Hamilton Greene</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was the only child of Frances Harris of Virginia<br /> +And Thomas Greene of Kentucky,<br /> +Of valiant and honorable blood both.<br /> +To them I owe all that I became,<br /> +Judge, member of Congress, leader in the State.<br /> +From my mother I inherited<br /> +Vivacity, fancy, language;<br /> +From my father will, judgment, logic.<br /> +All honor to them<br /> +For what service I was to the people! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH23"></a>Ernest Hyde</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +My mind was a mirror:<br /> +It saw what it saw, it knew what it knew.<br /> +In youth my mind was just a mirror<br /> +In a rapidly flying car,<br /> +Which catches and loses bits of the landscape.<br /> +Then in time<br /> +Great scratches were made on the mirror,<br /> +Letting the outside world come in,<br /> +And letting my inner self look out.<br /> +For this is the birth of the soul in sorrow,<br /> +A birth with gains and losses.<br /> +The mind sees the world as a thing apart,<br /> +And the soul makes the world at one with itself.<br /> +A mirror scratched reflects no image—<br /> +And this is the silence of wisdom. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH09"></a>Roger Heston</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Oh many times did Ernest Hyde and I<br /> +Argue about the freedom of the will.<br /> +My favorite metaphor was Prickett’s cow<br /> +Roped out to grass, and free you know as far<br /> +As the length of the rope.<br /> +One day while arguing so, watching the cow<br /> +Pull at the rope to get beyond the circle<br /> +Which she had eaten bare,<br /> +Out came the stake, and tossing up her head,<br /> +She ran for us.<br /> +“What’s that, free-will or what?” said Ernest, running.<br /> +I fell just as she gored me to my death. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS13"></a>Amos Sibley</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Not character, not fortitude, not patience<br /> +Were mine, the which the village thought I had<br /> +In bearing with my wife, while preaching on,<br /> +Doing the work God chose for me.<br /> +I loathed her as a termagant, as a wanton.<br /> +I knew of her adulteries, every one.<br /> +But even so, if I divorced the woman<br /> +I must forsake the ministry.<br /> +Therefore to do God’s work and have it crop,<br /> +I bore with her<br /> +So lied I to myself<br /> +So lied I to Spoon River!<br /> +Yet I tried lecturing, ran for the legislature,<br /> +Canvassed for books, with just the thought in mind:<br /> +If I make money thus,<br /> +I will divorce her. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS14"></a>Mrs. Sibley</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The secret of the stars—gravitation.<br /> +The secret of the earth—layers of rock.<br /> +The secret of the soil—to receive seed.<br /> +The secret of the seed—the germ.<br /> +The secret of man—the sower.<br /> +The secret of woman—the soil.<br /> +My secret: Under a mound that you shall never find. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW04"></a>Adam Weirauch</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was crushed between Altgeld and Armour.<br /> +I lost many friends, much time and money<br /> +Fighting for Altgeld whom Editor Whedon<br /> +Denounced as the candidate of gamblers and anarchists.<br /> +Then Armour started to ship dressed meat to Spoon River,<br /> +Forcing me to shut down my slaughter-house<br /> +And my butcher shop went all to pieces.<br /> +The new forces of Altgeld and Armour caught me<br /> +At the same time. I thought it due me, to recoup the money I lost<br /> +And to make good the friends that left me,<br /> +For the Governor to appoint me Canal Commissioner.<br /> +Instead he appointed Whedon of the Spoon River Argus,<br /> +So I ran for the legislature and was elected.<br /> +I said to hell with principle and sold my vote<br /> +On Charles T. Yerkes’ street-car franchise.<br /> +Of course I was one of the fellows they caught.<br /> +Who was it, Armour, Altgeld or myself<br /> +That ruined me? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB04"></a>Ezra Bartlett</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +A chaplain in the army,<br /> +A chaplain in the prisons,<br /> +An exhorter in Spoon River,<br /> +Drunk with divinity, Spoon River—<br /> +Yet bringing poor Eliza Johnson to shame,<br /> +And myself to scorn and wretchedness.<br /> +But why will you never see that love of women,<br /> +And even love of wine,<br /> +Are the stimulants by which the soul, hungering for divinity,<br /> +Reaches the ecstatic vision<br /> +And sees the celestial outposts?<br /> +Only after many trials for strength,<br /> +Only when all stimulants fail,<br /> +Does the aspiring soul<br /> +By its own sheer power<br /> +Find the divine<br /> +By resting upon itself. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG03"></a>Amelia Garrick</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Yes, here I lie close to a stunted rose bush<br /> +In a forgotten place near the fence<br /> +Where the thickets from Siever’s woods<br /> +Have crept over, growing sparsely.<br /> +And you, you are a leader in New York,<br /> +The wife of a noted millionaire,<br /> +A name in the society columns,<br /> +Beautiful, admired, magnified perhaps<br /> +By the mirage of distance.<br /> +You have succeeded, I have failed<br /> +In the eyes of the world.<br /> +You are alive, I am dead.<br /> +Yet I know that I vanquished your spirit;<br /> +And I know that lying here far from you,<br /> +Unheard of among your great friends<br /> +In the brilliant world where you move,<br /> +I am really the unconquerable power over your life<br /> +That robs it of complete triumph. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapO02"></a>John Hancock Otis</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +As to democracy, fellow citizens,<br /> +Are you not prepared to admit<br /> +That I, who inherited riches and was to the manor born,<br /> +Was second to none in Spoon River<br /> +In my devotion to the cause of Liberty?<br /> +While my contemporary, Anthony Findlay,<br /> +Born in a shanty and beginning life<br /> +As a water carrier to the section hands,<br /> +Then becoming a section hand when he was grown,<br /> +Afterwards foreman of the gang, until he rose<br /> +To the superintendency of the railroad,<br /> +Living in Chicago,<br /> +Was a veritable slave driver,<br /> +Grinding the faces of labor,<br /> +And a bitter enemy of democracy.<br /> +And I say to you, Spoon River,<br /> +And to you, O republic,<br /> +Beware of the man who rises to power<br /> +From one suspender. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF04"></a>Anthony Findlay</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Both for the country and for the man,<br /> +And for a country as well as a man,<br /> +’Tis better to be feared than loved.<br /> +And if this country would rather part<br /> +With the friendship of every nation<br /> +Than surrender its wealth,<br /> +I say of a man ’tis worse to lose<br /> +Money than friends.<br /> +And I rend the curtain that hides the soul<br /> +Of an ancient aspiration:<br /> +When the people clamor for freedom<br /> +They really seek for power o’er the strong.<br /> +I, Anthony Findlay, rising to greatness<br /> +From a humble water carrier,<br /> +Until I could say to thousands “Come,”<br /> +And say to thousands “Go,”<br /> +Affirm that a nation can never be good.<br /> +Or achieve the good,<br /> +Where the strong and the wise have not the rod<br /> +To use on the dull and weak. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC02"></a>John Cabanis</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Neither spite, fellow citizens,<br /> +Nor forgetfulness of the shiftlessness.<br /> +And the lawlessness and waste<br /> +Under democracy’s rule in Spoon River<br /> +Made me desert the party of law and order<br /> +And lead the liberal party.<br /> +Fellow citizens! I saw as one with second sight<br /> +That every man of the millions of men<br /> +Who give themselves to Freedom,<br /> +And fail while Freedom fails,<br /> +Enduring waste and lawlessness,<br /> +And the rule of the weak and the blind,<br /> +Dies in the hope of building earth,<br /> +Like the coral insect, for the temple<br /> +To stand on at the last.<br /> +And I swear that Freedom will wage to the end<br /> +The war for making every soul<br /> +Wise and strong and as fit to rule<br /> +As Plato’s lofty guardians<br /> +In a world republic girdled! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapU01"></a>The Unknown</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Ye aspiring ones, listen to the story of the unknown<br /> +Who lies here with no stone to mark the place.<br /> +As a boy reckless and wanton,<br /> +Wandering with gun in hand through the forest<br /> +Near the mansion of Aaron Hatfield,<br /> +I shot a hawk perched on the top<br /> +Of a dead tree. He fell with guttural cry<br /> +At my feet, his wing broken.<br /> +Then I put him in a cage<br /> +Where he lived many days cawing angrily at me<br /> +When I offered him food.<br /> +Daily I search the realms of Hades<br /> +For the soul of the hawk,<br /> +That I may offer him the friendship<br /> +Of one whom life wounded and caged. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT05"></a>Alexander Throckmorton</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +In youth my wings were strong and tireless,<br /> +But I did not know the mountains.<br /> +In age I knew the mountains<br /> +But my weary wings could not follow my vision—<br /> +Genius is wisdom and youth. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS21"></a>Jonathan Swift Somers (Author of <a href="#chapS25">the Spooniad</a>)</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +After you have enriched your soul<br /> +To the highest point,<br /> +With books, thought, suffering,<br /> +The understanding of many personalities,<br /> +The power to interpret glances, silences,<br /> +The pauses in momentous transformations,<br /> +The genius of divination and prophecy;<br /> +So that you feel able at times to hold the world<br /> +In the hollow of your hand;<br /> +Then, if, by the crowding of so many powers<br /> +Into the compass of your soul,<br /> +Your soul takes fire,<br /> +And in the conflagration of your soul<br /> +The evil of the world is lighted up and made clear—<br /> +Be thankful if in that hour of supreme vision<br /> +Life does not fiddle. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM03"></a>Widow McFarlane</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was the Widow McFarlane,<br /> +Weaver of carpets for all the village.<br /> +And I pity you still at the loom of life,<br /> +You who are singing to the shuttle<br /> +And lovingly watching the work of your hands,<br /> +If you reach the day of hate, of terrible truth.<br /> +For the cloth of life is woven, you know,<br /> +To a pattern hidden under the loom—<br /> +A pattern you never see!<br /> +And you weave high-hearted, singing, singing,<br /> +You guard the threads of love and friendship<br /> +For noble figures in gold and purple.<br /> +And long after other eyes can see<br /> +You have woven a moon-white strip of cloth,<br /> +You laugh in your strength, for Hope overlays it<br /> +With shapes of love and beauty.<br /> +The loom stops short!<br /> +The pattern’s out<br /> +You’re alone in the room!<br /> +You have woven a shroud<br /> +And hate of it lays you in it. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH02"></a>Carl Hamblin</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The press of the Spoon River <i>Clarion</i> was wrecked,<br /> +And I was tarred and feathered,<br /> +For publishing this on the day the<br /> +Anarchists were hanged in Chicago:<br /> +“I saw a beautiful woman with bandaged eyes<br /> +Standing on the steps of a marble temple.<br /> +Great multitudes passed in front of her,<br /> +Lifting their faces to her imploringly.<br /> +In her left hand she held a sword.<br /> +She was brandishing the sword,<br /> +Sometimes striking a child, again a laborer,<br /> +Again a slinking woman, again a lunatic.<br /> +In her right hand she held a scale;<br /> +Into the scale pieces of gold were tossed<br /> +By those who dodged the strokes of the sword.<br /> +A man in a black gown read from a manuscript:<br /> +“She is no respecter of persons.”<br /> +Then a youth wearing a red cap<br /> +Leaped to her side and snatched away the bandage.<br /> +And lo, the lashes had been eaten away<br /> +From the oozy eye-lids;<br /> +The eye-balls were seared with a milky mucus;<br /> +The madness of a dying soul<br /> +Was written on her face—<br /> +But the multitude saw why she wore the bandage.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW07"></a>Editor Whedon</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +To be able to see every side of every question;<br /> +To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long;<br /> +To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose,<br /> +To use great feelings and passions of the human family<br /> +For base designs, for cunning ends,<br /> +To wear a mask like the Greek actors—<br /> +Your eight-page paper—behind which you huddle,<br /> +Bawling through the megaphone of big type:<br /> +“This is I, the giant.”<br /> +Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief,<br /> +Poisoned with the anonymous words<br /> +Of your clandestine soul.<br /> +To scratch dirt over scandal for money,<br /> +And exhume it to the winds for revenge,<br /> +Or to sell papers,<br /> +Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be,<br /> +To win at any cost, save your own life.<br /> +To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization,<br /> +As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track<br /> +And derails the express train.<br /> +To be an editor, as I was.<br /> +Then to lie here close by the river over the place<br /> +Where the sewage flows from the village,<br /> +And the empty cans and garbage are dumped,<br /> +And abortions are hidden. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC07"></a>Eugene Carman</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Rhodes’ slave! Selling shoes and gingham,<br /> +Flour and bacon, overalls, clothing, all day long<br /> +For fourteen hours a day for three hundred and thirteen days<br /> +For more than twenty years.<br /> +Saying “Yes’m” and “Yes, sir”, and “Thank you”<br /> +A thousand times a day, and all for fifty dollars a month.<br /> +Living in this stinking room in the rattle-trap “Commercial.”<br /> +And compelled to go to Sunday School, and to listen<br /> +To the Rev. Abner Peet one hundred and four times a year<br /> +For more than an hour at a time,<br /> +Because Thomas Rhodes ran the church<br /> +As well as the store and the bank.<br /> +So while I was tying my neck-tie that morning<br /> +I suddenly saw myself in the glass:<br /> +My hair all gray, my face like a sodden pie.<br /> +So I cursed and cursed: You damned old thing<br /> +You cowardly dog! You rotten pauper!<br /> +You Rhodes’ slave! Till Roger Baughman<br /> +Thought I was having a fight with some one,<br /> +And looked through the transom just in time<br /> +To see me fall on the floor in a heap<br /> +From a broken vein in my head. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF02"></a>Clarence Fawcett</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The sudden death of Eugene Carman<br /> +Put me in line to be promoted to fifty dollars a month,<br /> +And I told my wife and children that night.<br /> +But it didn’t come, and so I thought<br /> +Old Rhodes suspected me of stealing<br /> +The blankets I took and sold on the side<br /> +For money to pay a doctor’s bill for my little girl.<br /> +Then like a bolt old Rhodes accused me,<br /> +And promised me mercy for my family’s sake<br /> +If I confessed, and so I confessed,<br /> +And begged him to keep it out of the papers,<br /> +And I asked the editors, too.<br /> +That night at home the constable took me<br /> +And every paper, except the Clarion,<br /> +Wrote me up as a thief<br /> +Because old Rhodes was an advertiser<br /> +And wanted to make an example of me.<br /> +Oh! well, you know how the children cried,<br /> +And how my wife pitied and hated me,<br /> +And how I came to lie here. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS26"></a>W. Lloyd Garrison Standard</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Vegetarian, non-resistant, free-thinker, in ethics a Christian;<br /> +Orator apt at the rhine-stone rhythm of Ingersoll.<br /> +Carnivorous, avenger, believer and pagan.<br /> +Continent, promiscuous, changeable, treacherous, vain,<br /> +Proud, with the pride that makes struggle a thing for laughter;<br /> +With heart cored out by the worm of theatric despair.<br /> +Wearing the coat of indifference to hide the shame of defeat;<br /> +I, child of the abolitionist idealism—<br /> +A sort of <i>Brand</i> in a birth of half-and-half.<br /> +What other thing could happen when I defended<br /> +The patriot scamps who burned the court house<br /> +That Spoon River might have a new one<br /> +Than plead them guilty?<br /> +When Kinsey Keene drove through<br /> +The card-board mask of my life with a spear of light,<br /> +What could I do but slink away, like the beast of myself<br /> +Which I raised from a whelp, to a corner and growl?<br /> +The pyramid of my life was nought but a dune,<br /> +Barren and formless, spoiled at last by the storm. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapN01"></a>Professor Newcomer</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Everyone laughed at Col. Prichard<br /> +For buying an engine so powerful<br /> +That it wrecked itself, and wrecked the grinder<br /> +He ran it with.<br /> +But here is a joke of cosmic size:<br /> +The urge of nature that made a man<br /> +Evolve from his brain a spiritual life—<br /> +Oh miracle of the world!—<br /> +The very same brain with which the ape and wolf<br /> +Get food and shelter and procreate themselves.<br /> +Nature has made man do this,<br /> +In a world where she gives him nothing to do<br /> +After all—(though the strength of his soul goes round<br /> +In a futile waste of power.<br /> +To gear itself to the mills of the gods)—<br /> +But get food and shelter and procreate himself! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapR02"></a>Ralph Rhodes</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +All they said was true:<br /> +I wrecked my father’s bank with my loans<br /> +To dabble in wheat; but this was true—<br /> +I was buying wheat for him as well,<br /> +Who couldn’t margin the deal in his name<br /> +Because of his church relationship.<br /> +And while George Reece was serving his term<br /> +I chased the will-o-the-wisp of women<br /> +And the mockery of wine in New York.<br /> +It’s deathly to sicken of wine and women<br /> +When nothing else is left in life.<br /> +But suppose your head is gray, and bowed<br /> +On a table covered with acrid stubs<br /> +Of cigarettes and empty glasses,<br /> +And a knock is heard, and you know it’s the knock<br /> +So long drowned out by popping corks<br /> +And the pea-cock screams of demireps—<br /> +And you look up, and there’s your Theft,<br /> +Who waited until your head was gray,<br /> +And your heart skipped beats to say to you:<br /> +The game is ended. I’ve called for you,<br /> +Go out on Broadway and be run over,<br /> +They’ll ship you back to Spoon River. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM07"></a>Mickey M’Grew</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +It was just like everything else in life:<br /> +Something outside myself drew me down,<br /> +My own strength never failed me.<br /> +Why, there was the time I earned the money<br /> +With which to go away to school,<br /> +And my father suddenly needed help<br /> +And I had to give him all of it.<br /> +Just so it went till I ended up<br /> +A man-of-all-work in Spoon River.<br /> +Thus when I got the water-tower cleaned,<br /> +And they hauled me up the seventy feet,<br /> +I unhooked the rope from my waist,<br /> +And laughingly flung my giant arms<br /> +Over the smooth steel lips of the top of the tower—<br /> +But they slipped from the treacherous slime,<br /> +And down, down, down, I plunged<br /> +Through bellowing darkness! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapR06"></a>Rosie Roberts</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was sick, but more than that, I was mad<br /> +At the crooked police, and the crooked game of life.<br /> +So I wrote to the Chief of Police at Peoria:<br /> +“I am here in my girlhood home in Spoon River,<br /> +Gradually wasting away.<br /> +But come and take me, I killed the son<br /> +Of the merchant prince, in Madam Lou’s<br /> +And the papers that said he killed himself<br /> +In his home while cleaning a hunting gun—<br /> +Lied like the devil to hush up scandal<br /> +For the bribe of advertising.<br /> +In my room I shot him, at Madam Lou’s,<br /> +Because he knocked me down when I said<br /> +That, in spite of all the money he had,<br /> +I’d see my lover that night.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH19"></a>Oscar Hummel</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I staggered on through darkness,<br /> +There was a hazy sky, a few stars<br /> +Which I followed as best I could.<br /> +It was nine o’clock, I was trying to get home.<br /> +But somehow I was lost,<br /> +Though really keeping the road.<br /> +Then I reeled through a gate and into a yard,<br /> +And called at the top of my voice:<br /> +“Oh, Fiddler! Oh, Mr. Jones!”<br /> +(I thought it was his house and he would show me the way home. )<br /> +But who should step out but A. D. Blood,<br /> +In his night shirt, waving a stick of wood,<br /> +And roaring about the cursed saloons,<br /> +And the criminals they made?<br /> +“You drunken Oscar Hummel,” he said,<br /> +As I stood there weaving to and fro,<br /> +Taking the blows from the stick in his hand<br /> +Till I dropped down dead at his feet. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT07"></a>Josiah Tompkins</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was well known and much beloved<br /> +And rich, as fortunes are reckoned<br /> +In Spoon River, where I had lived and worked.<br /> +That was the home for me,<br /> +Though all my children had flown afar—<br /> +Which is the way of Nature—all but one.<br /> +The boy, who was the baby, stayed at home,<br /> +To be my help in my failing years<br /> +And the solace of his mother.<br /> +But I grew weaker, as he grew stronger,<br /> +And he quarreled with me about the business,<br /> +And his wife said I was a hindrance to it;<br /> +And he won his mother to see as he did,<br /> +Till they tore me up to be transplanted<br /> +With them to her girlhood home in Missouri.<br /> +And so much of my fortune was gone at last,<br /> +Though I made the will just as he drew it,<br /> +He profited little by it. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP14"></a>Roscoe Purkapile</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +She loved me.<br /> +Oh! how she loved me I never had a chance to escape<br /> +From the day she first saw me.<br /> +But then after we were married I thought<br /> +She might prove her mortality and let me out,<br /> +Or she might divorce me. But few die, none resign.<br /> +Then I ran away and was gone a year on a lark.<br /> +But she never complained. She said all would be well<br /> +That I would return. And I did return.<br /> +I told her that while taking a row in a boat<br /> +I had been captured near Van Buren Street<br /> +By pirates on Lake Michigan,<br /> +And kept in chains, so I could not write her.<br /> +She cried and kissed me, and said it was cruel,<br /> +Outrageous, inhuman! I then concluded our marriage<br /> +Was a divine dispensation<br /> +And could not be dissolved,<br /> +Except by death.<br /> +I was right. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP13"></a>Mrs. Purkapile</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +He ran away and was gone for a year.<br /> +When he came home he told me the silly story<br /> +Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan<br /> +And kept in chains so he could not write me.<br /> +I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well<br /> +What he was doing, and that he met<br /> +The milliner, Mrs. Williams, now and then<br /> +When she went to the city to buy goods, as she said.<br /> +But a promise is a promise<br /> +And marriage is marriage,<br /> +And out of respect for my own character<br /> +I refused to be drawn into a divorce<br /> +By the scheme of a husband who had merely grown tired<br /> +Of his marital vow and duty. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK04"></a>Mrs. Kessler</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Mr. Kessler, you know, was in the army,<br /> +And he drew six dollars a month as a pension,<br /> +And stood on the corner talking politics,<br /> +Or sat at home reading Grant’s Memoirs;<br /> +And I supported the family by washing,<br /> +Learning the secrets of all the people<br /> +From their curtains, counterpanes, shirts and skirts.<br /> +For things that are new grow old at length,<br /> +They’re replaced with better or none at all:<br /> +People are prospering or falling back.<br /> +And rents and patches widen with time;<br /> +No thread or needle can pace decay,<br /> +And there are stains that baffle soap,<br /> +And there are colors that run in spite of you,<br /> +Blamed though you are for spoiling a dress.<br /> +Handkerchiefs, napery, have their secrets—<br /> +The laundress, Life, knows all about it.<br /> +And I, who went to all the funerals<br /> +Held in Spoon River, swear I never<br /> +Saw a dead face without thinking it looked<br /> +Like something washed and ironed. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW08"></a>Harmon Whitney</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Out of the lights and roar of cities,<br /> +Drifting down like a spark in Spoon River,<br /> +Burnt out with the fire of drink, and broken,<br /> +The paramour of a woman I took in self-contempt,<br /> +But to hide a wounded pride as well.<br /> +To be judged and loathed by a village of little minds—<br /> +I, gifted with tongues and wisdom,<br /> +Sunk here to the dust of the justice court,<br /> +A picker of rags in the rubbage of spites and wrongs,—<br /> +I, whom fortune smiled on!<br /> +I in a village,<br /> +Spouting to gaping yokels pages of verse,<br /> +Out of the lore of golden years,<br /> +Or raising a laugh with a flash of filthy wit<br /> +When they bought the drinks to kindle my dying mind.<br /> +To be judged by you,<br /> +The soul of me hidden from you,<br /> +With its wound gangrened<br /> +By love for a wife who made the wound,<br /> +With her cold white bosom, treasonous, pure and hard,<br /> +Relentless to the last, when the touch of her hand,<br /> +At any time, might have cured me of the typhus,<br /> +Caught in the jungle of life where many are lost.<br /> +And only to think that my soul could not react,<br /> +Like Byron’s did, in song, in something noble,<br /> +But turned on itself like a tortured snake—judge me this way,<br /> +O world. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK03"></a>Bert Kessler</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I winged my bird,<br /> +Though he flew toward the setting sun;<br /> +But just as the shot rang out, he soared<br /> +Up and up through the splinters of golden light,<br /> +Till he turned right over, feathers ruffled,<br /> +With some of the down of him floating near,<br /> +And fell like a plummet into the grass.<br /> +I tramped about, parting the tangles,<br /> +Till I saw a splash of blood on a stump,<br /> +And the quail lying close to the rotten roots.<br /> +I reached my hand, but saw no brier,<br /> +But something pricked and stung and numbed it.<br /> +And then, in a second, I spied the rattler—<br /> +The shutters wide in his yellow eyes,<br /> +The head of him arched, sunk back in the rings of him,<br /> +A circle of filth, the color of ashes,<br /> +Or oak leaves bleached under layers of leaves.<br /> +I stood like a stone as he shrank and uncoiled<br /> +And started to crawl beneath the stump,<br /> +When I fell limp in the grass. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH22"></a>Lambert Hutchins</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I have two monuments besides this granite obelisk:<br /> +One, the house I built on the hill,<br /> +With its spires, bay windows, and roof of slate.<br /> +The other, the lake-front in Chicago,<br /> +Where the railroad keeps a switching yard,<br /> +With whistling engines and crunching wheels<br /> +And smoke and soot thrown over the city,<br /> +And the crash of cars along the boulevard,—<br /> +A blot like a hog-pen on the harbor<br /> +Of a great metropolis, foul as a sty.<br /> +I helped to give this heritage<br /> +To generations yet unborn, with my vote<br /> +In the House of Representatives,<br /> +And the lure of the thing was to be at rest<br /> +From the never—ending fright of need,<br /> +And to give my daughters gentle breeding,<br /> +And a sense of security in life.<br /> +But, you see, though I had the mansion house<br /> +And traveling passes and local distinction,<br /> +I could hear the whispers, whispers, whispers,<br /> +Wherever I went, and my daughters grew up<br /> +With a look as if some one were about to strike them;<br /> +And they married madly, helter-skelter,<br /> +Just to get out and have a change.<br /> +And what was the whole of the business worth?<br /> +Why, it wasn’t worth a damn! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS27"></a>Lillian Stewart</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was the daughter of Lambert Hutchins,<br /> +Born in a cottage near the grist-mill,<br /> +Reared in the mansion there on the hill,<br /> +With its spires, bay-windows, and roof of slate.<br /> +How proud my mother was of the mansion<br /> +How proud of father’s rise in the world!<br /> +And how my father loved and watched us,<br /> +And guarded our happiness.<br /> +But I believe the house was a curse,<br /> +For father’s fortune was little beside it;<br /> +And when my husband found he had married<br /> +A girl who was really poor,<br /> +He taunted me with the spires,<br /> +And called the house a fraud on the world,<br /> +A treacherous lure to young men, raising hopes<br /> +Of a dowry not to be had;<br /> +And a man while selling his vote<br /> +Should get enough from the people’s betrayal<br /> +To wall the whole of his family in.<br /> +He vexed my life till I went back home<br /> +And lived like an old maid till I died,<br /> +Keeping house for father. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapR05"></a>Hortense Robbins</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +My name used to be in the papers daily<br /> +As having dined somewhere,<br /> +Or traveled somewhere,<br /> +Or rented a house in Paris,<br /> +Where I entertained the nobility.<br /> +I was forever eating or traveling,<br /> +Or taking the cure at Baden-Baden.<br /> +Now I am here to do honor<br /> +To Spoon River, here beside the family whence I sprang.<br /> +No one cares now where I dined,<br /> +Or lived, or whom I entertained,<br /> +Or how often I took the cure at Baden-Baden. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapD05"></a>Batterton Dobyns</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Did my widow flit about<br /> +From Mackinac to Los Angeles,<br /> +Resting and bathing and sitting an hour<br /> +Or more at the table over soup and meats<br /> +And delicate sweets and coffee?<br /> +I was cut down in my prime<br /> +From overwork and anxiety.<br /> +But I thought all along, whatever happens<br /> +I’ve kept my insurance up,<br /> +And there’s something in the bank,<br /> +And a section of land in Manitoba.<br /> +But just as I slipped I had a vision<br /> +In a last delirium:<br /> +I saw myself lying nailed in a box<br /> +With a white lawn tie and a boutonnière,<br /> +And my wife was sitting by a window<br /> +Some place afar overlooking the sea;<br /> +She seemed so rested, ruddy and fat,<br /> +Although her hair was white.<br /> +And she smiled and said to a colored waiter:<br /> +“Another slice of roast beef, George.<br /> +Here’s a nickel for your trouble.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG04"></a>Jacob Godbey</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +How did you feel, you libertarians,<br /> +Who spent your talents rallying noble reasons<br /> +Around the saloon, as if Liberty<br /> +Was not to be found anywhere except at the bar<br /> +Or at a table, guzzling?<br /> +How did you feel, Ben Pantier, and the rest of you,<br /> +Who almost stoned me for a tyrant<br /> +Garbed as a moralist,<br /> +And as a wry-faced ascetic frowning upon Yorkshire pudding,<br /> +Roast beef and ale and good will and rosy cheer—<br /> +Things you never saw in a grog-shop in your life?<br /> +How did you feel after I was dead and gone,<br /> +And your goddess, Liberty, unmasked as a strumpet,<br /> +Selling out the streets of Spoon River<br /> +To the insolent giants<br /> +Who manned the saloons from afar?<br /> +Did it occur to you that personal liberty<br /> +Is liberty of the mind,<br /> +Rather than of the belly? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS16"></a>Walter Simmons</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +My parents thought that I would be<br /> +As great as Edison or greater:<br /> +For as a boy I made balloons<br /> +And wondrous kites and toys with clocks<br /> +And little engines with tracks to run on<br /> +And telephones of cans and thread.<br /> +I played the cornet and painted pictures,<br /> +Modeled in clay and took the part<br /> +Of the villain in the “Octoroon.”<br /> +But then at twenty-one I married<br /> +And had to live, and so, to live<br /> +I learned the trade of making watches<br /> +And kept the jewelry store on the square,<br /> +Thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking,—<br /> +Not of business, but of the engine<br /> +I studied the calculus to build.<br /> +And all Spoon River watched and waited<br /> +To see it work, but it never worked.<br /> +And a few kind souls believed my genius<br /> +Was somehow hampered by the store.<br /> +It wasn’t true.<br /> +The truth was this:<br /> +I did not have the brains. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB06"></a>Tom Beatty</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was a lawyer like Harmon Whitney<br /> +Or Kinsey Keene or Garrison Standard,<br /> +For I tried the rights of property,<br /> +Although by lamp-light, for thirty years,<br /> +In that poker room in the opera house.<br /> +And I say to you that Life’s a gambler<br /> +Head and shoulders above us all.<br /> +No mayor alive can close the house.<br /> +And if you lose, you can squeal as you will;<br /> +You’ll not get back your money.<br /> +He makes the percentage hard to conquer;<br /> +He stacks the cards to catch your weakness<br /> +And not to meet your strength.<br /> +And he gives you seventy years to play:<br /> +For if you cannot win in seventy<br /> +You cannot win at all.<br /> +So, if you lose, get out of the room—<br /> +Get out of the room when your time is up.<br /> +It’s mean to sit and fumble the cards<br /> +And curse your losses, leaden-eyed,<br /> +Whining to try and try. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB20"></a>Roy Butler</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +If the learned Supreme Court of Illinois<br /> +Got at the secret of every case<br /> +As well as it does a case of rape<br /> +It would be the greatest court in the world.<br /> +A jury, of neighbors mostly, with “Butch” Weldy<br /> +As foreman, found me guilty in ten minutes<br /> +And two ballots on a case like this:<br /> +Richard Bandle and I had trouble over a fence<br /> +And my wife and Mrs. Bandle quarreled<br /> +As to whether Ipava was a finer town than Table Grove.<br /> +I awoke one morning with the love of God<br /> +Brimming over my heart, so I went to see Richard<br /> +To settle the fence in the spirit of Jesus Christ.<br /> +I knocked on the door, and his wife opened;<br /> +She smiled and asked me in.<br /> +I entered— She slammed the door and began to scream,<br /> +“Take your hands off, you low down varlet!”<br /> +Just then her husband entered.<br /> +I waved my hands, choked up with words.<br /> +He went for his gun, and I ran out.<br /> +But neither the Supreme Court nor my wife<br /> +Believed a word she said. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF06"></a>Searcy Foote</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I wanted to go away to college<br /> +But rich Aunt Persis wouldn’t help me.<br /> +So I made gardens and raked the lawns<br /> +And bought John Alden’s books with my earnings<br /> +And toiled for the very means of life.<br /> +I wanted to marry Delia Prickett,<br /> +But how could I do it with what I earned?<br /> +And there was Aunt Persis more than seventy<br /> +Who sat in a wheel-chair half alive<br /> +With her throat so paralyzed, when she swallowed<br /> +The soup ran out of her mouth like a duck—<br /> +A gourmand yet, investing her income<br /> +In mortgages, fretting all the time<br /> +About her notes and rents and papers.<br /> +That day I was sawing wood for her,<br /> +And reading Proudhon in between.<br /> +I went in the house for a drink of water,<br /> +And there she sat asleep in her chair,<br /> +And Proudhon lying on the table,<br /> +And a bottle of chloroform on the book,<br /> +She used sometimes for an aching tooth!<br /> +I poured the chloroform on a handkerchief<br /> +And held it to her nose till she died.—<br /> +Oh Delia, Delia, you and Proudhon<br /> +Steadied my hand, and the coroner<br /> +Said she died of heart failure.<br /> +I married Delia and got the money—<br /> +A joke on you, Spoon River? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP10"></a>Edmund Pollard</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I would I had thrust my hands of flesh<br /> +Into the disk-flowers bee-infested,<br /> +Into the mirror-like core of fire<br /> +Of the light of life, the sun of delight.<br /> +For what are anthers worth or petals<br /> +Or halo-rays? Mockeries, shadows<br /> +Of the heart of the flower, the central flame<br /> +All is yours, young passer-by;<br /> +Enter the banquet room with the thought;<br /> +Don’t sidle in as if you were doubtful<br /> +Whether you’re welcome—the feast is yours!<br /> +Nor take but a little, refusing more<br /> +With a bashful “Thank you”, when you’re hungry.<br /> +Is your soul alive? Then let it feed!<br /> +Leave no balconies where you can climb;<br /> +Nor milk-white bosoms where you can rest;<br /> +Nor golden heads with pillows to share;<br /> +Nor wine cups while the wine is sweet;<br /> +Nor ecstasies of body or soul,<br /> +You will die, no doubt, but die while living<br /> +In depths of azure, rapt and mated,<br /> +Kissing the queen-bee, Life! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT09"></a>Thomas Trevelyan</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Reading in Ovid the sorrowful story of Itys,<br /> +Son of the love of Tereus and Procne, slain<br /> +For the guilty passion of Tereus for Philomela,<br /> +The flesh of him served to Tereus by Procne,<br /> +And the wrath of Tereus, the murderess pursuing<br /> +Till the gods made Philomela a nightingale,<br /> +Lute of the rising moon, and Procne a swallow<br /> +Oh livers and artists of Hellas centuries gone,<br /> +Sealing in little thuribles dreams and wisdom,<br /> +Incense beyond all price, forever fragrant,<br /> +A breath whereof makes clear the eyes of the soul<br /> +How I inhaled its sweetness here in Spoon River!<br /> +The thurible opening when I had lived and learned<br /> +How all of us kill the children of love, and all of us,<br /> +Knowing not what we do, devour their flesh;<br /> +And all of us change to singers, although it be<br /> +But once in our lives, or change—alas!—to swallows,<br /> +To twitter amid cold winds and falling leaves! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS09"></a>Percival Sharp</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Observe the clasped hands!<br /> +Are they hands of farewell or greeting,<br /> +Hands that I helped or hands that helped me?<br /> +Would it not be well to carve a hand<br /> +With an inverted thumb, like Elagabalus?<br /> +And yonder is a broken chain,<br /> +The weakest-link idea perhaps—<br /> +But what was it?<br /> +And lambs, some lying down,<br /> +Others standing, as if listening to the shepherd—<br /> +Others bearing a cross, one foot lifted up—<br /> +Why not chisel a few shambles?<br /> +And fallen columns!<br /> +Carve the pedestal, please,<br /> +Or the foundations; let us see the cause of the fall.<br /> +And compasses and mathematical instruments,<br /> +In irony of the under tenants, ignorance<br /> +Of determinants and the calculus of variations.<br /> +And anchors, for those who never sailed.<br /> +And gates ajar—yes, so they were;<br /> +You left them open and stray goats entered your garden.<br /> +And an eye watching like one of the Arimaspi—<br /> +So did you—with one eye.<br /> +And angels blowing trumpets—you are heralded—<br /> +It is your horn and your angel and your family’s estimate.<br /> +It is all very well, but for myself<br /> +I know I stirred certain vibrations in Spoon River<br /> +Which are my true epitaph, more lasting than stone. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS02"></a>Hiram Scates</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I tried to win the nomination<br /> +For president of the County-board<br /> +And I made speeches all over the County<br /> +Denouncing Solomon Purple, my rival,<br /> +As an enemy of the people,<br /> +In league with the master-foes of man.<br /> +Young idealists, broken warriors,<br /> +Hobbling on one crutch of hope,<br /> +Souls that stake their all on the truth,<br /> +Losers of worlds at heaven’s bidding,<br /> +Flocked about me and followed my voice<br /> +As the savior of the County.<br /> +But Solomon won the nomination;<br /> +And then I faced about,<br /> +And rallied my followers to his standard,<br /> +And made him victor, made him King<br /> +Of the Golden Mountain with the door<br /> +Which closed on my heels just as I entered,<br /> +Flattered by Solomon’s invitation,<br /> +To be the County—board’s secretary.<br /> +And out in the cold stood all my followers:<br /> +Young idealists, broken warriors<br /> +Hobbling on one crutch of hope—<br /> +Souls that staked their all on the truth,<br /> +Losers of worlds at heaven’s bidding,<br /> +Watching the Devil kick the Millennium<br /> +Over the Golden Mountain. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP09"></a>Peleg Poague</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Horses and men are just alike.<br /> +There was my stallion, Billy Lee,<br /> +Black as a cat and trim as a deer,<br /> +With an eye of fire, keen to start,<br /> +And he could hit the fastest speed<br /> +Of any racer around Spoon River.<br /> +But just as you’d think he couldn’t lose,<br /> +With his lead of fifty yards or more,<br /> +He’d rear himself and throw the rider,<br /> +And fall back over, tangled up,<br /> +Completely gone to pieces.<br /> +You see he was a perfect fraud:<br /> +He couldn’t win, he couldn’t work,<br /> +He was too light to haul or plow with,<br /> +And no one wanted colts from him.<br /> +And when I tried to drive him—well,<br /> +He ran away and killed me. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH06"></a>Jeduthan Hawley</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +There would be a knock at the door<br /> +And I would arise at midnight and go to the shop,<br /> +Where belated travelers would hear me hammering<br /> +Sepulchral boards and tacking satin.<br /> +And often I wondered who would go with me<br /> +To the distant land, our names the theme<br /> +For talk, in the same week, for I’ve observed<br /> +Two always go together.<br /> +Chase Henry was paired with Edith Conant;<br /> +And Jonathan Somers with Willie Metcalf;<br /> +And Editor Hamblin with Francis Turner,<br /> +When he prayed to live longer than Editor Whedon,<br /> +And Thomas Rhodes with widow McFarlane;<br /> +And Emily Sparks with Barry Holden;<br /> +And Oscar Hummel with Davis Matlock;<br /> +And Editor Whedon with Fiddler Jones;<br /> +And Faith Matheny with Dorcas Gustine.<br /> +And I, the solemnest man in town,<br /> +Stepped off with Daisy Fraser. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM20"></a>Abel Melveny</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I bought every kind of machine that’s known—<br /> +Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers,<br /> +Mills and rakes and ploughs and threshers—<br /> +And all of them stood in the rain and sun,<br /> +Getting rusted, warped and battered,<br /> +For I had no sheds to store them in,<br /> +And no use for most of them.<br /> +And toward the last, when I thought it over,<br /> +There by my window, growing clearer<br /> +About myself, as my pulse slowed down,<br /> +And looked at one of the mills I bought—<br /> +Which I didn’t have the slightest need of,<br /> +As things turned out, and I never ran—<br /> +A fine machine, once brightly varnished,<br /> +And eager to do its work,<br /> +Now with its paint washed off—<br /> +I saw myself as a good machine<br /> +That Life had never used. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT14"></a>Oaks Tutt</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +My mother was for woman’s rights<br /> +And my father was the rich miller at London Mills.<br /> +I dreamed of the wrongs of the world and wanted to right them.<br /> +When my father died, I set out to see peoples and countries<br /> +In order to learn how to reform the world.<br /> +I traveled through many lands. I saw the ruins of Rome<br /> +And the ruins of Athens, And the ruins of Thebes.<br /> +And I sat by moonlight amid the necropolis of Memphis.<br /> +There I was caught up by wings of flame,<br /> +And a voice from heaven said to me:<br /> +“Injustice, Untruth destroyed them.<br /> +Go forth Preach Justice! Preach Truth!”<br /> +And I hastened back to Spoon River<br /> +To say farewell to my mother before beginning my work.<br /> +They all saw a strange light in my eye.<br /> +And by and by, when I talked, they discovered<br /> +What had come in my mind.<br /> +Then Jonathan Swift Somers challenged me to debate<br /> +The subject, (I taking the negative):<br /> +“Pontius Pilate, the Greatest Philosopher of the World.”<br /> +And he won the debate by saying at last,<br /> +“Before you reform the world, Mr. Tutt<br /> +Please answer the question of Pontius Pilate:<br /> +“What is Truth?” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH05"></a>Elliott Hawkins</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I looked like Abraham Lincoln.<br /> +I was one of you, Spoon River, in all fellowship,<br /> +But standing for the rights of property and for order.<br /> +A regular church attendant,<br /> +Sometimes appearing in your town meetings to warn you<br /> +Against the evils of discontent and envy<br /> +And to denounce those who tried to destroy the Union,<br /> +And to point to the peril of the Knights of Labor.<br /> +My success and my example are inevitable influences<br /> +In your young men and in generations to come,<br /> +In spite of attacks of newspapers like the <i>Clarion;</i><br /> +A regular visitor at Springfield<br /> +When the Legislature was in session<br /> +To prevent raids upon the railroads<br /> +And the men building up the state.<br /> +Trusted by them and by you, Spoon River, equally<br /> +In spite of the whispers that I was a lobbyist.<br /> +Moving quietly through the world, rich and courted.<br /> +Dying at last, of course, but lying here<br /> +Under a stone with an open book carved upon it<br /> +And the words <i>“Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”</i><br /> +And now, you world-savers, who reaped nothing in life<br /> +And in death have neither stones nor epitaphs,<br /> +How do you like your silence from mouths stopped<br /> +With the dust of my triumphant career? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapJ04"></a>Voltaire Johnson</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Why did you bruise me with your rough places<br /> +If you did not want me to tell you about them?<br /> +And stifle me with your stupidities,<br /> +If you did not want me to expose them?<br /> +And nail me with the nails of cruelty,<br /> +If you did not want me to pluck the nails forth<br /> +And fling them in your faces?<br /> +And starve me because I refused to obey you,<br /> +If you did not want me to undermine your tyranny?<br /> +I might have been as soul serene<br /> +As William Wordsworth except for you!<br /> +But what a coward you are, Spoon River,<br /> +When you drove me to stand in a magic circle<br /> +By the sword of Truth described!<br /> +And then to whine and curse your burns,<br /> +And curse my power who stood and laughed<br /> +Amid ironical lightning! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT04"></a>English Thornton</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Here! You sons of the men<br /> +Who fought with Washington at Valley Forge,<br /> +And whipped Black Hawk at Starved Rock,<br /> +Arise! Do battle with the descendants of those<br /> +Who bought land in the loop when it was waste sand,<br /> +And sold blankets and guns to the army of Grant,<br /> +And sat in legislatures in the early days,<br /> +Taking bribes from the railroads!<br /> +Arise! Do battle with the fops and bluffs,<br /> +The pretenders and figurantes of the society column<br /> +And the yokel souls whose daughters marry counts;<br /> +And the parasites on great ideas,<br /> +And the noisy riders of great causes,<br /> +And the heirs of ancient thefts.<br /> +Arise! And make the city yours,<br /> +And the State yours—<br /> +You who are sons of the hardy yeomanry of the forties!<br /> +By God! If you do not destroy these vermin<br /> +My avenging ghost will wipe out<br /> +Your city and your state. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapD08"></a>Enoch Dunlap</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +How many times, during the twenty years<br /> +I was your leader, friends of Spoon River,<br /> +Did you neglect the convention and caucus,<br /> +And leave the burden on my hands<br /> +Of guarding and saving the people’s cause?—<br /> +Sometimes because you were ill;<br /> +Or your grandmother was ill;<br /> +Or you drank too much and fell asleep;<br /> +Or else you said: “He is our leader,<br /> +All will be well; he fights for us;<br /> +We have nothing to do but follow.”<br /> +But oh, how you cursed me when I fell,<br /> +And cursed me, saying I had betrayed you,<br /> +In leaving the caucus room for a moment,<br /> +When the people’s enemies, there assembled,<br /> +Waited and watched for a chance to destroy<br /> +The Sacred Rights of the People.<br /> +You common rabble! I left the caucus<br /> +To go to the urinal. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF11"></a>Ida Frickey</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Nothing in life is alien to you:<br /> +I was a penniless girl from Summum<br /> +Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River.<br /> +All the houses stood before me with closed doors<br /> +And drawn shades—I was barred out;<br /> +I had no place or part in any of them.<br /> +And I walked past the old McNeely mansion,<br /> +A castle of stone ’mid walks and gardens<br /> +With workmen about the place on guard<br /> +And the County and State upholding it<br /> +For its lordly owner, full of pride.<br /> +I was so hungry I had a vision:<br /> +I saw a giant pair of scissors<br /> +Dip from the sky, like the beam of a dredge,<br /> +And cut the house in two like a curtain.<br /> +But at the “Commercial” I saw a man<br /> +Who winked at me as I asked for work—<br /> +It was Wash McNeely’s son.<br /> +He proved the link in the chain of title<br /> +To half my ownership of the mansion,<br /> +Through a breach of promise suit—the scissors.<br /> +So, you see, the house, from the day I was born,<br /> +Was only waiting for me. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC16"></a>Seth Compton</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +When I died, the circulating library<br /> +Which I built up for Spoon River,<br /> +And managed for the good of inquiring minds,<br /> +Was sold at auction on the public square,<br /> +As if to destroy the last vestige<br /> +Of my memory and influence.<br /> +For those of you who could not see the virtue<br /> +Of knowing Volney’s “Ruins” as well as Butler’s “Analogy”<br /> +And “Faust” as well as “Evangeline,”<br /> +Were really the power in the village,<br /> +And often you asked me<br /> +“What is the use of knowing the evil in the world?”<br /> +I am out of your way now, Spoon River,<br /> +Choose your own good and call it good.<br /> +For I could never make you see<br /> +That no one knows what is good<br /> +Who knows not what is evil;<br /> +And no one knows what is true<br /> +Who knows not what is false. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS04"></a>Felix Schmidt</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +It was only a little house of two rooms—<br /> +Almost like a child’s play-house—<br /> +With scarce five acres of ground around it;<br /> +And I had so many children to feed<br /> +And school and clothe, and a wife who was sick<br /> +From bearing children.<br /> +One day lawyer Whitney came along<br /> +And proved to me that Christian Dallman,<br /> +Who owned three thousand acres of land,<br /> +Had bought the eighty that adjoined me<br /> +In eighteen hundred and seventy-one<br /> +For eleven dollars, at a sale for taxes,<br /> +While my father lay in his mortal illness.<br /> +So the quarrel arose and I went to law.<br /> +But when we came to the proof,<br /> +A survey of the land showed clear as day<br /> +That Dallman’s tax deed covered my ground<br /> +And my little house of two rooms.<br /> +It served me right for stirring him up.<br /> +I lost my case and lost my place.<br /> +I left the court room and went to work<br /> +As Christian Dallman’s tenant. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS05"></a>Schrœder The Fisherman</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I sat on the bank above Bernadotte<br /> +And dropped crumbs in the water,<br /> +Just to see the minnows bump each other,<br /> +Until the strongest got the prize.<br /> +Or I went to my little pasture,<br /> +Where the peaceful swine were asleep in the wallow,<br /> +Or nosing each other lovingly,<br /> +And emptied a basket of yellow corn,<br /> +And watched them push and squeal and bite,<br /> +And trample each other to get the corn.<br /> +And I saw how Christian Dallman’s farm,<br /> +Of more than three thousand acres,<br /> +Swallowed the patch of Felix Schmidt,<br /> +As a bass will swallow a minnow<br /> +And I say if there’s anything in man—<br /> +Spirit, or conscience, or breath of God<br /> +That makes him different from fishes or hogs,<br /> +I’d like to see it work! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB13"></a>Richard Bone</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +When I first came to Spoon River<br /> +I did not know whether what they told me<br /> +Was true or false.<br /> +They would bring me the epitaph<br /> +And stand around the shop while I worked<br /> +And say “He was so kind,” “He was so wonderful,”<br /> +“She was the sweetest woman,” “He was a consistent Christian.”<br /> +And I chiseled for them whatever they wished,<br /> +All in ignorance of the truth.<br /> +But later, as I lived among the people here,<br /> +I knew how near to the life<br /> +Were the epitaphs that were ordered for them as they died.<br /> +But still I chiseled whatever they paid me to chisel<br /> +And made myself party to the false chronicles<br /> +Of the stones,<br /> +Even as the historian does who writes<br /> +Without knowing the truth,<br /> +Or because he is influenced to hide it. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapD02"></a>Silas Dement</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +It was moon-light, and the earth sparkled<br /> +With new-fallen frost.<br /> +It was midnight and not a soul abroad.<br /> +Out of the chimney of the court-house<br /> +A gray-hound of smoke leapt and chased<br /> +The northwest wind.<br /> +I carried a ladder to the landing of the stairs<br /> +And leaned it against the frame of the trap-door<br /> +In the ceiling of the portico,<br /> +And I crawled under the roof and amid the rafters<br /> +And flung among the seasoned timbers<br /> +A lighted handful of oil-soaked waste.<br /> +Then I came down and slunk away.<br /> +In a little while the fire-bell rang—<br /> +Clang! Clang! Clang!<br /> +And the Spoon River ladder company<br /> +Came with a dozen buckets and began to pour water<br /> +On the glorious bon-fire, growing hotter<br /> +Higher and brighter, till the walls fell in<br /> +And the limestone columns where Lincoln stood<br /> +Crashed like trees when the woodman fells them.<br /> +When I came back from Joliet<br /> +There was a new court house with a dome.<br /> +For I was punished like all who destroy<br /> +The past for the sake of the future. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS17"></a>Dillard Sissman</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The buzzards wheel slowly<br /> +In wide circles, in a sky<br /> +Faintly hazed as from dust from the road.<br /> +And a wind sweeps through the pasture where I lie<br /> +Beating the grass into long waves.<br /> +My kite is above the wind,<br /> +Though now and then it wobbles,<br /> +Like a man shaking his shoulders;<br /> +And the tail streams out momentarily,<br /> +Then sinks to rest.<br /> +And the buzzards wheel and wheel,<br /> +Sweeping the zenith with wide circles<br /> +Above my kite. And the hills sleep.<br /> +And a farm house, white as snow,<br /> +Peeps from green trees—far away.<br /> +And I watch my kite,<br /> +For the thin moon will kindle herself ere long,<br /> +Then she will swing like a pendulum dial<br /> +To the tail of my kite.<br /> +A spurt of flame like a water-dragon<br /> +Dazzles my eyes—<br /> +I am shaken as a banner! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH16"></a>Jonathan Houghton</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +There is the caw of a crow,<br /> +And the hesitant song of a thrush.<br /> +There is the tinkle of a cowbell far away,<br /> +And the voice of a plowman on Shipley’s hill.<br /> +The forest beyond the orchard is still<br /> +With midsummer stillness;<br /> +And along the road a wagon chuckles,<br /> +Loaded with corn, going to Atterbury.<br /> +And an old man sits under a tree asleep,<br /> +And an old woman crosses the road,<br /> +Coming from the orchard with a bucket of blackberries.<br /> +And a boy lies in the grass<br /> +Near the feet of the old man,<br /> +And looks up at the sailing clouds,<br /> +And longs, and longs, and longs<br /> +For what, he knows not:<br /> +For manhood, for life, for the unknown world!<br /> +Then thirty years passed,<br /> +And the boy returned worn out by life<br /> +And found the orchard vanished,<br /> +And the forest gone,<br /> +And the house made over,<br /> +And the roadway filled with dust from automobiles—<br /> +And himself desiring The Hill! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC18"></a>E. C. Culbertson</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Is it true, Spoon River,<br /> +That in the hall—way of the New Court House<br /> +There is a tablet of bronze<br /> +Containing the embossed faces<br /> +Of Editor Whedon and Thomas Rhodes?<br /> +And is it true that my successful labors<br /> +In the County Board, without which<br /> +Not one stone would have been placed on another,<br /> +And the contributions out of my own pocket<br /> +To build the temple, are but memories among the people,<br /> +Gradually fading away, and soon to descend<br /> +With them to this oblivion where I lie?<br /> +In truth, I can so believe.<br /> +For it is a law of the Kingdom of Heaven<br /> +That whoso enters the vineyard at the eleventh hour<br /> +Shall receive a full day’s pay.<br /> +And it is a law of the Kingdom of this World<br /> +That those who first oppose a good work<br /> +Seize it and make it their own,<br /> +When the corner—stone is laid,<br /> +And memorial tablets are erected. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapD09"></a>Shack Dye</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The white men played all sorts of jokes on me.<br /> +They took big fish off my hook<br /> +And put little ones on, while I was away<br /> +Getting a stringer, and made me believe<br /> +I hadn’t seen aright the fish I had caught.<br /> +When Burr Robbins circus came to town<br /> +They got the ring master to let a tame leopard<br /> +Into the ring, and made me believe<br /> +I was whipping a wild beast like Samson<br /> +When I, for an offer of fifty dollars,<br /> +Dragged him out to his cage.<br /> +One time I entered my blacksmith shop<br /> +And shook as I saw some horse-shoes crawling<br /> +Across the floor, as if alive—<br /> +Walter Simmons had put a magnet<br /> +Under the barrel of water.<br /> +Yet everyone of you, you white men,<br /> +Was fooled about fish and about leopards too,<br /> +And you didn’t know any more than the horse-shoes did<br /> +What moved you about Spoon River. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT12"></a>Hildrup Tubbs</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I made two fights for the people.<br /> +First I left my party, bearing the gonfalon<br /> +Of independence, for reform, and was defeated.<br /> +Next I used my rebel strength<br /> +To capture the standard of my old party—<br /> +And I captured it, but I was defeated.<br /> +Discredited and discarded, misanthropical,<br /> +I turned to the solace of gold<br /> +And I used my remnant of power<br /> +To fasten myself like a saprophyte<br /> +Upon the putrescent carcass<br /> +Of Thomas Rhodes, bankrupt bank,<br /> +As assignee of the fund.<br /> +Everyone now turned from me.<br /> +My hair grew white,<br /> +My purple lusts grew gray,<br /> +Tobacco and whisky lost their savor<br /> +And for years Death ignored me<br /> +As he does a hog. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapT11"></a>Henry Tripp</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The bank broke and I lost my savings.<br /> +I was sick of the tiresome game in Spoon River<br /> +And I made up my mind to run away<br /> +And leave my place in life and my family;<br /> +But just as the midnight train pulled in,<br /> +Quick off the steps jumped Cully Green<br /> +And Martin Vise, and began to fight<br /> +To settle their ancient rivalry,<br /> +Striking each other with fists that sounded<br /> +Like the blows of knotted clubs.<br /> +Now it seemed to me that Cully was winning,<br /> +When his bloody face broke into a grin<br /> +Of sickly cowardice, leaning on Martin<br /> +And whining out “We’re good friends, Mart,<br /> +You know that I’m your friend.”<br /> +But a terrible punch from Martin knocked him<br /> +Around and around and into a heap.<br /> +And then they arrested me as a witness,<br /> +And I lost my train and staid in Spoon River<br /> +To wage my battle of life to the end.<br /> +Oh, Cully Green, you were my savior—<br /> +You, so ashamed and drooped for years,<br /> +Loitering listless about the streets,<br /> +And tying rags round your festering soul,<br /> +Who failed to fight it out. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC03"></a>Granville Calhoun</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I wanted to be County Judge<br /> +One more term, so as to round out a service<br /> +Of thirty years.<br /> +But my friends left me and joined my enemies,<br /> +And they elected a new man.<br /> +Then a spirit of revenge seized me,<br /> +And I infected my four sons with it,<br /> +And I brooded upon retaliation,<br /> +Until the great physician, Nature,<br /> +Smote me through with paralysis<br /> +To give my soul and body a rest.<br /> +Did my sons get power and money?<br /> +Did they serve the people or yoke them,<br /> +To till and harvest fields of self?<br /> +For how could they ever forget<br /> +My face at my bed-room window,<br /> +Sitting helpless amid my golden cages<br /> +Of singing canaries,<br /> +Looking at the old court-house? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC04"></a>Henry C. Calhoun</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I reached the highest place in Spoon River,<br /> +But through what bitterness of spirit!<br /> +The face of my father, sitting speechless,<br /> +Child-like, watching his canaries,<br /> +And looking at the court-house window<br /> +Of the county judge’s room,<br /> +And his admonitions to me to seek<br /> +My own in life, and punish Spoon River<br /> +To avenge the wrong the people did him,<br /> +Filled me with furious energy<br /> +To seek for wealth and seek for power.<br /> +But what did he do but send me along<br /> +The path that leads to the grove of the Furies?<br /> +I followed the path and I tell you this:<br /> +On the way to the grove you’ll pass the Fates,<br /> +Shadow-eyed, bent over their weaving.<br /> +Stop for a moment, and if you see<br /> +The thread of revenge leap out of the shuttle<br /> +Then quickly snatch from Atropos<br /> +The shears and cut it, lest your sons<br /> +And the children of them and their children<br /> +Wear the envenomed robe. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM30"></a>Alfred Moir</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Why was I not devoured by self-contempt,<br /> +And rotted down by indifference<br /> +And impotent revolt like Indignation Jones?<br /> +Why, with all of my errant steps<br /> +Did I miss the fate of Willard Fluke?<br /> +And why, though I stood at Burchard’s bar,<br /> +As a sort of decoy for the house to the boys<br /> +To buy the drinks, did the curse of drink<br /> +Fall on me like rain that runs off,<br /> +Leaving the soul of me dry and clean?<br /> +And why did I never kill a man<br /> +Like Jack McGuire?<br /> +But instead I mounted a little in life,<br /> +And I owe it all to a book I read.<br /> +But why did I go to Mason City,<br /> +Where I chanced to see the book in a window,<br /> +With its garish cover luring my eye?<br /> +And why did my soul respond to the book,<br /> +As I read it over and over? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapZ01"></a>Perry Zoll</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +My thanks, friends of the<br /> +County Scientific Association,<br /> +For this modest boulder,<br /> +And its little tablet of bronze.<br /> +Twice I tried to join your honored body,<br /> +And was rejected<br /> +And when my little brochure<br /> +On the intelligence of plants<br /> +Began to attract attention<br /> +You almost voted me in.<br /> +After that I grew beyond the need of you<br /> +And your recognition.<br /> +Yet I do not reject your memorial stone<br /> +Seeing that I should, in so doing,<br /> +Deprive you of honor to yourselves. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapD03"></a>Dippold the Optician</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +What do you see now?<br /> +Globes of red, yellow, purple.<br /> +Just a moment! And now?<br /> +My father and mother and sisters.<br /> +Yes! And now?<br /> +Knights at arms, beautiful women, kind faces.<br /> +Try this.<br /> +A field of grain—a city.<br /> +Very good! And now?<br /> +A young woman with angels bending over her.<br /> +A heavier lens! And now?<br /> +Many women with bright eyes and open lips.<br /> +Try this.<br /> +Just a goblet on a table.<br /> +Oh I see! Try this lens!<br /> +Just an open space—I see nothing in particular.<br /> +Well, now!<br /> +Pine trees, a lake, a summer sky.<br /> +That’s better. And now?<br /> +A book.<br /> +Read a page for me.<br /> +I can’t. My eyes are carried beyond the page.<br /> +Try this lens.<br /> +Depths of air.<br /> +Excellent! And now!<br /> +Light, just light making everything below it a toy world.<br /> +Very well, we’ll make the glasses accordingly. + +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG09"></a>Magrady Graham</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Tell me, was Altgeld elected Governor?<br /> +For when the returns began to come in<br /> +And Cleveland was sweeping the East<br /> +It was too much for you, poor old heart,<br /> +Who had striven for democracy<br /> +In the long, long years of defeat.<br /> +And like a watch that is worn<br /> +I felt you growing slower until you stopped.<br /> +Tell me, was Altgeld elected,<br /> +And what did he do?<br /> +Did they bring his head on a platter to a dancer,<br /> +Or did he triumph for the people?<br /> +For when I saw him<br /> +And took his hand,<br /> +The child-like blueness of his eyes<br /> +Moved me to tears,<br /> +And there was an air of eternity about him,<br /> +Like the cold, clear light that rests at dawn<br /> +On the hills! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH10"></a>Archibald Higbie</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I loathed you, Spoon River.<br /> +I tried to rise above you,<br /> +I was ashamed of you.<br /> +I despised you<br /> +As the place of my nativity.<br /> +And there in Rome, among the artists,<br /> +Speaking Italian, speaking French,<br /> +I seemed to myself at times to be free<br /> +Of every trace of my origin.<br /> +I seemed to be reaching the heights of art<br /> +And to breathe the air that the masters breathed<br /> +And to see the world with their eyes.<br /> +But still they’d pass my work and say:<br /> +“What are you driving at, my friend?<br /> +Sometimes the face looks like Apollo’s<br /> +At others it has a trace of Lincoln’s.”<br /> +There was no culture, you know, in Spoon River<br /> +And I burned with shame and held my peace.<br /> +And what could I do, all covered over<br /> +And weighted down with western soil<br /> +Except aspire, and pray for another<br /> +Birth in the world, with all of Spoon River<br /> +Rooted out of my soul? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM22"></a>Tom Merritt</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +At first I suspected something—<br /> +She acted so calm and absent-minded.<br /> +And one day I heard the back door shut<br /> +As I entered the front, and I saw him slink<br /> +Back of the smokehouse into the lot<br /> +And run across the field.<br /> +And I meant to kill him on sight.<br /> +But that day, walking near Fourth Bridge<br /> +Without a stick or a stone at hand,<br /> +All of a sudden I saw him standing<br /> +Scared to death, holding his rabbits,<br /> +And all I could say was, “Don’t, Don’t, Don’t,”<br /> +As he aimed and fired at my heart. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM21"></a>Mrs. Merritt</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Silent before the jury<br /> +Returning no word to the judge when he asked me<br /> +If I had aught to say against the sentence,<br /> +Only shaking my head.<br /> +What could I say to people who thought<br /> +That a woman of thirty-five was at fault<br /> +When her lover of nineteen killed her husband?<br /> +Even though she had said to him over and over,<br /> +“Go away, Elmer, go far away,<br /> +I have maddened your brain with the gift of my body:<br /> +You will do some terrible thing.”<br /> +And just as I feared, he killed my husband;<br /> +With which I had nothing to do, before<br /> +God Silent for thirty years in prison<br /> +And the iron gates of Joliet<br /> +Swung as the gray and silent trusties<br /> +Carried me out in a coffin. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK01"></a>Elmer Karr</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +What but the love of God could have softened<br /> +And made forgiving the people of Spoon River<br /> +Toward me who wronged the bed of Thomas Merritt<br /> +And murdered him beside?<br /> +Oh, loving hearts that took me in again<br /> +When I returned from fourteen years in prison!<br /> +Oh, helping hands that in the church received me<br /> +And heard with tears my penitent confession,<br /> +Who took the sacrament of bread and wine!<br /> +Repent, ye living ones, and rest with Jesus. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC10"></a>Elizabeth Childers</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Dust of my dust,<br /> +And dust with my dust,<br /> +O, child who died as you entered the world,<br /> +Dead with my death!<br /> +Not knowing<br /> +Breath, though you tried so hard,<br /> +With a heart that beat when you lived with me,<br /> +And stopped when you left me for Life.<br /> +It is well, my child.<br /> +For you never traveled<br /> +The long, long way that begins with school days,<br /> +When little fingers blur under the tears<br /> +That fall on the crooked letters.<br /> +And the earliest wound, when a little mate<br /> +Leaves you alone for another;<br /> +And sickness, and the face of<br /> +Fear by the bed;<br /> +The death of a father or mother;<br /> +Or shame for them, or poverty;<br /> +The maiden sorrow of school days ended;<br /> +And eyeless Nature that makes you drink<br /> +From the cup of Love, though you know it’s poisoned;<br /> +To whom would your flower-face have been lifted?<br /> +Botanist, weakling?<br /> +Cry of what blood to yours?—<br /> +Pure or foul, for it makes no matter,<br /> +It’s blood that calls to our blood.<br /> +And then your children—oh, what might they be?<br /> +And what your sorrow?<br /> +Child! Child Death is better than Life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC17"></a>Edith Conant</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +We stand about this place—we, the memories;<br /> +And shade our eyes because we dread to read:<br /> +“June 17th, 1884, aged 21 years and 3 days.”<br /> +And all things are changed.<br /> +And we—we, the memories, stand here for ourselves alone,<br /> +For no eye marks us, or would know why we are here.<br /> +Your husband is dead, your sister lives far away,<br /> +Your father is bent with age;<br /> +He has forgotten you, he scarcely leaves the house<br /> +Any more. No one remembers your exquisite face,<br /> +Your lyric voice!<br /> +How you sang, even on the morning you were stricken,<br /> +With piercing sweetness, with thrilling sorrow,<br /> +Before the advent of the child which died with you.<br /> +It is all forgotten, save by us, the memories,<br /> +Who are forgotten by the world.<br /> +All is changed, save the river and the hill—<br /> +Even they are changed.<br /> +Only the burning sun and the quiet stars are the same.<br /> +And we—we, the memories, stand here in awe,<br /> +Our eyes closed with the weariness of tears—<br /> +In immeasurable weariness +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW03"></a>Charles Webster</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The pine woods on the hill,<br /> +And the farmhouse miles away,<br /> +Showed clear as though behind a lens<br /> +Under a sky of peacock blue!<br /> +But a blanket of cloud by afternoon<br /> +Muffled the earth. And you walked the road<br /> +And the clover field, where the only sound<br /> +Was the cricket’s liquid tremolo.<br /> +Then the sun went down between great drifts<br /> +Of distant storms. For a rising wind<br /> +Swept clean the sky and blew the flames<br /> +Of the unprotected stars;<br /> +And swayed the russet moon,<br /> +Hanging between the rim of the hill<br /> +And the twinkling boughs of the apple orchard.<br /> +You walked the shore in thought<br /> +Where the throats of the waves were like whip-poor-wills<br /> +Singing beneath the water and crying<br /> +To the wash of the wind in the cedar trees,<br /> +Till you stood, too full for tears, by the cot,<br /> +And looking up saw Jupiter,<br /> +Tipping the spire of the giant pine,<br /> +And looking down saw my vacant chair,<br /> +Rocked by the wind on the lonely porch—<br /> +Be brave, Beloved! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM12"></a>Father Malloy</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +You are over there, Father Malloy,<br /> +Where holy ground is, and the cross marks every grave,<br /> +Not here with us on the hill—<br /> +Us of wavering faith, and clouded vision<br /> +And drifting hope, and unforgiven sins.<br /> +You were so human, Father Malloy,<br /> +Taking a friendly glass sometimes with us,<br /> +Siding with us who would rescue Spoon River<br /> +From the coldness and the dreariness of village morality.<br /> +You were like a traveler who brings a little box of sand<br /> +From the wastes about the pyramids<br /> +And makes them real and Egypt real.<br /> +You were a part of and related to a great past,<br /> +And yet you were so close to many of us.<br /> +You believed in the joy of life.<br /> +You did not seem to be ashamed of the flesh.<br /> +You faced life as it is,<br /> +And as it changes.<br /> +Some of us almost came to you, Father Malloy,<br /> +Seeing how your church had divined the heart,<br /> +And provided for it,<br /> +Through Peter the Flame,<br /> +Peter the Rock. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG11"></a>Ami Green</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Not “a youth with hoary head and haggard eye”,<br /> +But an old man with a smooth skin<br /> +And black hair! I had the face of a boy as long as I lived,<br /> +And for years a soul that was stiff and bent,<br /> +In a world which saw me just as a jest,<br /> +To be hailed familiarly when it chose,<br /> +And loaded up as a man when it chose,<br /> +Being neither man nor boy.<br /> +In truth it was soul as well as body<br /> +Which never matured, and I say to you<br /> +That the much-sought prize of eternal youth<br /> +Is just arrested growth. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC05"></a>Calvin Campbell</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Ye who are kicking against Fate,<br /> +Tell me how it is that on this hill-side<br /> +Running down to the river,<br /> +Which fronts the sun and the south-wind,<br /> +This plant draws from the air and soil<br /> +Poison and becomes poison ivy?<br /> +And this plant draws from the same air and soil<br /> +Sweet elixirs and colors and becomes arbutus?<br /> +And both flourish?<br /> +You may blame Spoon River for what it is,<br /> +But whom do you blame for the will in you<br /> +That feeds itself and makes you dock-weed,<br /> +Jimpson, dandelion or mullen<br /> +And which can never use any soil or air<br /> +So as to make you jessamine or wistaria? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapL01"></a>Henry Layton</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Whoever thou art who passest by<br /> +Know that my father was gentle,<br /> +And my mother was violent,<br /> +While I was born the whole of such hostile halves,<br /> +Not intermixed and fused,<br /> +But each distinct, feebly soldered together.<br /> +Some of you saw me as gentle,<br /> +Some as violent,<br /> +Some as both.<br /> +But neither half of me wrought my ruin.<br /> +It was the falling asunder of halves,<br /> +Never a part of each other,<br /> +That left me a lifeless soul. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS08"></a>Harlan Sewall</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +You never understood,<br /> +O unknown one,<br /> +Why it was I repaid<br /> +Your devoted friendship and delicate ministrations<br /> +First with diminished thanks,<br /> +Afterward by gradually withdrawing my presence from you,<br /> +So that I might not be compelled to thank you,<br /> +And then with silence which followed upon<br /> +Our final Separation.<br /> +You had cured my diseased soul.<br /> +But to cure it<br /> +You saw my disease, you knew my secret,<br /> +And that is why I fled from you.<br /> +For though when our bodies rise from pain<br /> +We kiss forever the watchful hands<br /> +That gave us wormwood, while we shudder<br /> +For thinking of the wormwood,<br /> +A soul that’s cured is a different matter,<br /> +For there we’d blot from memory<br /> +The soft-toned words, the searching eyes,<br /> +And stand forever oblivious,<br /> +Not so much of the sorrow itself<br /> +As of the hand that healed it. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK10"></a>Ippolit Konovaloff</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was a gun-smith in Odessa.<br /> +One night the police broke in the room<br /> +Where a group of us were reading Spencer.<br /> +And seized our books and arrested us.<br /> +But I escaped and came to New York<br /> +And thence to Chicago, and then to Spoon River,<br /> +Where I could study my Kant in peace<br /> +And eke out a living repairing guns<br /> +Look at my moulds! My architectonics<br /> +One for a barrel, one for a hammer<br /> +And others for other parts of a gun!<br /> +Well, now suppose no gun-smith living<br /> +Had anything else but duplicate moulds<br /> +Of these I show you—well, all guns<br /> +Would be just alike, with a hammer to hit<br /> +The cap and a barrel to carry the shot<br /> +All acting alike for themselves, and all<br /> +Acting against each other alike.<br /> +And there would be your world of guns!<br /> +Which nothing could ever free from itself<br /> +Except a Moulder with different moulds<br /> +To mould the metal over. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP08"></a>Henry Phipps</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was the Sunday-school superintendent,<br /> +The dummy president of the wagon works<br /> +And the canning factory,<br /> +Acting for Thomas Rhodes and the banking clique;<br /> +My son the cashier of the bank,<br /> +Wedded to Rhodes’ daughter,<br /> +My week days spent in making money,<br /> +My Sundays at church and in prayer.<br /> +In everything a cog in the wheel of things-as-they-are:<br /> +Of money, master and man, made white<br /> +With the paint of the Christian creed.<br /> +And then:<br /> +The bank collapsed.<br /> +I stood and hooked at the wrecked machine—<br /> +The wheels with blow-holes stopped with putty and painted;<br /> +The rotten bolts, the broken rods;<br /> +And only the hopper for souls fit to be used again<br /> +In a new devourer of life,<br /> +When newspapers, judges and money-magicians<br /> +Build over again.<br /> +I was stripped to the bone, but I lay in the Rock of Ages,<br /> +Seeing now through the game, no longer a dupe,<br /> +And knowing “the upright shall dwell in the land<br /> +But the years of the wicked shall be shortened.”<br /> +Then suddenly, Dr. Meyers discovered<br /> +A cancer in my liver.<br /> +I was not, after all, the particular care of God<br /> +Why, even thus standing on a peak<br /> +Above the mists through which I had climbed,<br /> +And ready for larger life in the world,<br /> +Eternal forces<br /> +Moved me on with a push. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW14"></a>Harry Wilmans</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was just turned twenty-one,<br /> +And Henry Phipps, the Sunday-school superintendent,<br /> +Made a speech in Bindle’s Opera House.<br /> +“The honor of the flag must be upheld,” he said,<br /> +“Whether it be assailed by a barbarous tribe of Tagalogs<br /> +Or the greatest power in Europe.”<br /> +And we cheered and cheered the speech and the flag he waved<br /> +As he spoke.<br /> +And I went to the war in spite of my father,<br /> +And followed the flag till I saw it raised<br /> +By our camp in a rice field near Manila,<br /> +And all of us cheered and cheered it.<br /> +But there were flies and poisonous things;<br /> +And there was the deadly water,<br /> +And the cruel heat,<br /> +And the sickening, putrid food;<br /> +And the smell of the trench just back of the tents<br /> +Where the soldiers went to empty themselves;<br /> +And there were the whores who followed us, full of syphilis;<br /> +And beastly acts between ourselves or alone,<br /> +With bullying, hatred, degradation among us,<br /> +And days of loathing and nights of fear<br /> +To the hour of the charge through the steaming swamp,<br /> +Following the flag,<br /> +Till I fell with a scream, shot through the guts.<br /> +Now there’s a flag over me in<br /> +Spoon River. A flag!<br /> +A flag! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW01"></a>John Wasson</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Oh! the dew-wet grass of the meadow in North Carolina<br /> +Through which Rebecca followed me wailing, wailing,<br /> +One child in her arms, and three that ran along wailing,<br /> +Lengthening out the farewell to me off to the war with the British,<br /> +And then the long, hard years down to the day of Yorktown.<br /> +And then my search for Rebecca,<br /> +Finding her at last in Virginia,<br /> +Two children dead in the meanwhile.<br /> +We went by oxen to Tennessee,<br /> +Thence after years to Illinois,<br /> +At last to Spoon River.<br /> +We cut the buffalo grass,<br /> +We felled the forests,<br /> +We built the school houses, built the bridges,<br /> +Leveled the roads and tilled the fields<br /> +Alone with poverty, scourges, death—<br /> +If Harry Wilmans who fought the Filipinos<br /> +Is to have a flag on his grave<br /> +Take it from mine. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS20"></a>Many Soldiers</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +The idea danced before us as a flag;<br /> +The sound of martial music;<br /> +The thrill of carrying a gun;<br /> +Advancement in the world on coming home;<br /> +A glint of glory, wrath for foes;<br /> +A dream of duty to country or to God.<br /> +But these were things in ourselves, shining before us,<br /> +They were not the power behind us,<br /> +Which was the Almighty hand of Life,<br /> +Like fire at earth’s center making mountains,<br /> +Or pent up waters that cut them through.<br /> +Do you remember the iron band<br /> +The blacksmith, Shack Dye, welded<br /> +Around the oak on Bennet’s lawn,<br /> +From which to swing a hammock,<br /> +That daughter Janet might repose in, reading<br /> +On summer afternoons?<br /> +And that the growing tree at last<br /> +Sundered the iron band?<br /> +But not a cell in all the tree<br /> +Knew aught save that it thrilled with life,<br /> +Nor cared because the hammock fell<br /> +In the dust with Milton’s Poems. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapJ02"></a>Godwin James</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Harry Wilmans! You who fell in a swamp<br /> +Near Manila, following the flag<br /> +You were not wounded by the greatness of a dream,<br /> +Or destroyed by ineffectual work,<br /> +Or driven to madness by Satanic snags;<br /> +You were not torn by aching nerves,<br /> +Nor did you carry great wounds to your old age.<br /> +You did not starve, for the government fed you.<br /> +You did not suffer yet cry “forward”<br /> +To an army which you led<br /> +Against a foe with mocking smiles,<br /> +Sharper than bayonets.<br /> +You were not smitten down<br /> +By invisible bombs.<br /> +You were not rejected<br /> +By those for whom you were defeated.<br /> +You did not eat the savorless bread<br /> +Which a poor alchemy had made from ideals.<br /> +You went to Manila, Harry Wilmans,<br /> +While I enlisted in the bedraggled army<br /> +Of bright-eyed, divine youths,<br /> +Who surged forward, who were driven back and fell<br /> +Sick, broken, crying, shorn of faith,<br /> +Following the flag of the Kingdom of Heaven.<br /> +You and I, Harry Wilmans, have fallen<br /> +In our several ways, not knowing<br /> +Good from bad, defeat from victory,<br /> +Nor what face it is that smiles<br /> +Behind the demoniac mask. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK07"></a>Lyman King</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +You may think, passer-by, that Fate<br /> +Is a pit-fall outside of yourself,<br /> +Around which you may walk by the use of foresight<br /> +And wisdom.<br /> +Thus you believe, viewing the lives of other men,<br /> +As one who in God-like fashion bends over an anthill,<br /> +Seeing how their difficulties could be avoided.<br /> +But pass on into life:<br /> +In time you shall see Fate approach you<br /> +In the shape of your own image in the mirror;<br /> +Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth,<br /> +And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest,<br /> +And you shall know that guest<br /> +And read the authentic message of his eyes. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB14"></a>Caroline Branson</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked,<br /> +As often before, the April fields till star-light<br /> +Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness<br /> +Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood,<br /> +Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing<br /> +Like notes of music that run together, into winning,<br /> +In the inspired improvisation of love!<br /> +But to put back of us as a canticle ended<br /> +The rapt enchantment of the flesh,<br /> +In which our souls swooned, down, down,<br /> +Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves—<br /> +Annihilated in love!<br /> +To leave these behind for a room with lamps:<br /> +And to stand with our Secret mocking itself,<br /> +And hiding itself amid flowers and mandolins,<br /> +Stared at by all between salad and coffee.<br /> +And to see him tremble, and feel myself<br /> +Prescient, as one who signs a bond—<br /> +Not flaming with gifts and pledges heaped<br /> +With rosy hands over his brow.<br /> +And then, O night! deliberate! unlovely!<br /> +With all of our wooing blotted out by the winning,<br /> +In a chosen room in an hour that was known to all!<br /> +Next day he sat so listless, almost cold<br /> +So strangely changed, wondering why I wept,<br /> +Till a kind of sick despair and voluptuous madness<br /> +Seized us to make the pact of death.<br /> +<br /> +A stalk of the earth-sphere,<br /> +Frail as star-light;<br /> +Waiting to be drawn once again<br /> +Into creation’s stream.<br /> +But next time to be given birth<br /> +Gazed at by Raphael and St. Francis<br /> +Sometimes as they pass.<br /> +For I am their little brother,<br /> +To be known clearly face to face<br /> +Through a cycle of birth hereafter run.<br /> +You may know the seed and the soil;<br /> +You may feel the cold rain fall,<br /> +But only the earth-sphere, only heaven<br /> +Knows the secret of the seed<br /> +In the nuptial chamber under the soil.<br /> +Throw me into the stream again,<br /> +Give me another trial—<br /> +Save me, Shelley! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapR09"></a>Anne Rutledge</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Out of me unworthy and unknown<br /> +The vibrations of deathless music;<br /> +“With malice toward none, with charity for all.”<br /> +Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions,<br /> +And the beneficent face of a nation<br /> +Shining with justice and truth.<br /> +I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds,<br /> +Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln,<br /> +Wedded to him, not through union, But through separation.<br /> +Bloom forever, O Republic,<br /> +From the dust of my bosom! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM26"></a>Hamlet Micure</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +In a lingering fever many visions come to you:<br /> +I was in the little house again<br /> +With its great yard of clover<br /> +Running down to the board-fence,<br /> +Shadowed by the oak tree,<br /> +Where we children had our swing.<br /> +Yet the little house was a manor hall<br /> +Set in a lawn, and by the lawn was the sea.<br /> +I was in the room where little Paul<br /> +Strangled from diphtheria,<br /> +But yet it was not this room—<br /> +It was a sunny verandah enclosed<br /> +With mullioned windows<br /> +And in a chair sat a man in a dark cloak<br /> +With a face like Euripides.<br /> +He had come to visit me, or I had gone to visit him—I could not tell.<br /> +We could hear the beat of the sea, the clover nodded<br /> +Under a summer wind, and little Paul came<br /> +With clover blossoms to the window and smiled.<br /> +Then I said: “What is ‘divine despair,’ Alfred?”<br /> +“Have you read ‘Tears, Idle Tears’?” he asked.<br /> +“Yes, but you do not there express divine despair.”<br /> +“My poor friend,” he answered, “that was why the despair<br /> +Was divine.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapO01"></a>Mabel Osborne</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Your red blossoms amid green leaves<br /> +Are drooping, beautiful geranium!<br /> +But you do not ask for water.<br /> +You cannot speak!<br /> +You do not need to speak—<br /> +Everyone knows that you are dying of thirst,<br /> +Yet they do not bring water!<br /> +They pass on, saying:<br /> +“The geranium wants water.”<br /> +And I, who had happiness to share<br /> +And longed to share your happiness;<br /> +I who loved you, Spoon River,<br /> +And craved your love,<br /> +Withered before your eyes, Spoon River—<br /> +Thirsting, thirsting,<br /> +Voiceless from chasteness of soul to ask you for love,<br /> +You who knew and saw me perish before you,<br /> +Like this geranium which someone has planted over me,<br /> +And left to die. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH08"></a>William H. Herndon</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +There by the window in the old house<br /> +Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley,<br /> +My days of labor closed, sitting out life’s decline,<br /> +Day by day did I look in my memory,<br /> +As one who gazes in an enchantress’ crystal globe,<br /> +And I saw the figures of the past<br /> +As if in a pageant glassed by a shining dream,<br /> +Move through the incredible sphere of time.<br /> +And I saw a man arise from the soil like a fabled giant<br /> +And throw himself over a deathless destiny,<br /> +Master of great armies, head of the republic,<br /> +Bringing together into a dithyramb of recreative song<br /> +The epic hopes of a people;<br /> +At the same time Vulcan of sovereign fires,<br /> +Where imperishable shields and swords were beaten out<br /> +From spirits tempered in heaven.<br /> +Look in the crystal!<br /> +See how he hastens on<br /> +To the place where his path comes up to the path<br /> +Of a child of Plutarch and Shakespeare.<br /> +O Lincoln, actor indeed, playing well your part<br /> +And Booth, who strode in a mimic play within the play,<br /> +Often and often I saw you,<br /> +As the cawing crows winged their way to the wood<br /> +Over my house—top at solemn sunsets,<br /> +There by my window,<br /> +Alone. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW02"></a>Rebecca Wasson</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Spring and Summer, Fall and Winter and Spring,<br /> +After each other drifting, past my window drifting!<br /> +And I lay so many years watching them drift and counting<br /> +The years till a terror came in my heart at times,<br /> +With the feeling that I had become eternal; at last<br /> +My hundredth year was reached! And still I lay<br /> +Hearing the tick of the clock, and the low of cattle<br /> +And the scream of a jay flying through falling leaves!<br /> +Day after day alone in a room of the house<br /> +Of a daughter-in-law stricken with age and gray.<br /> +And by night, or looking out of the window by day<br /> +My thought ran back, it seemed, through infinite time<br /> +To North Carolina and all my girlhood days,<br /> +And John, my John, away to the war with the British,<br /> +And all the children, the deaths, and all the sorrows.<br /> +And that stretch of years like a prairie in Illinois<br /> +Through which great figures passed like hurrying horsemen,<br /> +Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Webster, Clay.<br /> +O beautiful young republic for whom my John and I<br /> +Gave all of our strength and love!<br /> +And O my John!<br /> +Why, when I lay so helpless in bed for years,<br /> +Praying for you to come, was your coming delayed?<br /> +Seeing that with a cry of rapture, like that I uttered<br /> +When you found me in old Virginia after the war,<br /> +I cried when I beheld you there by the bed,<br /> +As the sun stood low in the west growing smaller and fainter<br /> +In the light of your face! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM02"></a>Rutherford McDowell</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +They brought me ambrotypes<br /> +Of the old pioneers to enlarge.<br /> +And sometimes one sat for me—<br /> +Some one who was in being<br /> +When giant hands from the womb of the world<br /> +Tore the republic.<br /> +What was it in their eyes?—<br /> +For I could never fathom<br /> +That mystical pathos of drooped eyelids,<br /> +And the serene sorrow of their eyes.<br /> +It was like a pool of water,<br /> +Amid oak trees at the edge of a forest,<br /> +Where the leaves fall,<br /> +As you hear the crow of a cock<br /> +From a far-off farm house, seen near the hills<br /> +Where the third generation lives, and the strong men<br /> +And the strong women are gone and forgotten.<br /> +And these grand-children and great grand-children<br /> +Of the pioneers!<br /> +Truly did my camera record their faces, too,<br /> +With so much of the old strength gone,<br /> +And the old faith gone,<br /> +And the old mastery of life gone,<br /> +And the old courage gone,<br /> +Which labors and loves and suffers and sings<br /> +Under the sun! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapA02"></a>Hannah Armstrong</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I wrote him a letter asking him for old times’ sake<br /> +To discharge my sick boy from the army;<br /> +But maybe he couldn’t read it.<br /> +Then I went to town and had James Garber,<br /> +Who wrote beautifully, write him a letter.<br /> +But maybe that was lost in the mails.<br /> +So I traveled all the way to Washington.<br /> +I was more than an hour finding the White House.<br /> +And when I found it they turned me away,<br /> +Hiding their smiles.<br /> +Then I thought: “Oh, well, he ain’t the same as when I boarded him<br /> +And he and my husband worked together<br /> +And all of us called him Abe, there in Menard.”<br /> +As a last attempt I turned to a guard and said:<br /> +“Please say it’s old Aunt Hannah Armstrong<br /> +From Illinois, come to see him about her sick boy<br /> +In the army.”<br /> +Well, just in a moment they let me in!<br /> +And when he saw me he broke in a laugh,<br /> +And dropped his business as president,<br /> +And wrote in his own hand Doug’s discharge,<br /> +Talking the while of the early days,<br /> +And telling stories. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM19"></a>Lucinda Matlock</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I went to the dances at Chandlerville,<br /> +And played snap-out at Winchester.<br /> +One time we changed partners,<br /> +Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,<br /> +And then I found Davis.<br /> +We were married and lived together for seventy years,<br /> +Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,<br /> +Eight of whom we lost<br /> +Ere I had reached the age of sixty.<br /> +I spun,<br /> +I wove,<br /> +I kept the house,<br /> +I nursed the sick,<br /> +I made the garden, and for holiday<br /> +Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,<br /> +And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,<br /> +And many a flower and medicinal weed—<br /> +Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.<br /> +At ninety—six I had lived enough, that is all,<br /> +And passed to a sweet repose.<br /> +What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,<br /> +Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?<br /> +Degenerate sons and daughters,<br /> +Life is too strong for you—<br /> +It takes life to love Life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM18"></a>Davis Matlock</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Suppose it is nothing but the hive:<br /> +That there are drones and workers<br /> +And queens, and nothing but storing honey—<br /> +(Material things as well as culture and wisdom)—<br /> +For the next generation, this generation never living,<br /> +Except as it swarms in the sun-light of youth,<br /> +Strengthening its wings on what has been gathered,<br /> +And tasting, on the way to the hive<br /> +From the clover field, the delicate spoil.<br /> +Suppose all this, and suppose the truth:<br /> +That the nature of man is greater<br /> +Than nature’s need in the hive;<br /> +And you must bear the burden of life,<br /> +As well as the urge from your spirit’s excess—<br /> +Well, I say to live it out like a god<br /> +Sure of immortal life, though you are in doubt,<br /> +Is the way to live it.<br /> +If that doesn’t make God proud of you<br /> +Then God is nothing but gravitation<br /> +Or sleep is the golden goal. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapA01"></a>Herman Altman</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Did I follow Truth wherever she led,<br /> +And stand against the whole world for a cause,<br /> +And uphold the weak against the strong?<br /> +If I did I would be remembered among men<br /> +As I was known in life among the people,<br /> +And as I was hated and loved on earth,<br /> +Therefore, build no monument to me,<br /> +And carve no bust for me,<br /> +Lest, though I become not a demi-god,<br /> +The reality of my soul be lost,<br /> +So that thieves and liars,<br /> +Who were my enemies and destroyed me,<br /> +And the children of thieves and liars,<br /> +May claim me and affirm before my bust<br /> +That they stood with me in the days of my defeat.<br /> +Build me no monument<br /> +Lest my memory be perverted to the uses<br /> +Of lying and oppression.<br /> +My lovers and their children must not be dispossessed of me;<br /> +I would be the untarnished possession forever<br /> +Of those for whom I lived. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM06"></a>Jennie M’Grew</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Not, where the stairway turns in the dark<br /> +A hooded figure, shriveled under a flowing cloak!<br /> +Not yellow eyes in the room at night,<br /> +Staring out from a surface of cobweb gray!<br /> +And not the flap of a condor wing<br /> +When the roar of life in your ears begins<br /> +As a sound heard never before!<br /> +But on a sunny afternoon,<br /> +By a country road,<br /> +Where purple rag-weeds bloom along a straggling fence<br /> +And the field is gleaned, and the air is still<br /> +To see against the sun-light something black<br /> +Like a blot with an iris rim—<br /> +That is the sign to eyes of second sight. . .<br /> +And that I saw! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC08"></a>Columbus Cheney</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +This weeping willow!<br /> +Why do you not plant a few<br /> +For the millions of children not yet born,<br /> +As well as for us?<br /> +Are they not non-existent, or cells asleep<br /> +Without mind?<br /> +Or do they come to earth, their birth<br /> +Rupturing the memory of previous being?<br /> +Answer!<br /> +The field of unexplored intuition is yours.<br /> +But in any case why not plant willows for them,<br /> +As well as for us? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF03"></a>Wallace Ferguson</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +There at Geneva where Mt. Blanc floated above<br /> +The wine-hued lake like a cloud, when a breeze was blown<br /> +Out of an empty sky of blue, and the roaring Rhone<br /> +Hurried under the bridge through chasms of rock;<br /> +And the music along the cafés was part of the splendor<br /> +Of dancing water under a torrent of light;<br /> +And the purer part of the genius of Jean Rousseau<br /> +Was the silent music of all we saw or heard—<br /> +There at Geneva, I say, was the rapture less<br /> +Because I could not link myself with the I of yore,<br /> +When twenty years before I wandered about Spoon River?<br /> +Nor remember what I was nor what I felt?<br /> +We live in the hour all free of the hours gone by.<br /> +Therefore, O soul, if you lose yourself in death,<br /> +And wake in some Geneva by some Mt. Blanc,<br /> +What do you care if you know not yourself as the you<br /> +Who lived and loved in a little corner of earth<br /> +Known as Spoon River ages and ages vanished? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB05"></a>Marie Bateson</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +You observe the carven hand<br /> +With the index finger pointing heavenward.<br /> +That is the direction, no doubt.<br /> +But how shall one follow it?<br /> +It is well to abstain from murder and lust,<br /> +To forgive, do good to others, worship God<br /> +Without graven images.<br /> +But these are external means after all<br /> +By which you chiefly do good to yourself.<br /> +The inner kernel is freedom,<br /> +It is light, purity—<br /> +I can no more,<br /> +Find the goal or lose it, according to your vision. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS12"></a>Tennessee Claflin Shope</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was the laughing-stock of the village,<br /> +Chiefly of the people of good sense, as they call themselves—<br /> +Also of the learned, like Rev. Peet, who read Greek<br /> +The same as English.<br /> +For instead of talking free trade,<br /> +Or preaching some form of baptism;<br /> +Instead of believing in the efficacy<br /> +Of walking cracks, picking up pins the right way,<br /> +Seeing the new moon over the right shoulder,<br /> +Or curing rheumatism with blue glass,<br /> +I asserted the sovereignty of my own soul.<br /> +Before Mary Baker G. Eddy even got started<br /> +With what she called science I had mastered the “Bhagavad Gita,”<br /> +And cured my soul, before Mary<br /> +Began to cure bodies with souls—<br /> +Peace to all worlds! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapJ03"></a>Plymouth Rock Joe</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Why are you running so fast hither and thither<br /> +Chasing midges or butterflies?<br /> +Some of you are standing solemnly scratching for grubs;<br /> +Some of you are waiting for corn to be scattered.<br /> +This is life, is it?<br /> +Cock-a-doodle-do! Very well, Thomas Rhodes,<br /> +You are cock of the walk, no doubt.<br /> +But here comes Elliott Hawkins,<br /> +Gluck, Gluck, Gluck, attracting political followers.<br /> +Quah! quah! quah! why so poetical, Minerva,<br /> +This gray morning?<br /> +Kittie—quah—quah! for shame, Lucius Atherton,<br /> +The raucous squawk you evoked from the throat<br /> +Of Aner Clute will be taken up later<br /> +By Mrs. Benjamin Pantier as a cry<br /> +Of votes for women: Ka dook—dook!<br /> +What inspiration has come to you, Margaret Fuller Slack?<br /> +And why does your gooseberry eye<br /> +Flit so liquidly, Tennessee Claflin Shope?<br /> +Are you trying to fathom the esotericism of an egg?<br /> +Your voice is very metallic this morning, Hortense Robbins—<br /> +Almost like a guinea hen’s!<br /> +Quah! That was a guttural sigh, Isaiah Beethoven;<br /> +Did you see the shadow of the hawk,<br /> +Or did you step upon the drumsticks<br /> +Which the cook threw out this morning?<br /> +Be chivalric, heroic, or aspiring,<br /> +Metaphysical, religious, or rebellious,<br /> +You shall never get out of the barnyard<br /> +Except by way of over the fence<br /> +Mixed with potato peelings and such into the trough! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapE01"></a>Imanuel Ehrenhardt</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I began with Sir William Hamilton’s lectures.<br /> +Then studied Dugald Stewart;<br /> +And then John Locke on the Understanding,<br /> +And then Descartes, Fichte and Schelling,<br /> +Kant and then Schopenhauer—<br /> +Books I borrowed from old Judge Somers.<br /> +All read with rapturous industry<br /> +Hoping it was reserved to me<br /> +To grasp the tail of the ultimate secret,<br /> +And drag it out of its hole.<br /> +My soul flew up ten thousand miles<br /> +And only the moon looked a little bigger.<br /> +Then I fell back, how glad of the earth!<br /> +All through the soul of William Jones<br /> +Who showed me a letter of John Muir. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG02"></a>Samuel Gardner</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I who kept the greenhouse,<br /> +Lover of trees and flowers,<br /> +Oft in life saw this umbrageous elm,<br /> +Measuring its generous branches with my eye,<br /> +And listened to its rejoicing leaves<br /> +Lovingly patting each other<br /> +With sweet aeolian whispers.<br /> +And well they might:<br /> +For the roots had grown so wide and deep<br /> +That the soil of the hill could not withhold<br /> +Aught of its virtue, enriched by rain,<br /> +And warmed by the sun;<br /> +But yielded it all to the thrifty roots,<br /> +Through which it was drawn and whirled to the trunk,<br /> +And thence to the branches, and into the leaves,<br /> +Wherefrom the breeze took life and sang.<br /> +Now I, an under-tenant of the earth, can see<br /> +That the branches of a tree<br /> +Spread no wider than its roots.<br /> +And how shall the soul of a man<br /> +Be larger than the life he has lived? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK11"></a>Dow Kritt</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Samuel is forever talking of his elm—<br /> +But I did not need to die to learn about roots:<br /> +I, who dug all the ditches about Spoon River.<br /> +Look at my elm!<br /> +Sprung from as good a seed as his,<br /> +Sown at the same time,<br /> +It is dying at the top:<br /> +Not from lack of life, nor fungus,<br /> +Nor destroying insect, as the sexton thinks.<br /> +Look, Samuel, where the roots have struck rock,<br /> +And can no further spread.<br /> +And all the while the top of the tree<br /> +Is tiring itself out, and dying,<br /> +Trying to grow. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapJ09"></a>William Jones</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Once in a while a curious weed unknown to me,<br /> +Needing a name from my books;<br /> +Once in a while a letter from Yeomans.<br /> +Out of the mussel-shells gathered along the shore<br /> +Sometimes a pearl with a glint like meadow rue:<br /> +Then betimes a letter from Tyndall in England,<br /> +Stamped with the stamp of Spoon River.<br /> +I, lover of Nature, beloved for my love of her,<br /> +Held such converse afar with the great<br /> +Who knew her better than I.<br /> +Oh, there is neither lesser nor greater,<br /> +Save as we make her greater and win from her keener delight.<br /> +With shells from the river cover me, cover me.<br /> +I lived in wonder, worshipping earth and heaven.<br /> +I have passed on the march eternal of endless life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG06"></a>William Goode</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +To all in the village I seemed, no doubt,<br /> +To go this way and that way, aimlessly.<br /> +But here by the river you can see at twilight<br /> +The soft-winged bats fly zig-zag here and there—<br /> +They must fly so to catch their food.<br /> +And if you have ever lost your way at night,<br /> +In the deep wood near Miller’s Ford,<br /> +And dodged this way and now that,<br /> +Wherever the light of the Milky Way shone through,<br /> +Trying to find the path,<br /> +You should understand I sought the way<br /> +With earnest zeal, and all my wanderings<br /> +Were wanderings in the quest. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM27"></a>J. Milton Miles</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Whenever the Presbyterian bell<br /> +Was rung by itself, I knew it as the Presbyterian bell.<br /> +But when its sound was mingled<br /> +With the sound of the Methodist, the Christian,<br /> +The Baptist and the Congregational,<br /> +I could no longer distinguish it,<br /> +Nor any one from the others, or either of them.<br /> +And as many voices called to me in life<br /> +Marvel not that I could not tell<br /> +The true from the false,<br /> +Nor even, at last, the voice that<br /> +I should have known. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM17"></a>Faith Matheny</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +At first you will know not what they mean,<br /> +And you may never know,<br /> +And we may never tell you:—<br /> +These sudden flashes in your soul,<br /> +Like lambent lightning on snowy clouds<br /> +At midnight when the moon is full.<br /> +They come in solitude, or perhaps<br /> +You sit with your friend, and all at once<br /> +A silence falls on speech, and his eyes<br /> +Without a flicker glow at you:—<br /> +You two have seen the secret together,<br /> +He sees it in you, and you in him.<br /> +And there you sit thrilling lest the Mystery<br /> +Stand before you and strike you dead<br /> +With a splendor like the sun’s.<br /> +Be brave, all souls who have such visions<br /> +As your body’s alive as mine is dead,<br /> +You’re catching a little whiff of the ether<br /> +Reserved for God Himself. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH21"></a>Scholfield Hurley</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +God! ask me not to record your wonders,<br /> +I admit the stars and the suns<br /> +And the countless worlds.<br /> +But I have measured their distances<br /> +And weighed them and discovered their substances.<br /> +I have devised wings for the air,<br /> +And keels for water,<br /> +And horses of iron for the earth.<br /> +I have lengthened the vision you gave me a million times,<br /> +And the hearing you gave me a million times,<br /> +I have leaped over space with speech,<br /> +And taken fire for light out of the air.<br /> +I have built great cities and bored through the hills,<br /> +And bridged majestic waters.<br /> +I have written the Iliad and Hamlet;<br /> +And I have explored your mysteries,<br /> +And searched for you without ceasing,<br /> +And found you again after losing you<br /> +In hours of weariness—<br /> +And I ask you:<br /> +How would you like to create a sun<br /> +And the next day have the worms<br /> +Slipping in and out between your fingers? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM23"></a>Willie Metcalf</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was Willie Metcalf.<br /> +They used to call me “Doctor Meyers,”<br /> +Because, they said, I looked like him.<br /> +And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire.<br /> +I lived in the livery stable,<br /> +Sleeping on the floor<br /> +Side by side with Roger Baughman’s bulldog,<br /> +Or sometimes in a stall.<br /> +I could crawl between the legs of the wildest horses<br /> +Without getting kicked—we knew each other.<br /> +On spring days I tramped through the country<br /> +To get the feeling, which I sometimes lost,<br /> +That I was not a separate thing from the earth.<br /> +I used to lose myself, as if in sleep,<br /> +By lying with eyes half-open in the woods.<br /> +Sometimes I talked with animals—even toads and snakes—<br /> +Anything that had an eye to look into.<br /> +Once I saw a stone in the sunshine<br /> +Trying to turn into jelly.<br /> +In April days in this cemetery<br /> +The dead people gathered all about me,<br /> +And grew still, like a congregation in silent prayer.<br /> +I never knew whether I was a part of the earth<br /> +With flowers growing in me, or whether I walked—<br /> +Now I know. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapP05"></a>Willie Pennington</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +They called me the weakling, the simpleton,<br /> +For my brothers were strong and beautiful,<br /> +While I, the last child of parents who had aged,<br /> +Inherited only their residue of power.<br /> +But they, my brothers, were eaten up<br /> +In the fury of the flesh, which I had not,<br /> +Made pulp in the activity of the senses, which I had not,<br /> +Hardened by the growth of the lusts, which I had not,<br /> +Though making names and riches for themselves.<br /> +Then I, the weak one, the simpleton,<br /> +Resting in a little corner of life,<br /> +Saw a vision, and through me many saw the vision,<br /> +Not knowing it was through me.<br /> +Thus a tree sprang<br /> +From me, a mustard seed. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapA05"></a>The Village Atheist</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Ye young debaters over the doctrine<br /> +Of the soul’s immortality<br /> +I who lie here was the village atheist,<br /> +Talkative, contentious, versed in the arguments<br /> +Of the infidels. But through a long sickness<br /> +Coughing myself to death I read the<br /> +Upanishads and the poetry of Jesus.<br /> +And they lighted a torch of hope and intuition<br /> +And desire which the Shadow<br /> +Leading me swiftly through the caverns of darkness,<br /> +Could not extinguish.<br /> +Listen to me, ye who live in the senses<br /> +And think through the senses only:<br /> +Immortality is not a gift,<br /> +Immortality is an achievement;<br /> +And only those who strive mightily<br /> +Shall possess it. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB01"></a>John Ballard</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +In the lust of my strength<br /> +I cursed God, but he paid no attention to me:<br /> +I might as well have cursed the stars.<br /> +In my last sickness I was in agony, but I was resolute<br /> +And I cursed God for my suffering;<br /> +Still He paid no attention to me;<br /> +He left me alone, as He had always done.<br /> +I might as well have cursed the Presbyterian steeple.<br /> +Then, as I grew weaker, a terror came over me:<br /> +Perhaps I had alienated God by cursing him.<br /> +One day Lydia Humphrey brought me a bouquet<br /> +And it occurred to me to try to make friends with God,<br /> +So I tried to make friends with Him;<br /> +But I might as well have tried to make friends with the bouquet.<br /> +Now I was very close to the secret,<br /> +For I really could make friends with the bouquet<br /> +By holding close to me the love in me for the bouquet<br /> +And so I was creeping upon the secret, but— +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS06"></a>Julian Scott</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Toward the last<br /> +The truth of others was untruth to me;<br /> +The justice of others injustice to me;<br /> +Their reasons for death, reasons with me for life;<br /> +Their reasons for life, reasons with me for death;<br /> +I would have killed those they saved,<br /> +And save those they killed.<br /> +And I saw how a god, if brought to earth,<br /> +Must act out what he saw and thought,<br /> +And could not live in this world of men<br /> +And act among them side by side<br /> +Without continual clashes.<br /> +The dust’s for crawling, heaven’s for flying—<br /> +Wherefore, O soul, whose wings are grown,<br /> +Soar upward to the sun! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC12"></a>Alfonso Churchill</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +They laughed at me as “Prof. Moon,”<br /> +As a boy in Spoon River, born with the thirst<br /> +Of knowing about the stars.<br /> +They jeered when I spoke of the lunar mountains,<br /> +And the thrilling heat and cold,<br /> +And the ebon valleys by silver peaks,<br /> +And Spica quadrillions of miles away,<br /> +And the littleness of man.<br /> +But now that my grave is honored, friends,<br /> +Let it not be because I taught<br /> +The lore of the stars in Knox College,<br /> +But rather for this: that through the stars<br /> +I preached the greatness of man,<br /> +Who is none the less a part of the scheme of things<br /> +For the distance of Spica or the Spiral Nebulae;<br /> +Nor any the less a part of the question<br /> +Of what the drama means. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapM13"></a>Zilpha Marsh</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +At four o’clock in late October<br /> +I sat alone in the country school-house<br /> +Back from the road, mid stricken fields,<br /> +And an eddy of wind blew leaves on the pane,<br /> +And crooned in the flue of the cannon-stove,<br /> +With its open door blurring the shadows<br /> +With the spectral glow of a dying fire.<br /> +In an idle mood I was running the planchette—<br /> +All at once my wrist grew limp,<br /> +And my hand moved rapidly over the board,<br /> +’Till the name of “Charles Guiteau” was spelled,<br /> +Who threatened to materialize before me.<br /> +I rose and fled from the room bare-headed<br /> +Into the dusk, afraid of my gift.<br /> +And after that the spirits swarmed—<br /> +Chaucer, Caesar, Poe and Marlowe,<br /> +Cleopatra and Mrs. Surratt—<br /> +Wherever I went, with messages,—<br /> +Mere trifling twaddle, Spoon River agreed.<br /> +You talk nonsense to children, don’t you?<br /> +And suppose I see what you never saw<br /> +And never heard of and have no word for,<br /> +I must talk nonsense when you ask me<br /> +What it is I see! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG01"></a>James Garber</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Do you remember, passer-by, the path<br /> +I wore across the lot where now stands the opera house<br /> +Hasting with swift feet to work through many years?<br /> +Take its meaning to heart:<br /> +You too may walk, after the hills at Miller’s Ford<br /> +Seem no longer far away;<br /> +Long after you see them near at hand,<br /> +Beyond four miles of meadow;<br /> +And after woman’s love is silent<br /> +Saying no more: “I will save you.”<br /> +And after the faces of friends and kindred<br /> +Become as faded photographs, pitifully silent,<br /> +Sad for the look which means:<br /> +“We cannot help you.”<br /> +And after you no longer reproach mankind<br /> +With being in league against your soul’s uplifted hands—<br /> +Themselves compelled at midnight and at noon<br /> +To watch with steadfast eye their destinies;<br /> +After you have these understandings, think of me<br /> +And of my path, who walked therein and knew<br /> +That neither man nor woman, neither toil,<br /> +Nor duty, gold nor power<br /> +Can ease the longing of the soul,<br /> +The loneliness of the soul! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH20"></a>Lydia Humphrey</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Back and forth, back and forth, to and from the church,<br /> +With my Bible under my arm<br /> +’Till I was gray and old;<br /> +Unwedded, alone in the world,<br /> +Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation,<br /> +And children in the church.<br /> +I know they laughed and thought me queer.<br /> +I knew of the eagle souls that flew high in the sunlight,<br /> +Above the spire of the church, and laughed at the church,<br /> +Disdaining me, not seeing me.<br /> +But if the high air was sweet to them, sweet was the church to me.<br /> +It was the vision, vision, vision of the poets<br /> +Democratized! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapG05"></a>Le Roy Goldman</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +“What will you do when you come to die,<br /> +If all your life long you have rejected Jesus,<br /> +And know as you lie there,<br /> +He is not your friend?”<br /> +Over and over I said, I, the revivalist.<br /> +Ah, yes! but there are friends and friends.<br /> +And blessed are you, say I, who know all now,<br /> +You who have lost ere you pass,<br /> +A father or mother, or old grandfather or mother<br /> +Some beautiful soul that lived life strongly<br /> +And knew you all through, and loved you ever,<br /> +Who would not fail to speak for you,<br /> +And give God an intimate view of your soul<br /> +As only one of your flesh could do it.<br /> +That is the hand your hand will reach for,<br /> +To lead you along the corridor<br /> +To the court where you are a stranger! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapR04"></a>Gustav Richter</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +After a long day of work in my hot—houses<br /> +Sleep was sweet, but if you sleep on your left side<br /> +Your dreams may be abruptly ended.<br /> +I was among my flowers where some one<br /> +Seemed to be raising them on trial,<br /> +As if after-while to be transplanted<br /> +To a larger garden of freer air.<br /> +And I was disembodied vision<br /> +Amid a light, as it were the sun<br /> +Had floated in and touched the roof of glass<br /> +Like a toy balloon and softly bursted,<br /> +And etherealized in golden air.<br /> +And all was silence, except the splendor<br /> +Was immanent with thought as clear<br /> +As a speaking voice, and I, as thought,<br /> +Could hear a Presence think as he walked<br /> +Between the boxes pinching off leaves,<br /> +Looking for bugs and noting values,<br /> +With an eye that saw it all:<br /> +“Homer, oh yes! Pericles, good.<br /> +Caesar Borgia, what shall be done with it?<br /> +Dante, too much manure, perhaps.<br /> +Napoleon, leave him awhile as yet.<br /> +Shelley, more soil. Shakespeare, needs spraying—”<br /> +Clouds, eh!— +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapW10"></a>Arlo Will</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Did you ever see an alligator<br /> +Come up to the air from the mud,<br /> +Staring blindly under the full glare of noon?<br /> +Have you seen the stabled horses at night<br /> +Tremble and start back at the sight of a lantern?<br /> +Have you ever walked in darkness<br /> +When an unknown door was open before you<br /> +And you stood, it seemed, in the light of a thousand candles<br /> +Of delicate wax?<br /> +Have you walked with the wind in your ears<br /> +And the sunlight about you<br /> +And found it suddenly shine with an inner splendor?<br /> +Out of the mud many times<br /> +Before many doors of light<br /> +Through many fields of splendor,<br /> +Where around your steps a soundless glory scatters<br /> +Like new-fallen snow,<br /> +Will you go through earth, O strong of soul,<br /> +And through unnumbered heavens<br /> +To the final flame! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK05"></a>Captain Orlando Killion</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Oh, you young radicals and dreamers,<br /> +You dauntless fledglings<br /> +Who pass by my headstone,<br /> +Mock not its record of my captaincy in the army<br /> +And my faith in God!<br /> +They are not denials of each other.<br /> +Go by reverently, and read with sober care<br /> +How a great people, riding with defiant shouts<br /> +The centaur of Revolution,<br /> +Spurred and whipped to frenzy,<br /> +Shook with terror, seeing the mist of the sea<br /> +Over the precipice they were nearing,<br /> +And fell from his back in precipitate awe<br /> +To celebrate the Feast of the Supreme Being.<br /> +Moved by the same sense of vast reality<br /> +Of life and death, and burdened as they were<br /> +With the fate of a race,<br /> +How was I, a little blasphemer,<br /> +Caught in the drift of a nation’s unloosened flood,<br /> +To remain a blasphemer,<br /> +And a captain in the army? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapC06"></a>Jeremy Carlisle</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Passer-by, sin beyond any sin<br /> +Is the sin of blindness of souls to other souls.<br /> +And joy beyond any joy is the joy<br /> +Of having the good in you seen, and seeing the good<br /> +At the miraculous moment!<br /> +Here I confess to a lofty scorn,<br /> +And an acrid skepticism.<br /> +But do you remember the liquid that Penniwit<br /> +Poured on tintypes making them blue<br /> +With a mist like hickory smoke?<br /> +Then how the picture began to clear<br /> +Till the face came forth like life?<br /> +So you appeared to me, neglected ones,<br /> +And enemies too, as I went along<br /> +With my face growing clearer to you as yours<br /> +Grew clearer to me.<br /> +We were ready then to walk together<br /> +And sing in chorus and chant the dawn<br /> +Of life that is wholly life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapD04"></a>Joseph Dixon</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Who carved this shattered harp on my stone?<br /> +I died to you, no doubt. But how many harps and pianos<br /> +Wired I and tightened and disentangled for you,<br /> +Making them sweet again—with tuning fork or without?<br /> +Oh well! A harp leaps out of the ear of a man, you say,<br /> +But whence the ear that orders the length of the strings<br /> +To a magic of numbers flying before your thought<br /> +Through a door that closes against your breathless wonder?<br /> +Is there no Ear round the ear of a man, that it senses<br /> +Through strings and columns of air the soul of sound?<br /> +I thrill as I call it a tuning fork that catches<br /> +The waves of mingled music and light from afar,<br /> +The antennæ of Thought that listens through utmost space.<br /> +Surely the concord that ruled my spirit is proof<br /> +Of an Ear that tuned me, able to tune me over<br /> +And use me again if I am worthy to use. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS28"></a>Judson Stoddard</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +On a mountain top above the clouds<br /> +That streamed like a sea below me<br /> +I said that peak is the thought of Budda,<br /> +And that one is the prayer of Jesus,<br /> +And this one is the dream of Plato,<br /> +And that one there the song of Dante,<br /> +And this is Kant and this is Newton,<br /> +And this is Milton and this is Shakespeare,<br /> +And this the hope of the Mother Church,<br /> +And this—why all these peaks are poems,<br /> +Poems and prayers that pierce the clouds.<br /> +And I said “What does God do with mountains<br /> +That rise almost to heaven?” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapK06"></a>Russell Kincaid</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +In the last spring I ever knew,<br /> +In those last days, I sat in the forsaken orchard<br /> +Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered<br /> +The hills at Miller’s Ford;<br /> +Just to muse on the apple tree<br /> +With its ruined trunk and blasted branches,<br /> +And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms<br /> +Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle,<br /> +Never to grow in fruit.<br /> +And there was I with my spirit girded<br /> +By the flesh half dead, the senses numb<br /> +Yet thinking of youth and the earth in youth,—<br /> +Such phantom blossoms palely shining<br /> +Over the lifeless boughs of Time.<br /> +O earth that leaves us ere heaven takes us!<br /> +Had I been only a tree to shiver<br /> +With dreams of spring and a leafy youth,<br /> +Then I had fallen in the cyclone<br /> +Which swept me out of the soul’s suspense<br /> +Where it’s neither earth nor heaven. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapH04"></a>Aaron Hatfield</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Better than granite, Spoon River,<br /> +Is the memory-picture you keep of me<br /> +Standing before the pioneer men and women<br /> +There at Concord Church on Communion day.<br /> +Speaking in broken voice of the peasant youth<br /> +Of Galilee who went to the city<br /> +And was killed by bankers and lawyers;<br /> +My voice mingling with the June wind<br /> +That blew over wheat fields from Atterbury;<br /> +While the white stones in the burying ground<br /> +Around the Church shimmered in the summer sun.<br /> +And there, though my own memories<br /> +Were too great to bear, were you, O pioneers,<br /> +With bowed heads breathing forth your sorrow<br /> +For the sons killed in battle and the daughters<br /> +And little children who vanished in life’s morning,<br /> +Or at the intolerable hour of noon.<br /> +But in those moments of tragic silence,<br /> +When the wine and bread were passed,<br /> +Came the reconciliation for us—<br /> +Us the ploughmen and the hewers of wood,<br /> +Us the peasants, brothers of the peasant of Galilee—<br /> +To us came the Comforter<br /> +And the consolation of tongues of flame! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB07"></a>Isaiah Beethoven</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +They told me I had three months to live,<br /> +So I crept to Bernadotte,<br /> +And sat by the mill for hours and hours<br /> +Where the gathered waters deeply moving<br /> +Seemed not to move:<br /> +O world, that’s you!<br /> +You are but a widened place in the river<br /> +Where Life looks down and we rejoice for her<br /> +Mirrored in us, and so we dream<br /> +And turn away, but when again<br /> +We look for the face, behold the low-lands<br /> +And blasted cotton-wood trees where we empty<br /> +Into the larger stream!<br /> +But here by the mill the castled clouds<br /> +Mocked themselves in the dizzy water;<br /> +And over its agate floor at night<br /> +The flame of the moon ran under my eyes<br /> +Amid a forest stillness broken<br /> +By a flute in a hut on the hill.<br /> +At last when I came to lie in bed<br /> +Weak and in pain, with the dreams about me,<br /> +The soul of the river had entered my soul,<br /> +And the gathered power of my soul was moving<br /> +So swiftly it seemed to be at rest<br /> +Under cities of cloud and under<br /> +Spheres of silver and changing worlds—<br /> +Until I saw a flash of trumpets<br /> +Above the battlements over Time. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapB17"></a>Elijah Browning</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +I was among multitudes of children<br /> +Dancing at the foot of a mountain.<br /> +A breeze blew out of the east and swept them as leaves,<br /> +Driving some up the slopes. . . .<br /> +All was changed.<br /> +Here were flying lights, and mystic moons, and dream-music.<br /> +A cloud fell upon us.<br /> +When it lifted all was changed.<br /> +I was now amid multitudes who were wrangling.<br /> +Then a figure in shimmering gold, and one with a trumpet,<br /> +And one with a sceptre stood before me.<br /> +They mocked me and danced a rigadoon and vanished. . . .<br /> +All was changed again.<br /> +Out of a bower of poppies<br /> +A woman bared her breasts and lifted her open mouth to mine.<br /> +I kissed her.<br /> +The taste of her lips was like salt.<br /> +She left blood on my lips.<br /> +I fell exhausted.<br /> +I arose and ascended higher, but a mist as from an iceberg<br /> +Clouded my steps.<br /> +I was cold and in pain.<br /> +Then the sun streamed on me again,<br /> +And I saw the mists below me hiding all below them.<br /> +And I, bent over my staff, knew myself<br /> +Silhouetted against the snow. And above me<br /> +Was the soundless air, pierced by a cone of ice,<br /> +Over which hung a solitary star!<br /> +A shudder of ecstasy, a shudder of fear<br /> +Ran through me.<br /> +But I could not return to the slopes—<br /> +Nay, I wished not to return.<br /> +For the spent waves of the symphony of freedom<br /> +Lapped the ethereal cliffs about me.<br /> +Therefore I climbed to the pinnacle.<br /> +I flung away my staff.<br /> +I touched that star<br /> +With my outstretched hand.<br /> +I vanished utterly.<br /> +For the mountain delivers to Infinite Truth<br /> +Whosoever touches the star. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapF07"></a>Webster Ford</h2> + +<p class="noindent"> +Do you remember, O Delphic Apollo,<br /> +The sunset hour by the river, when Mickey M’Grew<br /> +Cried, “There’s a ghost,” and I, “It’s Delphic Apollo”;<br /> +And the son of the banker derided us, saying, “It’s light<br /> +By the flags at the water’s edge, you half-witted fools.”<br /> +And from thence, as the wearisome years rolled on, long after<br /> +Poor Mickey fell down in the water tower to his death<br /> +Down, down, through bellowing darkness, I carried<br /> +The vision which perished with him like a rocket which falls<br /> +And quenches its light in earth, and hid it for fear<br /> +Of the son of the banker, calling on Plutus to save me?<br /> +Avenged were you for the shame of a fearful heart<br /> +Who left me alone till I saw you again in an hour<br /> +When I seemed to be turned to a tree with trunk and branches<br /> +Growing indurate, turning to stone, yet burgeoning<br /> +In laurel leaves, in hosts of lambent laurel,<br /> +Quivering, fluttering, shrinking, fighting the numbness<br /> +Creeping into their veins from the dying trunk and branches!<br /> +’Tis vain, O youth, to fly the call of Apollo.<br /> +Fling yourselves in the fire, die with a song of spring,<br /> +If die you must in the spring. For none shall look<br /> +On the face of Apollo and live, and choose you must<br /> +’Twixt death in the flame and death after years of sorrow,<br /> +Rooted fast in the earth, feeling the grisly hand,<br /> +Not so much in the trunk as in the terrible numbness<br /> +Creeping up to the laurel leaves that never cease<br /> +To flourish until you fall. O leaves of me<br /> +Too sere for coronal wreaths, and fit alone<br /> +For urns of memory, treasured, perhaps, as themes<br /> +For hearts heroic, fearless singers and livers—<br /> +Delphic Apollo! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapS25"></a>The Spooniad</h2> + +<p class="letter"> +[<i>The late Mr. Jonathan Swift Somers, laureate of Spoon River (<a href="#chapS21">see page 111</a>), +planned The Spooniad as an epic in twenty-four books, but unfortunately did not +live to complete even the first book. The fragment was found among his papers +by William Marion Reedy and was for the first time published in Reedy’s +Mirror of December 18th, 1914.</i>] +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +Of John Cabanis’ wrath and of the strife<br /> +Of hostile parties, and his dire defeat<br /> +Who led the common people in the cause<br /> +Of freedom for Spoon River, and the fall<br /> +Of Rhodes, bank that brought unnumbered woes<br /> +And loss to many, with engendered hate<br /> +That flamed into the torch in Anarch hands<br /> +To burn the court-house, on whose blackened wreck<br /> +A fairer temple rose and Progress stood—<br /> +Sing, muse, that lit the Chian’s face with smiles<br /> +Who saw the ant-like Greeks and Trojans crawl<br /> +About Scamander, over walls, pursued<br /> +Or else pursuing, and the funeral pyres<br /> +And sacred hecatombs, and first because<br /> +Of Helen who with Paris fled to Troy<br /> +As soul-mate; and the wrath of Peleus, son,<br /> +Decreed to lose Chryseis, lovely spoil<br /> +Of war, and dearest concubine.<br /> +<br /> +Say first,<br /> +Thou son of night, called Momus, from whose eyes<br /> +No secret hides, and Thalia, smiling one,<br /> +What bred ’twixt Thomas Rhodes and John Cabanis<br /> +The deadly strife? His daughter Flossie, she,<br /> +Returning from her wandering with a troop<br /> +Of strolling players, walked the village streets,<br /> +Her bracelets tinkling and with sparkling rings<br /> +And words of serpent wisdom and a smile<br /> +Of cunning in her eyes. Then Thomas Rhodes,<br /> +Who ruled the church and ruled the bank as well,<br /> +Made known his disapproval of the maid;<br /> +And all Spoon River whispered and the eyes<br /> +Of all the church frowned on her, till she knew<br /> +They feared her and condemned.<br /> +<br /> +But them to flout<br /> +She gave a dance to viols and to flutes,<br /> +Brought from Peoria, and many youths,<br /> +But lately made regenerate through the prayers<br /> +Of zealous preachers and of earnest souls,<br /> +Danced merrily, and sought her in the dance,<br /> +Who wore a dress so low of neck that eyes<br /> +Down straying might survey the snowy swale<br /> +’Till it was lost in whiteness.<br /> +<br /> +With the dance<br /> +The village changed to merriment from gloom.<br /> +The milliner, Mrs. Williams, could not fill<br /> +Her orders for new hats, and every seamstress<br /> +Plied busy needles making gowns; old trunks<br /> +And chests were opened for their store of laces<br /> +And rings and trinkets were brought out of hiding<br /> +And all the youths fastidious grew of dress;<br /> +Notes passed, and many a fair one’s door at eve<br /> +Knew a bouquet, and strolling lovers thronged<br /> +About the hills that overlooked the river.<br /> +Then, since the mercy seats more empty showed,<br /> +One of God’s chosen lifted up his voice:<br /> +“The woman of Babylon is among us; rise<br /> +Ye sons of light and drive the wanton forth!”<br /> +So John Cabanis left the church and left<br /> +The hosts of law and order with his eyes<br /> +By anger cleared, and him the liberal cause<br /> +Acclaimed as nominee to the mayoralty<br /> +To vanquish A. D. Blood.<br /> +<br /> +But as the war<br /> +Waged bitterly for votes and rumors flew<br /> +About the bank, and of the heavy loans<br /> +Which Rhodes, son had made to prop his loss<br /> +In wheat, and many drew their coin and left<br /> +The bank of Rhodes more hollow, with the talk<br /> +Among the liberals of another bank<br /> +Soon to be chartered, lo, the bubble burst<br /> +’Mid cries and curses; but the liberals laughed<br /> +And in the hall of Nicholas Bindle held<br /> +Wise converse and inspiriting debate.<br /> +<br /> +High on a stage that overlooked the chairs<br /> +Where dozens sat, and where a pop-eyed daub<br /> +Of Shakespeare, very like the hired man<br /> +Of Christian Dallman, brow and pointed beard,<br /> +Upon a drab proscenium outward stared,<br /> +Sat Harmon Whitney, to that eminence,<br /> +By merit raised in ribaldry and guile,<br /> +And to the assembled rebels thus he spake:<br /> +“Whether to lie supine and let a clique<br /> +Cold-blooded, scheming, hungry, singing psalms,<br /> +Devour our substance, wreck our banks and drain<br /> +Our little hoards for hazards on the price<br /> +Of wheat or pork, or yet to cower beneath<br /> +The shadow of a spire upreared to curb<br /> +A breed of lackeys and to serve the bank<br /> +Coadjutor in greed, that is the question.<br /> +Shall we have music and the jocund dance,<br /> +Or tolling bells? Or shall young romance roam<br /> +These hills about the river, flowering now<br /> +To April’s tears, or shall they sit at home,<br /> +Or play croquet where Thomas Rhodes may see,<br /> +I ask you? If the blood of youth runs o’er<br /> +And riots ’gainst this regimen of gloom,<br /> +Shall we submit to have these youths and maids<br /> +Branded as libertines and wantons?”<br /> +<br /> +Ere<br /> +His words were done a woman’s voice called “No!”<br /> +Then rose a sound of moving chairs, as when<br /> +The numerous swine o’er-run the replenished troughs;<br /> +And every head was turned, as when a flock<br /> +Of geese back-turning to the hunter’s tread<br /> +Rise up with flapping wings; then rang the hall<br /> +With riotous laughter, for with battered hat<br /> +Tilted upon her saucy head, and fist<br /> +Raised in defiance, Daisy Fraser stood.<br /> +Headlong she had been hurled from out the hall<br /> +Save Wendell Bloyd, who spoke for woman’s rights,<br /> +Prevented, and the bellowing voice of Burchard.<br /> +Then, mid applause she hastened toward the stage<br /> +And flung both gold and silver to the cause<br /> +And swiftly left the hall.<br /> +Meantime upstood<br /> +A giant figure, bearded like the son<br /> +Of Alcmene, deep-chested, round of paunch,<br /> +And spoke in thunder: “Over there behold<br /> +A man who for the truth withstood his wife—<br /> +Such is our spirit—when that A. D. Blood<br /> +Compelled me to remove Dom Pedro—”<br /> +<br /> +Quick<br /> +Before Jim Brown could finish, Jefferson Howard<br /> +Obtained the floor and spake: “Ill suits the time<br /> +For clownish words, and trivial is our cause<br /> +If naught’s at stake but John Cabanis, wrath,<br /> +He who was erstwhile of the other side<br /> +And came to us for vengeance. More’s at stake<br /> +Than triumph for New England or Virginia.<br /> +And whether rum be sold, or for two years<br /> +As in the past two years, this town be dry<br /> +Matters but little— Oh yes, revenue<br /> +For sidewalks, sewers; that is well enough!<br /> +I wish to God this fight were now inspired<br /> +By other passion than to salve the pride<br /> +Of John Cabanis or his daughter. Why<br /> +Can never contests of great moment spring<br /> +From worthy things, not little? Still, if men<br /> +Must always act so, and if rum must be<br /> +The symbol and the medium to release<br /> +From life’s denial and from slavery,<br /> +Then give me rum!”<br /> +<br /> +Exultant cries arose.<br /> +Then, as George Trimble had o’ercome his fear<br /> +And vacillation and begun to speak,<br /> +The door creaked and the idiot, Willie Metcalf,<br /> +Breathless and hatless, whiter than a sheet,<br /> +Entered and cried: “The marshal’s on his way<br /> +To arrest you all. And if you only knew<br /> +Who’s coming here to-morrow; I was listening<br /> +Beneath the window where the other side<br /> +Are making plans.”<br /> +<br /> +So to a smaller room<br /> +To hear the idiot’s secret some withdrew<br /> +Selected by the Chair; the Chair himself<br /> +And Jefferson Howard, Benjamin Pantier,<br /> +And Wendell Bloyd, George Trimble, Adam Weirauch,<br /> +Imanuel Ehrenhardt, Seth Compton, Godwin James<br /> +And Enoch Dunlap, Hiram Scates, Roy Butler,<br /> +Carl Hamblin, Roger Heston, Ernest Hyde<br /> +And Penniwit, the artist, Kinsey Keene,<br /> +And E. C. Culbertson and Franklin Jones,<br /> +Benjamin Fraser, son of Benjamin Pantier<br /> +By Daisy Fraser, some of lesser note,<br /> +And secretly conferred.<br /> +<br /> +But in the hall<br /> +Disorder reigned and when the marshal came<br /> +And found it so, he marched the hoodlums out<br /> +And locked them up.<br /> +<br /> +Meanwhile within a room<br /> +Back in the basement of the church, with Blood<br /> +Counseled the wisest heads. Judge Somers first,<br /> +Deep learned in life, and next him, Elliott Hawkins<br /> +And Lambert Hutchins; next him Thomas Rhodes<br /> +And Editor Whedon; next him Garrison Standard,<br /> +A traitor to the liberals, who with lip<br /> +Upcurled in scorn and with a bitter sneer:<br /> +“Such strife about an insult to a woman—<br /> +A girl of eighteen” —Christian Dallman too,<br /> +And others unrecorded. Some there were<br /> +Who frowned not on the cup but loathed the rule<br /> +Democracy achieved thereby, the freedom<br /> +And lust of life it symbolized. +<br /> +Now morn with snowy fingers up the sky<br /> +Flung like an orange at a festival<br /> +The ruddy sun, when from their hasty beds<br /> +Poured forth the hostile forces, and the streets<br /> +Resounded to the rattle of the wheels<br /> +That drove this way and that to gather in<br /> +The tardy voters, and the cries of chieftains<br /> +Who manned the battle. But at ten o’clock<br /> +The liberals bellowed fraud, and at the polls<br /> +The rival candidates growled and came to blows.<br /> +Then proved the idiot’s tale of yester-eve<br /> +A word of warning. Suddenly on the streets<br /> +Walked hog-eyed Allen, terror of the hills<br /> +That looked on Bernadotte ten miles removed.<br /> +No man of this degenerate day could lift<br /> +The boulders which he threw, and when he spoke<br /> +The windows rattled, and beneath his brows<br /> +Thatched like a shed with bristling hair of black,<br /> +His small eyes glistened like a maddened boar.<br /> +And as he walked the boards creaked, as he walked<br /> +A song of menace rumbled. Thus he came,<br /> +The champion of A. D. Blood, commissioned<br /> +To terrify the liberals. Many fled<br /> +As when a hawk soars o’er the chicken yard.<br /> +He passed the polls and with a playful hand<br /> +Touched Brown, the giant, and he fell against,<br /> +As though he were a child, the wall; so strong<br /> +Was hog-eyed Allen. But the liberals smiled.<br /> +For soon as hog-eyed Allen reached the walk,<br /> +Close on his steps paced Bengal Mike, brought in<br /> +By Kinsey Keene, the subtle-witted one,<br /> +To match the hog-eyed Allen. He was scarce<br /> +Three-fourths the other’s bulk, but steel his arms,<br /> +And with a tiger’s heart. Two men he killed<br /> +And many wounded in the days before,<br /> +And no one feared.<br /> +<br /> +But when the hog-eyed one<br /> +Saw Bengal Mike his countenance grew dark,<br /> +The bristles o’er his red eyes twitched with rage,<br /> +The song he rumbled lowered. Round and round<br /> +The court-house paced he, followed stealthily<br /> +By Bengal Mike, who jeered him every step:<br /> +“Come, elephant, and fight! Come, hog-eyed coward!<br /> +Come, face about and fight me, lumbering sneak!<br /> +Come, beefy bully, hit me, if you can!<br /> +Take out your gun, you duffer, give me reason<br /> +To draw and kill you. Take your billy out.<br /> +I’ll crack your boar’s head with a piece of brick!”<br /> +But never a word the hog-eyed one returned<br /> +But trod about the court-house, followed both<br /> +By troops of boys and watched by all the men.<br /> +All day, they walked the square. But when Apollo<br /> +Stood with reluctant look above the hills<br /> +As fain to see the end, and all the votes<br /> +Were cast, and closed the polls, before the door<br /> +Of Trainor’s drug store Bengal Mike, in tones<br /> +That echoed through the village, bawled the taunt:<br /> +“Who was your mother, hog—eyed?” In a trice<br /> +As when a wild boar turns upon the hound<br /> +That through the brakes upon an August day<br /> +Has gashed him with its teeth, the hog-eyed one<br /> +Rushed with his giant arms on Bengal Mike<br /> +And grabbed him by the throat. Then rose to heaven<br /> +The frightened cries of boys, and yells of men<br /> +Forth rushing to the street. And Bengal Mike<br /> +Moved this way and now that, drew in his head<br /> +As if his neck to shorten, and bent down<br /> +To break the death grip of the hog-eyed one;<br /> +’Twixt guttural wrath and fast-expiring strength<br /> +Striking his fists against the invulnerable chest<br /> +Of hog-eyed Allen. Then, when some came in<br /> +To part them, others stayed them, and the fight<br /> +Spread among dozens; many valiant souls<br /> +Went down from clubs and bricks.<br /> +<br /> +But tell me, Muse,<br /> +What god or goddess rescued Bengal Mike?<br /> +With one last, mighty struggle did he grasp<br /> +The murderous hands and turning kick his foe.<br /> +Then, as if struck by lightning, vanished all<br /> +The strength from hog-eyed Allen, at his side<br /> +Sank limp those giant arms and o’er his face<br /> +Dread pallor and the sweat of anguish spread.<br /> +And those great knees, invincible but late,<br /> +Shook to his weight. And quickly as the lion<br /> +Leaps on its wounded prey, did Bengal Mike<br /> +Smite with a rock the temple of his foe,<br /> +And down he sank and darkness o’er his eyes<br /> +Passed like a cloud.<br /> +<br /> +As when the woodman fells<br /> +Some giant oak upon a summer’s day<br /> +And all the songsters of the forest shrill,<br /> +And one great hawk that has his nestling young<br /> +Amid the topmost branches croaks, as crash<br /> +The leafy branches through the tangled boughs<br /> +Of brother oaks, so fell the hog-eyed one<br /> +Amid the lamentations of the friends<br /> +Of A. D. Blood.<br /> +<br /> +Just then, four lusty men<br /> +Bore the town marshal, on whose iron face<br /> +The purple pall of death already lay,<br /> +To Trainor’s drug store, shot by Jack McGuire.<br /> +And cries went up of “Lynch him!” and the sound<br /> +Of running feet from every side was heard<br /> +Bent on the +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chapE02"></a>Epilogue</h2> + +<p class="center"> +(THE GRAVEYARD OF SPOON RIVER. TWO VOICES ARE HEARD BEHIND A SCREEN DECORATED +WITH DIABOLICAL AND ANGELIC FIGURES IN VARIOUS ALLEGORICAL RELATIONS. A FAINT +LIGHT SHOWS DIMLY THROUGH THE SCREEN AS IF IT WERE WOVEN OF LEAVES, BRANCHES +AND SHADOWS.) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE.<br /> +A game of checkers? +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +Well, I don’t mind. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +I move the Will. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +You’re playing it blind. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +Then here’s the Soul. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +Checked by the Will. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +Eternal Good! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +And Eternal Ill. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +I haste for the King row. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +Save your breath. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +I was moving Life. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +You’re checked by Death. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +Very good, here’s Moses. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +And here’s the Jew. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +My next move is Jesus. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +St. Paul for you! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +Yes, but St. Peter— +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +You might have foreseen— +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +You’re in the King row— +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +With Constantine! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +I’ll go back to Athens. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +Well, here’s the Persian. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +All right, the Bible. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +Pray now, what version? +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +I take up Buddha. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +It never will work. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +From the corner Mahomet. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +I move the Turk. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +The game is tangled; where are we now? +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +You’re dreaming worlds. I’m in the King row.<br /> +Move as you will, if I can’t wreck you<br /> +I’ll thwart you, harry you, rout you, check you. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +I’m tired. I’ll send for my Son to play.<br /> +I think he can beat you finally— +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +Eh? +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +I must preside at the stars’ convention. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +Very well, my lord, but I beg to mention<br /> +I’ll give this game my direct +attention. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +A game indeed! But Truth is my quest. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +Beaten, you walk away with a jest.<br /> +I strike the table, I scatter the checkers.<br /> +(<i>A rattle of a falling table and checkers flying over a floor</i>.)<br /> +Aha! You armies and iron deckers,<br /> +Races and states in a cataclysm—<br /> +Now for a day of atheism! +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>The screen vanishes and</i> BEELZEBUB <i>steps forward carrying a trumpet, +which he blows faintly. Immediately</i> LOKI <i>and</i> YOCARINDRA <i>start up +from the shadows of night.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Good evening, Loki! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +LOKI<br /> +The same to you! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +And Yogarindra! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +YOGARINDRA<br /> +My greetings, too. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +LOKI<br /> +Whence came you, comrade? +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +From yonder screen. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +YOGARINDRA<br /> +And what were you doing? +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Stirring His spleen. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +LOKI<br /> +How did you do it? +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +I made it rough<br /> +In a game of checkers. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +LOKI<br /> +Good enough! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +YOGARINDRA<br /> +I thought I heard the sounds of a battle. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +No doubt! I made the checkers rattle,<br /> +Turning the table over and strewing<br /> +The bits of wood like an army pursuing. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +YOGARINDRA<br /> +I have a game! Let us make a man. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +LOKI<br /> +My net is waiting him, if you can. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +YOGARINDRA<br /> +And here’s my mirror to fool him with— +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Mystery, falsehood, creed and myth. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +LOKI<br /> +But no one can mold him, friend, but you. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Then to the sport without more ado. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +YOGARINDRA<br /> +Hurry the work ere it grow to day. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +I set me to it. Where is the clay?<br /> +(<i>He scrapes the earth with his hands and begins to model.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Out of the dust,<br /> +Out of the slime,<br /> +A little rust,<br /> +And a little lime.<br /> +Muscle and gristle,<br /> +Mucin, stone<br /> +Brayed with a pestle,<br /> +Fat and bone.<br /> +Out of the marshes,<br /> +Out of the vaults,<br /> +Matter crushes<br /> +Gas and salts.<br /> +What is this you call a mind,<br /> +Flitting, drifting, pale and blind,<br /> +Soul of the swamp that rides the wind?<br /> +Jack-o’-lantern, here you are!<br /> +Dream of heaven, pine for a star,<br /> +Chase your brothers to and fro,<br /> +Back to the swamp at last you’ll go.<br /> +Hilloo! Hilloo! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +THE VALLEY<br /> +Hilloo! Hilloo!<br /> +(<i>Beelzebub in scraping up the earth turns out a skull.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Old one, old one.<br /> +Now ere I break you<br /> +Crush you and make you<br /> +Clay for my use,<br /> +Let me observe you:<br /> +You were a bold one<br /> +Flat at the dome of you,<br /> +Heavy the base of you,<br /> +False to the home of you,<br /> +Strong was the face of you,<br /> +Strange to all fears.<br /> +Yet did the hair of you<br /> +Hide what you were.<br /> +Now to re-nerve you— +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>He crushes the skull between his hands and mixes it with the clay.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +Now you are dust,<br /> +Limestone and rust.<br /> +I mold and I stir<br /> +And make you again. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +THE VALLEY<br /> +Again? Again? +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>In the same manner</i> BEELZEBUB <i>has fashioned several figures, standing +them against the trees.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +LOKI<br /> +Now for the breath of life. As I remember<br /> +You have done right to mold your creatures first,<br /> +And stand them up. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +From gravitation<br /> +I make the will. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +YOGARINDRA<br /> +Out of sensation<br /> +Comes his ill.<br /> +Out of my mirror<br /> +Springs his error.<br /> +Who was so cruel<br /> +To make him the slave<br /> +Of me the sorceress, you the knave,<br /> +And you the plotter to catch his thought,<br /> +Whatever he did, whatever he sought?<br /> +With a nature dual<br /> +Of will and mind,<br /> +A thing that sees, and a thing that’s blind.<br /> +Come! to our dance! Something hated him<br /> +Made us over him, therefore fated him. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>They join hands and dance.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +LOKI<br /> +Passion, reason, custom, ruels,<br /> +Creeds of the churches, lore of the schools,<br /> +Taint in the blood and strength of soul.<br /> +Flesh too weak for the will’s control;<br /> +Poverty, riches, pride of birth,<br /> +Wailing, laughter, over the earth.<br /> +Here I have you caught again.<br /> +Enter my web, ye sons of men. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +YOGARINDRA<br /> +Look in my mirror! Isn’t it real?<br /> +What do you think now, what do you feel?<br /> +Here is treasure of gold heaped up;<br /> +Here is wine in the festal cup.<br /> +Tendrils blossoming, turned to whips,<br /> +Love with her breasts and scarlet lips.<br /> +Breathe in their nostrils. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Falsehood’s breath,<br /> +Out of nothingness into death.<br /> +Out of the mold, out of the rocks,<br /> +Wonder, mockery, paradox!<br /> +Soaring spirit, groveling flesh,<br /> +Bait the trap, and spread the mesh.<br /> +Give him hunger, lure him with truth,<br /> +Give him the iris hopes of Youth.<br /> +Starve him, shame him, fling him down,<br /> +Whirled in the vortex of the town.<br /> +Break him, age him, till he curse<br /> +The idiot face of the universe.<br /> +Over and over we mix the clay,—<br /> +What was dust is alive to-day. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +THE THREE<br /> +Thus is the hell-born tangle wound<br /> +Swiftly, swiftly round and round. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +(<i>Waving his trumpet.</i>)<br /> +You live! Away! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +ONE OF THE FIGURES<br /> +How strange and new!<br /> +I am I, and another, too. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +ANOTHER FIGURE<br /> +I was a sun-dew’s leaf, but now<br /> +What is this longing?— +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +ANOTHER FIGURE<br /> +Earth below<br /> +I was a seedling magnet-tipped<br /> +Drawn down earth— +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +ANOTHER FIGURE<br /> +And I was gripped<br /> +Electrons in a granite stone,<br /> +Now I think. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +ANOTHER FIGURE<br /> +Oh, how alone! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +ANOTHER FIGURE<br /> +My lips to thine. Through thee I find<br /> +Something alone by love divined! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Begone! No, wait. I have bethought me, friends;<br /> +Let s give a play. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>He waves his trumpet.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +To yonder green rooms go. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>The figures disappear.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +YOGARINDRA<br /> +Oh, yes, a play! That’s very well, I think,<br /> +But who will be the audience? I must throw<br /> +Illusion over all. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +LOKI<br /> +And I must shift<br /> +The scenery, and tangle up the plot. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Well, so you shall! Our audience shall come<br /> +From yonder graves. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>He blows his trumpet slightly louder than before. The scene changes. A +stage arises among the graves. The curtain is down, concealing the creatures +just created, illuminated halfway up by spectral lights.</i> BEELZEBUB +<i>stands before the curtain.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +(<i>A terrific blast of the trumpet.</i>)<br /> +Who-o-o-o-o-o! +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>Immediately there is a rustling as of the shells of grasshoppers stirred by +a wind; and hundreds of the dead, including those who have appeared in the +Anthology, hurry to the sound of the trumpet.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +A VOICE<br /> +Gabriel! Gabriel! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +MANY VOICES<br /> +The Judgment day! +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Be quiet, if you please<br /> +At least until the stars fall and the moon. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +MANY VOICES<br /> +Save us! Save us! +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>Beelzebub extends his hands over the audience with a benedictory motion and +restores order.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +BEELZEBUB<br /> +Ladies and gentlemen, your kind attention<br /> +To my interpretation of the scene.<br /> +I rise to give your fancy comprehension,<br /> +And analyze the parts of the machine.<br /> +My mood is such that I would not deceive you,<br /> +Though still a liar and the father of it,<br /> +From judgment’s frailty I would retrieve you,<br /> +Though falsehood is my art and though I love it.<br /> +Down in the habitations whence I rise,<br /> +The roots of human sorrow boundless spread.<br /> +Long have I watched them draw the strength that lies<br /> +In clay made richer by the rotting dead.<br /> +Here is a blossom, here a twisted stalk,<br /> +Here fruit that sourly withers ere its prime;<br /> +And here a growth that sprawls across the walk,<br /> +Food for the green worm, which it turns to slime.<br /> +The ruddy apple with a core of cork<br /> +Springs from a root which in a hollow dangles,<br /> +Not skillful husbandry nor laborious work<br /> +Can save the tree which lightning breaks and tangles.<br /> +Why does the bright nasturtium scarcely flower<br /> +But that those insects multiply and grow,<br /> +Which make it food, and in the very hour<br /> +In which the veined leaves and blossoms blow?<br /> +Why does a goodly tree, while fast maturing,<br /> +Turn crooked branches covered o’er with scale?<br /> +Why does the tree whose youth was not assuring<br /> +Prosper and bear while all its fellows fail?<br /> +I under earth see much. I know the soil.<br /> +I know where mold is heavy and where thin.<br /> +I see the stones that thwart the plowman’s toil,<br /> +The crooked roots of what the priests call sin.<br /> +I know all secrets, even to the core,<br /> +What seedlings will be upas, pine or laurel;<br /> +It cannot change howe’er the field’s worked o’er.<br /> +Man’s what he is and that’s the devil’s moral.<br /> +So with the souls of the ensuing drama<br /> +They sprang from certain seed in certain earth.<br /> +Behold them in the devil’s cyclorama,<br /> +Shown in their proper light for all they’re worth.<br /> +Now to my task: I’ll give an exhibition<br /> +Of mixing the ingredients of spirit. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>He waves his hand.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +Come, crucible, perform your magic mission,<br /> +Come, recreative fire, and hover near it!<br /> +I’ll make a soul, or show how one is made. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>He waves his wand again. Parti-colored flames appear.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +This is the woman you shall see anon! +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>A red flame appears.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +This hectic flame makes all the world afraid:<br /> +It was a soldier’s scourge which ate the bone.<br /> +His daughter bore the lady of the action.<br /> +And died at thirty-nine of scrofula.<br /> +She was a creature of a sweet attraction,<br /> +Whose sex-obsession no one ever saw. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>A purple flame appears.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +Lo! this denotes aristocratic strains<br /> +Back in the centuries of France’s glory. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>A blue flame appears.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +And this the will that pulls against the chains<br /> +Her father strove until his hair was hoary.<br /> +Sorrow and failure made his nature cold.<br /> +He never loved the child whose woe is shown,<br /> +And hence her passion for the things which gold<br /> +Brings in this world of pride, and brings alone.<br /> +The human heart that’s famished from its birth<br /> +Turns to the grosser treasures, that is plain.<br /> +Thus aspiration fallen fills the earth<br /> +With jungle growths of bitterness and pain.<br /> +Of Celtic, Gallic fire our heroine!<br /> +Courageous, cruel, passionate and proud.<br /> +False, vengeful, cunning, without fear o’ sin.<br /> +A head that oft is bloody, but not bowed.<br /> +Now if she meet a man—suppose our hero,<br /> +With whom her chemistry shall war yet mix,<br /> +As if she were her Borgia to his Nero,<br /> +’Twill look like one of Satan’s little tricks!<br /> +However, it must be. The world’s great garden<br /> +Is not all mine. I only sow the tares.<br /> +Wheat should be made immune, or else the Warden<br /> +Should stop their coming in the world’s affairs.<br /> +But to our hero! Long ere he was born<br /> +I knew what would repel him and attract.<br /> +Such spirit mathematics, fig or thorn,<br /> +I can prognosticate before the fact. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>A yellow flame appears.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +This is a grandsire’s treason in an orchard<br /> +Against a maid whose nature with his mated. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(<i>Lurid flames appear.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +And this his memory distrait and tortured,<br /> +Which marked the child with hate because she hated.<br /> +Our heroine’s grand dame was that maid’s own cousin—<br /> +But never this our man and woman knew.<br /> +The child, in time, of lovers had a dozen,<br /> +Then wed a gentleman upright and true.<br /> +And thus our hero had a double nature:<br /> +One half of him was bad, the other good.<br /> +The devil must exhaust his nomenclature<br /> +To make this puzzle rightly understood.<br /> +But when our hero and our heroine met<br /> +They were at once attracted, the repulsion<br /> +Was hidden under Passion, with her net<br /> +Which must enmesh you ere you feel revulsion.<br /> +The virus coursing in the soldier’s blood,<br /> +The orchard’s ghost, the unknown kinship ’twixt them,<br /> +Our hero’s mother’s lovers round them stood,<br /> +Shadows that smiled to see how Fate had fixed them.<br /> +This twain pledge vows and marry, that’s the play.<br /> +And then the tragic features rise and deepen.<br /> +He is a tender husband. When away<br /> +The serpents from the orchard slyly creep in.<br /> +Our heroine, born of spirit none too loyal,<br /> +Picks fruit of knowledge—leaves the tree of life.<br /> +Her fancy turns to France corrupt and royal,<br /> +Soon she forgets her duty as a wife.<br /> +You know the rest, so far as that’s concerned,<br /> +She met exposure and her husband slew her.<br /> +He lost his reason, for the love she spurned.<br /> +He prized her as his own—how slight he knew her.<br /> +(<i>He waves a wand, showing a man in a prison cell.</i>)<br /> +Now here he sits condemned to mount the gallows—<br /> +He could not tell his story—he is dumb.<br /> +Love, says your poets, is a grace that hallows,<br /> +I call it suffering and martyrdom.<br /> +The judge with pointed finger says, “You killed her.”<br /> +Well, so he did—but here’s the explanation;<br /> +He could not give it. I, the drama-builder,<br /> +Show you the various truths and their relation.<br /> +(<i>He waves his wand.</i>)<br /> +Now, to begin. The curtain is ascending,<br /> +They meet at tea upon a flowery lawn.<br /> +Fair, is it not? How sweet their souls are blending—<br /> +The author calls the play “Laocoon.” +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +A VOICE<br /> +Only an earth dream. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +ANOTHER VOICE<br /> +With which we are done.<br /> +A flash of a comet<br /> +Upon the earth stream. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +ANOTHER VOICE<br /> +A dream twrice removed,<br /> +A spectral confusion<br /> +Of earth’s dread illusion. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +A FAR VOICE<br /> +These are the ghosts<br /> +From the desolate coasts.<br /> +Would you go to them?<br /> +Only pursue them.<br /> +Whatever enshrined is<br /> +Within you is you.<br /> +In a place where no wind is,<br /> +Out of the damps,<br /> +Be ye as lamps.<br /> +Flame-like aspire,<br /> +To me alone true,<br /> +The Life and the Fire. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +(BEELZEBUB, LOKI <i>and</i> YOGARINDRA <i>vanish. The phantasmagoria fades out. +Where the dead seemed to have assembled, only heaps of leaves appear. There is +the light as of dawn. Voices of Spring.</i>) +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FIRST VOICE<br /> +The springtime is come, the winter departed.<br /> +She wakens from slumber and dances light-hearted.<br /> +The sun is returning,<br /> +We are done with alarms,<br /> +Earth lifts her face burning,<br /> +Held close in his arms.<br /> +The sun is an eagle<br /> +Who broods o’er his young,<br /> +The earth is his nursling<br /> +In whom he has flung<br /> +The life-flame in seed,<br /> +In blossom desire,<br /> +Till fire become life,<br /> +And life become fire. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +I slip and I vanish,<br /> +I baffle your eye;<br /> +I dive and I climb,<br /> +I change and I fly.<br /> +You have me, you lose me,<br /> +Who have me too well,<br /> +Now find me and use me—<br /> +I am here in a cell. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +THIRD VOICE<br /> +You are there in a cell?<br /> +Oh, now for a rod<br /> +With which to divine you— +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +SECOND VOICE<br /> +Nay, child, I am God. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +FOURTH VOICE<br /> +When the waking waters rise from their beds of snow, under the hill,<br /> +In little rooms of stone where they sleep when icicles reign,<br /> +The April breezes scurry through woodlands, saying “Fulfill!<br /> +Awaken roots under cover of soil—it is Spring again.”<br /> +Then the sun exults, the moon is at peace, and voices<br /> +Call to the silver shadows to lift the flowers from their dreams.<br /> +And a longing, longing enters my heart of sorrow, my heart that rejoices<br /> +In the fleeting glimpse of a shining face, and her hair that gleams.<br /> +I arise and follow alone for hours the winding way by the river.<br /> +Hunting a vanishing light, and a solace for joy too deep.<br /> +Where do you lead me, wild one, on and on forever?<br /> +Over the hill, over the hill, and down to the meadows of sleep. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +THE SUN<br /> +Over the soundless depths of space for a hundred million miles<br /> +Speeds the soul of me, silent thunder, struck from a harp of fire.<br /> +Before my eyes the planets wheel and a universe defiles,<br /> +I but a luminant speck of dust upborne in a vast desire.<br /> +What is my universe that obeys me—myself compelled to obey<br /> +A power that holds me and whirls me over a path that has no end?<br /> +And there are my children who call me great, the giver of life and day,<br /> +Myself a child who cry for life and know not whither I tend.<br /> +A million million suns above me, as if the curtain of night<br /> +Were hung before creation’s flame, that shone through the weave of the cloth,<br /> +Each with its worlds and worlds and worlds crying upward for light,<br /> +For each is drawn in its course to what?—as the candle draws the moth. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +THE MILKY WAY<br /> +Orbits unending,<br /> +Life never ending,<br /> +Power without end. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +A VOICE<br /> +Wouldst thou be lord,<br /> +Not peace but a sword.<br /> +Not heart’s desire—<br /> +Ever aspire.<br /> +Worship thy power,<br /> +Conquer thy hour,<br /> +Sleep not but strive,<br /> +So shalt thou live. +</p> + +<p class="drama"> +INFINITE DEPTHS<br /> +Infinite Law,<br /> +Infinite Life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net + + +Title: Spoon River Anthology + +Author: Edgar Lee Masters + +Posting Date: January 27, 2010 [EBook #1280] +Release Date: April, 1998 +Last Updated: February 3, 2016 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY *** + + + + +Produced by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer + + + + + + + + +Spoon River Anthology + +by Edgar Lee Masters + + + + + Contents: + + Armstrong, Hannah + Arnett, Harold + Atherton, Lucius + + Ballard, John + Barker, Amanda + Barrett, Pauline + Bartlett, Ezra + Bateson, Marie + Beatty, Tom + Beethoven, Isaiah + Bennett, Hon. Henry + Bindle, Nicholas + Blind Jack + Bliss, Mrs. Charles + Blood, A. D. + Bloyd, Wendell P. + Bone, Richard + Branson, Caroline + Brown, Jim + Brown, Sarah + Browning, Elijah + Burleson, John Horace + Butler, Roy + + Cabanis, Flossie + Calhoun, Granville + Calhoun, Henry C. + Campbell, Calvin + Carman, Eugene + Cheney, Columbus + Childers, Elizabeth + Church, John M. + Churchill, Alfonso + Circuit Judge, The + Clapp, Homer + Clark, Nellie + Clute, Aner + Compton, Seth Conant, Edith + Culbertson, E. C. + + Davidson, Robert + Dement, Silas + Dixon, Joseph + Drummer, Frank + Drummer, Hare + Dunlap, Enoch + Dye, Shack + + Ehrenhardt, Imanuel + + Fallas, State's Attorney + Fawcett, Clarence + Fluke, Willard + Foote, Searcy + Ford, Webster + Fraser, Benjamin + Fraser, Daisy + French, Charlie + Frickey, Ida + + Garber, James + Gardner, Samuel + Garrick, Amelia + Godbey, Jacob + Goldman, Le Roy + Goode, William + Goodpasture, Jacob + Graham, Magrady + Gray, George + Green, Ami + Greene, Hamilton + Griffy the Cooper + Gustine, Dorcas + + Hainsfeather, Barney + Hamblin, Carl + Hatfield, Aaron + Hawkins, Elliott + Hawley, Jeduthan + Henry, Chase + Herndon, William H. + Heston, Roger + Higbie, Archibald + Hill, Doc + Hill, The + Hoheimer, Knowlt + Holden, Barry + Hookey, Sam + Howard, Jefferson + Hueffer, Cassius + Hummel, Oscar + Humphrey, Lydia + Hutchins, Lambert + Hyde, Ernest + + James, Godwin + Jones, Fiddler + Jones, Franklin + Jones, "Indignation" + Jones, Minerva + Jones, William + + Karr, Elmer + Keene, Jonas + Kessler, Bert + Kessler, Mrs. + Killion, Captain Orlando + Kincaid, Russell + King, Lyman + Knapp, Nancy + Konovaloff, Ippolit + Kritt, Dow + + Layton, Henry + + M'Cumber, Daniel + McDowell, Rutherford + McFarlane, Widow + McGee, Fletcher + McGee, Ollie + M'Grew, Jennie + M'Grew, Mickey + McGuire, Jack + McNeely, Mary + McNeely, Washington + Malloy, Father + Many Soldiers + Marsh, Zilpha + Marshall, Herbert + Mason, Serepta + Matheny, Faith + Matlock, Davis + Matlock, Lucinda + Melveny, Abel + Merritt, Mrs. + Merritt, Tom + Metcalf, Willie + Meyers, Doctor + Meyers, Mrs. + Micure, Hamlet + Miles, I. Milton + Miller, Julia + Miner, Georgine Sand + Moir, Alfred + + Newcomer, Professor + + Osborne, Mabel + Otis, John Hancock + + Pantier, Benjamin + Pantier, Mrs. Benjamin + Pantier, Reuben + Peet, Rev. Abner + Pennington, Willie + Penniwit, the Artist + Petit, the Poet + Phipps, Henry + Poague, Peleg + Pollard, Edmund + Potter, Cooney + Puckett, Lydia + Purkapile, Mrs. + Purkapile, Roscoe + Putt, Hod + + Reece, Mrs. George + Rhodes, Ralph + Rhodes, Thomas + Richter, Gustav + Robbins, Hortense + Roberts, Rosie + Ross, Thomas, Ir. + Russian Sonia + Rutledge, Anne + + Sayre, Johnnie + Scates, Hiram + Schirding, Albert + Schmidt, Felix + Scott, Julian + Sewall, Harlan + Sharp, Percival + Shaw, "Ace" + Shelley, Percy Bysshe + Shope, Tennessee Claflin + Sibley, Amos + Sibley, Mrs. + Simmons, Walter + Sissman, Dillard + Slack, Margaret Fuller + Smith, Louise + Somers, Jonathan Swift + Somers, Judge + Sparks, Emily + Spooniad, The + Standard, W. Lloyd Garrison + Stewart, Lillian + + Tanner, Robert Fulton + Taylor, Deacon + Theodore the Poet + Throckmorton, Alexander + Tompkins, Josiah + Town Marshal, The + Trainor, the Druggist + Trevelyan, Thomas + Trimble, George + Tripp, Henry + Tubbs, Hildrup + Turner, Francis + Tutt, Oaks + + Unknown, The + + Village Atheist, The + + Wasson, John + Weirauch, Adam + Weldy, "Butch" + Wertman, Elsa + Whedon, Editor + Whitney, Harmon + Wiley, Rev. Lemuel + Will, Arlo + William and Emily + Williams, Dora + Williams, Mrs. + Wilmans, Harry + Witt, Zenas + + Yee Bow + + Zoll, Perry + + + + + The Hill + + Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley, + The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter? + All, all are sleeping on the hill. + + One passed in a fever, + One was burned in a mine, + One was killed in a brawl, + One died in a jail, + One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife-- + All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill. + + Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith, + The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?-- + All, all are sleeping on the hill. + + One died in shameful child-birth, + One of a thwarted love, + One at the hands of a brute in a brothel, + One of a broken pride, in the search for heart's desire; + One after life in far-away London and Paris + Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag-- + All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill. + + Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily, + And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton, + And Major Walker who had talked + With venerable men of the revolution?-- + All, all are sleeping on the hill. + + They brought them dead sons from the war, + And daughters whom life had crushed, + And their children fatherless, crying-- + All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill. + Where is Old Fiddler Jones + Who played with life all his ninety years, + Braving the sleet with bared breast, + Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin, + Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven? + Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago, + Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary's Grove, + Of what Abe Lincoln said + One time at Springfield. + + + + Hod Putt + + HERE I lie close to the grave + Of Old Bill Piersol, + Who grew rich trading with the Indians, and who + Afterwards took the Bankrupt Law + And emerged from it richer than ever + Myself grown tired of toil and poverty + And beholding how Old Bill and other grew in wealth + Robbed a traveler one Night near Proctor's Grove, + Killing him unwittingly while doing so, + For which I was tried and hanged. + That was my way of going into bankruptcy. + Now we who took the bankrupt law in our respective ways + Sleep peacefully side by side. + + + + Ollie McGee + + Have you seen walking through the village + A Man with downcast eyes and haggard face? + That is my husband who, by secret cruelty + Never to be told, robbed me of my youth and my beauty; + Till at last, wrinkled and with yellow teeth, + And with broken pride and shameful humility, + I sank into the grave. + But what think you gnaws at my husband's heart? + The face of what I was, the face of what he made me! + These are driving him to the place where I lie. + In death, therefore, I am avenged. + + + + Fletcher McGee + + She took my strength by minutes, + She took my life by hours, + She drained me like a fevered moon + That saps the spinning world. + The days went by like shadows, + The minutes wheeled like stars. + She took the pity from my heart, + And made it into smiles. + She was a hunk of sculptor's clay, + My secret thoughts were fingers: + They flew behind her pensive brow + And lined it deep with pain. + They set the lips, and sagged the cheeks, + And drooped the eye with sorrow. + My soul had entered in the clay, + Fighting like seven devils. + It was not mine, it was not hers; + She held it, but its struggles + Modeled a face she hated, + And a face I feared to see. + I beat the windows, shook the bolts. + I hid me in a corner + And then she died and haunted me, + And hunted me for life. + + + + Robert Fulton Tanner + + IF a man could bite the giant hand + That catches and destroys him, + As I was bitten by a rat + While demonstrating my patent trap, + In my hardware store that day. + But a man can never avenge himself + On the monstrous ogre Life. + You enter the room--thats being born; + And then you must live--work out your soul, + Aha! the bait that you crave is in view: + A woman with money you want to marry, + Prestige, place, or power in the world. + But theres work to do and things to conquer-- + Oh, yes! the wires that screen the bait. + At last you get in--but you hear a step: + The ogre, Life, comes into the room, + (He was waiting and heard the clang of the spring) + To watch you nibble the wondrous cheese, + And stare with his burning eyes at you, + And scowl and laugh, and mock and curse you, + Running up and down in the trap, + Until your misery bores him. + + + + + Cassius Hueffer + + THEY have chiseled on my stone the words: + "His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him + That nature might stand up and say to all the world, + This was a man." + Those who knew me smile + As they read this empty rhetoric. + My epitaph should have been: + "Life was not gentle to him, + And the elements so mixed in him + That he made warfare on life + In the which he was slain." + While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues, + Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph + Graven by a fool! + + + + Serepta Mason + + MY life's blossom might have bloomed on all sides + Save for a bitter wind which stunted my petals + On the side of me which you in the village could see. + From the dust I lift a voice of protest: + My flowering side you never saw! + Ye living ones, ye are fools indeed + Who do not know the ways of the wind + And the unseen forces + That govern the processes of life. + + + + Amanda Barker + + HENRY got me with child, + Knowing that I could not bring forth life + Without losing my own. + In my youth therefore I entered the portals of dust. + Traveler, it is believed in the village where I lived + That Henry loved me with a husband's love + But I proclaim from the dust + That he slew me to gratify his hatred. + + + + Chase Henry + + IN life I was the town drunkard; + When I died the priest denied me burial + In holy ground. + The which redounded to my good fortune. + For the Protestants bought this lot, + And buried my body here, + Close to the grave of the banker Nicholas, + And of his wife Priscilla. + Take note, ye prudent and pious souls, + Of the cross--currents in life + Which bring honor to the dead, who lived in shame + + + + Judge Somers + + How does it happen, tell me, + That I who was most erudite of lawyers, + Who knew Blackstone and Coke + Almost by heart, who made the greatest speech + The court-house ever heard, and wrote + A brief that won the praise of Justice Breese + How does it happen, tell me, + That I lie here unmarked, forgotten, + While Chase Henry, the town drunkard, + Has a marble block, topped by an urn + Wherein Nature, in a mood ironical, + Has sown a flowering weed? + + + + Benjamin Pantier + + TOGETHER in this grave lie Benjamin Pantier, attorney at law, + And Nig, his dog, constant companion, solace and friend. + Down the gray road, friends, children, men and women, + Passing one by one out of life, left me till I was alone + With Nig for partner, bed-fellow; comrade in drink. + In the morning of life I knew aspiration and saw glory, + The she, who survives me, snared my soul + With a snare which bled me to death, + Till I, once strong of will, lay broken, indifferent, + Living with Nig in a room back of a dingy office. + Under my Jaw-bone is snuggled the bony nose of Nig + Our story is lost in silence. Go by, Mad world! + + + + Mrs. Benjamin Pantier + + I know that he told that I snared his soul + With a snare which bled him to death. + And all the men loved him, + And most of the women pitied him. + But suppose you are really a lady, and have delicate tastes, + And loathe the smell of whiskey and onions, + And the rhythm of Wordsworth's "Ode" runs in your ears, + While he goes about from morning till night + Repeating bits of that common thing; + "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" + And then, suppose; + You are a woman well endowed, + And the only man with whom the law and morality + Permit you to have the marital relation + Is the very man that fills you with disgust + Every time you think of it while you think of it + Every time you see him? + That's why I drove him away from home + To live with his dog in a dingy room + Back of his office. + + + + Reuben Pantier + + WELL, Emily Sparks, your prayers were not wasted, + Your love was not all in vain. + I owe whatever I was in life + To your hope that would not give me up, + To your love that saw me still as good. + Dear Emily Sparks, let me tell you the story. + I pass the effect of my father and mother; + The milliner's daughter made me trouble + And out I went in the world, + Where I passed through every peril known + Of wine and women and joy of life. + One night, in a room in the Rue de Rivoli, + I was drinking wine with a black-eyed cocotte, + And the tears swam into my eyes. + She though they were amorous tears and smiled + For thought of her conquest over me. + But my soul was three thousand miles away, + In the days when you taught me in Spoon River. + And just because you no more could love me, + Nor pray for me, nor write me letters, + The eternal silence of you spoke instead. + And the Black-eyed cocotte took the tears for hers, + As well as the deceiving kisses I gave her. + Somehow, from that hour, I had a new vision + Dear Emily Sparks! + + + + Emily Sparks + + Where is my boy, my boy + In what far part of the world? + The boy I loved best of all in the school?-- + I, the teacher, the old maid, the virgin heart, + Who made them all my children. + Did I know my boy aright, + Thinking of him as a spirit aflame, + Active, ever aspiring? + Oh, boy, boy, for whom I prayed and prayed + In many a watchful hour at night, + Do you remember the letter I wrote you + Of the beautiful love of Christ? + And whether you ever took it or not, + My, boy, wherever you are, + Work for your soul's sake, + That all the clay of you, all of the dross of you, + May yield to the fire of you, + Till the fire is nothing but light!... + Nothing but light! + + + + Trainor, the Druggist + + Only the chemist can tell, and not always the chemist, + What will result from compounding + Fluids or solids. + And who can tell + How men and women will interact + On each other, or what children will result? + There were Benjamin Pantier and his wife, + Good in themselves, but evil toward each other; + He oxygen, she hydrogen, + Their son, a devastating fire. + I Trainor, the druggist, a miser of chemicals, + Killed while making an experiment, + Lived unwedded. + + + + Daisy Fraser + + Did you ever hear of Editor Whedon + Giving to the public treasury any of the money he received + For supporting candidates for office? + Or for writing up the canning factory + To get people to invest? + Or for suppressing the facts about the bank, + When it was rotten and ready to break? + Did you ever hear of the Circuit Judge + Helping anyone except the "Q" railroad, + Or the bankers? Or did Rev. Peet or Rev. Sibley + Give any part of their salary, earned by keeping still, + Or speaking out as the leaders wished them to do, + To the building of the water works? + But I Daisy Fraser who always passed + Along the street through rows of nods and smiles, + And caughs and words such as "there she goes." + Never was taken before Justice Arnett + Without contributing ten dollars and costs + To the school fund of Spoon River! + + + + Benjamin Fraser + + THEIR spirits beat upon mine + Like the wings of a thousand butterflies. + I closed my eyes and felt their spirits vibrating. + I closed my eyes, yet I knew when their lashes + Fringed their cheeks from downcast eyes, + And when they turned their heads; + And when their garments clung to them, + Or fell from them, in exquisite draperies. + Their spirits watched my ecstasy + With wide looks of starry unconcern. + Their spirits looked upon my torture; + They drank it as it were the water of life; + With reddened cheeks, brightened eyes, + The rising flame of my soul made their spirits gilt, + Like the wings of a butterfly drifting suddenly into sunlight. + And they cried to me for life, life, life. + But in taking life for myself, + In seizing and crushing their souls, + As a child crushes grapes and drinks + From its palms the purple juice, + I came to this wingless void, + Where neither red, nor gold, nor wine, + Nor the rhythm of life are known. + + + + Minerva Jones + + I AM Minerva, the village poetess, + Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street + For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk, + And all the more when "Butch" Weldy + Captured me after a brutal hunt. + He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers; + And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up, + Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice. + Will some one go to the village newspaper, + And gather into a book the verses I wrote?-- + I thirsted so for love + I hungered so for life! + + + + "Indignation" Jones + + You would not believe, would you + That I came from good Welsh stock? + That I was purer blooded than the white trash here? + And of more direct lineage than the + New Englanders And Virginians of Spoon River? + You would not believe that I had been to school + And read some books. + You saw me only as a run-down man + With matted hair and beard + And ragged clothes. + Sometimes a man's life turns into a cancer + From being bruised and continually bruised, + And swells into a purplish mass + Like growths on stalks of corn. + Here was I, a carpenter, mired in a bog of life + Into which I walked, thinking it was a meadow, + With a slattern for a wife, and poor Minerva, my daughter, + Whom you tormented and drove to death. + So I crept, crept, like a snail through the days + Of my life. + No more you hear my footsteps in the morning, + Resounding on the hollow sidewalk + Going to the grocery store for a little corn meal + And a nickel's worth of bacon. + + + + "Butch" Weldy + + AFTER I got religion and steadied down + They gave me a job in the canning works, + And every morning I had to fill + The tank in the yard with gasoline, + That fed the blow-fires in the sheds + To heat the soldering irons. + And I mounted a rickety ladder to do it, + Carrying buckets full of the stuff. + One morning, as I stood there pouring, + The air grew still and seemed to heave, + And I shot up as the tank exploded, + And down I came with both legs broken, + And my eyes burned crisp as a couple of eggs. + For someone left a blow--fire going, + And something sucked the flame in the tank. + The Circuit Judge said whoever did it + Was a fellow-servant of mine, and so + Old Rhodes' son didn't have to pay me. + And I sat on the witness stand as blind + As lack the Fiddler, saying over and over, + "I didn't know him at all." + + + + Doctor Meyers + + No other man, unless it was Doc Hill, + Did more for people in this town than I. + And all the weak, the halt, the improvident + And those who could not pay flocked to me. + I was good-hearted, easy Doctor Meyers. + I was healthy, happy, in comfortable fortune, + Blest with a congenial mate, my children raised, + All wedded, doing well in the world. + And then one night, Minerva, the poetess, + Came to me in her trouble, crying. + I tried to help her out--she died-- + They indicted me, the newspapers disgraced me, + My wife perished of a broken heart. + And pneumonia finished me. + + + + Mrs. Meyers + + HE protested all his life long + The newspapers lied about him villainously; + That he was not at fault for Minerva's fall, + But only tried to help her. + Poor soul so sunk in sin he could not see + That even trying to help her, as he called it, + He had broken the law human and divine. + Passers by, an ancient admonition to you: + If your ways would be ways of pleasantness, + And all your pathways peace, + Love God and keep his commandments. + + + + Knowlt Hoheimer + + I WAS the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge. + When I felt the bullet enter my heart + I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail + For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary, + Instead of running away and joining the army. + Rather a thousand times the county jail + Than to lie under this marble figure with wings, + And this granite pedestal Bearing the words, "Pro Patria." + What do they mean, anyway? + + + + Lydia Puckett + + KNOWLT HOHEIMER ran away to the war + The day before Curl Trenary + Swore out a warrant through Justice Arnett + For stealing hogs. + But that's not the reason he turned a soldier. + He caught me running with Lucius Atherton. + We quarreled and I told him never again + To cross my path. + Then he stole the hogs and went to the war-- + Back of every soldier is a woman. + + + + Frank Drummer + + OUT of a cell into this darkened space-- + The end at twenty-five! + My tongue could not speak what stirred within me, + And the village thought me a fool. + Yet at the start there was a clear vision, + A high and urgent purpose in my soul + Which drove me on trying to memorize + The Encyclopedia Britannica! + + + + Hare Drummer + + Do the boys and girls still go to Siever's + For cider, after school, in late September? + Or gather hazel nuts among the thickets + On Aaron Hatfield's farm when the frosts begin? + For many times with the laughing girls and boys + Played I along the road and over the hills + When the sun was low and the air was cool, + Stopping to club the walnut tree + Standing leafless against a flaming west. + Now, the smell of the autumn smoke, + And the dropping acorns, + And the echoes about the vales + Bring dreams of life. + They hover over me. + They question me: + Where are those laughing comrades? + How many are with me, how many + In the old orchards along the way to Siever's, + And in the woods that overlook + The quiet water? + + + + Doc Hill + + I WENT UP and down the streets + Here and there by day and night, + Through all hours of the night caring for the poor who were sick. + Do you know why? + My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs. + And I turned to the people and poured out my love to them. + Sweet it was to see the crowds about the lawns on the day of my + funeral, + And hear them murmur their love and sorrow. + But oh, dear God, my soul trembled, scarcely able + To hold to the railing of the new life + When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree + At the grave, + Hiding herself, and her grief! + + + + Sarah Brown + + MAURICE, weep not, I am not here under this pine tree. + The balmy air of spring whispers through the sweet grass, + The stars sparkle, the whippoorwill calls, + But thou grievest, while my soul lies rapturous + In the blest Nirvana of eternal light! + Go to the good heart that is my husband + Who broods upon what he calls our guilty love:-- + Tell him that my love for you, no less than my love for him + Wrought out my destiny--that through the flesh + I won spirit, and through spirit, peace. + There is no marriage in heaven + But there is love. + + + + Percy Bysshe Shelley + + MY father who owned the wagon-shop + And grew rich shoeing horses + Sent me to the University of Montreal. + I learned nothing and returned home, + Roaming the fields with Bert Kessler, + Hunting quail and snipe. + At Thompson's Lake the trigger of my gun + Caught in the side of the boat + And a great hole was shot through my heart. + Over me a fond father erected this marble shaft, + On which stands the figure of a woman + Carved by an Italian artist. + They say the ashes of my namesake + Were scattered near the pyramid of Caius Cestius + Somewhere near Rome. + + + + Flossie Cabanis + + FROM Bindle's opera house in the village + To Broadway is a great step. + But I tried to take it, my ambition fired + When sixteen years of age, + Seeing "East Lynne," played here in the village + By Ralph Barrett, the coming + Romantic actor, who enthralled my soul. + True, I trailed back home, a broken failure, + When Ralph disappeared in New York, + Leaving me alone in the city-- + But life broke him also. + In all this place of silence + There are no kindred spirits. + How I wish Duse could stand amid the pathos + Of these quiet fields + And read these words. + + + + Julia Miller + + WE quarreled that morning, + For he was sixty--five, and I was thirty, + And I was nervous and heavy with the child + Whose birth I dreaded. + I thought over the last letter written me + By that estranged young soul + Whose betrayal of me I had concealed + By marrying the old man. + Then I took morphine and sat down to read. + Across the blackness that came over my eyes + I see the flickering light of these words even now: + "And Jesus said unto him, Verily + I say unto thee, To-day thou shalt + Be with me in paradise." + + + + Johnnie Sayre + + FATHER, thou canst never know + The anguish that smote my heart + For my disobedience, the moment I felt + The remorseless wheel of the engine + Sink into the crying flesh of my leg. + As they carried me to the home of widow Morris + I could see the school-house in the valley + To which I played truant to steal rides upon the trains. + I prayed to live until I could ask your forgiveness-- + And then your tears, your broken words of comfort! + From the solace of that hour I have gained infinite happiness. + Thou wert wise to chisel for me: + "Taken from the evil to come." + + + + Charlie French + + DID YOU ever find out + Which one of the O'Brien boys it was + Who snapped the toy pistol against my hand? + There when the flags were red and white + In the breeze and "Bucky" Estil + Was firing the cannon brought to Spoon River + From Vicksburg by Captain Harris; + And the lemonade stands were running + And the band was playing, + To have it all spoiled + By a piece of a cap shot under the skin of my hand, + And the boys all crowding about me saying: + "You'll die of lock-jaw, Charlie, sure." + Oh, dear! oh, dear! + What chum of mine could have done it? + + + + Zenas Witt + + I WAS sixteen, and I had the most terrible dreams, + And specks before my eyes, and nervous weakness. + And I couldn't remember the books I read, + Like Frank Drummer who memorized page after page. + And my back was weak, and I worried and worried, + And I was embarrassed and stammered my lessons, + And when I stood up to recite I'd forget + Everything that I had studied. + Well, I saw Dr. Weese's advertisement, + And there I read everything in print, + Just as if he had known me; + And about the dreams which I couldn't help. + So I knew I was marked for an early grave. + And I worried until I had a cough + And then the dreams stopped. + And then I slept the sleep without dreams + Here on the hill by the river. + + + + Theodore the Poet + + As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours + On the shore of the turbid Spoon + With deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish's burrow, + Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead, + First his waving antennae, like straws of hay, + And soon his body, colored like soap-stone, + Gemmed with eyes of jet. + And you wondered in a trance of thought + What he knew, what he desired, and why he lived at all. + But later your vision watched for men and women + Hiding in burrows of fate amid great cities, + Looking for the souls of them to come out, + So that you could see + How they lived, and for what, + And why they kept crawling so busily + Along the sandy way where water fails + As the summer wanes. + + + + The Town Marshal + + THE: Prohibitionists made me Town Marshal + When the saloons were voted out, + Because when I was a drinking man, + Before I joined the church, I killed a Swede + At the saw-mill near Maple Grove. + And they wanted a terrible man, + Grim, righteous, strong, courageous, + And a hater of saloons and drinkers, + To keep law and order in the village. + And they presented me with a loaded cane + With which I struck Jack McGuire + Before he drew the gun with which he killed + The Prohibitionists spent their money in vain + To hang him, for in a dream + I appeared to one of the twelve jurymen + And told him the whole secret story. + Fourteen years were enough for killing me. + + + + Jack McGuire + + THEY would have lynched me + Had I not been secretly hurried away + To the jail at Peoria. + And yet I was going peacefully home, + Carrying my jug, a little drunk, + When Logan, the marshal, halted me + Called me a drunken hound and shook me + And, when I cursed him for it, struck me + With that Prohibition loaded cane-- + All this before I shot him. + They would have hanged me except for this: + My lawyer, Kinsey Keene, was helping to land + Old Thomas Rhodes for wrecking the bank, + And the judge was a friend of + Rhodes And wanted him to escape, + And Kinsey offered to quit on + Rhodes For fourteen years for me. + And the bargain was made. + I served my time + And learned to read and write. + + + + Jacob Goodpasture + + WHEN Fort Sumter fell and the war came + I cried out in bitterness of soul: + "O glorious republic now no more!" + When they buried my soldier son + To the call of trumpets and the sound of drums + My heart broke beneath the weight + Of eighty years, and I cried: + "Oh, son who died in a cause unjust! + In the strife of Freedom slain!" + And I crept here under the grass. + And now from the battlements of time, behold: + Thrice thirty million souls being bound together + In the love of larger truth, + Rapt in the expectation of the birth + Of a new Beauty, + Sprung from Brotherhood and Wisdom. + I with eyes of spirit see the Transfiguration + Before you see it. + But ye infinite brood of golden eagles nesting ever higher, + Wheeling ever higher, the sun-light wooing + Of lofty places of Thought, + Forgive the blindness of the departed owl. + + + + Dorcas Gustine + + I WAS not beloved of the villagers, + But all because I spoke my mind, + And met those who transgressed against me + With plain remonstrance, hiding nor nurturing + Nor secret griefs nor grudges. + That act of the Spartan boy is greatly praised, + Who hid the wolf under his cloak, + Letting it devour him, uncomplainingly. + It is braver, I think, to snatch the wolf forth + And fight him openly, even in the street, + Amid dust and howls of pain. + The tongue may be an unruly member-- + But silence poisons the soul. + Berate me who will--I am content. + + + + Nicholas Bindle + + Were you not ashamed, fellow citizens, + When my estate was probated and everyone knew + How small a fortune I left?-- + You who hounded me in life, + To give, give, give to the churches, to the poor, + To the village!--me who had already given much. + And think you not I did not know + That the pipe-organ, which I gave to the church, + Played its christening songs when Deacon Rhodes, + Who broke and all but ruined me, + Worshipped for the first time after his acquittal? + + + + Harold Arnett + + I LEANED against the mantel, sick, sick, + Thinking of my failure, looking into the abysm, + Weak from the noon-day heat. + A church bell sounded mournfully far away, + I heard the cry of a baby, + And the coughing of John Yarnell, + Bed-ridden, feverish, feverish, dying, + Then the violent voice of my wife: + "Watch out, the potatoes are burning!" + I smelled them . . . then there was irresistible disgust. + I pulled the trigger . . . blackness . . . light . . . + Unspeakable regret . . . fumbling for the world again. + Too late! Thus I came here, + With lungs for breathing . . . one cannot breathe here with lungs, + Though one must breathe + Of what use is it To rid one's self of the world, + When no soul may ever escape the eternal destiny of life? + + + + Margaret Fuller Slack + + I WOULD have been as great as George Eliot + But for an untoward fate. + For look at the photograph of me made by Penniwit, + Chin resting on hand, and deep--set eyes-- + Gray, too, and far-searching. + But there was the old, old problem: + Should it be celibacy, matrimony or unchastity? + Then John Slack, the rich druggist, wooed me, + Luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel, + And I married him, giving birth to eight children, + And had no time to write. + It was all over with me, anyway, + When I ran the needle in my hand + While washing the baby's things, + And died from lock--jaw, an ironical death. + Hear me, ambitious souls, + Sex is the curse of life. + + + + George Trimble + + Do you remember when I stood on the steps + Of the Court House and talked free-silver, + And the single-tax of Henry George? + Then do you remember that, when the Peerless Leader + Lost the first battle, I began to talk prohibition, + And became active in the church? + That was due to my wife, + Who pictured to me my destruction + If I did not prove my morality to the people. + Well, she ruined me: + For the radicals grew suspicious of me, + And the conservatives were never sure of me-- + And here I lie, unwept of all. + + + + "Ace" Shaw + + I NEVER saw any difference + Between playing cards for money + And selling real estate, + Practicing law, banking, or anything else. + For everything is chance. + Nevertheless + Seest thou a man diligent in business? + He shall stand before Kings! + + + + Willard Fluke + + MY wife lost her health, + And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds. + Then that woman, whom the men + Styled Cleopatra, came along. + And we--we married ones + All broke our vows, myself among the rest. + Years passed and one by one + Death claimed them all in some hideous form + And I was borne along by dreams + Of God's particular grace for me, + And I began to write, write, write, reams on reams + Of the second coming of Christ. + Then Christ came to me and said, + "Go into the church and stand before the congregation + And confess your sin." + But just as I stood up and began to speak + I saw my little girl, who was sitting in the front seat-- + My little girl who was born blind! + After that, all is blackness. + + + + Aner Clute + + OVER and over they used to ask me, + While buying the wine or the beer, + In Peoria first, and later in Chicago, + Denver, Frisco, New York, wherever I lived + How I happened to lead the life, + And what was the start of it. + Well, I told them a silk dress, + And a promise of marriage from a rich man-- + (It was Lucius Atherton). + But that was not really it at all. + Suppose a boy steals an apple + From the tray at the grocery store, + And they all begin to call him a thief, + The editor, minister, judge, and all the people-- + "A thief," "a thief," "a thief," wherever he goes + And he can't get work, and he can't get bread + Without stealing it, why the boy will steal. + It's the way the people regard the theft of the apple + That makes the boy what he is. + + + + Lucius Atherton + + WHEN my moustache curled, + And my hair was black, + And I wore tight trousers + And a diamond stud, + I was an excellent knave of hearts and took many a trick. + But when the gray hairs began to appear-- + Lo! a new generation of girls + Laughed at me, not fearing me, + And I had no more exciting adventures + Wherein I was all but shot for a heartless devil, + But only drabby affairs, warmed-over affairs + Of other days and other men. + And time went on until I lived at + Mayer's restaurant, + Partaking of short-orders, a gray, untidy, + Toothless, discarded, rural Don Juan. . . . + There is a mighty shade here who sings + Of one named Beatrice; + And I see now that the force that made him great + Drove me to the dregs of life. + + + + Homer Clapp + + OFTEN Aner Clute at the gate + Refused me the parting kiss, + Saying we should be engaged before that; + And just with a distant clasp of the hand + She bade me good-night, as I brought her home + From the skating rink or the revival. + No sooner did my departing footsteps die away + Than Lucius Atherton, + (So I learned when Aner went to Peoria) + Stole in at her window, or took her riding + Behind his spanking team of bays + Into the country. + The shock of it made me settle down + And I put all the money I got from my father's estate + Into the canning factory, to get the job + Of head accountant, and lost it all. + And then I knew I was one of Life's fools, + Whom only death would treat as the equal + Of other men, making me feel like a man. + + + + Deacon Taylor + + I BELONGED to the church, + And to the party of prohibition; + And the villagers thought I died of eating watermelon. + In truth I had cirrhosis of the liver, + For every noon for thirty years, + I slipped behind the prescription partition + In Trainor's drug store + And poured a generous drink + From the bottle marked "Spiritus frumenti." + + + + Sam Hookey + + I RAN away from home with the circus, + Having fallen in love with Mademoiselle Estralada, + The lion tamer. + One time, having starved the lions + For more than a day, + I entered the cage and began to beat Brutus + And Leo and Gypsy. + Whereupon Brutus sprang upon me, + And killed me. + On entering these regions + I met a shadow who cursed me, + And said it served me right. . . . + It was Robespierre! + + + + Cooney Potter + + I INHERITED forty acres from my Father + And, by working my wife, my two sons and two daughters + From dawn to dusk, I acquired + A thousand acres. + But not content, + Wishing to own two thousand acres, + I bustled through the years with axe and plow, + Toiling, denying myself, my wife, my sons, my daughters. + Squire Higbee wrongs me to say + That I died from smoking Red Eagle cigars. + Eating hot pie and gulping coffee + During the scorching hours of harvest time + Brought me here ere I had reached my sixtieth year. + + + + Fiddler Jones + + THE earth keeps some vibration going + There in your heart, and that is you. + And if the people find you can fiddle, + Why, fiddle you must, for all your life. + What do you see, a harvest of clover? + Or a meadow to walk through to the river? + The wind's in the corn; you rub your hands + For beeves hereafter ready for market; + Or else you hear the rustle of skirts + Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove. + To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust + Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth; + They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy + Stepping it off, to "Toor-a-Loor." + How could I till my forty acres + Not to speak of getting more, + With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos + Stirred in my brain by crows and robins + And the creak of a wind-mill--only these? + And I never started to plow in my life + That some one did not stop in the road + And take me away to a dance or picnic. + I ended up with forty acres; + I ended up with a broken fiddle-- + And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories, + And not a single regret. + + + + Nellie Clark + + I WAS only eight years old; + And before I grew up and knew what it meant + I had no words for it, except + That I was frightened and told my + Mother; And that my Father got a pistol + And would have killed Charlie, who was a big boy, + Fifteen years old, except for his Mother. + Nevertheless the story clung to me. + But the man who married me, a widower of thirty-five, + Was a newcomer and never heard it + 'Till two years after we were married. + Then he considered himself cheated, + And the village agreed that I was not really a virgin. + Well, he deserted me, and I died + The following winter. + + + + Louise Smith + + HERBERT broke our engagement of eight years + When Annabelle returned to the village From the + Seminary, ah me! + If I had let my love for him alone + It might have grown into a beautiful sorrow-- + Who knows?--filling my life with healing fragrance. + But I tortured it, I poisoned it + I blinded its eyes, and it became hatred-- + Deadly ivy instead of clematis. + And my soul fell from its support + Its tendrils tangled in decay. + Do not let the will play gardener to your soul + Unless you are sure + It is wiser than your soul's nature. + + + + Herbert Marshall + + ALL your sorrow, Louise, and hatred of me + Sprang from your delusion that it was wantonness + Of spirit and contempt of your soul's rights + Which made me turn to Annabelle and forsake you. + You really grew to hate me for love of me, + Because I was your soul's happiness, + Formed and tempered + To solve your life for you, and would not. + But you were my misery. + If you had been + My happiness would I not have clung to you? + This is life's sorrow: + That one can be happy only where two are; + And that our hearts are drawn to stars + Which want us not. + + + + George Gray + + I HAVE studied many times + The marble which was chiseled for me-- + A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor. + In truth it pictures not my destination + But my life. + For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment; + Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid; + Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances. + Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life. + And now I know that we must lift the sail + And catch the winds of destiny + Wherever they drive the boat. + To put meaning in one's life may end in madness, + But life without meaning is the torture + Of restlessness and vague desire-- + It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid. + + + + Hon. Henry Bennett + + IT never came into my mind + Until I was ready to die + That Jenny had loved me to death, with malice of heart. + For I was seventy, she was thirty--five, + And I wore myself to a shadow trying to husband + Jenny, rosy Jenny full of the ardor of life. + For all my wisdom and grace of mind + Gave her no delight at all, in very truth, + But ever and anon she spoke of the giant strength + Of Willard Shafer, and of his wonderful feat + Of lifting a traction engine out of the ditch + One time at Georgie Kirby's. + So Jenny inherited my fortune and married Willard-- + That mount of brawn! That clownish soul! + + + + Griffy the Cooper + + THE cooper should know about tubs. + But I learned about life as well, + And you who loiter around these graves + Think you know life. + You think your eye sweeps about a wide horizon, perhaps, + In truth you are only looking around the interior of your tub. + You cannot lift yourself to its rim + And see the outer world of things, + And at the same time see yourself. + You are submerged in the tub of yourself-- + Taboos and rules and appearances, + Are the staves of your tub. + Break them and dispel the witchcraft + Of thinking your tub is life + And that you know life. + + + + A. D. Blood + + IF YOU in the village think that my work was a good one, + Who closed the saloons and stopped all playing at cards, + And haled old Daisy Fraser before Justice Arnett, + In many a crusade to purge the people of sin; + Why do you let the milliner's daughter Dora, + And the worthless son of Benjamin Pantier + Nightly make my grave their unholy pillow? + + + + Dora Williams + + WHEN Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me + I went to Springfield. There I met a lush, + Whose father just deceased left him a fortune. + He married me when drunk. + My life was wretched. + A year passed and one day they found him dead. + That made me rich. I moved on to Chicago. + After a time met Tyler Rountree, villain. + I moved on to New York. A gray-haired magnate + Went mad about me--so another fortune. + He died one night right in my arms, you know. + (I saw his purple face for years thereafter. ) + There was almost a scandal. + I moved on, This time to Paris. I was now a woman, + Insidious, subtle, versed in the world and rich. + My sweet apartment near the Champs Elysees + Became a center for all sorts of people, + Musicians, poets, dandies, artists, nobles, + Where we spoke French and German, Italian, English. + I wed Count Navigato, native of Genoa. + We went to Rome. He poisoned me, I think. + Now in the Campo Santo overlooking + The sea where young Columbus dreamed new worlds, + See what they chiseled: "Contessa Navigato + Implora eterna quiete." + + + + Mrs. Williams + + I WAS the milliner + Talked about, lied about, + Mother of Dora, + Whose strange disappearance + Was charged to her rearing. + My eye quick to beauty + Saw much beside ribbons + And buckles and feathers + And leghorns and felts, + To set off sweet faces, + And dark hair and gold. + One thing I will tell you + And one I will ask: + The stealers of husbands + Wear powder and trinkets, + And fashionable hats. + Wives, wear them yourselves. + Hats may make divorces-- + They also prevent them. + Well now, let me ask you: + If all of the children, born here in Spoon River + Had been reared by the + County, somewhere on a farm; + And the fathers and mothers had been given their freedom + To live and enjoy, change mates if they wished, + Do you think that Spoon River + Had been any the worse? + + + + William and Emily + + THERE is something about + Death Like love itself! + If with some one with whom you have known passion + And the glow of youthful love, + You also, after years of life + Together, feel the sinking of the fire + And thus fade away together, + Gradually, faintly, delicately, + As it were in each other's arms, + Passing from the familiar room-- + That is a power of unison between souls + Like love itself! + + + + The Circuit Judge + + TAKE note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions + Eaten in my head-stone by the wind and rain-- + Almost as if an intangible Nemesis or hatred + Were marking scores against me, + But to destroy, and not preserve, my memory. + I in life was the Circuit judge, a maker of notches, + Deciding cases on the points the lawyers scored, + Not on the right of the matter. + O wind and rain, leave my head-stone alone + For worse than the anger of the wronged, + The curses of the poor, + Was to lie speechless, yet with vision clear, + Seeing that even Hod Putt, the murderer, + Hanged by my sentence, + Was innocent in soul compared with me. + + + + Blind Jack + + I HAD fiddled all day at the county fair. + But driving home "Butch" Weldy and Jack McGuire, + Who were roaring full, made me fiddle and fiddle + To the song of Susie Skinner, while whipping the horses + Till they ran away. Blind as I was, I tried to get out + As the carriage fell in the ditch, + And was caught in the wheels and killed. + There's a blind man here with a brow + As big and white as a cloud. + And all we fiddlers, from highest to lowest, + Writers of music and tellers of stories + Sit at his feet, + And hear him sing of the fall of Troy. + + + + John Horace Burleson + + I WON the prize essay at school + Here in the village, + And published a novel before I was twenty-five. + I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art; + There married the banker's daughter, + And later became president of the bank-- + Always looking forward to some leisure + To write an epic novel of the war. + Meanwhile friend of the great, and lover of letters, + And host to Matthew Arnold and to Emerson. + An after dinner speaker, writing essays + For local clubs. At last brought here-- + My boyhood home, you know-- + Not even a little tablet in Chicago + To keep my name alive. + How great it is to write the single line: + "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll!" + + + + Nancy Knapp + + WELL, don't you see this was the way of it: + We bought the farm with what he inherited, + And his brothers and sisters accused him of poisoning + His fathers mind against the rest of them. + And we never had any peace with our treasure. + The murrain took the cattle, and the crops failed. + And lightning struck the granary. + So we mortgaged the farm to keep going. + And he grew silent and was worried all the time. + Then some of the neighbors refused to speak to us, + And took sides with his brothers and sisters. + And I had no place to turn, as one may say to himself, + At an earlier time in life; + "No matter, So and so is my friend, or I can shake this off + With a little trip to Decatur." + Then the dreadfulest smells infested the rooms. + So I set fire to the beds and the old witch-house + Went up in a roar of flame, + As I danced in the yard with waving arms, + While he wept like a freezing steer. + + + + Barry Holden + + THE very fall my sister Nancy Knapp + Set fire to the house + They were trying Dr. Duval + For the murder of Zora Clemens, + And I sat in the court two weeks + Listening to every witness. + It was clear he had got her in a family + And to let the child be born + Would not do. + Well, how about me with eight children, + And one coming, and the farm + Mortgaged to Thomas Rhodes? + And when I got home that night, + (After listening to the story of the buggy ride, + And the finding of Zora in the ditch,) + The first thing I saw, right there by the steps, + Where the boys had hacked for angle worms, + Was the hatchet! + And just as I entered there was my wife, + Standing before me, big with child. + She started the talk of the mortgaged farm, + And I killed her. + + + + State's Attorney Fallas + + I, THE scourge-wielder, balance-wrecker, + Smiter with whips and swords; + I, hater of the breakers of the law; + I, legalist, inexorable and bitter, + Driving the jury to hang the madman, Barry Holden, + Was made as one dead by light too bright for eyes, + And woke to face a Truth with bloody brow: + Steel forceps fumbled by a doctor's hand + Against my boy's head as he entered life + Made him an idiot. I turned to books of science + To care for him. + That's how the world of those whose minds are sick + Became my work in life, and all my world. + Poor ruined boy! You were, at last, the potter + And I and all my deeds of charity + The vessels of your hand. + + + + Wendell P. Bloyd + + THEY first charged me with disorderly conduct, + There being no statute on blasphemy. + Later they locked me up as insane + Where I was beaten to death by a Catholic guard. + My offense was this: + I said God lied to Adam, and destined him + To lead the life of a fool, + Ignorant that there is evil in the world as well as good. + And when Adam outwitted God by eating the apple + And saw through the lie, + God drove him out of Eden to keep him from taking + The fruit of immortal life. + For Christ's sake, you sensible people, + Here's what God Himself says about it in the book of Genesis: + "And the Lord God said, behold the man + Is become as one of us" (a little envy, you see), + "To know good and evil" (The all-is-good lie exposed): + "And now lest he put forth his hand and take + Also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever: + Therefore the Lord God sent Him forth from the garden of Eden." (The + reason I believe God crucified His Own Son + To get out of the wretched tangle is, because it sounds just like Him. ) + + + + Francis Turner + + I COULD not run or play + In boyhood. + In manhood I could only sip the cup, + Not drink--For scarlet-fever left my heart diseased. + Yet I lie here + Soothed by a secret none but Mary knows: + There is a garden of acacia, + Catalpa trees, and arbors sweet with vines-- + There on that afternoon in June + By Mary's side-- + Kissing her with my soul upon my lips + It suddenly took flight. + + + + Franklin Jones + + IF I could have lived another year + I could have finished my flying machine, + And become rich and famous. + Hence it is fitting the workman + Who tried to chisel a dove for me + Made it look more like a chicken. + For what is it all but being hatched, + And running about the yard, + To the day of the block? + Save that a man has an angel's brain, + And sees the ax from the first! + + + + John M. Church + + I WAS attorney for the "Q" + And the Indemnity Company which insured + The owners of the mine. + I pulled the wires with judge and jury, + And the upper courts, to beat the claims + Of the crippled, the widow and orphan, + And made a fortune thereat. + The bar association sang my praises + In a high-flown resolution. + And the floral tributes were many-- + But the rats devoured my heart + And a snake made a nest in my skull + + + + Russian Sonia + + I, BORN in Weimar + Of a mother who was French + And German father, a most learned professor, + Orphaned at fourteen years, + Became a dancer, known as Russian Sonia, + All up and down the boulevards of Paris, + Mistress betimes of sundry dukes and counts, + And later of poor artists and of poets. + At forty years, passe, I sought New York + And met old Patrick Hummer on the boat, + Red-faced and hale, though turned his sixtieth year, + Returning after having sold a ship-load + Of cattle in the German city, Hamburg. + He brought me to Spoon River and we lived here + For twenty years--they thought that we were married + This oak tree near me is the favorite haunt + Of blue jays chattering, chattering all the day. + And why not? for my very dust is laughing + For thinking of the humorous thing called life. + Barney Hainsfeather + + IF the excursion train to Peoria + Had just been wrecked, I might have escaped with my life-- + Certainly I should have escaped this place. + But as it was burned as well, they mistook me + For John Allen who was sent to the Hebrew Cemetery + At Chicago, + And John for me, so I lie here. + It was bad enough to run a clothing store in this town, + But to be buried here--ach! + + + + Petit, the Poet + + SEEDS in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, + Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel-- + Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens-- + But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof. + Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus, + Ballades by the score with the same old thought: + The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished; + And what is love but a rose that fades? + Life all around me here in the village: + Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth, + Courage, constancy, heroism, failure-- + All in the loom, and oh what patterns! + Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers-- + Blind to all of it all my life long. + Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus, + Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics, + While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines? + + + + Pauline Barrett + + ALMOST the shell of a woman after the surgeon's knife + And almost a year to creep back into strength, + Till the dawn of our wedding decennial + Found me my seeming self again. + We walked the forest together, + By a path of soundless moss and turf. + But I could not look in your eyes, + And you could not look in my eyes, + For such sorrow was ours--the beginning of gray in your hair. + And I but a shell of myself. + And what did we talk of?--sky and water, + Anything, 'most, to hide our thoughts. + And then your gift of wild roses, + Set on the table to grace our dinner. + Poor heart, how bravely you struggled + To imagine and live a remembered rapture! + Then my spirit drooped as the night came on, + And you left me alone in my room for a while, + As you did when I was a bride, poor heart. + And I looked in the mirror and something said: + "One should be all dead when one is half-dead--" + Nor ever mock life, nor ever cheat love." + And I did it looking there in the mirror-- + Dear, have you ever understood? + + + + Mrs. Charles Bliss + + REVEREND WILEY advised me not to divorce him + For the sake of the children, + And Judge Somers advised him the same. + So we stuck to the end of the path. + But two of the children thought he was right, + And two of the children thought I was right. + And the two who sided with him blamed me, + And the two who sided with me blamed him, + And they grieved for the one they sided with. + And all were torn with the guilt of judging, + And tortured in soul because they could not admire + Equally him and me. + Now every gardener knows that plants grown in cellars + Or under stones are twisted and yellow and weak. + And no mother would let her baby suck + Diseased milk from her breast. + Yet preachers and judges advise the raising of souls + Where there is no sunlight, but only twilight, + No warmth, but only dampness and cold-- + Preachers and judges! + + + + Mrs. George Reece + + To this generation I would say: + Memorize some bit of verse of truth or beauty. + It may serve a turn in your life. + My husband had nothing to do + With the fall of the bank--he was only cashier. + The wreck was due to the president, Thomas Rhodes, + And his vain, unscrupulous son. + Yet my husband was sent to prison, + And I was left with the children, + To feed and clothe and school them. + And I did it, and sent them forth + Into the world all clean and strong, + And all through the wisdom of Pope, the poet: + "Act well your part, there all the honor lies." + + + + Rev. Lemuel Wiley + + I PREACHED four thousand sermons, + I conducted forty revivals, + And baptized many converts. + Yet no deed of mine + Shines brighter in the memory of the world, + And none is treasured more by me: + Look how I saved the Blisses from divorce, + And kept the children free from that disgrace, + To grow up into moral men and women, + Happy themselves, a credit to the village. + + + + Thomas Ross, Jr. + + THIS I saw with my own eyes: A cliff--swallow + Made her nest in a hole of the high clay-bank + There near Miller's Ford. + But no sooner were the young hatched + Than a snake crawled up to the nest + To devour the brood. + Then the mother swallow with swift flutterings + And shrill cries + Fought at the snake, + Blinding him with the beat of her wings, + Until he, wriggling and rearing his head, + Fell backward down the bank + Into Spoon River and was drowned. + Scarcely an hour passed + Until a shrike + Impaled the mother swallow on a thorn. + As for myself I overcame my lower nature + Only to be destroyed by my brother's ambition. + + + + Rev. Abner Peet + + I HAD no objection at all + To selling my household effects at auction + On the village square. + It gave my beloved flock the chance + To get something which had belonged to me + For a memorial. + But that trunk which was struck off + To Burchard, the grog-keeper! + Did you know it contained the manuscripts + Of a lifetime of sermons? + And he burned them as waste paper. + + + + Jefferson Howard + + MY valiant fight! For I call it valiant, + With my father's beliefs from old Virginia: + Hating slavery, but no less war. + I, full of spirit, audacity, courage + Thrown into life here in Spoon River, + With its dominant forces drawn from + New England, Republicans, Calvinists, merchants, bankers, + Hating me, yet fearing my arm. + With wife and children heavy to carry-- + Yet fruits of my very zest of life. + Stealing odd pleasures that cost me prestige, + And reaping evils I had not sown; + Foe of the church with its charnel dankness, + Friend of the human touch of the tavern; + Tangled with fates all alien to me, + Deserted by hands I called my own. + Then just as I felt my giant strength + Short of breath, behold my children + Had wound their lives in stranger gardens-- + And I stood alone, as I started alone + My valiant life! I died on my feet, + Facing the silence--facing the prospect + That no one would know of the fight I made. + + + + Albert Schirding + + JONAS KEENE thought his lot a hard one + Because his children were all failures. + But I know of a fate more trying than that: + It is to be a failure while your children are successes. + For I raised a brood of eagles + Who flew away at last, leaving me + A crow on the abandoned bough. + Then, with the ambition to prefix + Honorable to my name, + And thus to win my children's admiration, + I ran for County Superintendent of Schools, + Spending my accumulations to win--and lost. + That fall my daughter received first prize in + Paris For her picture, entitled, "The Old Mill"-- + (It was of the water mill before Henry Wilkin put in steam.) + The feeling that I was not worthy of her finished me. + + + + Jonas Keene + + WHY did Albert Schirding kill himself + Trying to be County Superintendent of Schools, + Blest as he was with the means of life + And wonderful children, bringing him honor + Ere he was sixty? + If even one of my boys could have run a news-stand, + Or one of my girls could have married a decent man, + I should not have walked in the rain + And jumped into bed with clothes all wet, + Refusing medical aid. + + + + Yee Bow + + THEY got me into the Sunday-school + In Spoon River And tried to get me to drop + Confucius for Jesus. I could have been no worse off + If I had tried to get them to drop Jesus for Confucius. + For, without any warning, as if it were a prank, + And sneaking up behind me, Harry Wiley, + The minister's son, caved my ribs into my lungs, + With a blow of his fist. + Now I shall never sleep with my ancestors in Pekin, + And no children shall worship at my grave. + + + + Washington McNeely + + RICH, honored by my fellow citizens, + The father of many children, born of a noble mother, + All raised there + In the great mansion--house, at the edge of town. + Note the cedar tree on the lawn! + I sent all the boys to Ann Arbor, all of the girls to Rockford, + The while my life went on, getting more riches and honors-- + Resting under my cedar tree at evening. + The years went on. I sent the girls to Europe; + I dowered them when married. + I gave the boys money to start in business. + They were strong children, promising as apples + Before the bitten places show. + But John fled the country in disgrace. + Jenny died in child-birth-- + I sat under my cedar tree. + Harry killed himself after a debauch, Susan was divorced-- + I sat under my cedar tree. Paul was invalided from over study, + Mary became a recluse at home for love of a man-- + I sat under my cedar tree. + All were gone, or broken-winged or devoured by life-- + I sat under my cedar tree. + My mate, the mother of them, was taken-- + I sat under my cedar tree, + Till ninety years were tolled. + O maternal Earth, which rocks the fallen leaf to sleep. + + + + Mary McNeely + + PASSER-BY, + To love is to find your own soul + Through the soul of the beloved one. + When the beloved one withdraws itself from your soul + Then you have lost your soul. + It is written: "l have a friend, + But my sorrow has no friend." + Hence my long years of solitude at the home of my father, + Trying to get myself back, + And to turn my sorrow into a supremer self. + But there was my father with his sorrows, + Sitting under the cedar tree, + A picture that sank into my heart at last + Bringing infinite repose. + Oh, ye souls who have made life + Fragrant and white as tube roses + From earth's dark soil, + Eternal peace! + + + + Daniel M'Cumber + + WHEN I went to the city, Mary McNeely, + I meant to return for you, yes I did. + But Laura, my landlady's daughter, + Stole into my life somehow, and won me away. + Then after some years whom should I meet + But Georgine Miner from Niles--a sprout + Of the free love, Fourierist gardens that flourished + Before the war all over Ohio. + Her dilettante lover had tired of her, + And she turned to me for strength and solace. + She was some kind of a crying thing + One takes in one's arms, and all at once + It slimes your face with its running nose, + And voids its essence all over you; + Then bites your hand and springs away. + And there you stand bleeding and smelling to heaven + Why, Mary McNeely, I was not worthy + To kiss the hem of your robe! + + + + Georgine Sand Miner + + A STEPMOTHER drove me from home, embittering me. + A squaw-man, a flaneur and dilettante took my virtue. + For years I was his mistress--no one knew. + I learned from him the parasite cunning + With which I moved with the bluffs, like a flea on a dog. + All the time I was nothing but "very private," with different men. + Then Daniel, the radical, had me for years. + His sister called me his mistress; + And Daniel wrote me: + "Shameful word, soiling our beautiful love!" + But my anger coiled, preparing its fangs. + My Lesbian friend next took a hand. + She hated Daniel's sister. + And Daniel despised her midget husband. + And she saw a chance for a poisonous thrust: + I must complain to the wife of Daniel's pursuit! + But before I did that I begged him to fly to London with me. + "Why not stay in the city just as we have?" he asked. + Then I turned submarine and revenged his repulse + In the arms of my dilettante friend. + Then up to the surface, Bearing the letter that Daniel wrote me + To prove my honor was all intact, showing it to his wife, + My Lesbian friend and everyone. + If Daniel had only shot me dead! + Instead of stripping me naked of lies + A harlot in body and soul. + + + + Thomas Rhodes + + VERY well, you liberals, + And navigators into realms intellectual, + You sailors through heights imaginative, + Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets, + You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits, + And Tennessee Claflin Shopes-- + You found with all your boasted wisdom + How hard at the last it is + To keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms. + While we, seekers of earth's treasures + Getters and hoarders of gold, + Are self-contained, compact, harmonized, + Even to the end. + + + + Penniwit, the Artist + + I LOST my patronage in Spoon River + From trying to put my mind in the camera + To catch the soul of the person. + The very best picture I ever took + Was of Judge Somers, attorney at law. + He sat upright and had me pause + Till he got his cross-eye straight. + Then when he was ready he said "all right." + And I yelled "overruled" and his eye turned up. + And I caught him just as he used to look + When saying "I except." + + + + Jim Brown + + WHILE I was handling Dom Pedro + I got at the thing that divides the race between men who are + For singing "Turkey in the straw" or + "There is a fountain filled with blood"-- + (Like Rile Potter used to sing it over at Concord). + For cards, or for Rev. Peet's lecture on the holy land; + For skipping the light fantastic, or passing the plate; + For Pinafore, or a Sunday school cantata; + For men, or for money; + For the people or against them. + This was it: Rev. Peet and the Social Purity Club, + Headed by Ben Pantier's wife, + Went to the Village trustees, + And asked them to make me take Dom Pedro + From the barn of Wash McNeely, there at the edge of town, + To a barn outside of the corporation, + On the ground that it corrupted public morals. + Well, Ben Pantier and Fiddler Jones saved the day-- + They thought it a slam on colts. + + + + Robert Davidson + + I GREW spiritually fat living off the souls of men. + If I saw a soul that was strong + I wounded its pride and devoured its strength. + The shelters of friendship knew my cunning + For where I could steal a friend I did so. + And wherever I could enlarge my power + By undermining ambition, I did so, + Thus to make smooth my own. + And to triumph over other souls, + Just to assert and prove my superior strength, + Was with me a delight, + The keen exhilaration of soul gymnastics. + Devouring souls, I should have lived forever. + But their undigested remains bred in me a deadly nephritis, + With fear, restlessness, sinking spirits, + Hatred, suspicion, vision disturbed. + I collapsed at last with a shriek. + Remember the acorn; + It does not devour other acorns. + + + + Elsa Wertman + + I WAS a peasant girl from Germany, + Blue-eyed, rosy, happy and strong. + And the first place I worked was at Thomas Greene's. + On a summer's day when she was away + He stole into the kitchen and took me + Right in his arms and kissed me on my throat, + I turning my head. Then neither of us + Seemed to know what happened. + And I cried for what would become of me. + And cried and cried as my secret began to show. + One day Mrs. Greene said she understood, + And would make no trouble for me, + And, being childless, would adopt it. + (He had given her a farm to be still. ) + So she hid in the house and sent out rumors, + As if it were going to happen to her. + And all went well and the child was born-- + They were so kind to me. + Later I married Gus Wertman, and years passed. + But--at political rallies when sitters-by thought I was crying + At the eloquence of Hamilton Greene-- + That was not it. No! I wanted to say: + That's my son! + That's my son. + + + + Hamilton Greene + + I WAS the only child of Frances Harris of Virginia + And Thomas Greene of Kentucky, + Of valiant and honorable blood both. + To them I owe all that I became, + Judge, member of Congress, leader in the State. + From my mother I inherited + Vivacity, fancy, language; + From my father will, judgment, logic. + All honor to them + For what service I was to the people! + + + + Ernest Hyde + + MY mind was a mirror: + It saw what it saw, it knew what it knew. + In youth my mind was just a mirror In a rapidly flying car, + Which catches and loses bits of the landscape. + Then in time + Great scratches were made on the mirror, + Letting the outside world come in, + And letting my inner self look out. + For this is the birth of the soul in sorrow, + A birth with gains and losses. + The mind sees the world as a thing apart, + And the soul makes the world at one with itself. + A mirror scratched reflects no image-- + And this is the silence of wisdom. + + + + Roger Heston + + OH many times did Ernest Hyde and I + Argue about the freedom of the will. + My favorite metaphor was Prickett's cow + Roped out to grass, and free you know as far + As the length of the rope. + One day while arguing so, watching the cow + Pull at the rope to get beyond the circle + Which she had eaten bare, + Out came the stake, and tossing up her head, + She ran for us. + "What's that, free-will or what?" said Ernest, running. + I fell just as she gored me to my death. + + + + Amos Sibley + + NOT character, not fortitude, not patience + Were mine, the which the village thought I had + In bearing with my wife, while preaching on, + Doing the work God chose for me. + I loathed her as a termagant, as a wanton. + I knew of her adulteries, every one. + But even so, if I divorced the woman + I must forsake the ministry. + Therefore to do God's work and have it crop, + I bore with her + So lied I to myself + So lied I to Spoon River! + Yet I tried lecturing, ran for the legislature, + Canvassed for books, with just the thought in mind: + If I make money thus, + I will divorce her. + + + + Mrs. Sibley + + THE secret of the stars--gravitation. + The secret of the earth--layers of rock. + The secret of the soil--to receive seed. + The secret of the seed--the germ. + The secret of man--the sower. + The secret of woman--the soil. + My secret: Under a mound that you shall never find. + + + + Adam Weirauch + + I WAS crushed between Altgeld and Armour. + I lost many friends, much time and money + Fighting for Altgeld whom Editor Whedon + Denounced as the candidate of gamblers and anarchists. + Then Armour started to ship dressed meat to Spoon River, + Forcing me to shut down my slaughter-house + And my butcher shop went all to pieces. + The new forces of Altgeld and Armour caught me + At the same time. I thought it due me, to recoup the money I lost + And to make good the friends that left me, + For the Governor to appoint me Canal Commissioner. + Instead he appointed Whedon of the Spoon River Argus, + So I ran for the legislature and was elected. + I said to hell with principle and sold my vote + On Charles T. Yerkes' street-car franchise. + Of course I was one of the fellows they caught. + Who was it, Armour, Altgeld or myself + That ruined me? + + + + Ezra Bartlett + + A CHAPLAIN in the army, + A chaplain in the prisons, + An exhorter in Spoon River, + Drunk with divinity, Spoon River-- + Yet bringing poor Eliza Johnson to shame, + And myself to scorn and wretchedness. + But why will you never see that love of women, + And even love of wine, + Are the stimulants by which the soul, hungering for divinity, + Reaches the ecstatic vision + And sees the celestial outposts? + Only after many trials for strength, + Only when all stimulants fail, + Does the aspiring soul + By its own sheer power + Find the divine + By resting upon itself. + + + + Amelia Garrick + + YES, here I lie close to a stunted rose bush + In a forgotten place near the fence + Where the thickets from Siever's woods + Have crept over, growing sparsely. + And you, you are a leader in New York, + The wife of a noted millionaire, + A name in the society columns, + Beautiful, admired, magnified perhaps + By the mirage of distance. + You have succeeded, + I have failed In the eyes of the world. + You are alive, I am dead. + Yet I know that I vanquished your spirit; + And I know that lying here far from you, + Unheard of among your great friends + In the brilliant world where you move, + I am really the unconquerable power over your life + That robs it of complete triumph. + + + + John Hancock Otis + + As to democracy, fellow citizens, + Are you not prepared to admit + That I, who inherited riches and was to the manor born, + Was second to none in Spoon River + In my devotion to the cause of Liberty? + While my contemporary, Anthony Findlay, + Born in a shanty and beginning life + As a water carrier to the section hands, + Then becoming a section hand when he was grown, + Afterwards foreman of the gang, until he rose + To the superintendency of the railroad, + Living in Chicago, + Was a veritable slave driver, + Grinding the faces of labor, + And a bitter enemy of democracy. + And I say to you, Spoon River, + And to you, O republic, + Beware of the man who rises to power + From one suspender. + + + + The Unknown + + YE aspiring ones, listen to the story of the unknown + Who lies here with no stone to mark the place. + As a boy reckless and wanton, + Wandering with gun in hand through the forest + Near the mansion of Aaron Hatfield, + I shot a hawk perched on the top + Of a dead tree. He fell with guttural cry + At my feet, his wing broken. + Then I put him in a cage + Where he lived many days cawing angrily at me + When I offered him food. + Daily I search the realms of Hades + For the soul of the hawk, + That I may offer him the friendship + Of one whom life wounded and caged. + Alexander Throckmorton + + IN youth my wings were strong and tireless, + But I did not know the mountains. + In age I knew the mountains + But my weary wings could not follow my vision-- + Genius is wisdom and youth. + + + + Jonathan Swift Somers (Author of the Spooniad) + + AFTER you have enriched your soul + To the highest point, + With books, thought, suffering, + The understanding of many personalities, + The power to interpret glances, silences, + The pauses in momentous transformations, + The genius of divination and prophecy; + So that you feel able at times to hold the world + In the hollow of your hand; + Then, if, by the crowding of so many powers + Into the compass of your soul, + Your soul takes fire, + And in the conflagration of your soul + The evil of the world is lighted up and made clear-- + Be thankful if in that hour of supreme vision + Life does not fiddle. + + + + Widow McFarlane + + I WAS the Widow McFarlane, + Weaver of carpets for all the village. + And I pity you still at the loom of life, + You who are singing to the shuttle + And lovingly watching the work of your hands, + If you reach the day of hate, of terrible truth. + For the cloth of life is woven, you know, + To a pattern hidden under the loom-- + A pattern you never see! + And you weave high-hearted, singing, singing, + You guard the threads of love and friendship + For noble figures in gold and purple. + And long after other eyes can see + You have woven a moon-white strip of cloth, + You laugh in your strength, for Hope overlays it + With shapes of love and beauty. + The loom stops short! + The pattern's out + You're alone in the room! + You have woven a shroud + And hate of it lays you in it. + + + + Carl Hamblin + + THE press of the Spoon River Clarion was wrecked, + And I was tarred and feathered, + For publishing this on the day the + Anarchists were hanged in Chicago: + "l saw a beautiful woman with bandaged eyes + Standing on the steps of a marble temple. + Great multitudes passed in front of her, + Lifting their faces to her imploringly. + In her left hand she held a sword. + She was brandishing the sword, + Sometimes striking a child, again a laborer, + Again a slinking woman, again a lunatic. + In her right hand she held a scale; + Into the scale pieces of gold were tossed + By those who dodged the strokes of the sword. + A man in a black gown read from a manuscript: + "She is no respecter of persons." + Then a youth wearing a red cap + Leaped to her side and snatched away the bandage. + And lo, the lashes had been eaten away + From the oozy eye-lids; + The eye-balls were seared with a milky mucus; + The madness of a dying soul + Was written on her face-- + But the multitude saw why she wore the bandage." + + + + Editor Whedon + + To be able to see every side of every question; + To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long; + To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose, + To use great feelings and passions of the human family + For base designs, for cunning ends, + To wear a mask like the Greek actors-- + Your eight-page paper--behind which you huddle, + Bawling through the megaphone of big type: + "This is I, the giant." + Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief, + Poisoned with the anonymous words + Of your clandestine soul. + To scratch dirt over scandal for money, + And exhume it to the winds for revenge, + Or to sell papers, + Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be, + To win at any cost, save your own life. + To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization, + As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track + And derails the express train. + To be an editor, as I was. + Then to lie here close by the river over the place + Where the sewage flows from the village, + And the empty cans and garbage are dumped, + And abortions are hidden. + + + + Eugene Carman + + RHODES, slave! Selling shoes and gingham, + Flour and bacon, overalls, clothing, all day long + For fourteen hours a day for three hundred and thirteen days + For more than twenty years. + Saying "Yes'm" and "Yes, sir", and "Thank you" + A thousand times a day, and all for fifty dollars a month. + Living in this stinking room in the rattle-trap "Commercial." + And compelled to go to Sunday School, and to listen + To the Rev. Abner Peet one hundred and four times a year + For more than an hour at a time, + Because Thomas Rhodes ran the church + As well as the store and the bank. + So while I was tying my neck-tie that morning + I suddenly saw myself in the glass: + My hair all gray, my face like a sodden pie. + So I cursed and cursed: You damned old thing + You cowardly dog! You rotten pauper! + You Rhodes' slave! Till Roger Baughman + Thought I was having a fight with some one, + And looked through the transom just in time + To see me fall on the floor in a heap + From a broken vein in my head. + + + + Clarence Fawcett + + THE sudden death of Eugene Carman + Put me in line to be promoted to fifty dollars a month, + And I told my wife and children that night. + But it didn't come, and so I thought + Old Rhodes suspected me of stealing + The blankets I took and sold on the side + For money to pay a doctor's bill for my little girl. + Then like a bolt old Rhodes accused me, + And promised me mercy for my family's sake + If I confessed, and so I confessed, + And begged him to keep it out of the papers, + And I asked the editors, too. + That night at home the constable took me + And every paper, except the Clarion, + Wrote me up as a thief + Because old Rhodes was an advertiser + And wanted to make an example of me. + Oh! well, you know how the children cried, + And how my wife pitied and hated me, + And how I came to lie here. + + + + W. Lloyd Garrison Standard + + VEGETARIAN, non--resistant, free-thinker, in ethics a Christian; + Orator apt at the rhine-stone rhythm of Ingersoll. + Carnivorous, avenger, believer and pagan. + Continent, promiscuous, changeable, treacherous, vain, + Proud, with the pride that makes struggle a thing for laughter; + With heart cored out by the worm of theatric despair. + Wearing the coat of indifference to hide the shame of defeat; + I, child of the abolitionist idealism-- + A sort of Brand in a birth of half-and-half. + What other thing could happen when I defended + The patriot scamps who burned the court house + That Spoon River might have a new one + Than plead them guilty? + When Kinsey Keene drove through + The card--board mask of my life with a spear of light, + What could I do but slink away, like the beast of myself + Which I raised from a whelp, to a corner and growl? + The pyramid of my life was nought but a dune, + Barren and formless, spoiled at last by the storm. + + + + Professor Newcomer + + EVERYONE laughed at Col. Prichard + For buying an engine so powerful + That it wrecked itself, and wrecked the grinder + He ran it with. + But here is a joke of cosmic size: + The urge of nature that made a man + Evolve from his brain a spiritual life-- + Oh miracle of the world!-- + The very same brain with which the ape and wolf + Get food and shelter and procreate themselves. + Nature has made man do this, + In a world where she gives him nothing to do + After all--(though the strength of his soul goes round + In a futile waste of power. + To gear itself to the mills of the gods)-- + But get food and shelter and procreate himself! + + + + Ralph Rhodes + + ALL they said was true: + I wrecked my father's bank with my loans + To dabble in wheat; but this was true-- + I was buying wheat for him as well, + Who couldn't margin the deal in his name + Because of his church relationship. + And while George Reece was serving his term + I chased the will-o-the-wisp of women + And the mockery of wine in New York. + It's deathly to sicken of wine and women + When nothing else is left in life. + But suppose your head is gray, and bowed + On a table covered with acrid stubs + Of cigarettes and empty glasses, + And a knock is heard, and you know it's the knock + So long drowned out by popping corks + And the pea-cock screams of demireps-- + And you look up, and there's your Theft, + Who waited until your head was gray, + And your heart skipped beats to say to you: + The game is ended. I've called for you, + Go out on Broadway and be run over, + They'll ship you back to Spoon River. + + + + Mickey M'Grew + + IT was just like everything else in life: + Something outside myself drew me down, + My own strength never failed me. + Why, there was the time I earned the money + With which to go away to school, + And my father suddenly needed help + And I had to give him all of it. + Just so it went till I ended up + A man-of--all-work in Spoon River. + Thus when I got the water-tower cleaned, + And they hauled me up the seventy feet, + I unhooked the rope from my waist, + And laughingly flung my giant arms + Over the smooth steel lips of the top of the tower-- + But they slipped from the treacherous slime, + And down, down, down, I plunged + Through bellowing darkness! + + + + Rosie Roberts + + I WAS sick, but more than that, I was mad + At the crooked police, and the crooked game of life. + So I wrote to the Chief of Police at Peoria: + "l am here in my girlhood home in Spoon River, + Gradually wasting away. + But come and take me, I killed the son + Of the merchant prince, in Madam Lou's + And the papers that said he killed himself + In his home while cleaning a hunting gun-- + Lied like the devil to hush up scandal + For the bribe of advertising. + In my room I shot him, at Madam Lou's, + Because he knocked me down when I said + That, in spite of all the money he had, + I'd see my lover that night." + + + + Oscar Hummel + + I STAGGERED on through darkness, + There was a hazy sky, a few stars + Which I followed as best I could. + It was nine o'clock, I was trying to get home. + But somehow I was lost, + Though really keeping the road. + Then I reeled through a gate and into a yard, + And called at the top of my voice: + "Oh, Fiddler! Oh, Mr. Jones!" + (I thought it was his house and he would show me the way home. ) + But who should step out but A. D. Blood, + In his night shirt, waving a stick of wood, + And roaring about the cursed saloons, + And the criminals they made? + "You drunken Oscar Hummel", he said, + As I stood there weaving to and fro, + Taking the blows from the stick in his hand + Till I dropped down dead at his feet. + + + + Josiah Tompkins + + I WAS well known and much beloved + And rich, as fortunes are reckoned + In Spoon River, where I had lived and worked. + That was the home for me, + Though all my children had flown afar-- + Which is the way of Nature--all but one. + The boy, who was the baby, stayed at home, + To be my help in my failing years + And the solace of his mother. + But I grew weaker, as he grew stronger, + And he quarreled with me about the business, + And his wife said I was a hindrance to it; + And he won his mother to see as he did, + Till they tore me up to be transplanted + With them to her girlhood home in Missouri. + And so much of my fortune was gone at last, + Though I made the will just as he drew it, + He profited little by it. + + + + Roscoe Purkapile + + SHE loved me. + Oh! how she loved me I never had a chance to escape + From the day she first saw me. + But then after we were married I thought + She might prove her mortality and let me out, + Or she might divorce me. But few die, none resign. + Then I ran away and was gone a year on a lark. + But she never complained. She said all would be well + That I would return. And I did return. + I told her that while taking a row in a boat + I had been captured near Van Buren Street + By pirates on Lake Michigan, + And kept in chains, so I could not write her. + She cried and kissed me, and said it was cruel, + Outrageous, inhuman! I then concluded our marriage + Was a divine dispensation + And could not be dissolved, + Except by death. + I was right. + + + + Mrs. Purkapile + + HE ran away and was gone for a year. + When he came home he told me the silly story + Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan + And kept in chains so he could not write me. + I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well + What he was doing, and that he met + The milliner, Mrs. Williams, now and then + When she went to the city to buy goods, as she said. + But a promise is a promise + And marriage is marriage, + And out of respect for my own character + I refused to be drawn into a divorce + By the scheme of a husband who had merely grown tired + Of his marital vow and duty. + + + + Mrs. Kessler + + MR. KESSLER, you know, was in the army, + And he drew six dollars a month as a pension, + And stood on the corner talking politics, + Or sat at home reading Grant's Memoirs; + And I supported the family by washing, + Learning the secrets of all the people + From their curtains, counterpanes, shirts and skirts. + For things that are new grow old at length, + They're replaced with better or none at all: + People are prospering or falling back. + And rents and patches widen with time; + No thread or needle can pace decay, + And there are stains that baffle soap, + And there are colors that run in spite of you, + Blamed though you are for spoiling a dress. + Handkerchiefs, napery, have their secrets-- + The laundress, Life, knows all about it. + And I, who went to all the funerals + Held in Spoon River, swear I never + Saw a dead face without thinking it looked + Like something washed and ironed. + + + + Harmon Whitney + + OUT of the lights and roar of cities, + Drifting down like a spark in Spoon River, + Burnt out with the fire of drink, and broken, + The paramour of a woman I took in self-contempt, + But to hide a wounded pride as well. + To be judged and loathed by a village of little minds-- + I, gifted with tongues and wisdom, + Sunk here to the dust of the justice court, + A picker of rags in the rubbage of spites and wrongs,-- + I, whom fortune smiled on! + I in a village, + Spouting to gaping yokels pages of verse, + Out of the lore of golden years, + Or raising a laugh with a flash of filthy wit + When they bought the drinks to kindle my dying mind. + To be judged by you, + The soul of me hidden from you, + With its wound gangrened + By love for a wife who made the wound, + With her cold white bosom, treasonous, pure and hard, + Relentless to the last, when the touch of her hand, + At any time, might have cured me of the typhus, + Caught in the jungle of life where many are lost. + And only to think that my soul could not react, + Like Byron's did, in song, in something noble, + But turned on itself like a tortured snake--judge me this way, + O world. + + + + Bert Kessler + + I WINGED my bird, + Though he flew toward the setting sun; + But just as the shot rang out, he soared + Up and up through the splinters of golden light, + Till he turned right over, feathers ruffled, + With some of the down of him floating near, + And fell like a plummet into the grass. + I tramped about, parting the tangles, + Till I saw a splash of blood on a stump, + And the quail lying close to the rotten roots. + I reached my hand, but saw no brier, + But something pricked and stung and numbed it. + And then, in a second, I spied the rattler-- + The shutters wide in his yellow eyes, + The head of him arched, sunk back in the rings of him, + A circle of filth, the color of ashes, + Or oak leaves bleached under layers of leaves. + I stood like a stone as he shrank and uncoiled + And started to crawl beneath the stump, + When I fell limp in the grass. + + + + Lambert Hutchins + + I HAVE two monuments besides this granite obelisk: + One, the house I built on the hill, + With its spires, bay windows, and roof of slate. + The other, the lake-front in Chicago, + Where the railroad keeps a switching yard, + With whistling engines and crunching wheels + And smoke and soot thrown over the city, + And the crash of cars along the boulevard,-- + A blot like a hog-pen on the harbor + Of a great metropolis, foul as a sty. + I helped to give this heritage + To generations yet unborn, with my vote + In the House of Representatives, + And the lure of the thing was to be at rest + From the never--ending fright of need, + And to give my daughters gentle breeding, + And a sense of security in life. + But, you see, though I had the mansion house + And traveling passes and local distinction, + I could hear the whispers, whispers, whispers, + Wherever I went, and my daughters grew up + With a look as if some one were about to strike them; + And they married madly, helter-skelter, + Just to get out and have a change. + And what was the whole of the business worth? + Why, it wasn't worth a damn! + + + + Lillian Stewart + + I WAS the daughter of Lambert Hutchins, + Born in a cottage near the grist--mill, + Reared in the mansion there on the hill, + With its spires, bay--windows, and roof of slate. + How proud my mother was of the mansion + How proud of father's rise in the world! + And how my father loved and watched us, + And guarded our happiness. + But I believe the house was a curse, + For father's fortune was little beside it; + And when my husband found he had married + A girl who was really poor, + He taunted me with the spires, + And called the house a fraud on the world, + A treacherous lure to young men, raising hopes + Of a dowry not to be had; + And a man while selling his vote + Should get enough from the people's betrayal + To wall the whole of his family in. + He vexed my life till I went back home + And lived like an old maid till I died, + Keeping house for father. + + + + Hortense Robbins + + MY name used to be in the papers daily + As having dined somewhere, + Or traveled somewhere, + Or rented a house in Paris, + Where I entertained the nobility. + I was forever eating or traveling, + Or taking the cure at Baden-Baden. + Now I am here to do honor + To Spoon River, here beside the family whence I sprang. + No one cares now where I dined, + Or lived, or whom I entertained, + Or how often I took the cure at Baden-Baden. + + + + Jacob Godbey + + How did you feel, you libertarians, + Who spent your talents rallying noble reasons + Around the saloon, as if Liberty + Was not to be found anywhere except at the bar + Or at a table, guzzling? + How did you feel, Ben Pantier, and the rest of you, + Who almost stoned me for a tyrant + Garbed as a moralist, + And as a wry-faced ascetic frowning upon Yorkshire pudding, + Roast beef and ale and good will and rosy cheer-- + Things you never saw in a grog-shop in your life? + How did you feel after I was dead and gone, + And your goddess, Liberty, unmasked as a strumpet, + Selling out the streets of Spoon River + To the insolent giants + Who manned the saloons from afar? + Did it occur to you that personal liberty + Is liberty of the mind, + Rather than of the belly? + + + + Walter Simmons + + MY parents thought that I would be + As great as Edison or greater: + For as a boy I made balloons + And wondrous kites and toys with clocks + And little engines with tracks to run on + And telephones of cans and thread. + I played the cornet and painted pictures, + Modeled in clay and took the part + Of the villain in the "Octoroon." + But then at twenty--one I married + And had to live, and so, to live + I learned the trade of making watches + And kept the jewelry store on the square, + Thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking,-- + Not of business, but of the engine + I studied the calculus to build. + And all Spoon River watched and waited + To see it work, but it never worked. + And a few kind souls believed my genius + Was somehow hampered by the store. + It wasn't true. + The truth was this: + I did not have the brains. + + + + Tom Beatty + + I WAS a lawyer like Harmon Whitney + Or Kinsey Keene or Garrison Standard, + For I tried the rights of property, + Although by lamp-light, for thirty years, + In that poker room in the opera house. + And I say to you that Life's a gambler + Head and shoulders above us all. + No mayor alive can close the house. + And if you lose, you can squeal as you will; + You'll not get back your money. + He makes the percentage hard to conquer; + He stacks the cards to catch your weakness + And not to meet your strength. + And he gives you seventy years to play: + For if you cannot win in seventy + You cannot win at all. + So, if you lose, get out of the room-- + Get out of the room when your time is up. + It's mean to sit and fumble the cards + And curse your losses, leaden-eyed, + Whining to try and try. + + + + Roy Butler + + IF the learned Supreme Court of Illinois + Got at the secret of every case + As well as it does a case of rape + It would be the greatest court in the world. + A jury, of neighbors mostly, with "Butch" Weldy + As foreman, found me guilty in ten minutes + And two ballots on a case like this: + Richard Bandle and I had trouble over a fence + And my wife and Mrs. Bandle quarreled + As to whether Ipava was a finer town than Table Grove. + I awoke one morning with the love of God + Brimming over my heart, so I went to see Richard + To settle the fence in the spirit of Jesus Christ. + I knocked on the door, and his wife opened; + She smiled and asked me in. + I entered-- She slammed the door and began to scream, + "Take your hands off, you low down varlet!" + Just then her husband entered. + I waved my hands, choked up with words. + He went for his gun, and I ran out. + But neither the Supreme Court nor my wife + Believed a word she said. + + + + Searcy Foote + + I WANTED to go away to college + But rich Aunt Persis wouldn't help me. + So I made gardens and raked the lawns + And bought John Alden's books with my earnings + And toiled for the very means of life. + I wanted to marry Delia Prickett, + But how could I do it with what I earned? + And there was Aunt Persis more than seventy + Who sat in a wheel-chair half alive + With her throat so paralyzed, when she swallowed + The soup ran out of her mouth like a duck-- + A gourmand yet, investing her income + In mortgages, fretting all the time + About her notes and rents and papers. + That day I was sawing wood for her, + And reading Proudhon in between. + I went in the house for a drink of water, + And there she sat asleep in her chair, + And Proudhon lying on the table, + And a bottle of chloroform on the book, + She used sometimes for an aching tooth! + I poured the chloroform on a handkerchief + And held it to her nose till she died.-- + Oh Delia, Delia, you and Proudhon + Steadied my hand, and the coroner + Said she died of heart failure. + I married Delia and got the money-- + A joke on you, Spoon River? + + + + Edmund Pollard + + I WOULD I had thrust my hands of flesh + Into the disk--flowers bee-infested, + Into the mirror-like core of fire + Of the light of life, the sun of delight. + For what are anthers worth or petals + Or halo-rays? Mockeries, shadows + Of the heart of the flower, the central flame + All is yours, young passer-by; + Enter the banquet room with the thought; + Don't sidle in as if you were doubtful + Whether you're welcome--the feast is yours! + Nor take but a little, refusing more + With a bashful "Thank you", when you're hungry. + Is your soul alive? Then let it feed! + Leave no balconies where you can climb; + Nor milk-white bosoms where you can rest; + Nor golden heads with pillows to share; + Nor wine cups while the wine is sweet; + Nor ecstasies of body or soul, + You will die, no doubt, but die while living + In depths of azure, rapt and mated, + Kissing the queen-bee, Life! + + + + Thomas Trevelyan + + READING in Ovid the sorrowful story of Itys, + Son of the love of Tereus and Procne, slain + For the guilty passion of Tereus for Philomela, + The flesh of him served to Tereus by Procne, + And the wrath of Tereus, the murderess pursuing + Till the gods made Philomela a nightingale, + Lute of the rising moon, and Procne a swallow + Oh livers and artists of Hellas centuries gone, + Sealing in little thuribles dreams and wisdom, + Incense beyond all price, forever fragrant, + A breath whereof makes clear the eyes of the soul + How I inhaled its sweetness here in Spoon River! + The thurible opening when I had lived and learned + How all of us kill the children of love, and all of us, + Knowing not what we do, devour their flesh; + And all of us change to singers, although it be + But once in our lives, or change--alas!--to swallows, + To twitter amid cold winds and falling leaves! + + + + Percival Sharp + + OBSERVE the clasped hands! + Are they hands of farewell or greeting, + Hands that I helped or hands that helped me? + Would it not be well to carve a hand + With an inverted thumb, like Elagabalus? + And yonder is a broken chain, + The weakest-link idea perhaps--but what was it? + And lambs, some lying down, + Others standing, as if listening to the shepherd-- + Others bearing a cross, one foot lifted up-- + Why not chisel a few shambles? + And fallen columns! + Carve the pedestal, please, + Or the foundations; let us see the cause of the fall. + And compasses and mathematical instruments, + In irony of the under tenants, ignorance + Of determinants and the calculus of variations. + And anchors, for those who never sailed. + And gates ajar--yes, so they were; + You left them open and stray goats entered your garden. + And an eye watching like one of the Arimaspi-- + So did you--with one eye. + And angels blowing trumpets--you are heralded-- + It is your horn and your angel and your family's estimate. + It is all very well, but for myself + I know I stirred certain vibrations in Spoon River + Which are my true epitaph, more lasting than stone. + + + + Hiram Scates + + I TRIED to win the nomination + For president of the County-board + And I made speeches all over the County + Denouncing Solomon Purple, my rival, + As an enemy of the people, + In league with the master-foes of man. + Young idealists, broken warriors, + Hobbling on one crutch of hope, + Souls that stake their all on the truth, + Losers of worlds at heaven's bidding, + Flocked about me and followed my voice + As the savior of the County. + But Solomon won the nomination; + And then I faced about, + And rallied my followers to his standard, + And made him victor, made him King + Of the Golden Mountain with the door + Which closed on my heels just as I entered, + Flattered by Solomon's invitation, + To be the County--board's secretary. + And out in the cold stood all my followers: + Young idealists, broken warriors + Hobbling on one crutch of hope-- + Souls that staked their all on the truth, + Losers of worlds at heaven's bidding, + Watching the Devil kick the Millennium + Over the Golden Mountain. + + + + Peleg Poague + + HORSES and men are just alike. + There was my stallion, Billy Lee, + Black as a cat and trim as a deer, + With an eye of fire, keen to start, + And he could hit the fastest speed + Of any racer around Spoon River. + But just as you'd think he couldn't lose, + With his lead of fifty yards or more, + He'd rear himself and throw the rider, + And fall back over, tangled up, + Completely gone to pieces. + You see he was a perfect fraud: + He couldn't win, he couldn't work, + He was too light to haul or plow with, + And no one wanted colts from him. + And when I tried to drive him--well, + He ran away and killed me. + + + + Jeduthan Hawley + + THERE would be a knock at the door + And I would arise at midnight and go to the shop, + Where belated travelers would hear me hammering + Sepulchral boards and tacking satin. + And often I wondered who would go with me + To the distant land, our names the theme + For talk, in the same week, for I've observed + Two always go together. + Chase Henry was paired with Edith Conant; + And Jonathan Somers with Willie Metcalf; + And Editor Hamblin with Francis Turner, + When he prayed to live longer than Editor Whedon, + And Thomas Rhodes with widow McFarlane; + And Emily Sparks with Barry Holden; + And Oscar Hummel with Davis Matlock; + And Editor Whedon with Fiddler Jones; + And Faith Matheny with Dorcas Gustine. + And I, the solemnest man in town, + Stepped off with Daisy Fraser. + + + + Abel Melveny + + I BOUGHT every kind of machine that's known-- + Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers, + Mills and rakes and ploughs and threshers-- + And all of them stood in the rain and sun, + Getting rusted, warped and battered, + For I had no sheds to store them in, + And no use for most of them. + And toward the last, when I thought it over, + There by my window, growing clearer + About myself, as my pulse slowed down, + And looked at one of the mills I bought-- + Which I didn't have the slightest need of, + As things turned out, and I never ran-- + A fine machine, once brightly varnished, + And eager to do its work, + Now with its paint washed off-- + I saw myself as a good machine + That Life had never used. + + + + Oaks Tutt + + MY mother was for woman's rights + And my father was the rich miller at London Mills. + I dreamed of the wrongs of the world and wanted to right them. + When my father died, I set out to see peoples and countries + In order to learn how to reform the world. + I traveled through many lands. I saw the ruins of Rome + And the ruins of Athens, And the ruins of Thebes. + And I sat by moonlight amid the necropolis of Memphis. + There I was caught up by wings of flame, + And a voice from heaven said to me: + "Injustice, Untruth destroyed them. + Go forth Preach Justice! Preach Truth!" + And I hastened back to Spoon River + To say farewell to my mother before beginning my work. + They all saw a strange light in my eye. + And by and by, when I talked, they discovered + What had come in my mind. + Then Jonathan Swift Somers challenged me to debate + The subject, (I taking the negative): + "Pontius Pilate, the Greatest Philosopher of the World." + And he won the debate by saying at last, + "Before you reform the world, Mr. Tutt + Please answer the question of Pontius Pilate: + "What is Truth?" + + + + Elliott Hawkins + + I LOOKED like Abraham Lincoln. + I was one of you, Spoon River, in all fellowship, + But standing for the rights of property and for order. + A regular church attendant, + Sometimes appearing in your town meetings to warn you + Against the evils of discontent and envy + And to denounce those who tried to destroy the Union, + And to point to the peril of the Knights of Labor. + My success and my example are inevitable influences + In your young men and in generations to come, + In spite of attacks of newspapers like the Clarion; + A regular visitor at Springfield + When the Legislature was in session + To prevent raids upon the railroads + And the men building up the state. + Trusted by them and by you, Spoon River, equally + In spite of the whispers that I was a lobbyist. + Moving quietly through the world, rich and courted. + Dying at last, of course, but lying here + Under a stone with an open book carved upon it + And the words "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." + And now, you world-savers, who reaped nothing in life + And in death have neither stones nor epitaphs, + How do you like your silence from mouths stopped + With the dust of my triumphant career? + + + + Enoch Dunlap + + How many times, during the twenty years + I was your leader, friends of Spoon River, + Did you neglect the convention and caucus, + And leave the burden on my hands + Of guarding and saving the people's cause?-- + Sometimes because you were ill; + Or your grandmother was ill; + Or you drank too much and fell asleep; + Or else you said: "He is our leader, + All will be well; he fights for us; + We have nothing to do but follow." + But oh, how you cursed me when I fell, + And cursed me, saying I had betrayed you, + In leaving the caucus room for a moment, + When the people's enemies, there assembled, + Waited and watched for a chance to destroy + The Sacred Rights of the People. + You common rabble! I left the caucus + To go to the urinal. + + + + Ida Frickey + + NOTHING in life is alien to you: + I was a penniless girl from Summum + Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River. + All the houses stood before me with closed doors + And drawn shades--l was barred out; + I had no place or part in any of them. + And I walked past the old McNeely mansion, + A castle of stone 'mid walks and gardens + With workmen about the place on guard + And the County and State upholding it + For its lordly owner, full of pride. + I was so hungry I had a vision: + I saw a giant pair of scissors + Dip from the sky, like the beam of a dredge, + And cut the house in two like a curtain. + But at the "Commercial" I saw a man + Who winked at me as I asked for work-- + It was Wash McNeely's son. + He proved the link in the chain of title + To half my ownership of the mansion, + Through a breach of promise suit--the scissors. + So, you see, the house, from the day I was born, + Was only waiting for me. + + + + Seth Compton + + WHEN I died, the circulating library + Which I built up for Spoon River, + And managed for the good of inquiring minds, + Was sold at auction on the public square, + As if to destroy the last vestige + Of my memory and influence. + For those of you who could not see the virtue + Of knowing Volney's "Ruins" as well as Butler's "Analogy" + And "Faust" as well as "Evangeline," + Were really the power in the village, + And often you asked me + "What is the use of knowing the evil in the world?" + I am out of your way now, Spoon River, + Choose your own good and call it good. + For I could never make you see + That no one knows what is good + Who knows not what is evil; + And no one knows what is true + Who knows not what is false. + + + + Felix Schmidt + + IT was only a little house of two rooms-- + Almost like a child's play-house-- + With scarce five acres of ground around it; + And I had so many children to feed + And school and clothe, and a wife who was sick + From bearing children. + One day lawyer Whitney came along + And proved to me that Christian Dallman, + Who owned three thousand acres of land, + Had bought the eighty that adjoined me + In eighteen hundred and seventy-one + For eleven dollars, at a sale for taxes, + While my father lay in his mortal illness. + So the quarrel arose and I went to law. + But when we came to the proof, + A survey of the land showed clear as day + That Dallman's tax deed covered my ground + And my little house of two rooms. + It served me right for stirring him up. + I lost my case and lost my place. + I left the court room and went to work + As Christian Dallman's tenant. + + + + Richard Bone + + When I first came to Spoon River + I did not know whether what they told me + Was true or false. + They would bring me the epitaph + And stand around the shop while I worked + And say "He was so kind," "He was so wonderful," + "She was the sweetest woman," "He was a consistent Christian." + And I chiseled for them whatever they wished, + All in ignorance of the truth. + But later, as I lived among the people here, + I knew how near to the life + Were the epitaphs that were ordered for them as they died. + But still I chiseled whatever they paid me to chisel + And made myself party to the false chronicles + Of the stones, + Even as the historian does who writes + Without knowing the truth, + Or because he is influenced to hide it. + + + + Silas Dement + + It was moon-light, and the earth sparkled + With new-fallen frost. + It was midnight and not a soul abroad. + Out of the chimney of the court-house + A gray-hound of smoke leapt and chased + The northwest wind. + I carried a ladder to the landing of the stairs + And leaned it against the frame of the trap-door + In the ceiling of the portico, + And I crawled under the roof and amid the rafters + And flung among the seasoned timbers + A lighted handful of oil-soaked waste. + Then I came down and slunk away. + In a little while the fire-bell rang-- + Clang! Clang! Clang! + And the Spoon River ladder company + Came with a dozen buckets and began to pour water + On the glorious bon-fire, growing hotter + Higher and brighter, till the walls fell in + And the limestone columns where Lincoln stood + Crashed like trees when the woodman fells them. + When I came back from Joliet + There was a new court house with a dome. + For I was punished like all who destroy + The past for the sake of the future. + + + + Dillard Sissman + + THE buzzards wheel slowly + In wide circles, in a sky + Faintly hazed as from dust from the road. + And a wind sweeps through the pasture where I lie + Beating the grass into long waves. + My kite is above the wind, + Though now and then it wobbles, + Like a man shaking his shoulders; + And the tail streams out momentarily, + Then sinks to rest. + And the buzzards wheel and wheel, + Sweeping the zenith with wide circles + Above my kite. And the hills sleep. + And a farm house, white as snow, + Peeps from green trees--far away. + And I watch my kite, + For the thin moon will kindle herself ere long, + Then she will swing like a pendulum dial + To the tail of my kite. + A spurt of flame like a water-dragon + Dazzles my eyes-- + I am shaken as a banner. + + + + E. C. Culbertson + + Is it true, Spoon River, + That in the hall--way of the New Court House + There is a tablet of bronze + Containing the embossed faces + Of Editor Whedon and Thomas Rhodes? + And is it true that my successful labors + In the County Board, without which + Not one stone would have been placed on another, + And the contributions out of my own pocket + To build the temple, are but memories among the people, + Gradually fading away, and soon to descend + With them to this oblivion where I lie? + In truth, I can so believe. + For it is a law of the Kingdom of Heaven + That whoso enters the vineyard at the eleventh hour + Shall receive a full day's pay. + And it is a law of the Kingdom of this World + That those who first oppose a good work + Seize it and make it their own, + When the corner--stone is laid, + And memorial tablets are erected. + + + + Shack Dye + + THE white men played all sorts of jokes on me. + They took big fish off my hook + And put little ones on, while I was away + Getting a stringer, and made me believe + I hadn't seen aright the fish I had caught. + When Burr Robbins, circus came to town + They got the ring master to let a tame leopard + Into the ring, and made me believe + I was whipping a wild beast like Samson + When I, for an offer of fifty dollars, + Dragged him out to his cage. + One time I entered my blacksmith shop + And shook as I saw some horse-shoes crawling + Across the floor, as if alive-- + Walter Simmons had put a magnet + Under the barrel of water. + Yet everyone of you, you white men, + Was fooled about fish and about leopards too, + And you didn't know any more than the horse-shoes did + What moved you about Spoon River. + + + + Hildrup Tubbs + + I MADE two fights for the people. + First I left my party, bearing the gonfalon + Of independence, for reform, and was defeated. + Next I used my rebel strength + To capture the standard of my old party-- + And I captured it, but I was defeated. + Discredited and discarded, misanthropical, + I turned to the solace of gold + And I used my remnant of power + To fasten myself like a saprophyte + Upon the putrescent carcass + Of Thomas Rhodes, bankrupt bank, + As assignee of the fund. + Everyone now turned from me. + My hair grew white, + My purple lusts grew gray, + Tobacco and whisky lost their savor + And for years Death ignored me + As he does a hog. + + + + Henry Tripp + + THE bank broke and I lost my savings. + I was sick of the tiresome game in Spoon River + And I made up my mind to run away + And leave my place in life and my family; + But just as the midnight train pulled in, + Quick off the steps jumped Cully Green + And Martin Vise, and began to fight + To settle their ancient rivalry, + Striking each other with fists that sounded + Like the blows of knotted clubs. + Now it seemed to me that Cully was winning, + When his bloody face broke into a grin + Of sickly cowardice, leaning on Martin + And whining out "We're good friends, Mart, + You know that I'm your friend." + But a terrible punch from Martin knocked him + Around and around and into a heap. + And then they arrested me as a witness, + And I lost my train and staid in Spoon River + To wage my battle of life to the end. + Oh, Cully Green, you were my savior-- + You, so ashamed and drooped for years, + Loitering listless about the streets, + And tying rags round your festering soul, + Who failed to fight it out. + + + + Granville Calhoun + + I WANTED to be County Judge + One more term, so as to round out a service + Of thirty years. + But my friends left me and joined my enemies, + And they elected a new man. + Then a spirit of revenge seized me, + And I infected my four sons with it, + And I brooded upon retaliation, + Until the great physician, Nature, + Smote me through with paralysis + To give my soul and body a rest. + Did my sons get power and money? + Did they serve the people or yoke them, + To till and harvest fields of self? + For how could they ever forget + My face at my bed-room window, + Sitting helpless amid my golden cages + Of singing canaries, + Looking at the old court-house? + + + + Henry C. Calhoun + + I REACHED the highest place in Spoon River, + But through what bitterness of spirit! + The face of my father, sitting speechless, + Child-like, watching his canaries, + And looking at the court-house window + Of the county judge's room, + And his admonitions to me to seek + My own in life, and punish Spoon River + To avenge the wrong the people did him, + Filled me with furious energy + To seek for wealth and seek for power. + But what did he do but send me along + The path that leads to the grove of the Furies? + I followed the path and I tell you this: + On the way to the grove you'll pass the Fates, + Shadow-eyed, bent over their weaving. + Stop for a moment, and if you see + The thread of revenge leap out of the shuttle + Then quickly snatch from Atropos + The shears and cut it, lest your sons + And the children of them and their children + Wear the envenomed robe. + + + + Alfred Moir + + WHY was I not devoured by self-contempt, + And rotted down by indifference + And impotent revolt like Indignation Jones? + Why, with all of my errant steps + Did I miss the fate of Willard Fluke? + And why, though I stood at Burchard's bar, + As a sort of decoy for the house to the boys + To buy the drinks, did the curse of drink + Fall on me like rain that runs off, + Leaving the soul of me dry and clean? + And why did I never kill a man Like Jack McGuire? + But instead I mounted a little in life, + And I owe it all to a book I read. + But why did I go to Mason City, + Where I chanced to see the book in a window, + With its garish cover luring my eye? + And why did my soul respond to the book, + As I read it over and over? + + + + Perry Zoll + + MY thanks, friends of the + County Scientific Association, + For this modest boulder, + And its little tablet of bronze. + Twice I tried to join your honored body, + And was rejected + And when my little brochure + On the intelligence of plants + Began to attract attention + You almost voted me in. + After that I grew beyond the need of you + And your recognition. + Yet I do not reject your memorial stone + Seeing that I should, in so doing, + Deprive you of honor to yourselves. + + + + Magrady Graham + + TELL me, was Altgeld elected Governor? + For when the returns began to come in + And Cleveland was sweeping the East + It was too much for you, poor old heart, + Who had striven for democracy + In the long, long years of defeat. + And like a watch that is worn + I felt you growing slower until you stopped. + Tell me, was Altgeld elected, + And what did he do? + Did they bring his head on a platter to a dancer, + Or did he triumph for the people? + For when I saw him + And took his hand, + The child-like blueness of his eyes + Moved me to tears, + And there was an air of eternity about him, + Like the cold, clear light that rests at dawn + On the hills! + + + + Archibald Higbie + + I LOATHED YOU, Spoon River. + I tried to rise above you, + I was ashamed of you. + I despised you + As the place of my nativity. + And there in Rome, among the artists, + Speaking Italian, speaking French, + I seemed to myself at times to be free + Of every trace of my origin. + I seemed to be reaching the heights of art + And to breathe the air that the masters breathed + And to see the world with their eyes. + But still they'd pass my work and say: + "What are you driving at, my friend? + Sometimes the face looks like Apollo's + At others it has a trace of Lincoln's." + There was no culture, you know, in Spoon River + And I burned with shame and held my peace. + And what could I do, all covered over + And weighted down with western soil + Except aspire, and pray for another + Birth in the world, with all of Spoon River + Rooted out of my soul? + + + + Tom Merritt + + AT first I suspected something-- + She acted so calm and absent-minded. + And one day I heard the back door shut + As I entered the front, and I saw him slink + Back of the smokehouse into the lot + And run across the field. + And I meant to kill him on sight. + But that day, walking near Fourth Bridge + Without a stick or a stone at hand, + All of a sudden I saw him standing + Scared to death, holding his rabbits, + And all I could say was, "Don't, Don't, Don't," + As he aimed and fired at my heart. + + + + Mrs. Merritt + + SILENT before the jury + Returning no word to the judge when he asked me + If I had aught to say against the sentence, + Only shaking my head. + What could I say to people who thought + That a woman of thirty-five was at fault + When her lover of nineteen killed her husband? + Even though she had said to him over and over, + "Go away, Elmer, go far away, + I have maddened your brain with the gift of my body: + You will do some terrible thing." + And just as I feared, he killed my husband; + With which I had nothing to do, before + God Silent for thirty years in prison + And the iron gates of Joliet + Swung as the gray and silent trusties + Carried me out in a coffin. + + + + Elmer Karr + + WHAT but the love of God could have softened + And made forgiving the people of Spoon River + Toward me who wronged the bed of Thomas Merritt + And murdered him beside? + Oh, loving hearts that took me in again + When I returned from fourteen years in prison! + Oh, helping hands that in the church received me + And heard with tears my penitent confession, + Who took the sacrament of bread and wine! + Repent, ye living ones, and rest with Jesus. + + + + Elizabeth Childers + + DUST of my dust, + And dust with my dust, + O, child who died as you entered the world, + Dead with my death! + Not knowing + Breath, though you tried so hard, + With a heart that beat when you lived with me, + And stopped when you left me for Life. + It is well, my child. + For you never traveled + The long, long way that begins with school days, + When little fingers blur under the tears + That fall on the crooked letters. + And the earliest wound, when a little mate + Leaves you alone for another; + And sickness, and the face of + Fear by the bed; + The death of a father or mother; + Or shame for them, or poverty; + The maiden sorrow of school days ended; + And eyeless Nature that makes you drink + From the cup of Love, though you know it's poisoned; + To whom would your flower-face have been lifted? + Botanist, weakling? + Cry of what blood to yours?-- + Pure or foul, for it makes no matter, + It's blood that calls to our blood. + And then your children--oh, what might they be? + And what your sorrow? + Child! Child Death is better than Life. + + + + Edith Conant + + WE stand about this place--we, the memories; + And shade our eyes because we dread to read: + "June 17th, 1884, aged 21 years and 3 days." + And all things are changed. + And we--we, the memories, stand here for ourselves alone, + For no eye marks us, or would know why we are here. + Your husband is dead, your sister lives far away, + Your father is bent with age; + He has forgotten you, he scarcely leaves the house + Any more. No one remembers your exquisite face, + Your lyric voice! + How you sang, even on the morning you were stricken, + With piercing sweetness, with thrilling sorrow, + Before the advent of the child which died with you. + It is all forgotten, save by us, the memories, + Who are forgotten by the world. + All is changed, save the river and the hill-- + Even they are changed. + Only the burning sun and the quiet stars are the same. + And we--we, the memories, stand here in awe, + Our eyes closed with the weariness of tears-- + In immeasurable weariness + + + + Father Malloy + + YOU are over there, Father Malloy, + Where holy ground is, and the cross marks every grave, + Not here with us on the hill-- + Us of wavering faith, and clouded vision + And drifting hope, and unforgiven sins. + You were so human, Father Malloy, + Taking a friendly glass sometimes with us, + Siding with us who would rescue Spoon River + From the coldness and the dreariness of village morality. + You were like a traveler who brings a little box of sand + From the wastes about the pyramids + And makes them real and Egypt real. + You were a part of and related to a great past, + And yet you were so close to many of us. + You believed in the joy of life. + You did not seem to be ashamed of the flesh. + You faced life as it is, + And as it changes. + Some of us almost came to you, Father Malloy, + Seeing how your church had divined the heart, + And provided for it, + Through Peter the Flame, + Peter the Rock. + + + + Ami Green + + NOT "a youth with hoary head and haggard eye", + But an old man with a smooth skin + And black hair! I had the face of a boy as long as I lived, + And for years a soul that was stiff and bent, + In a world which saw me just as a jest, + To be hailed familiarly when it chose, + And loaded up as a man when it chose, + Being neither man nor boy. + In truth it was soul as well as body + Which never matured, and I say to you + That the much-sought prize of eternal youth + Is just arrested growth. + + + + Calvin Campbell + + YE who are kicking against Fate, + Tell me how it is that on this hill-side + Running down to the river, + Which fronts the sun and the south-wind, + This plant draws from the air and soil + Poison and becomes poison ivy? + And this plant draws from the same air and soil + Sweet elixirs and colors and becomes arbutus? + And both flourish? + You may blame Spoon River for what it is, + But whom do you blame for the will in you + That feeds itself and makes you dock-weed, + Jimpson, dandelion or mullen + And which can never use any soil or air + So as to make you jessamine or wistaria? + + + + Henry Layton + + WHOEVER thou art who passest by + Know that my father was gentle, + And my mother was violent, + While I was born the whole of such hostile halves, + Not intermixed and fused, + But each distinct, feebly soldered together. + Some of you saw me as gentle, + Some as violent, + Some as both. + But neither half of me wrought my ruin. + It was the falling asunder of halves, + Never a part of each other, + That left me a lifeless soul. + + + + Harlan Sewall + + You never understood, + O unknown one, + Why it was I repaid + Your devoted friendship and delicate ministrations + First with diminished thanks, + Afterward by gradually withdrawing my presence from you, + So that I might not be compelled to thank you, + And then with silence which followed upon + Our final Separation. + You had cured my diseased soul. + But to cure it + You saw my disease, you knew my secret, + And that is why I fled from you. + For though when our bodies rise from pain + We kiss forever the watchful hands + That gave us wormwood, while we shudder + For thinking of the wormwood, + A soul that's cured is a different matter, + For there we'd blot from memory + The soft--toned words, the searching eyes, + And stand forever oblivious, + Not so much of the sorrow itself + As of the hand that healed it. + + + + Ippolit Konovaloff + + I WAS a gun-smith in Odessa. + One night the police broke in the room + Where a group of us were reading Spencer. + And seized our books and arrested us. + But I escaped and came to New York + And thence to Chicago, and then to Spoon River, + Where I could study my Kant in peace + And eke out a living repairing guns + Look at my moulds! My architectonics + One for a barrel, one for a hammer + And others for other parts of a gun! + Well, now suppose no gun--smith living + Had anything else but duplicate moulds + Of these I show you--well, all guns + Would be just alike, with a hammer to hit + The cap and a barrel to carry the shot + All acting alike for themselves, and all + Acting against each other alike. + And there would be your world of guns! + Which nothing could ever free from itself + Except a Moulder with different moulds + To mould the metal over. + + + + Henry Phipps + + I WAS the Sunday-school superintendent, + The dummy president of the wagon works + And the canning factory, + Acting for Thomas Rhodes and the banking clique; + My son the cashier of the bank, + Wedded to Rhodes, daughter, + My week days spent in making money, + My Sundays at church and in prayer. + In everything a cog in the wheel of things--as--they-are: + Of money, master and man, made white + With the paint of the Christian creed. + And then: + The bank collapsed. + I stood and hooked at the wrecked machine-- + The wheels with blow-holes stopped with putty and painted; + The rotten bolts, the broken rods; + And only the hopper for souls fit to be used again + In a new devourer of life, + When newspapers, judges and money-magicians + Build over again. + I was stripped to the bone, but I lay in the Rock of Ages, + Seeing now through the game, no longer a dupe, + And knowing "'the upright shall dwell in the land + But the years of the wicked shall be shortened." + Then suddenly, Dr. Meyers discovered + A cancer in my liver. + I was not, after all, the particular care of God + Why, even thus standing on a peak + Above the mists through which I had climbed, + And ready for larger life in the world, + Eternal forces + Moved me on with a push. + + + + Harry Wilmans + + I WAS just turned twenty-one, + And Henry Phipps, the Sunday-school superintendent, + Made a speech in Bindle's Opera House. + "The honor of the flag must be upheld," he said, + "Whether it be assailed by a barbarous tribe of Tagalogs + Or the greatest power in Europe." + And we cheered and cheered the speech and the flag he waved + As he spoke. + And I went to the war in spite of my father, + And followed the flag till I saw it raised + By our camp in a rice field near Manila, + And all of us cheered and cheered it. + But there were flies and poisonous things; + And there was the deadly water, + And the cruel heat, + And the sickening, putrid food; + And the smell of the trench just back of the tents + Where the soldiers went to empty themselves; + And there were the whores who followed us, full of syphilis; + And beastly acts between ourselves or alone, + With bullying, hatred, degradation among us, + And days of loathing and nights of fear + To the hour of the charge through the steaming swamp, + Following the flag, + Till I fell with a scream, shot through the guts. + Now there's a flag over me in + Spoon River. A flag! + A flag! + + + + John Wasson + + OH! the dew-wet grass of the meadow in North Carolina + Through which Rebecca followed me wailing, wailing, + One child in her arms, and three that ran along wailing, + Lengthening out the farewell to me off to the war with the British, + And then the long, hard years down to the day of Yorktown. + And then my search for Rebecca, + Finding her at last in Virginia, + Two children dead in the meanwhile. + We went by oxen to Tennessee, + Thence after years to Illinois, + At last to Spoon River. + We cut the buffalo grass, + We felled the forests, + We built the school houses, built the bridges, + Leveled the roads and tilled the fields + Alone with poverty, scourges, death-- + If Harry Wilmans who fought the Filipinos + Is to have a flag on his grave + Take it from mine. + + + + Many Soldiers + + THE idea danced before us as a flag; + The sound of martial music; + The thrill of carrying a gun; + Advancement in the world on coming home; + A glint of glory, wrath for foes; + A dream of duty to country or to God. + But these were things in ourselves, shining before us, + They were not the power behind us, + Which was the Almighty hand of Life, + Like fire at earth's center making mountains, + Or pent up waters that cut them through. + Do you remember the iron band + The blacksmith, Shack Dye, welded + Around the oak on Bennet's lawn, + From which to swing a hammock, + That daughter Janet might repose in, reading + On summer afternoons? + And that the growing tree at last + Sundered the iron band? + But not a cell in all the tree + Knew aught save that it thrilled with life, + Nor cared because the hammock fell + In the dust with Milton's Poems. + + + + Godwin James + + HARRY WILMANS! You who fell in a swamp + Near Manila, following the flag + You were not wounded by the greatness of a dream, + Or destroyed by ineffectual work, + Or driven to madness by Satanic snags; + You were not torn by aching nerves, + Nor did you carry great wounds to your old age. + You did not starve, for the government fed you. + You did not suffer yet cry "forward" + To an army which you led + Against a foe with mocking smiles, + Sharper than bayonets. + You were not smitten down + By invisible bombs. + You were not rejected + By those for whom you were defeated. + You did not eat the savorless bread + Which a poor alchemy had made from ideals. + You went to Manila, Harry Wilmans, + While I enlisted in the bedraggled army + Of bright-eyed, divine youths, + Who surged forward, who were driven back and fell + Sick, broken, crying, shorn of faith, + Following the flag of the Kingdom of Heaven. + You and I, Harry Wilmans, have fallen + In our several ways, not knowing + Good from bad, defeat from victory, + Nor what face it is that smiles + Behind the demoniac mask. + + + + Lyman King + + YOU may think, passer-by, that Fate + Is a pit-fall outside of yourself, + Around which you may walk by the use of foresight + And wisdom. + Thus you believe, viewing the lives of other men, + As one who in God-like fashion bends over an anthill, + Seeing how their difficulties could be avoided. + But pass on into life: + In time you shall see Fate approach you + In the shape of your own image in the mirror; + Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth, + And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest, + And you shall know that guest + And read the authentic message of his eyes. + + + + Caroline Branson + + WITH our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked, + As often before, the April fields till star--light + Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness + Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood, + Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing + Like notes of music that run together, into winning, + In the inspired improvisation of love! + But to put back of us as a canticle ended + The rapt enchantment of the flesh, + In which our souls swooned, down, down, + Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves-- + Annihilated in love! + To leave these behind for a room with lamps: + And to stand with our Secret mocking itself, + And hiding itself amid flowers and mandolins, + Stared at by all between salad and coffee. + And to see him tremble, and feel myself + Prescient, as one who signs a bond-- + Not flaming with gifts and pledges heaped + With rosy hands over his brow. + And then, O night! deliberate! unlovely! + With all of our wooing blotted out by the winning, + In a chosen room in an hour that was known to all! + Next day he sat so listless, almost cold + So strangely changed, wondering why I wept, + Till a kind of sick despair and voluptuous madness + Seized us to make the pact of death. + A stalk of the earth-sphere, + Frail as star-light; + Waiting to be drawn once again Into creation's stream. + But next time to be given birth + Gazed at by Raphael and St. Francis + Sometimes as they pass. + For I am their little brother, + To be known clearly face to face + Through a cycle of birth hereafter run. + You may know the seed and the soil; + You may feel the cold rain fall, + But only the earth--sphere, only heaven + Knows the secret of the seed + In the nuptial chamber under the soil. + Throw me into the stream again, + Give me another trial-- + Save me, Shelley! + + + + Anne Rutledge + + OUT of me unworthy and unknown + The vibrations of deathless music; + "With malice toward none, with charity for all.', + Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions, + And the beneficent face of a nation + Shining with justice and truth. + I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds, + Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln, + Wedded to him, not through union, But through separation. + Bloom forever, O Republic, + From the dust of my bosom! + + + + Hamlet Micure + + IN a lingering fever many visions come to you: + I was in the little house again + With its great yard of clover + Running down to the board-fence, + Shadowed by the oak tree, + Where we children had our swing. + Yet the little house was a manor hall + Set in a lawn, and by the lawn was the sea. + I was in the room where little Paul + Strangled from diphtheria, + But yet it was not this room-- + It was a sunny verandah enclosed + With mullioned windows + And in a chair sat a man in a dark cloak + With a face like Euripides. + He had come to visit me, or I had gone to visit him--I could not tell. + We could hear the beat of the sea, the clover nodded + Under a summer wind, and little Paul came + With clover blossoms to the window and smiled. + Then I said: "What is "divine despair" Alfred?" + "Have you read 'Tears, Idle Tears'?" he asked. + "Yes, but you do not there express divine despair." + "My poor friend," he answered, "that was why the despair + Was divine." + + + + Mabel Osborne + + YOUR red blossoms amid green leaves + Are drooping, beautiful geranium! + But you do not ask for water. + You cannot speak! + You do not need to speak-- + Everyone knows that you are dying of thirst, + Yet they do not bring water! + They pass on, saying: + "The geranium wants water." + And I, who had happiness to share + And longed to share your happiness; + I who loved you, Spoon River, + And craved your love, + Withered before your eyes, Spoon River-- + Thirsting, thirsting, + Voiceless from chasteness of soul to ask you for love, + You who knew and saw me perish before you, + Like this geranium which someone has planted over me, + And left to die. + + + + William H. Herndon + + THERE by the window in the old house + Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley, + My days of labor closed, sitting out life's decline, + Day by day did I look in my memory, + As one who gazes in an enchantress' crystal globe, + And I saw the figures of the past + As if in a pageant glassed by a shining dream, + Move through the incredible sphere of time. + And I saw a man arise from the soil like a fabled giant + And throw himself over a deathless destiny, + Master of great armies, head of the republic, + Bringing together into a dithyramb of recreative song + The epic hopes of a people; + At the same time Vulcan of sovereign fires, + Where imperishable shields and swords were beaten out + From spirits tempered in heaven. + Look in the crystal! + See how he hastens on + To the place where his path comes up to the path + Of a child of Plutarch and Shakespeare. + O Lincoln, actor indeed, playing well your part + And Booth, who strode in a mimic play within the play, + Often and often I saw you, + As the cawing crows winged their way to the wood + Over my house--top at solemn sunsets, + There by my window, + Alone. + + + + Rutherford McDowell + + THEY brought me ambrotypes + Of the old pioneers to enlarge. + And sometimes one sat for me-- + Some one who was in being + When giant hands from the womb of the world + Tore the republic. + What was it in their eyes?-- + For I could never fathom + That mystical pathos of drooped eyelids, + And the serene sorrow of their eyes. + It was like a pool of water, + Amid oak trees at the edge of a forest, + Where the leaves fall, + As you hear the crow of a cock + From a far--off farm house, seen near the hills + Where the third generation lives, and the strong men + And the strong women are gone and forgotten. + And these grand--children and great grand-children + Of the pioneers! + Truly did my camera record their faces, too, + With so much of the old strength gone, + And the old faith gone, + And the old mastery of life gone, + And the old courage gone, + Which labors and loves and suffers and sings + Under the sun! + + + + Hannah Armstrong + + I WROTE him a letter asking him for old times, sake + To discharge my sick boy from the army; + But maybe he couldn't read it. + Then I went to town and had James Garber, + Who wrote beautifully, write him a letter. + But maybe that was lost in the mails. + So I traveled all the way to Washington. + I was more than an hour finding the White House. + And when I found it they turned me away, + Hiding their smiles. + Then I thought: "Oh, well, he ain't the same as when I boarded him + And he and my husband worked together + And all of us called him Abe, there in Menard." + As a last attempt I turned to a guard and said: + "Please say it's old Aunt Hannah Armstrong + From Illinois, come to see him about her sick boy + In the army." + Well, just in a moment they let me in! + And when he saw me he broke in a laugh, + And dropped his business as president, + And wrote in his own hand Doug's discharge, + Talking the while of the early days, + And telling stories. + + + + Lucinda Matlock + + I WENT to the dances at Chandlerville, + And played snap-out at Winchester. + One time we changed partners, + Driving home in the moonlight of middle June, + And then I found Davis. + We were married and lived together for seventy years, + Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children, + Eight of whom we lost + Ere I had reached the age of sixty. + I spun, + I wove, + I kept the house, + I nursed the sick, + I made the garden, and for holiday + Rambled over the fields where sang the larks, + And by Spoon River gathering many a shell, + And many a flower and medicinal weed-- + Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys. + At ninety--six I had lived enough, that is all, + And passed to a sweet repose. + What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness, + Anger, discontent and drooping hopes? + Degenerate sons and daughters, + Life is too strong for you-- + It takes life to love Life. + + + + Davis Matlock + + SUPPOSE it is nothing but the hive: + That there are drones and workers + And queens, and nothing but storing honey-- + (Material things as well as culture and wisdom)-- + For the next generation, this generation never living, + Except as it swarms in the sun-light of youth, + Strengthening its wings on what has been gathered, + And tasting, on the way to the hive + From the clover field, the delicate spoil. + Suppose all this, and suppose the truth: + That the nature of man is greater + Than nature's need in the hive; + And you must bear the burden of life, + As well as the urge from your spirit's excess-- + Well, I say to live it out like a god + Sure of immortal life, though you are in doubt, + Is the way to live it. + If that doesn't make God proud of you + Then God is nothing but gravitation + Or sleep is the golden goal. + + + + Jennie M'Grew + + NOT, where the stairway turns in the dark + A hooded figure, shriveled under a flowing cloak! + Not yellow eyes in the room at night, + Staring out from a surface of cobweb gray! + And not the flap of a condor wing + When the roar of life in your ears begins + As a sound heard never before! + But on a sunny afternoon, + By a country road, + Where purple rag-weeds bloom along a straggling fence + And the field is gleaned, and the air is still + To see against the sun-light something black + Like a blot with an iris rim-- + That is the sign to eyes of second sight. . . + And that I saw! + + + + Columbus Cheney + + THIS weeping willow! + Why do you not plant a few + For the millions of children not yet born, + As well as for us? + Are they not non-existent, or cells asleep + Without mind? + Or do they come to earth, their birth + Rupturing the memory of previous being? + Answer! + The field of unexplored intuition is yours. + But in any case why not plant willows for them, + As well as for us? + Marie Bateson + You observe the carven hand + With the index finger pointing heavenward. + That is the direction, no doubt. + But how shall one follow it? + It is well to abstain from murder and lust, + To forgive, do good to others, worship God + Without graven images. + But these are external means after all + By which you chiefly do good to yourself. + The inner kernel is freedom, + It is light, purity-- + I can no more, + Find the goal or lose it, according to your vision. + + + + Tennessee Claflin Shope + + I WAS the laughing-stock of the village, + Chiefly of the people of good sense, as they call themselves-- + Also of the learned, like Rev. Peet, who read Greek + The same as English. + For instead of talking free trade, + Or preaching some form of baptism; + Instead of believing in the efficacy + Of walking cracks, picking up pins the right way, + Seeing the new moon over the right shoulder, + Or curing rheumatism with blue glass, + I asserted the sovereignty of my own soul. + Before Mary Baker G. Eddy even got started + With what she called science I had mastered the "Bhagavad Gita," + And cured my soul, before Mary Began to cure bodies with souls-- + Peace to all worlds! + + + + Imanuel Ehrenhardt + + I BEGAN with Sir William Hamilton's lectures. + Then studied Dugald Stewart; + And then John Locke on the Understanding, + And then Descartes, Fichte and Schelling, + Kant and then Schopenhauer-- + Books I borrowed from old Judge Somers. + All read with rapturous industry + Hoping it was reserved to me + To grasp the tail of the ultimate secret, + And drag it out of its hole. + My soul flew up ten thousand miles + And only the moon looked a little bigger. + Then I fell back, how glad of the earth! + All through the soul of William Jones + Who showed me a letter of John Muir. + + + + Samuel Gardner + + I WHO kept the greenhouse, + Lover of trees and flowers, + Oft in life saw this umbrageous elm, + Measuring its generous branches with my eye, + And listened to its rejoicing leaves + Lovingly patting each other + With sweet aeolian whispers. + And well they might: + For the roots had grown so wide and deep + That the soil of the hill could not withhold + Aught of its virtue, enriched by rain, + And warmed by the sun; + But yielded it all to the thrifty roots, + Through which it was drawn and whirled to the trunk, + And thence to the branches, and into the leaves, + Wherefrom the breeze took life and sang. + Now I, an under--tenant of the earth, can see + That the branches of a tree + Spread no wider than its roots. + And how shall the soul of a man + Be larger than the life he has lived? + + + + Dow Kritt + + SAMUEL is forever talking of his elm-- + But I did not need to die to learn about roots: + I, who dug all the ditches about Spoon River. + Look at my elm! + Sprung from as good a seed as his, + Sown at the same time, + It is dying at the top: + Not from lack of life, nor fungus, + Nor destroying insect, as the sexton thinks. + Look, Samuel, where the roots have struck rock, + And can no further spread. + And all the while the top of the tree + Is tiring itself out, and dying, + Trying to grow. + + + + William Jones + + ONCE in a while a curious weed unknown to me, + Needing a name from my books; + Once in a while a letter from Yeomans. + Out of the mussel-shells gathered along the shore + Sometimes a pearl with a glint like meadow rue: + Then betimes a letter from Tyndall in England, + Stamped with the stamp of Spoon River. + I, lover of Nature, beloved for my love of her, + Held such converse afar with the great + Who knew her better than I. + Oh, there is neither lesser nor greater, + Save as we make her greater and win from her keener delight. + With shells from the river cover me, cover me. + I lived in wonder, worshipping earth and heaven. + I have passed on the march eternal of endless life. + + + + William Goode + + To all in the village I seemed, no doubt, + To go this way and that way, aimlessly. . + But here by the river you can see at twilight + The soft--winged bats fly zig-zag here and there-- + They must fly so to catch their food. + And if you have ever lost your way at night, + In the deep wood near Miller's Ford, + And dodged this way and now that, + Wherever the light of the Milky Way shone through, + Trying to find the path, + You should understand I sought the way + With earnest zeal, and all my wanderings + Were wanderings in the quest. + + + + J. Milton Miles + + WHENEVER the Presbyterian bell + Was rung by itself, I knew it as the Presbyterian bell. + But when its sound was mingled + With the sound of the Methodist, the Christian, + The Baptist and the Congregational, + I could no longer distinguish it, + Nor any one from the others, or either of them. + And as many voices called to me in life + Marvel not that I could not tell + The true from the false, + Nor even, at last, the voice that + I should have known. + + + + Faith Matheny + + AT first you will know not what they mean, + And you may never know, + And we may never tell you:-- + These sudden flashes in your soul, + Like lambent lightning on snowy clouds + At midnight when the moon is full. + They come in solitude, or perhaps + You sit with your friend, and all at once + A silence falls on speech, and his eyes + Without a flicker glow at you:-- + You two have seen the secret together, + He sees it in you, and you in him. + And there you sit thrilling lest the + Mystery Stand before you and strike you dead + With a splendor like the sun's. + Be brave, all souls who have such visions + As your body's alive as mine is dead, + You're catching a little whiff of the ether + Reserved for God Himself. + + + + Willie Metcalf + + I WAS Willie Metcalf. + They used to call me "Doctor Meyers," + Because, they said, I looked like him. + And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire. + I lived in the livery stable, + Sleeping on the floor + Side by side with Roger Baughman's bulldog, + Or sometimes in a stall. + I could crawl between the legs of the wildest horses + Without getting kicked--we knew each other. + On spring days I tramped through the country + To get the feeling, which I sometimes lost, + That I was not a separate thing from the earth. + I used to lose myself, as if in sleep, + By lying with eyes half-open in the woods. + Sometimes I talked with animals--even toads and snakes-- + Anything that had an eye to look into. + Once I saw a stone in the sunshine + Trying to turn into jelly. + In April days in this cemetery + The dead people gathered all about me, + And grew still, like a congregation in silent prayer. + I never knew whether I was a part of the earth + With flowers growing in me, or whether I walked-- + Now I know. + + + + Willie Pennington + + THEY called me the weakling, the simpleton, + For my brothers were strong and beautiful, + While I, the last child of parents who had aged, + Inherited only their residue of power. + But they, my brothers, were eaten up + In the fury of the flesh, which I had not, + Made pulp in the activity of the senses, which I had not, + Hardened by the growth of the lusts, which I had not, + Though making names and riches for themselves. + Then I, the weak one, the simpleton, + Resting in a little corner of life, + Saw a vision, and through me many saw the vision, + Not knowing it was through me. + Thus a tree sprang + From me, a mustard seed. + + + + The Village Atheist + + YE young debaters over the doctrine + Of the soul's immortality + I who lie here was the village atheist, + Talkative, contentious, versed in the arguments + Of the infidels. But through a long sickness + Coughing myself to death I read the + Upanishads and the poetry of Jesus. + And they lighted a torch of hope and intuition + And desire which the Shadow + Leading me swiftly through the caverns of darkness, + Could not extinguish. + Listen to me, ye who live in the senses + And think through the senses only: + Immortality is not a gift, + Immortality is an achievement; + And only those who strive mightily + Shall possess it. + + + + John Ballard + + IN the lust of my strength + I cursed God, but he paid no attention to me: + I might as well have cursed the stars. + In my last sickness I was in agony, but I was resolute + And I cursed God for my suffering; + Still He paid no attention to me; + He left me alone, as He had always done. + I might as well have cursed the Presbyterian steeple. + Then, as I grew weaker, a terror came over me: + Perhaps I had alienated God by cursing him. + One day Lydia Humphrey brought me a bouquet + And it occurred to me to try to make friends with God, + So I tried to make friends with Him; + But I might as well have tried to make friends with the bouquet. + Now I was very close to the secret, + For I really could make friends with the bouquet + By holding close to me the love in me for the bouquet + And so I was creeping upon the secret, but-- + + + + Julian Scott + + TOWARD the last + The truth of others was untruth to me; + The justice of others injustice to me; + Their reasons for death, reasons with me for life; + Their reasons for life, reasons with me for death; + I would have killed those they saved, + And save those they killed. + And I saw how a god, if brought to earth, + Must act out what he saw and thought, + And could not live in this world of men + And act among them side by side + Without continual clashes. + The dust's for crawling, heaven's for flying-- + Wherefore, O soul, whose wings are grown, + Soar upward to the sun! + + + + Alfonso Churchill + + THEY laughed at me as "Prof. Moon," + As a boy in Spoon River, born with the thirst + Of knowing about the stars. + They jeered when I spoke of the lunar mountains, + And the thrilling heat and cold, + And the ebon valleys by silver peaks, + And Spica quadrillions of miles away, + And the littleness of man. + But now that my grave is honored, friends, + Let it not be because I taught + The lore of the stars in Knox College, + But rather for this: that through the stars + I preached the greatness of man, + Who is none the less a part of the scheme of things + For the distance of Spica or the Spiral Nebulae; + Nor any the less a part of the question + Of what the drama means. + + + + Zilpha Marsh + + AT four o'clock in late October + I sat alone in the country school-house + Back from the road, mid stricken fields, + And an eddy of wind blew leaves on the pane, + And crooned in the flue of the cannon-stove, + With its open door blurring the shadows + With the spectral glow of a dying fire. + In an idle mood I was running the planchette-- + All at once my wrist grew limp, + And my hand moved rapidly over the board, + 'Till the name of "Charles Guiteau" was spelled, + Who threatened to materialize before me. + I rose and fled from the room bare-headed + Into the dusk, afraid of my gift. + And after that the spirits swarmed-- + Chaucer, Caesar, Poe and Marlowe, + Cleopatra and Mrs. Surratt-- + Wherever I went, with messages,-- + Mere trifling twaddle, Spoon River agreed. + You talk nonsense to children, don't you? + And suppose I see what you never saw + And never heard of and have no word for, + I must talk nonsense when you ask me + What it is I see! + + + + James Garber + + Do you remember, passer-by, the path + I wore across the lot where now stands the opera house + Hasting with swift feet to work through many years? + Take its meaning to heart: + You too may walk, after the hills at Miller's Ford + Seem no longer far away; + Long after you see them near at hand, + Beyond four miles of meadow; + And after woman's love is silent + Saying no more: "l will save you." + And after the faces of friends and kindred + Become as faded photographs, pitifully silent, + Sad for the look which means: + "We cannot help you." + And after you no longer reproach mankind + With being in league against your soul's uplifted hands-- + Themselves compelled at midnight and at noon + To watch with steadfast eye their destinies; + After you have these understandings, think of me + And of my path, who walked therein and knew + That neither man nor woman, neither toil, + Nor duty, gold nor power + Can ease the longing of the soul, + The loneliness of the soul! + + + + Lydia Humphrey + + BACK and forth, back and forth, to and from the church, + With my Bible under my arm + 'Till I was gray and old; + Unwedded, alone in the world, + Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation, + And children in the church. + I know they laughed and thought me queer. + I knew of the eagle souls that flew high in the sunlight, + Above the spire of the church, and laughed at the church, + Disdaining me, not seeing me. + But if the high air was sweet to them, sweet was the church to me. + It was the vision, vision, vision of the poets + Democratized! + + + + Le Roy Goldman + + WHAT will you do when you come to die, + If all your life long you have rejected Jesus, + And know as you lie there, + He is not your friend?" + Over and over I said, I, the revivalist. + Ah, yes! but there are friends and friends. + And blessed are you, say I, who know all now, + You who have lost ere you pass, + A father or mother, or old grandfather or mother + Some beautiful soul that lived life strongly + And knew you all through, and loved you ever, + Who would not fail to speak for you, + And give God an intimate view of your soul + As only one of your flesh could do it. + That is the hand your hand will reach for, + To lead you along the corridor + To the court where you are a stranger! + + + + Gustav Richter + + AFTER a long day of work in my hot--houses + Sleep was sweet, but if you sleep on your left side + Your dreams may be abruptly ended. + I was among my flowers where some one + Seemed to be raising them on trial, + As if after-while to be transplanted + To a larger garden of freer air. + And I was disembodied vision + Amid a light, as it were the sun + Had floated in and touched the roof of glass + Like a toy balloon and softly bursted, + And etherealized in golden air. + And all was silence, except the splendor + Was immanent with thought as clear + As a speaking voice, and I, as thought, + Could hear a + Presence think as he walked + Between the boxes pinching off leaves, + Looking for bugs and noting values, + With an eye that saw it all: + "Homer, oh yes! Pericles, good. + Caesar Borgia, what shall be done with it? + Dante, too much manure, perhaps. + Napoleon, leave him awhile as yet. + Shelley, more soil. Shakespeare, needs spraying--" + Clouds, eh!-- + + + + Arlo Will + + DID you ever see an alligator + Come up to the air from the mud, + Staring blindly under the full glare of noon? + Have you seen the stabled horses at night + Tremble and start back at the sight of a lantern? + Have you ever walked in darkness + When an unknown door was open before you + And you stood, it seemed, in the light of a thousand candles + Of delicate wax? + Have you walked with the wind in your ears + And the sunlight about you + And found it suddenly shine with an inner splendor? + Out of the mud many times + Before many doors of light + Through many fields of splendor, + Where around your steps a soundless glory scatters + Like new--fallen snow, + Will you go through earth, O strong of soul, + And through unnumbered heavens + To the final flame! + + + + Captain Orlando Killion + + OH, YOU young radicals and dreamers, + You dauntless fledglings + Who pass by my headstone, + Mock not its record of my captaincy in the army + And my faith in God! + They are not denials of each other. + Go by reverently, and read with sober care + How a great people, riding with defiant shouts + The centaur of Revolution, + Spurred and whipped to frenzy, + Shook with terror, seeing the mist of the sea + Over the precipice they were nearing, + And fell from his back in precipitate awe + To celebrate the Feast of the Supreme Being. + Moved by the same sense of vast reality + Of life and death, and burdened as they were + With the fate of a race, + How was I, a little blasphemer, + Caught in the drift of a nation's unloosened flood, + To remain a blasphemer, + And a captain in the army? + + + + Joseph Dixon + + WHO carved this shattered harp on my stone? + I died to you, no doubt. But how many harps and pianos + Wired I and tightened and disentangled for you, + Making them sweet again--with tuning fork or without? + Oh well! A harp leaps out of the ear of a man, you say, + But whence the ear that orders the length of the strings + To a magic of numbers flying before your thought + Through a door that closes against your breathless wonder? + Is there no Ear round the ear of a man, that it senses + Through strings and columns of air the soul of sound? + I thrill as I call it a tuning fork that catches + The waves of mingled music and light from afar, + The antennae of + Thought that listens through utmost space. + Surely the concord that ruled my spirit is proof + Of an Ear that tuned me, able to tune me over + And use me again if I am worthy to use. + + + + Russell Kincaid + + IN the last spring I ever knew, + In those last days, I sat in the forsaken orchard + Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered + The hills at Miller's Ford; + Just to muse on the apple tree + With its ruined trunk and blasted branches, + And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms + Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle, + Never to grow in fruit. + And there was I with my spirit girded + By the flesh half dead, the senses numb + Yet thinking of youth and the earth in youth,-- + Such phantom blossoms palely shining + Over the lifeless boughs of Time. + O earth that leaves us ere heaven takes us! + Had I been only a tree to shiver + With dreams of spring and a leafy youth, + Then I had fallen in the cyclone + Which swept me out of the soul's suspense + Where it's neither earth nor heaven. + + + + Aaron Hatfield + + BETTER than granite, Spoon River, + Is the memory-picture you keep of me + Standing before the pioneer men and women + There at Concord Church on Communion day. + Speaking in broken voice of the peasant youth + Of Galilee who went to the city + And was killed by bankers and lawyers; + My voice mingling with the June wind + That blew over wheat fields from Atterbury; + While the white stones in the burying ground + Around the Church shimmered in the summer sun. + And there, though my own memories + Were too great to bear, were you, O pioneers, + With bowed heads breathing forth your sorrow + For the sons killed in battle and the daughters + And little children who vanished in life's morning, + Or at the intolerable hour of noon. + But in those moments of tragic silence, + When the wine and bread were passed, + Came the reconciliation for us-- + Us the ploughmen and the hewers of wood, + Us the peasants, brothers of the peasant of Galilee-- + To us came the Comforter + And the consolation of tongues of flame! + + + + Isaiah Beethoven + + THEY told me I had three months to live, + So I crept to Bernadotte, + And sat by the mill for hours and hours + Where the gathered waters deeply moving + Seemed not to move: + O world, that's you! + You are but a widened place in the river + Where Life looks down and we rejoice for her + Mirrored in us, and so we dream And turn away, but when again + We look for the face, behold the low-lands + And blasted cotton-wood trees where we empty + Into the larger stream! + But here by the mill the castled clouds + Mocked themselves in the dizzy water; + And over its agate floor at night + The flame of the moon ran under my eyes + Amid a forest stillness broken + By a flute in a hut on the hill. + At last when I came to lie in bed + Weak and in pain, with the dreams about me, + The soul of the river had entered my soul, + And the gathered power of my soul was moving + So swiftly it seemed to be at rest + Under cities of cloud and under + Spheres of silver and changing worlds-- + Until I saw a flash of trumpets + Above the battlements over Time. + + + + Elijah Browning + + I WAS among multitudes of children + Dancing at the foot of a mountain. + A breeze blew out of the east and swept them as leaves, + Driving some up the slopes. . . . + All was changed. + Here were flying lights, and mystic moons, and dream-music. + A cloud fell upon us. + When it lifted all was changed. + I was now amid multitudes who were wrangling. + Then a figure in shimmering gold, and one with a trumpet, + And one with a sceptre stood before me. + They mocked me and danced a rigadoon and vanished. . . . + All was changed again. + Out of a bower of poppies + A woman bared her breasts and lifted her open mouth to mine. + I kissed her. + The taste of her lips was like salt. + She left blood on my lips. + I fell exhausted. + I arose and ascended higher, but a mist as from an iceberg + Clouded my steps. + I was cold and in pain. + Then the sun streamed on me again, + And I saw the mists below me hiding all below them. + And I, bent over my staff, knew myself + Silhouetted against the snow. + And above me + Was the soundless air, pierced by a cone of ice, + Over which hung a solitary star! + A shudder of ecstasy, a shudder of fear + Ran through me. + But I could not return to the slopes-- + Nay, I wished not to return. + For the spent waves of the symphony of freedom + Lapped the ethereal cliffs about me. + Therefore I climbed to the pinnacle. + I flung away my staff. + I touched that star + With my outstretched hand. + I vanished utterly. + For the mountain delivers to + Infinite Truth + Whosoever touches the star. + + + + Webster Ford + + Do you remember, O Delphic Apollo, + The sunset hour by the river, when Mickey M'Grew + Cried, "There's a ghost," and I, "It's Delphic Apollo,". + And the son of the banker derided us, saying, "It's light + By the flags at the water's edge, you half-witted fools." + And from thence, as the wearisome years rolled on, long after + Poor Mickey fell down in the water tower to his death + Down, down, through bellowing darkness, I carried + The vision which perished with him like a rocket which falls + And quenches its light in earth, and hid it for fear + Of the son of the banker, calling on Plutus to save me? + Avenged were you for the shame of a fearful heart + Who left me alone till I saw you again in an hour + When I seemed to be turned to a tree with trunk and branches + Growing indurate, turning to stone, yet burgeoning + In laurel leaves, in hosts of lambent laurel, + Quivering, fluttering, shrinking, fighting the numbness + Creeping into their veins from the dying trunk and branches! + 'Tis vain, O youth, to fly the call of Apollo. + Fling yourselves in the fire, die with a song of spring, + If die you must in the spring. For none shall look + On the face of Apollo and live, and choose you must + 'Twixt death in the flame and death after years of sorrow, + Rooted fast in the earth, feeling the grisly hand, + Not so much in the trunk as in the terrible numbness + Creeping up to the laurel leaves that never cease + To flourish until you fall. O leaves of me + Too sere for coronal wreaths, and fit alone + For urns of memory, treasured, perhaps, as themes + For hearts heroic, fearless singers and livers-- + Delphic Apollo. + + + + The Spooniad + + OF John Cabanis, wrath and of the strife + Of hostile parties, and his dire defeat + Who led the common people in the cause + Of freedom for Spoon River, and the fall + Of Rhodes, bank that brought unnumbered woes + And loss to many, with engendered hate + That flamed into the torch in Anarch hands + To burn the court--house, on whose blackened wreck + A fairer temple rose and Progress stood-- + Sing, muse, that lit the Chian's face with smiles + Who saw the ant-like Greeks and Trojans crawl + About Scamander, over walls, pursued + Or else pursuing, and the funeral pyres + And sacred hecatombs, and first because + Of Helen who with Paris fled to Troy + As soul-mate; and the wrath of Peleus, son, + Decreed to lose Chryseis, lovely spoil + Of war, and dearest concubine. + Say first, + Thou son of night, called Momus, from whose eyes + No secret hides, and Thalia, smiling one, + What bred 'twixt Thomas Rhodes and John Cabanis + The deadly strife? His daughter Flossie, she, + Returning from her wandering with a troop + Of strolling players, walked the village streets, + Her bracelets tinkling and with sparkling rings + And words of serpent wisdom and a smile + Of cunning in her eyes. Then Thomas Rhodes, + Who ruled the church and ruled the bank as well, + Made known his disapproval of the maid; + And all Spoon River whispered and the eyes + Of all the church frowned on her, till she knew + They feared her and condemned. + But them to flout + She gave a dance to viols and to flutes, + Brought from Peoria, and many youths, + But lately made regenerate through the prayers + Of zealous preachers and of earnest souls, + Danced merrily, and sought her in the dance, + Who wore a dress so low of neck that eyes + Down straying might survey the snowy swale + 'Till it was lost in whiteness. + With the dance + The village changed to merriment from gloom. + The milliner, Mrs. Williams, could not fill + Her orders for new hats, and every seamstress + Plied busy needles making gowns; old trunks + And chests were opened for their store of laces + And rings and trinkets were brought out of hiding + And all the youths fastidious grew of dress; + Notes passed, and many a fair one's door at eve + Knew a bouquet, and strolling lovers thronged + About the hills that overlooked the river. + Then, since the mercy seats more empty showed, + One of God's chosen lifted up his voice: + "The woman of Babylon is among us; rise + Ye sons of light and drive the wanton forth!" + So John Cabanis left the church and left + The hosts of law and order with his eyes + By anger cleared, and him the liberal cause + Acclaimed as nominee to the mayoralty + To vanquish A. D. Blood. + But as the war + Waged bitterly for votes and rumors flew + About the bank, and of the heavy loans + Which Rhodes, son had made to prop his loss + In wheat, and many drew their coin and left + The bank of Rhodes more hollow, with the talk + Among the liberals of another bank + Soon to be chartered, lo, the bubble burst + 'Mid cries and curses; but the liberals laughed + And in the hall of Nicholas Bindle held + Wise converse and inspiriting debate. + + High on a stage that overlooked the chairs + Where dozens sat, and where a pop--eyed daub + Of Shakespeare, very like the hired man + Of Christian Dallman, brow and pointed beard, + Upon a drab proscenium outward stared, + Sat Harmon Whitney, to that eminence, + By merit raised in ribaldry and guile, + And to the assembled rebels thus he spake: + "Whether to lie supine and let a clique + Cold-blooded, scheming, hungry, singing psalms, + Devour our substance, wreck our banks and drain + Our little hoards for hazards on the price + Of wheat or pork, or yet to cower beneath + The shadow of a spire upreared to curb + A breed of lackeys and to serve the bank + Coadjutor in greed, that is the question. + Shall we have music and the jocund dance, + Or tolling bells? Or shall young romance roam + These hills about the river, flowering now + To April's tears, or shall they sit at home, + Or play croquet where Thomas Rhodes may see, + I ask you? If the blood of youth runs o'er + And riots 'gainst this regimen of gloom, + Shall we submit to have these youths and maids + Branded as libertines and wantons?" + Ere + His words were done a woman's voice called "No!" + Then rose a sound of moving chairs, as when + The numerous swine o'er-run the replenished troughs; + And every head was turned, as when a flock + Of geese back-turning to the hunter's tread + Rise up with flapping wings; then rang the hall + With riotous laughter, for with battered hat + Tilted upon her saucy head, and fist + Raised in defiance, Daisy Fraser stood. + Headlong she had been hurled from out the hall + Save Wendell Bloyd, who spoke for woman's rights, + Prevented, and the bellowing voice of Burchard. + Then, mid applause she hastened toward the stage + And flung both gold and silver to the cause + And swiftly left the hall. + Meantime upstood + A giant figure, bearded like the son + Of Alcmene, deep-chested, round of paunch, + And spoke in thunder: "Over there behold + A man who for the truth withstood his wife-- + Such is our spirit--when that A. D. Blood + Compelled me to remove Dom Pedro--" + Quick + Before Jim Brown could finish, Jefferson Howard + Obtained the floor and spake: "Ill suits the time + For clownish words, and trivial is our cause + If naught's at stake but John Cabanis, wrath, + He who was erstwhile of the other side + And came to us for vengeance. More's at stake + Than triumph for New England or Virginia. + And whether rum be sold, or for two years + As in the past two years, this town be dry + Matters but little-- Oh yes, revenue + For sidewalks, sewers; that is well enough! + I wish to God this fight were now inspired + By other passion than to salve the pride + Of John Cabanis or his daughter. + Why Can never contests of great moment spring + From worthy things, not little? Still, if men + Must always act so, and if rum must be + The symbol and the medium to release + From life's denial and from slavery, + Then give me rum!" + Exultant cries arose. + Then, as George Trimble had o'ercome his fear + And vacillation and begun to speak, + The door creaked and the idiot, Willie Metcalf, + Breathless and hatless, whiter than a sheet, + Entered and cried: "The marshal's on his way + To arrest you all. And if you only knew + Who's coming here to--morrow; I was listening + Beneath the window where the other side + Are making plans." + So to a smaller room + To hear the idiot's secret some withdrew + Selected by the Chair; the Chair himself + And Jefferson Howard, Benjamin Pantier, + And Wendell Bloyd, George Trimble, Adam Weirauch, + Imanuel Ehrenhardt, Seth Compton, Godwin James + And Enoch Dunlap, Hiram Scates, Roy Butler, + Carl Hamblin, Roger Heston, Ernest Hyde + And Penniwit, the artist, Kinsey Keene, + And E. C. Culbertson and Franklin Jones, + Benjamin Fraser, son of Benjamin Pantier + By Daisy Fraser, some of lesser note, + And secretly conferred. + But in the hall + Disorder reigned and when the marshal came + And found it so, he marched the hoodlums out + And locked them up. + Meanwhile within a room + Back in the basement of the church, with Blood + Counseled the wisest heads. Judge Somers first, + Deep learned in life, and next him, Elliott Hawkins + And Lambert Hutchins; next him Thomas Rhodes + And Editor Whedon; next him Garrison Standard, + A traitor to the liberals, who with lip + Upcurled in scorn and with a bitter sneer: + "Such strife about an insult to a woman-- + A girl of eighteen "--Christian Dallman too, + And others unrecorded. Some there were + Who frowned not on the cup but loathed the rule + Democracy achieved thereby, the freedom + And lust of life it symbolized. + + Now morn with snowy fingers up the sky + Flung like an orange at a festival + The ruddy sun, when from their hasty beds + Poured forth the hostile forces, and the streets + Resounded to the rattle of the wheels + That drove this way and that to gather in + The tardy voters, and the cries of chieftains + Who manned the battle. But at ten o'clock + The liberals bellowed fraud, and at the polls + The rival candidates growled and came to blows. + Then proved the idiot's tale of yester-eve + A word of warning. Suddenly on the streets + Walked hog-eyed Allen, terror of the hills + That looked on Bernadotte ten miles removed. + No man of this degenerate day could lift + The boulders which he threw, and when he spoke + The windows rattled, and beneath his brows + Thatched like a shed with bristling hair of black, + His small eyes glistened like a maddened boar. + And as he walked the boards creaked, as he walked + A song of menace rumbled. Thus he came, + The champion of A. D. Blood, commissioned + To terrify the liberals. Many fled + As when a hawk soars o'er the chicken yard. + He passed the polls and with a playful hand + Touched Brown, the giant, and he fell against, + As though he were a child, the wall; so strong + Was hog-eyed Allen. But the liberals smiled. + For soon as hog-eyed Allen reached the walk, + Close on his steps paced Bengal Mike, brought in + By Kinsey Keene, the subtle-witted one, + To match the hog-eyed Allen. He was scarce + Three-fourths the other's bulk, but steel his arms, + And with a tiger's heart. Two men he killed + And many wounded in the days before, + And no one feared. + But when the hog-eyed one + Saw Bengal Mike his countenance grew dark, + The bristles o'er his red eyes twitched with rage, + The song he rumbled lowered. Round and round + The court-house paced he, followed stealthily + By Bengal Mike, who jeered him every step: + "Come, elephant, and fight! Come, hog-eyed coward! + Come, face about and fight me, lumbering sneak! + Come, beefy bully, hit me, if you can! + Take out your gun, you duffer, give me reason + To draw and kill you. Take your billy out. + I'll crack your boar's head with a piece of brick!" + But never a word the hog-eyed one returned + But trod about the court-house, followed both + By troops of boys and watched by all the men. + All day, they walked the square. But when Apollo + Stood with reluctant look above the hills + As fain to see the end, and all the votes + Were cast, and closed the polls, before the door + Of Trainor's drug store Bengal Mike, in tones + That echoed through the village, bawled the taunt: + "Who was your mother, hog--eyed?" In a trice + As when a wild boar turns upon the hound + That through the brakes upon an August day + Has gashed him with its teeth, the hog--one + Rushed with his giant arms on Bengal Mike + And grabbed him by the throat. Then rose to heaven + The frightened cries of boys, and yells of men + Forth rushing to the street. And Bengal Mike + Moved this way and now that, drew in his head + As if his neck to shorten, and bent down + To break the death grip of the hog-eyed one; + 'Twixt guttural wrath and fast-expiring strength + Striking his fists against the invulnerable chest + Of hog-eyed Allen. Then, when some came in + To part them, others stayed them, and the fight + Spread among dozens; many valiant souls + Went down from clubs and bricks. + But tell me, Muse, + What god or goddess rescued Bengal Mike? + With one last, mighty struggle did he grasp + The murderous hands and turning kick his foe. + Then, as if struck by lightning, vanished all + The strength from hog--eyed Allen, at his side + Sank limp those giant arms and o'er his face + Dread pallor and the sweat of anguish spread. + And those great knees, invincible but late, + Shook to his weight. And quickly as the lion + Leaps on its wounded prey, did Bengal Mike + Smite with a rock the temple of his foe, + And down he sank and darkness o'er his eyes + Passed like a cloud. + As when the woodman fells + Some giant oak upon a summer's day + And all the songsters of the forest shrill, + And one great hawk that has his nestling young + Amid the topmost branches croaks, as crash + The leafy branches through the tangled boughs + Of brother oaks, so fell the hog--eyed one + Amid the lamentations of the friends + Of A. D. Blood. + Just then, four lusty men + Bore the town marshal, on whose iron face + The purple pall of death already lay, + To Trainor's drug store, shot by Jack McGuire. + And cries went up of "Lynch him!" and the sound + Of running feet from every side was heard + Bent on the + + + + + +THE END + + + + + +The late Mr. Jonathan Swift Somers, laureate of Spoon River +planned The Spooniad as an epic in twenty-four books, but +unfortunately did not live to complete even the first book. The +fragment was found among his papers by William Marion Reedy +and was for the first time published in Reedy's Mirror of December +18th, 1914. + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Spoon River Anthology, by Edgar Lee Masters + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY *** + +***** This file should be named 1280.txt or 1280.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/8/1280/ + +Produced by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Henry +Bindle, Nicholas +Blind Jack +Bliss, Mrs. Charles +Blood, A. D. +Bloyd, Wendell P. +Bone, Richard +Branson, Caroline +Brown, Jim +Brown, Sarah +Browning, Elijah +Burleson, John Horace +Butler, Roy + +Cabanis, Flossie +Calhoun, Granville +Calhoun, Henry C. +Campbell, Calvin +Carman, Eugene +Cheney, Columbus +Childers, Elizabeth +Church, John M. +Churchill, Alfonso +Circuit Judge, The +Clapp, Homer +Clark, Nellie +Clute, Aner +Compton, Seth Conant, Edith +Culbertson, E. C. + +Davidson, Robert +Dement, Silas +Dixon, Joseph +Drummer, Frank +Drummer, Hare +Dunlap, Enoch +Dye, Shack + +Ehrenhardt, Imanuel + +Fallas, State's Attorney +Fawcett, Clarence +Fluke, Willard +Foote, Searcy +Ford, Webster +Fraser, Benjamin +Fraser, Daisy +French, Charlie +Frickey, Ida + +Garber, James +Gardner, Samuel +Garrick, Amelia +Godbey, Jacob +Goldman, Le Roy +Goode, William +Goodpasture, Jacob +Graham, Mady +Gray, George +Green, Ami +Greene, Hamilton +Griffy the Cooper +Gustine, Dorcas + +Hainsfeather, Barney +Hamblin, Carl +Hatfield, Aaron +Hawkins, Elliott +Hawley, Jeduthan +Henry, Chase +Herndon, William H. +Heston, Roger +Higbie, Archibald +Hill, Doc +Hill, The +Hoheimer, Knowlt +Holden, Barry +Hookey, Sam +Howard, Jefferson +Hueffer, Cassius +Hummel, Oscar +Humphrey, Lydia +Hutchins, Lambert +Hyde, Ernest + +James, Godwin +Jones, Fiddler +Jones, Franklin +Jones, "Indignation" +Jones, Minerva +Jones, William + +Karr, Elmer +Keene, Jonas +Kessler, Bert +Kessler, Mrs. +Killion, Captain Orlando +Kincaid, Russell +King, Lyman +Knapp, Nancy +Konovaloff, Ippolit +Kritt, Dow + +Layton, Henry + +M'Cumber, Daniel +McDowell, Rutherford +McFarlane, Widow +McGee, Fletcher +McGee, Ollie +M'Grew, Jennie +M'Grew, Mickey +McGuire, Jack +McNeely, Mary +McNeely, Washington +Malloy, Father +Many Soldiers +Marsh, Zilpha +Marshall, Herbert +Mason, Serepta +Matheny, Faith +Matlock, Davis +Matlock, Lucinda +Melveny, Abel +Merritt, Mrs. +Merritt, Tom +Metcalf, Willie +Meyers, Doctor +Meyers, Mrs. +Micure, Hamlet +Miles, I. Milton +Miller, Julia +Miner, Georgine Sand +Moir, Alfred + +Newcomer, Professor + +Osborne, Mabel +Otis, John Hancock + +Pantier, Benjamin +Pantier, Mrs. Benjamin +Pantier, Reuben +Peet, Rev. Abner +Pennington, Willie +Penniwit, the Artist +Petit, the Poet +Phipps, Henry +Poague, Peleg +Pollard, Edmund +Potter, Cooney +Puckett, Lydia +Purkapile, Mrs. +Purkapile, Roscoe +Putt, Hod + +Reece, Mrs. George +Rhodes, Ralph +Rhodes, Thomas +Richter, Gustav +Robbins, Hortense +Roberts, Rosie +Ross, Thomas, Ir. +Russian Sonia +Rutledge, Anne + +Sayre, Johnnie +Scates, Hiram +Schirding, Albert +Schmidt, Felix +Scott, Julian +Sewall, Harlan +Sharp, Percival +Shaw, "Ace " +Shelley, Percy Bysshe +Shope, Tennessee Claflin +Sibley, Amos +Sibley, Mrs. +Simmons, Walter +Sissman, Dillard +Slack, Margaret Fuller +Smith, Louise +Somers, Jonathan Swift +Somers, Judge +Sparks, Emily +Spooniad, The +Standard, W. Lloyd Garrison +Stewart, Lillian + +Tanner, Robert Fulton +Taylor, Deacon +Theodore the Poet +Throckmorton, Alexander +Tompkins, Josiah +Town Marshal, The +Trainor, the Druggist +Trevelyan, Thomas +Trimble, George +Tripp, Henry +Tubbs, Hildrup +Turner, Francis +Tutt, Oaks + +Unknown, The + +Village Atheist, The + +Wasson, John +Weirauch, Adam +Weldy, "Butch " +Wertman, Elsa +Whedon, Editor +Whitney, Harmon +Wiley, Rev. Lemuel +Will, Arlo +William and Emily +Williams, Dora +Williams, Mrs. +Wilmans, Harry +Witt, Zenas + +Yee Bow + +Zoll, Perry + + + + +The Hill + +Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley, +The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter? +All, all are sleeping on the hill. + +One passed in a fever, +One was burned in a mine, +One was killed in a brawl, +One died in a jail, +One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife- +All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill. + +Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith, +The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?-- +All, all are sleeping on the hill. + +One died in shameful child-birth, +One of a thwarted love, +One at the hands of a brute in a brothel, +One of a broken pride, in the search for heart's desire; +One after life in far-away London and Paris +Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag-- +All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill. + +Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily, +And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton, +And Major Walker who had talked +With venerable men of the revolution?-- +All, all are sleeping on the hill. + +They brought them dead sons from the war, +And daughters whom life had crushed, +And their children fatherless, crying-- +All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill. +Where is Old Fiddler Jones +Who played with life all his ninety years, +Braving the sleet with bared breast, +Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin, +Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven? +Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago, +Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary's Grove, +Of what Abe Lincoln said +One time at Springfield. + +Hod Putt + +HERE I lie close to the grave +Of Old Bill Piersol, +Who grew rich trading with the Indians, and who +Afterwards took the Bankrupt Law +And emerged from it richer than ever +Myself grown tired of toil and poverty +And beholding how Old Bill and other grew in wealth +Robbed a traveler one Night near Proctor's Grove, +Killing him unwittingly while doing so, +For which I was tried and hanged. +That was my way of going into bankruptcy. +Now we who took the bankrupt law in our respective ways +Sleep peacefully side by side. + +Ollie McGee + +Have you seen walking through the village +A Man with downcast eyes and haggard face? +That is my husban who, by secret cruelty +Never to be told, robbed me of my youth and my beauty; +Till at last, wrinkled and with yellow teeth, +And with broken pride and shameful humility, +I sank into the grave. +But what think you gnaws at my husband's heart? +The face of what I was, the face of what he made me! +These are driving him to the place where I lie. +In death, therefore, i am avenged. + +Fletcher McGee + +She took my strength by minutes, +She took my life by hours, +She drained me like a fevered moon +That saps the spinning world. +The days went by like shadows, +The minutes wheeled like stars. +She took the pity from my heart, +And made it into smiles. +She was a hunk of sculptor's clay, +My secret thoughts were fingers: +They flew behind her pensive brow +And lined it deep with pain. +They set the lips, and sagged the cheeks, +And drooped the eye with sorrow. +My soul had entered in the clay, +Fighting like seven devils. +It was not mine, it was not hers; +She held it, but its struggles +Modeled a face she hated, +And a face I feared to see. +I beat the windows, shook the bolts. +I hid me in a corner +And then she died and haunted me, +And hunted me for life. + +Robert Fulton Tanner + +If a man could bite the giant hand +That catches and destroys him, +As I was bitten by a rat +While demonstrating my patent trap, +In my hardware store that day. +But a man can never avenge himself +On the monstrous ogre Life. +You enter the room that's being born; +And then you must live work out your soul, +Of the cross-current in life +Which Bring honor to the dead, who lived in shame. + +Cassius Hueffer + +THEY have chiseled on my stone the words: +"His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him +That nature might stand up and say to all the world, +This was a man." +Those who knew me smile +As they read this empty rhetoric. +My epitaph should have been: +"Life was not gentle to him, +And the elements so mixed in him +That he made warfare on life +In the which he was slain." +While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues, +Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph +Graven by a fool! + +Serepta Mason + +MY life's blossom might have bloomed on all sides +Save for a bitter wind which stunted my petals +On the side of me which you in the village could see. +From the dust I lift a voice of protest: +My flowering side you never saw! +Ye living ones, ye are fools indeed +Who do not know the ways of the wind +And the unseen forces +That govern the processes of life. + +Amanda Barker + +HENRY got me with child, +Knowing that I could not bring forth life +Without losing my own. +In my youth therefore I entered the portals of dust. +Traveler, it is believed in the village where I lived +That Henry loved me with a husband's love +But I proclaim from the dust +That he slew me to gratify his hatred. + +Chase Henry + +IN life I was the town drunkard; +When I died the priest denied me burial +In holy ground. +The which redounded to my good fortune. +For the Protestants bought this lot, +And buried my body here, +Close to the grave of the banker Nicholas, +And of his wife Priscilla. +Take note, ye prudent and pious souls, +Of the cross--currents in life +Which bring honor to the dead, who lived in shame + +Judge Somers + +How does it happen, tell me, +That I who was most erudite of lawyers, +Who knew Blackstone and Coke +Almost by heart, who made the greatest speech +The court-house ever heard, and wrote +A brief that won the praise of Justice Breese +How does it happen, tell me, +That I lie here unmarked, forgotten, +While Chase Henry, the town drunkard, +Has a marble block, topped by an urn +Wherein Nature, in a mood ironical, +Has sown a flowering weed? + +Benjamin Pantier + +TOGETHER in this grave lie Benjamin Panitier, attorney at law, +And Nig, his dog, constant companion, solace and friend. +Down the gray road, friends, children, men and women, +Passing one by one out of life, left me till I was alone +With Nig for partner, bed-fellow; comrade in drink. +In the morning of lief I knew aspiration and saw dlory, +The she, who survives me, snared my soul +With a snare which bled me to death, +Till I, once strong of will, lay broken, indifferent, +Living with Nig in a room back of a dingy office. +Under my Jaw-bone is snuggled the bony nose of Nig +Our story is lost in silence. Go by, Mad world! + +Mrs. Benjamin Pantier + +I know that he told that I snared his soul +With a snare which bled him to death. +And all the men loved him, +And most of the women pitied him. +But suppose you are really a lady, and have delicate tastes, +And loathe the smell of whiskey and onions, +And the rhythm of Wordsworth's "Ode" runs in your ears, +While he goes about from morning till night +Repeating bits of that common thing; +"Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" +And then, suppose; +You are a woman well endowed, +And the only man with whom the law and morality +Permit you to have the marital relation +Is the very man that fills you with disgust +Every time you think of it while you think of it +Every time you see him? +That's why I drove him away from home +To live with his dog in a dingy room +Back of his office. + +Reuben Pantier + +WELL, Emily Sparks, your prayers were not wasted, +Your love was not all in vain. +I owe whatever I was in life +To your hope that would not give me up, +To your love that saw me still as good. +Dear Emily Sparks, let me tell you the story. +I pass the effect of my father and mother; +The milliner's daughter made me trouble +And out I went in the world, +Where I passed through every peril known +Of wine and women and joy of life. +One night, in a room in the Rue de Rivoli, +I was drinking wine with a black-eyed cocotte, +And the tears swam into my eyes. +She though they were amorous tears and smiled +For thought of her conquest over me. +But my soul was three thousand miles away, +In the days when you taught me in Spoon River. +And just because you no more could love me, +Nor pray for me, nor write me letters, +The eternal silence of you spoke instead. +And the Black-eyed cocotte took the tears for hers, +As well as the deceiving kisses I gave her. +Somehow, from that hour, I had a new vision +Dear Emily Sparks! + +Emily Sparks + +Where is my boy, my boy +In what far part of the world? +The boy I loved best of all in the school?-- +I, the teacher, the old maid, the virgin heart, +Who made them all my children. +Did I know my boy aright, +Thinking of him as a spirit aflame, +Active, ever aspiring? +Oh, boy, boy, for whom I prayed and prayed +In many a watchful hour at night, +Do you remember the letter I wrote you +Of the beautiful love of Christ? +And whether you ever took it or not, +My, boy, whereever you are, +Work for your soul'd sake, +That all the clay of you, all of the dross of you, +May yield to the fire of you, +Till the fire is nothing but light!... +Nothing but light! + +Trainor, the Druggist + +Only the chemist can tell, and not always the chemist, +What will result from compounding +Fluids or solids. +And who can tell +How men and women will interact +On each other, or what children will result? +There were Benjamin Pantier and his wife, +Good in themselved, but evil toward each other; +He oxygen, she hydrogen, +Their son, a devastating fire. +I Trainor, the druggist, a miser of chemicals, +Killed while making an experiment, +Lived unwedded. + +Daisy Fraser + +Did you ever hear of Editor Whedon +Giving to the public treasury any of the money he received +Fopr supporting candidated for office? +Or for writing up the canning factory +To get people to invest? +Or for suppressing the facts about the bank, +When it was rotten and ready to break? +Did you ever hear of the Circuit Judge +Helping anyone except the "Q" railroad, +Or the bankers? Or did Rev. Peet or Rev. Sibley +Give any part of their salary, earned by keeping still, +Or speaking out as the leaders wished them to do, +To the building of the water works? +But I Daisy Fraser who always passed +Along the street through rows of nods and smiles, +And caughs and words such as "there she goes." +Never was taken before Justice Arnett +Without contributing ten dollars and costs +To the school fund of Spoon River! + +Benjamin Fraser + +THEIR spirits beat upon mine +Like the wings of a thousand butterflies. +I closed my eyes and felt their spirits vibrating. +I closed my eyes, yet I knew when their lashes +Fringed their cheeks from downcast eyes, +And when they turned their heads; +And when their garments clung to them, +Or fell from them, in exquisite draperies. +Their spirits watched my ecstasy +With wide looks of starry unconcern. +Their spirits looked upon my torture; +They drank it as it were the water of life; +With reddened cheeks, brightened eyes, +The rising flame of my soul made their spirits gilt, +Like the wings of a butterfly drifting suddenly into sunlight. +And they cried to me for life, life, life. +But in taking life for myself, +In seizing and crushing their souls, +As a child crushes grapes and drinks +From its palms the purple juice, +I came to this wingless void, +Where neither red, nor gold, nor wine, +Nor the rhythm of life are known. + +Minerva Jones + +I AM Minerva, the village poetess, +Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street +For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk, +And all the more when "Butch" Weldy +Captured me after a brutal hunt. +He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers; +And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up, +Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice. +Will some one go to the village newspaper, +And gather into a book the verses I wrote?-- +I thirsted so for love +I hungered so for life! + +"Indignation" Jones + +You would not believe, would you +That I came from good Welsh stock? +That I was purer blooded than the white trash here? +And of more direct lineage than the +New Englanders And Virginians of Spoon River? +You would not believe that I had been to school +And read some books. +You saw me only as a run-down man +With matted hair and beard +And ragged clothes. +Sometimes a man's life turns into a cancer +From being bruised and continually bruised, +And swells into a purplish mass +Like growths on stalks of corn. +Here was I, a carpenter, mired in a bog of life +Into which I walked, thinking it was a meadow, +With a slattern for a wife, and poor Minerva, my daughter, +Whom you tormented and drove to death. +So I crept, crept, like a snail through the days +Of my life. +No more you hear my footsteps in the morning, +Resounding on the hollow sidewalk +Going to the grocery store for a little corn meal +And a nickel's worth of bacon. + +"Butch" Weldy + +AFTER I got religion and steadied down +They gave me a job in the canning works, +And every morning I had to fill +The tank in the yard with gasoline, +That fed the blow-fires in the sheds +To heat the soldering irons. +And I mounted a rickety ladder to do it, +Carrying buckets full of the stuff. +One morning, as I stood there pouring, +The air grew still and seemed to heave, +And I shot up as the tank exploded, +And down I came with both legs broken, +And my eyes burned crisp as a couple of eggs. +For someone left a blow--fire going, +And something sucked the flame in the tank. +The Circuit Judge said whoever did it +Was a fellow-servant of mine, and so +Old Rhodes' son didn't have to pay me. +And I sat on the witness stand as blind +As lack the Fiddler, saying over and over, +"l didn't know him at all." + +Doctor Meyers + +No other man, unless it was Doc Hill, +Did more for people in this town than l. +And all the weak, the halt, the improvident +And those who could not pay flocked to me. +I was good-hearted, easy Doctor Meyers. +I was healthy, happy, in comfortable fortune, +Blest with a congenial mate, my children raised, +All wedded, doing well in the world. +And then one night, Minerva, the poetess, +Came to me in her trouble, crying. +I tried to help her out--she died-- +They indicted me, the newspapers disgraced me, +My wife perished of a broken heart. +And pneumonia finished me. + +Mrs. Meyers + +HE protested all his life long +The newspapers lied about him villainously; +That he was not at fault for Minerva's fall, +But only tried to help her. +Poor soul so sunk in sin he could not see +That even trying to help her, as he called it, +He had broken the law human and divine. +Passers by, an ancient admonition to you: +If your ways would be ways of pleasantness, +And all your pathways peace, +Love God and keep his commandments. + +Knowlt Hoheimer + +I WAS the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge. +When I felt the bullet enter my heart +I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail +For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary, +Instead of running away and joining the army. +Rather a thousand times the county jail +Than to lie under this marble figure with wings, +And this granite pedestal Bearing the words, "Pro Patria." +What do they mean, anyway? + +Lydia Puckett + +KNOWLT HOHEIMER ran away to the war +The day before Curl Trenary +Swore out a warrant through Justice Arnett +For stealing hogs. +But that's not the reason he turned a soldier. +He caught me running with Lucius Atherton. +We quarreled and I told him never again +To cross my path. +Then he stole the hogs and went to the war-- +Back of every soldier is a woman. + +Frank Drummer + +OUT of a cell into this darkened space-- +The end at twenty-five! +My tongue could not speak what stirred within me, +And the village thought me a fool. +Yet at the start there was a clear vision, +A high and urgent purpose in my soul +Which drove me on trying to memorize +The Encyclopedia Britannica! + +Hare Drummer + +Do the boys and girls still go to Siever's +For cider, after school, in late September? +Or gather hazel nuts among the thickets +On Aaron Hatfield's farm when the frosts begin? +For many times with the laughing girls and boys +Played I along the road and over the hills +When the sun was low and the air was cool, +Stopping to club the walnut tree +Standing leafless against a flaming west. +Now, the smell of the autumn smoke, +And the dropping acorns, +And the echoes about the vales +Bring dreams of life. +They hover over me. +They question me: +Where are those laughing comrades? +How many are with me, how many +In the old orchards along the way to Siever's, +And in the woods that overlook +The quiet water? + +Doc Hill + +I WENT UP and down the streets +Here and there by day and night, +Through all hours of the night caring for the poor who were sick. +Do you know why? +My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs. +And I turned to the people and poured out my love to them. +Sweet it was to see the crowds about the lawns on the day of my +funeral, +And hear them murmur their love and sorrow. +But oh, dear God, my soul trembled, scarcely able +To hold to the railing of the new life +When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree +At the grave, +Hiding herself, and her grief! + +Sarah Brown + +MAURICE, weep not, I am not here under this pine tree. +The balmy air of spring whispers through the sweet grass, +The stars sparkle, the whippoorwill calls, +But thou grievest, while my soul lies rapturous +In the blest Nirvana of eternal light! +Go to the good heart that is my husband +Who broods upon what he calls our guilty love:-- +Tell him that my love for you, no less than my love for him +Wrought out my destiny-- that through the flesh +I won spirit, and through spirit, peace. +There is no marriage in heaven +But there is love. + +Percy Bysshe Shelley + +MY father who owned the wagon-shop +And grew rich shoeing horses +Sent me to the University of Montreal. +I learned nothing and returned home, +Roaming the fields with Bert Kessler, +Hunting quail and snipe. +At Thompson's Lake the trigger of my gun +Caught in the side of the boat +And a great hole was shot through my heart. +Over me a fond father erected this marble shaft, +On which stands the figure of a woman +Carved by an Italian artist. +They say the ashes of my namesake +Were scattered near the pyramid of Caius Cestius +Somewhere near Rome. + +Flossie Cabanis + +FROM Bindle's opera house in the village +To Broadway is a great step. +But I tried to take it, my ambition fired +When sixteen years of age, +Seeing "East Lynne," played here in the village +By Ralph Barrett, the coming +Romantic actor, who enthralled my soul. +True, I trailed back home, a broken failure, +When Ralph disappeared in New York, +Leaving me alone in the city-- +But life broke him also. +In all this place of silence +There are no kindred spirits. +How I wish Duse could stand amid the pathos +Of these quiet fields +And read these words. + +Julia Miller + +WE quarreled that morning, +For he was sixty--five, and I was thirty, +And I was nervous and heavy with the child +Whose birth I dreaded. +I thought over the last letter written me +By that estranged young soul +Whose betrayal of me I had concealed +By marrying the old man. +Then I took morphine and sat down to read. +Across the blackness that came over my eyes +I see the flickering light of these words even now: +"And Jesus said unto him, Verily +I say unto thee, To-day thou shalt +Be with me in paradise." + +Johnnie Sayre + +FATHER, thou canst never know +The anguish that smote my heart +For my disobedience, the moment I felt +The remorseless wheel of the engine +Sink into the crying flesh of my leg. +As they carried me to the home of widow Morris +I could see the school-house in the valley +To which I played truant to steal rides upon the trains. +I prayed to live until I could ask your forgiveness-- +And then your tears, your broken words of comfort! +From the solace of that hour I have gained infinite happiness. +Thou wert wise to chisel for me: +"Taken from the evil to come." + +Charlie French + +DID YOU ever find out +Which one of the O'Brien boys it was +Who snapped the toy pistol against my hand? +There when the flags were red and white +In the breeze and "Bucky" Estil +Was firing the cannon brought to Spoon River +From Vicksburg by Captain Harris; +And the lemonade stands were running +And the band was playing, +To have it all spoiled +By a piece of a cap shot under the skin of my hand, +And the boys all crowding about me saying: +"You'll die of lock-jaw, Charlie, sure." +Oh, dear! oh, dear! +What chum of mine could have done it? + +Zenas Witt + +I WAS sixteen, and I had the most terrible dreams, +And specks before my eyes, and nervous weakness. +And I couldn't remember the books I read, +Like Frank Drummer who memorized page after page. +And my back was weak, and I worried and worried, +And I was embarrassed and stammered my lessons, +And when I stood up to recite I'd forget +Everything that I had studied. +Well, I saw Dr. Weese's advertisement, +And there I read everything in print, +Just as if he had known me; +And about the dreams which I couldn't help. +So I knew I was marked for an early grave. +And I worried until I had a cough +And then the dreams stopped. +And then I slept the sleep without dreams +Here on the hill by the river. + +Theodore the Poet + +As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours +On the shore of the turbid Spoon +With deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish's burrow, +Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead, +First his waving antennae, like straws of hay, +And soon his body, colored like soap-stone, +Gemmed with eyes of jet. +And you wondered in a trance of thought +What he knew, what he desired, and why he lived at all. +But later your vision watched for men and women +Hiding in burrows of fate amid great cities, +Looking for the souls of them to come out, +So that you could see +How they lived, and for what, +And why they kept crawling so busily +Along the sandy way where water fails +As the summer wanes. + +The Town Marshal + +THE: Prohibitionists made me Town Marshal +When the saloons were voted out, +Because when I was a drinking man, +Before I joined the church, I killed a Swede +At the saw-mill near Maple Grove. +And they wanted a terrible man, +Grim, righteous, strong, courageous, +And a hater of saloons and drinkers, +To keep law and order in the village. +And they presented me with a loaded cane +With which I struck Jack McGuire +Before he drew the gun with which he killed +The Prohibitionists spent their money in vain +To hang him, for in a dream +I appeared to one of the twelve jurymen +And told him the whole secret story. +Fourteen years were enough for killing me. + +Jack McGuire + +THEY would have lynched me +Had I not been secretly hurried away +To the jail at Peoria. +And yet I was going peacefully home, +Carrying my jug, a little drunk, +When Logan, the marshal, halted me +Called me a drunken hound and shook me +And, when I cursed him for it, struck me +With that Prohibition loaded cane-- +All this before I shot him. +They would have hanged me except for this: +My lawyer, Kinsey Keene, was helping to land +Old Thomas Rhodes for wrecking the bank, +And the judge was a friend of +Rhodes And wanted him to escape, +And Kinsey offered to quit on +Rhodes For fourteen years for me. +And the bargain was made. +I served my time +And learned to read and write. + +Jacob Goodpasture + +WHEN Fort Sumter fell and the war came +I cried out in bitterness of soul: +"O glorious republic now no more!" +When they buried my soldier son +To the call of trumpets and the sound of drums +My heart broke beneath the weight +Of eighty years, and I cried: +"Oh, son who died in a cause unjust! +In the strife of Freedom slain!" +And I crept here under the grass. +And now from the battlements of time, behold: +Thrice thirty million souls being bound together +In the love of larger truth, +Rapt in the expectation of the birth +Of a new Beauty, +Sprung from Brotherhood and Wisdom. +I with eyes of spirit see the Transfiguration +Before you see it. +But ye infinite brood of golden eagles nesting ever higher, +Wheeling ever higher, the sun-- light wooing +Of lofty places of Thought, +Forgive the blindness of the departed owl. + +Dorcas Gustine + +I WAS not beloved of the villagers, +But all because I spoke my mind, +And met those who transgressed against me +With plain remonstrance, hiding nor nurturing +Nor secret griefs nor grudges. +That act of the Spartan boy is greatly praised, +Who hid the wolf under his cloak, +Letting it devour him, uncomplainingly. +It is braver, I think, to snatch the wolf forth +And fight him openly, even in the street, +Amid dust and howls of pain. +The tongue may be an unruly member-- +But silence poisons the soul. +Berate me who will--I am content. + +Nicholas Bindle + +Were you not ashamed, fellow citizens, +When my estate was probated and everyone knew +How small a fortune I left?-- +You who hounded me in life, +To give, give, give to the churches, to the poor, +To the village!--me who had already given much. +And think you not I did not know +That the pipe-organ, which I gave to the church, +Played its christening songs when Deacon Rhodes, +Who broke and all but ruined me, +Worshipped for the first time after his acquittal? + +Harold Arnett + +I LEANED against the mantel, sick, sick, +Thinking of my failure, looking into the abysm, +Weak from the noon-day heat. +A church bell sounded mournfully far away, +I heard the cry of a baby, +And the coughing of John Yarnell, +Bed-ridden, feverish, feverish, dying, +Then the violent voice of my wife: +"Watch out, the potatoes are burning!" +I smelled them . . . then there was irresistible disgust. +I pulled the trigger . . . blackness . . . light . . . +Unspeakable regret . . . fumbling for the world again. +Too late! Thus I came here, +With lungs for breathing . . . one cannot breathe here with lungs, +Though one must breathe +Of what use is it To rid one's self of the world, +When no soul may ever escape the eternal destiny of life? + +Margaret Fuller Slack + +I WOULD have been as great as George Eliot +But for an untoward fate. +For look at the photograph of me made by Penniwit, +Chin resting on hand, and deep--set eyes-- +Gray, too, and far-searching. +But there was the old, old problem: +Should it be celibacy, matrimony or unchastity? +Then John Slack, the rich druggist, wooed me, +Luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel, +And I married him, giving birth to eight children, +And had no time to write. +It was all over with me, anyway, +When I ran the needle in my hand +While washing the baby's things, +And died from lock--jaw, an ironical death. +Hear me, ambitious souls, +Sex is the curse of life. + +George Trimble + +Do you remember when I stood on the steps +Of the Court House and talked free-silver, +And the single-tax of Henry George? +Then do you remember that, when the Peerless Leader +Lost the first battle, I began to talk prohibition, +And became active in the church? +That was due to my wife, +Who pictured to me my destruction +If I did not prove my morality to the people. +Well, she ruined me: +For the radicals grew suspicious of me, +And the conservatives were never sure of me-- +And here I lie, unwept of all. + +"Ace" Shaw + +I NEVER saw any difference +Between playing cards for money +And selling real estate, +Practicing law, banking, or anything else. +For everything is chance. +Nevertheless +Seest thou a man diligent in business? +He shall stand before Kings! + +Willard Fluke + +MY wife lost her health, +And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds. +Then that woman, whom the men +Styled Cleopatra, came along. +And we-- we married ones +All broke our vows, myself among the rest. +Years passed and one by one +Death claimed them all in some hideous form +And I was borne along by dreams +Of God's particular grace for me, +And I began to write, write, write, reams on reams +Of the second coming of Christ. +Then Christ came to me and said, +"Go into the church and stand before the congregation +And confess your sin." +But just as I stood up and began to speak +I saw my little girl, who was sitting in the front seat-- +My little girl who was born blind! +After that, all is blackness. + +Aner Clute + +OVER and over they used to ask me, +While buying the wine or the beer, +In Peoria first, and later in Chicago, +Denver, Frisco, New York, wherever I lived +How I happened to lead the life, +And what was the start of it. +Well, I told them a silk dress, +And a promise of marriage from a rich man-- +(It was Lucius Atherton). +But that was not really it at all. +Suppose a boy steals an apple +From the tray at the grocery store, +And they all begin to call him a thief, +The editor, minister, judge, and all the people-- +"A thief," "a thief," "a thief," wherever he goes +And he can't get work, and he can't get bread +Without stealing it, why the boy will steal. +It's the way the people regard the theft of the apple +That makes the boy what he is. + +Lucius Atherton + +WHEN my moustache curled, +And my hair was black, +And I wore tight trousers +And a diamond stud, +I was an excellent knave of hearts and took many a trick. +But when the gray hairs began to appear-- +Lo! a new generation of girls +Laughed at me, not fearing me, +And I had no more exciting adventures +Wherein I was all but shot for a heartless devil, +But only drabby affairs, warmed-over affairs +Of other days and other men. +And time went on until I lived at +Mayer's restaurant, +Partaking of short-orders, a gray, untidy, +Toothless, discarded, rural Don Juan. . . . +There is a mighty shade here who sings +Of one named Beatrice; +And I see now that the force that made him great +Drove me to the dregs of life. + +Homer Clapp + +OFTEN Aner Clute at the gate +Refused me the parting kiss, +Saying we should be engaged before that; +And just with a distant clasp of the hand +She bade me good-night, as I brought her home +From the skating rink or the revival. +No sooner did my departing footsteps die away +Than Lucius Atherton, +(So I learned when Aner went to Peoria) +Stole in at her window, or took her riding +Behind his spanking team of bays +Into the country. +The shock of it made me settle down +And I put all the money I got from my father's estate +Into the canning factory, to get the job +Of head accountant, and lost it all. +And then I knew I was one of Life's fools, +Whom only death would treat as the equal +Of other men, making me feel like a man. + +Deacon Taylor + +I BELONGED to the church, +And to the party of prohibition; +And the villagers thought I died of eating watermelon. +In truth I had cirrhosis of the liver, +For every noon for thirty years, +I slipped behind the prescription partition +In Trainor's drug store +And poured a generous drink +From the bottle marked "Spiritus frumenti." + +Sam Hookey + +I RAN away from home with the circus, +Having fallen in love with Mademoiselle Estralada, +The lion tamer. +One time, having starved the lions +For more than a day, +I entered the cage and began to beat Brutus +And Leo and Gypsy. +Whereupon Brutus sprang upon me, +And killed me. +On entering these regions +I met a shadow who cursed me, +And said it served me right. . . . +It was Robespierre! + +Cooney Potter + +I INHERITED forty acres from my Father +And, by working my wife, my two sons and two daughters +From dawn to dusk, I acquired +A thousand acres. +But not content, +Wishing to own two thousand acres, +I bustled through the years with axe and plow, +Toiling, denying myself, my wife, my sons, my daughters. +Squire Higbee wrongs me to say +That I died from smoking Red Eagle cigars. +Eating hot pie and gulping coffee +During the scorching hours of harvest time +Brought me here ere I had reached my sixtieth year. + +Fiddler Jones + +THE earth keeps some vibration going +There in your heart, and that is you. +And if the people find you can fiddle, +Why, fiddle you must, for all your life. +What do you see, a harvest of clover? +Or a meadow to walk through to the river? +The wind's in the corn; you rub your hands +For beeves hereafter ready for market; +Or else you hear the rustle of skirts +Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove. +To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust +Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth; +They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy +Stepping it off, to "Toor-a-Loor." +How could I till my forty acres +Not to speak of getting more, +With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos +Stirred in my brain by crows and robins +And the creak of a wind-mill--only these? +And I never started to plow in my life +That some one did not stop in the road +And take me away to a dance or picnic. +I ended up with forty acres; +I ended up with a broken fiddle-- +And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories, +And not a single regret. + +Nellie Clark + +I WAS only eight years old; +And before I grew up and knew what it meant +I had no words for it, except +That I was frightened and told my +Mother; And that my Father got a pistol +And would have killed Charlie, who was a big boy, +Fifteen years old, except for his Mother. +Nevertheless the story clung to me. +But the man who married me, a widower of thirty-five, +Was a newcomer and never heard it +OTill two years after we were married. +Then he considered himself cheated, +And the village agreed that I was not really a virgin. +Well, he deserted me, and I died +The following winter. + +Louise Smith + +HERBERT broke our engagement of eight years +When Annabelle returned to the village From the +Seminary, ah me! +If I had let my love for him alone +It might have grown into a beautiful sorrow-- +Who knows? -- filling my life with healing fragrance. +But I tortured it, I poisoned it +I blinded its eyes, and it became hatred-- +Deadly ivy instead of clematis. +And my soul fell from its support +Its tendrils tangled in decay. +Do not let the will play gardener to your soul +Unless you are sure +It is wiser than your soul's nature. + +Herbert Marshall + +ALL your sorrow, Louise, and hatred of me +Sprang from your delusion that it was wantonness +Of spirit and contempt of your soul's rights +Which made me turn to Annabelle and forsake you. +You really grew to hate me for love of me, +Because I was your soul's happiness, +Formed and tempered +To solve your life for you, and would not. +But you were my misery. +If you had been +My happiness would I not have clung to you? +This is life's sorrow: +That one can be happy only where two are; +And that our hearts are drawn to stars +Which want us not. + +George Gray + +I HAVE studied many times +The marble which was chiseled for me-- +A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor. +In truth it pictures not my destination +But my life. +For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment; +Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid; +Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances. +Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life. +And now I know that we must lift the sail +And catch the winds of destiny +Wherever they drive the boat. +To put meaning in one's life may end in madness, +But life without meaning is the torture +Of restlessness and vague desire-- +It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid. + +Hon. Henry Bennett + +IT never came into my mind +Until I was ready to die +That Jenny had loved me to death, with malice of heart. +For I was seventy, she was thirty--five, +And I wore myself to a shadow trying to husband +Jenny, rosy Jenny full of the ardor of life. +For all my wisdom and grace of mind +Gave her no delight at all, in very truth, +But ever and anon she spoke of the giant strength +Of Willard Shafer, and of his wonderful feat +Of lifting a traction engine out of the ditch +One time at Georgie Kirby's. +So Jenny inherited my fortune and married Willard-- +That mount of brawn! That clownish soul! + +Griffy the Cooper + +THE cooper should know about tubs. +But I learned about life as well, +And you who loiter around these graves +Think you know life. +You think your eye sweeps about a wide horizon, perhaps, +In truth you are only looking around the interior of your tub. +You cannot lift yourself to its rim +And see the outer world of things, +And at the same time see yourself. +You are submerged in the tub of yourself-- +Taboos and rules and appearances, +Are the staves of your tub. +Break them and dispel the witchcraft +Of thinking your tub is life +And that you know life. + +A. D. Blood + +IF YOU in the village think that my work was a good one, +Who closed the saloons and stopped all playing at cards, +And haled old Daisy Fraser before Justice Arnett, +In many a crusade to purge the people of sin; +Why do you let the milliner's daughter Dora, +And the worthless son of Benjamin Pantier +Nightly make my grave their unholy pillow? + +Dora Williams + +WHEN Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me +I went to Springfield. There I met a lush, +Whose father just deceased left him a fortune. +He married me when drunk. +My life was wretched. +A year passed and one day they found him dead. +That made me rich. I moved on to Chicago. +After a time met Tyler Rountree, villain. +I moved on to New York. A gray-haired magnate +Went mad about me--so another fortune. +He died one night right in my arms, you know. +(I saw his purple face for years thereafter. ) +There was almost a scandal. +I moved on, This time to Paris. I was now a woman, +Insidious, subtle, versed in the world and rich. +My sweet apartment near the Champs Elys?es +Became a center for all sorts of people, +Musicians, poets, dandies, artists, nobles, +Where we spoke French and German, Italian, English. +I wed Count Navigato, native of Cenoa. +We went to Rome. He poisoned me, I think. +Now in the Campo Santo overlooking +The sea where young Columbus dreamed new worlds, +See what they chiseled: "Contessa Navigato +Implora eterna quiete." + +Mrs. Williams + +I WAS the milliner +Talked about, lied about, +Mother of Dora, +Whose strange disappearance +Was charged to her rearing. +My eye quick to beauty +Saw much beside ribbons +And buckles and feathers +And leghorns and felts, +To set off sweet faces, +And dark hair and gold. +One thing I will tell you +And one I will ask: +The stealers of husbands +Wear powder and trinkets, +And fashionable hats. +Wives, wear them yourselves. +Hats may make divorces-- +They also prevent them. +Well now, let me ask you: +If all of the children, born here in Spoon River +Had been reared by the +County, somewhere on a farm; +And the fathers and mothers had been given their freedom +To live and enjoy, change mates if they wished, +Do you think that Spoon River +Had been any the worse? + +William and Emily + +THERE is something about +Death Like love itself! +If with some one with whom you have known passion +And the glow of youthful love, +You also, after years of life +Together, feel the sinking of the fire +And thus fade away together, +Gradually, faintly, delicately, +As it were in each other's arms, +Passing from the familiar room-- +That is a power of unison between souls +Like love itself! + +The Circuit Judge + +TAKE note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions +Eaten in my head-stone by the wind and rain-- +Almost as if an intangible Nemesis or hatred +Were marking scores against me, +But to destroy, and not preserve, my memory. +I in life was the Circuit judge, a maker of notches, +Deciding cases on the points the lawyers scored, +Not on the right of the matter. +O wind and rain, leave my head-stone alone +For worse than the anger of the wronged, +The curses of the poor, +Was to lie speechless, yet with vision clear, +Seeing that even Hod Putt, the murderer, +Hanged by my sentence, +Was innocent in soul compared with me. + +Blind Jack + +I HAD fiddled all day at the county fair. +But driving home "Butch" Weldy and Jack McGuire, +Who were roaring full, made me fiddle and fiddle +To the song of Susie Skinner, while whipping the horses +Till they ran away. Blind as I was, I tried to get out +As the carriage fell in the ditch, +And was caught in the wheels and killed. +There's a blind man here with a brow +As big and white as a cloud. +And all we fiddlers, from highest to lowest, +Writers of music and tellers of stories +Sit at his feet, +And hear him sing of the fall of Troy. + +John Horace Burleson + +I WON the prize essay at school +Here in the village, +And published a novel before I was twenty-five. +I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art; +There married the banker's daughter, +And later became president of the bank-- +Always looking forward to some leisure +To write an epic novel of the war. +Meanwhile friend of the great, and lover of letters, +And host to Matthew Arnold and to Emerson. +An after dinner speaker, writing essays +For local clubs. At last brought here-- +My boyhood home, you know-- +Not even a little tablet in Chicago +To keep my name alive. +How great it is to write the single line: +"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll!" + +Nancy Knapp + +WELL, don't you see this was the way of it: +We bought the farm with what he inherited, +And his brothers and sisters accused him of poisoning +His fathers mind against the rest of them. +And we never had any peace with our treasure. +The murrain took the cattle, and the crops failed. +And lightning struck the granary. +So we mortgaged the farm to keep going. +And he grew silent and was worried all the time. +Then some of the neighbors refused to speak to us, +And took sides with his brothers and sisters. +And I had no place to turn, as one may say to himself, +At an earlier time in life; +"No matter, So and so is my friend, or I can shake this off +With a little trip to Decatur." +Then the dreadfulest smells infested the rooms. +So I set fire to the beds and the old witch-house +Went up in a roar of flame, +As I danced in the yard with waving arms, +While he wept like a freezing steer. + +Barry Holden + +THE very fall my sister Nancy Knapp +Set fire to the house +They were trying Dr. Duval +For the murder of Zora Clemens, +And I sat in the court two weeks +Listening to every witness. +It was clear he had got her in a family +And to let the child be born +Would not do. +Well, how about me with eight children, +And one coming, and the farm +Mortgaged to Thomas Rhodes? +And when I got home that night, +(After listening to the story of the buggy ride, +And the finding of Zora in the ditch,) +The first thing I saw, right there by the steps, +Where the boys had hacked for angle worms, +Was the hatchet! +And just as I entered there was my wife, +Standing before me, big with child. +She started the talk of the mortgaged farm, +And I killed her. + +State's Attorney Fallas + +l, THE scourge-wielder, balance-wrecker, +Smiter with whips and swords; +I, hater of the breakers of the law; +I, legalist, inexorable and bitter, +Driving the jury to hang the madman, Barry Holden, +Was made as one dead by light too bright for eyes, +And woke to face a Truth with bloody brow: +Steel forceps fumbled by a doctor's hand +Against my boy's head as he entered life +Made him an idiot. I turned to books of science +To care for him. +That's how the world of those whose minds are sick +Became my work in life, and all my world. +Poor ruined boy! You were, at last, the potter +And I and all my deeds of charity +The vessels of your hand. + +Wendell P. Bloyd + +THEY first charged me with disorderly conduct, +There being no statute on blasphemy. +Later they locked me up as insane +Where I was beaten to death by a Catholic guard. +My offense was this: +I said God lied to Adam, and destined him +To lead the life of a fool, +Ignorant that there is evil in the world as well as good. +And when Adam outwitted God by eating the apple +And saw through the lie, +God drove him out of Eden to keep him from taking +The fruit of immortal life. +For Christ's sake, you sensible people, +Here's what God Himself says about it in the book of Genesis: +"And the Lord God said, behold the man +Is become as one of us" (a little envy, you see), +"To know good and evil" (The all-is-good lie exposed): +"And now lest he put forth his hand and take +Also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever: +Therefore the Lord God sent Him forth from the garden of Eden." (The +reason I believe God crucified His Own Son +To get out of the wretched tangle is, because it sounds just like Him. ) + +Francis Turner + +I COULD not run or play In boyhood. +In manhood I could only sip the cup, +Not drink-- For scarlet-fever left my heart diseased. +Yet I lie here +Soothed by a secret none but Mary knows: +There is a garden of acacia, +Catalpa trees, and arbors sweet with vines-- +There on that afternoon in June By Mary's side-- +Kissing her with my soul upon my lips +It suddenly took flight. + +Franklin Jones + +IF I could have lived another year +I could have finished my flying machine, +And become rich and famous. +Hence it is fitting the workman +Who tried to chisel a dove for me +Made it look more like a chicken. +For what is it all but being hatched, +And running about the yard, +To the day of the block? +Save that a man has an angel's brain, +And sees the ax from the first! + +John M. Church + +I WAS attorney for the "Q" +And the Indemnity Company which insured +The owners of the mine. +I pulled the wires with judge and jury, +And the upper courts, to beat the claims +Of the crippled, the widow and orphan, +And made a fortune thereat. +The bar association sang my praises In a high-flown resolution. +And the floral tributes were many-- +But the rats devoured my heart +And a snake made a nest in my skull + +Russian Sonia + +I, BORN in Weimar +Of a mother who was French +And German father, a most learned professor, +Orphaned at fourteen years, +Became a dancer, known as Russian Sonia, +All up and down the boulevards of Paris, +Mistress betimes of sundry dukes and counts, +And later of poor artists and of poets. +At forty years, pass?e, I sought New York +And met old Patrick Hummer on the boat, +Red-faced and hale, though turned his sixtieth year, +Returning after having sold a ship-load +Of cattle in the German city, Hamburg. +He brought me to Spoon River and we lived here +For twenty years--they thought that we were married +This oak tree near me is the favorite haunt +Of blue jays chattering, chattering all the day. +And why not? for my very dust is laughing +For thinking of the humorous thing called life. +Barney Hainsfeather + +IF the excursion train to Peoria +Had just been wrecked, I might have escaped with my life-- +Certainly I should have escaped this place. +But as it was burned as well, they mistook me +For John Allen who was sent to the Hebrew Cemetery At Chicago, And +lohn for me, so I lie here. +It was bad enough to run a clothing store in this town, +But to be buried here--ach! + +Petit, the Poet + +SEEDS in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, +Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel-- +Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens-- +But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof. +Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus, +Ballades by the score with the same old thought: +The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished; +And what is love but a rose that fades? +Life all around me here in the village: +Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth, +Courage, constancy, heroism, failure-- +All in the loom, and oh what patterns! +Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers-- +Blind to all of it all my life long. +Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus, +Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics, +While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines? + +Pauline Barrett + +ALMOST the shell of a woman after the surgeon's knife +And almost a year to creep back into strength, +Till the dawn of our wedding decennial +Found me my seeming self again. +We walked the forest together, +By a path of soundless moss and turf. +But I could not look in your eyes, +And you could not look in my eyes, +For such sorrow was ours--the beginning of gray in your hair. +And I but a shell of myself. +And what did we talk of?-- sky and water, +Anything, Omost, to hide our thoughts. +And then your gift of wild roses, +Set on the table to grace our dinner. +Poor heart, how bravely you struggled +To imagine and live a remembered rapture! +Then my spirit drooped as the night came on, +And you left me alone in my room for a while, +As you did when I was a bride, poor heart. +And I looked in the mirror and something said: +"One should be all dead when one is half-dead--" +Nor ever mock life, nor ever cheat love." +And I did it looking there in the mirror-- +Dear, have you ever understood? + +Mrs. Charles Bliss + +REVEREND WILEY advised me not to divorce him +For the sake of the children, +And Judge Somers advised him the same. +So we stuck to the end of the path. +But two of the children thought he was right, +And two of the children thought I was right. +And the two who sided with him blamed me, +And the two who sided with me blamed him, +And they grieved for the one they sided with. +And all were torn with the guilt of judging, +And tortured in soul because they could not admire +Equally him and me. +Now every gardener knows that plants grown in cellars +Or under stones are twisted and yellow and weak. +And no mother would let her baby suck +Diseased milk from her breast. +Yet preachers and judges advise the raising of souls +Where there is no sunlight, but only twilight, +No warmth, but only dampness and cold-- +Preachers and judges! + +Mrs. George Reece + +To this generation I would say: +Memorize some bit of verse of truth or beauty. +It may serve a turn in your life. +My husband had nothing to do +With the fall of the bank--he was only cashier. +The wreck was due to the president, Thomas Rhodes, +And his vain, unscrupulous son. +Yet my husband was sent to prison, +And I was left with the children, +To feed and clothe and school them. +And I did it, and sent them forth +Into the world all clean and strong, +And all through the wisdom of Pope, the poet: +"Act well your part, there all the honor lies." + +Rev. Lemuel Wiley + +I PREACHED four thousand sermons, +I conducted forty revivals, +And baptized many converts. +Yet no deed of mine +Shines brighter in the memory of the world, +And none is treasured more by me: +Look how I saved the Blisses from divorce, +And kept the children free from that disgrace, +To grow up into moral men and women, +Happy themselves, a credit to the village. + +Thomas Ross, Jr. + +THIS I saw with my own eyes: A cliff--swallow +Made her nest in a hole of the high clay-bank +There near Miller's Ford. +But no sooner were the young hatched +Than a snake crawled up to the nest +To devour the brood. +Then the mother swallow with swift flutterings +And shrill cries +Fought at the snake, +Blinding him with the beat of her wings, +Until he, wriggling and rearing his head, +Fell backward down the bank +Into Spoon River and was drowned. +Scarcely an hour passed +Until a shrike +Impaled the mother swallow on a thorn. +As for myself I overcame my lower nature +Only to be destroyed by my brother's ambition. + +Rev. Abner Peet + +I HAD no objection at all +To selling my household effects at auction +On the village square. +It gave my beloved flock the chance +To get something which had belonged to me +For a memorial. +But that trunk which was struck off +To Burchard, the grog-keeper! +Did you know it contained the manuscripts +Of a lifetime of sermons? +And he burned them as waste paper. + +Jefferson Howard + +MY valiant fight! For I call it valiant, +With my father's beliefs from old Virginia: +Hating slavery, but no less war. +I, full of spirit, audacity, courage +Thrown into life here in Spoon River, +With its dominant forces drawn from +New England, Republicans, Calvinists, merchants, bankers, +Hating me, yet fearing my arm. +With wife and children heavy to carry-- +Yet fruits of my very zest of life. +Stealing odd pleasures that cost me prestige, +And reaping evils I had not sown; +Foe of the church with its charnel dankness, +Friend of the human touch of the tavern; +Tangled with fates all alien to me, +Deserted by hands I called my own. +Then just as I felt my giant strength +Short of breath, behold my children +Had wound their lives in stranger gardens-- +And I stood alone, as I started alone +My valiant life! I died on my feet, +Facing the silence--facing the prospect +That no one would know of the fight I made. + +Albert Schirding + +JONAS KEENE thought his lot a hard one +Because his children were all failures. +But I know of a fate more trying than that: +It is to be a failure while your children are successes. +For I raised a brood of eagles +Who flew away at last, leaving me +A crow on the abandoned bough. +Then, with the ambition to prefix +Honorable to my name, +And thus to win my children's admiration, +I ran for County Superintendent of Schools, +Spending my accumulations to win-- and lost. +That fall my daughter received first prize in +Paris For her picture, entitled, "The Old Mill"-- +(It was of the water mill before Henry Wilkin put in steam.) +The feeling that I was not worthy of her finished me. + +Jonas Keene + +WHY did Albert Schirding kill himself +Trying to be County Superintendent of Schools, +Blest as he was with the means of life +And wonderful children, bringing him honor +Ere he was sixty? +If even one of my boys could have run a news-stand, +Or one of my girls could have married a decent man, +I should not have walked in the rain +And jumped into bed with clothes all wet, +Refusing medical aid. + +Yee Bow + +THEY got me into the Sunday-school +In Spoon River And tried to get me to drop +Confucius for Jesus. I could have been no worse off +If I had tried to get them to drop Jesus for Confucius. +For, without any warning, as if it were a prank, +And sneaking up behind me, Harry Wiley, +The minister's son, caved my ribs into my lungs, +With a blow of his fist. +Now I shall never sleep with my ancestors in Pekin, +And no children shall worship at my grave. + +Washington McNeely + +RICH, honored by my fellow citizens, +The father of many children, born of a noble mother, +All raised there +In the great mansion--house, at the edge of town. +Note the cedar tree on the lawn! +I sent all the boys to Ann Arbor, all of the girls to Rockford, +The while my life went on, getting more riches and honors-- +Resting under my cedar tree at evening. +The years went on. I sent the girls to Europe; +I dowered them when married. +I gave the boys money to start in business. +They were strong children, promising as apples +Before the bitten places show. +But John fled the country in disgrace. +Jenny died in child-birth-- +I sat under my cedar tree. +Harry killed himself after a debauch, Susan was divorced-- +I sat under my cedar tree. Paul was invalided from over study, +Mary became a recluse at home for love of a man-- +I sat under my cedar tree. +All were gone, or broken-winged or devoured by life-- +I sat under my cedar tree. +My mate, the mother of them, was taken-- +I sat under my cedar tree, +Till ninety years were tolled. +O maternal Earth, which rocks the fallen leaf to sleep. + +Mary McNeely + +PASSER-BY, +To love is to find your own soul +Through the soul of the beloved one. +When the beloved one withdraws itself from your soul +Then you have lost your soul. +It is written: "l have a friend, +But my sorrow has no friend." +Hence my long years of solitude at the home of my father, +Trying to get myself back, +And to turn my sorrow into a supremer self. +But there was my father with his sorrows, +Sitting under the cedar tree, +A picture that sank into my heart at last +Bringing infinite repose. +Oh, ye souls who have made life +Fragrant and white as tube roses +From earth's dark soil, +Eternal peace! + +Daniel M'Cumber + +WHEN I went to the city, Mary McNeely, +I meant to return for you, yes I did. +But Laura, my landlady's daughter, +Stole into my life somehow, and won me away. +Then after some years whom should I meet +But Georgine Miner from Niles--a sprout +Of the free love, Fourierist gardens that flourished +Before the war all over Ohio. +Her dilettante lover had tired of her, +And she turned to me for strength and solace. +She was some kind of a crying thing +One takes in one's arms, and all at once +It slimes your face with its running nose, +And voids its essence all over you; +Then bites your hand and springs away. +And there you stand bleeding and smelling to heaven +Why, Mary McNeely, I was not worthy +To kiss the hem of your robe! + +Georgine Sand Miner + +A STEPMOTHER drove me from home, embittering me. +A squaw-man, a flaneur and dilettante took my virtue. +For years I was his mistress--no one knew. +I learned from him the parasite cunning +With which I moved with the bluffs, like a flea on a dog. +All the time I was nothing but "very private," with different men. +Then Daniel, the radical, had me for years. +His sister called me his mistress; +And Daniel wrote me: +"Shameful word, soiling our beautifullove!" +But my anger coiled, preparing its fangs. +My Lesbian friend next took a hand. +She hated Daniel's sister. +And Daniel despised her midget husband. +And she saw a chance for a poisonous thrust: +I must complain to the wife of Daniel's pursuit! +But before I did that I begged him to fly to London with me. +"Why not stay in the city just as we have?" he asked. +Then I turned submarine and revenged his repulse +In the arms of my dilettante friend. +Then up to the surface, Bearing the letter that Daniel wrote me +To prove my honor was all intact, showing it to his wife, +My Lesbian friend and everyone. +If Daniel had only shot me dead! +Instead of stripping me naked of lies +A harlot in body and soul. + +Thomas Rhodes + +VERY well, you liberals, +And navigators into realms intellectual, +You sailors through heights imaginative, +Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets, +You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits, +And Tennessee Claflin Shopes-- +You tound with all your boasted wisdom +How hard at the last it is +To keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms. +While we, seekers of earth's treasures +Getters and hoarders of gold, +Are self-contained, compact, harmonized, +Even to the end. + +Penniwit, the Artist + +I LOST my patronage in Spoon River +From trying to put my mind in the camera +To catch the soul of the person. +The very best picture I ever took +Was of Judge Somers, attorney at law. +He sat upright and had me pause +Till he got his cross-eye straight. +Then when he was ready he said "all right." +And I yelled "overruled" and his eye turned up. +And I caught him just as he used to look +When saying "l except." + +Jim Brown + +WHILE I was handling Dom Pedro +I got at the thing that divides the race between men who are +For singing "Turkey in the straw" or +"There is a fountain filled with blood"-- +(Like Rile Potter used to sing it over at Concord). +For cards, or for Rev. Peet's lecture on the holy land; +For skipping the light fantastic, or passing the plate; +For Pinafore, or a Sunday school cantata; +For men, or for money; +For the people or against them. +This was it: Rev. Peet and the Social Purity Club, +Headed by Ben Pantier's wife, +Went to the Village trustees, +And asked them to make me take Dom Pedro +From the barn of Wash McNeely, there at the edge of town, +To a barn outside of the corporation, +On the ground that it corrupted public morals. +Well, Ben Pantier and Fiddler Jones saved the day-- +They thought it a slam on colts. + +Robert Davidson + +I GREW spiritually fat living off the souls of men. +If I saw a soul that was strong +I wounded its pride and devoured its strength. +The shelters of friendship knew my cunning +For where I could steal a friend I did so. +And wherever I could enlarge my power +By undermining ambition, I did so, +Thus to make smooth my own. +And to triumph over other souls, +Just to assert and prove my superior strength, +Was with me a delight, +The keen exhilaration of soul gymnastics. +Devouring souls, I should have lived forever. +But their undigested remains bred in me a deadly nephritis, +With fear, restlessness, sinking spirits, +Hatred, suspicion, vision disturbed. +I collapsed at last with a shriek. +Remember the acorn; +It does not devour other acorns. + +Elsa Wertman + +I WAS a peasant girl from Germany, +Blue-eyed, rosy, happy and strong. +And the first place I worked was at Thomas Greene's. +On a summer's day when she was away +He stole into the kitchen and took me +Right in his arms and kissed me on my throat, +I turning my head. Then neither of us +Seemed to know what happened. +And I cried for what would become of me. +And cried and cried as my secret began to show. +One day Mrs. Greene said she understood, +And would make no trouble for me, +And, being childless, would adopt it. +(He had given her a farm to be still. ) +So she hid in the house and sent out rumors, +As if it were going to happen to her. +And all went well and the child was born-- +They were so kind to me. +Later I married Gus Wertman, and years passed. +But-- at political rallies when sitters-by thought I was crying +At the eloquence of Hamilton Greene-- +That was not it. No! I wanted to say: +That's my son! +That's my son. + +Hamilton Greene + +I WAS the only child of Frances Harris of Virginia +And Thomas Greene of Kentucky, +Of valiant and honorable blood both. +To them I owe all that I became, +Judge, member of Congress, leader in the State. +From my mother I inherited +Vivacity, fancy, language; +From my father will, judgment, logic. +All honor to them +For what service I was to the people! + +Ernest Hyde + +MY mind was a mirror: +It saw what it saw, it knew what it knew. +In youth my mind was just a mirror In a rapidly flying car, +Which catches and loses bits of the landscape. +Then in time +Great scratches were made on the mirror, +Letting the outside world come in, +And letting my inner self look out. +For this is the birth of the soul in sorrow, +A birth with gains and losses. +The mind sees the world as a thing apart, +And the soul makes the world at one with itself. +A mirror scratched reflects no image-- +And this is the silence of wisdom. + +Roger Heston + +OH many times did Ernest Hyde and I +Argue about the freedom of the will. +My favorite metaphor was Prickett's cow +Roped out to grass, and free you know as far +As the length of the rope. +One day while arguing so, watching the cow +Pull at the rope to get beyond the circle +Which she had eaten bare, +Out came the stake, and tossing up her head, +She ran for us. +"What's that, free-will or what?" said Ernest, running. +I fell just as she gored me to my death. + +Amos Sibley + +NOT character, not fortitude, not patience +Were mine, the which the village thought I had +In bearing with my wife, while preaching on, +Doing the work God chose for me. +I loathed her as a termagant, as a wanton. +I knew of her adulteries, every one. +But even so, if I divorced the woman +I must forsake the ministry. +Therefore to do God's work and have it crop, +I bore with her +So lied I to myself +So lied I to Spoon River! +Yet I tried lecturing, ran for the legislature, +Canvassed for books, with just the thought in mind: +If I make money thus, +I will divorce her. + +Mrs. Sibley + +THE secret of the stars-- gravitation. +The secret of the earth-- layers of rock. +The secret of the soil-- to receive seed. +The secret of the seed-- the germ. +The secret of man-- the sower. +The secret of woman-- the soil. +My secret: Under a mound that you shall never find. + +Adam Weirauch + +I WAS crushed between Altgeld and Armour. +I lost many friends, much time and money +Fighting for Altgeld whom Editor Whedon +Denounced as the candidate of gamblers and anarchists. +Then Armour started to ship dressed meat to Spoon River, +Forcing me to shut down my slaughter-house +And my butcher shop went all to pieces. +The new forces of Altgeld and Armour caught me +At the same time. I thought it due me, to recoup the money I lost +And to make good the friends that left me, +For the Governor to appoint me Canal Commissioner. +Instead he appointed Whedon of the Spoon River Argus, +So I ran for the legislature and was elected. +I said to hell with principle and sold my vote +On Charles T. Yerkes' street-car franchise. +Of course I was one of the fellows they caught. +Who was it, Armour, Altgeld or myself +That ruined me? + +Ezra Bartlett + +A CHAPLAIN in the army, +A chaplain in the prisons, +An exhorter in Spoon River, +Drunk with divinity, Spoon River-- +Yet bringing poor Eliza Johnson to shame, +And myself to scorn and wretchedness. +But why will you never see that love of women, +And even love of wine, +Are the stimulants by which the soul, hungering for divinity, +Reaches the ecstatic vision +And sees the celestial outposts? +Only after many trials for strength, +Only when all stimulants fail, +Does the aspiring soul +By its own sheer power +Find the divine +By resting upon itself. + +Amelia Garrick + +YES, here I lie close to a stunted rose bush +In a forgotten place near the fence +Where the thickets from Siever's woods +Have crept over, growing sparsely. +And you, you are a leader in New York, +The wife of a noted millionaire, +A name in the society columns, +Beautiful, admired, magnified perhaps +By the mirage of distance. +You have succeeded, +I have failed In the eyes of the world. +You are alive, I am dead. +Yet I know that I vanquished your spirit; +And I know that lying here far from you, +Unheard of among your great friends +In the brilliant world where you move, +I am really the unconquerable power over your life +That robs it of complete triumph. + +John Hancock Otis + +As to democracy, fellow citizens, +Are you not prepared to admit +That l, who inherited riches and was to the manor born, +Was second to none in Spoon River +In my devotion to the cause of Liberty? +While my contemporary, Anthony Findlay, +Born in a shanty and beginning life +As a water carrier to the section hands, +Then becoming a section hand when he was grown, +Afterwards foreman of the gang, until he rose +To the superintendency of the railroad, +Living in Chicago, +Was a veritable slave driver, +Grinding the faces of labor, +And a bitter enemy of democracy. +And I say to you, Spoon River, +And to you, O republic, +Beware of the man who rises to power +From one suspender. + +The Unknown + +YE aspiring ones, listen to the story of the unknown +Who lies here with no stone to mark the place. +As a boy reckless and wanton, +Wandering with gun in hand through the forest +Near the mansion of Aaron Hatfield, +I shot a hawk perched on the top +Of a dead tree. He fell with guttural cry +At my feet, his wing broken. +Then I put him in a cage +Where he lived many days cawing angrily at me +When I offered him food. +Daily I search the realms of Hades +For the soul of the hawk, +That I may offer him the friendship +Of one whom life wounded and caged. +Alexander Throckmorton + +IN youth my wings were strong and tireless, +But I did not know the mountains. +In age I knew the mountains +But my weary wings could not follow my vision-- +Genius is wisdom and youth. + +Jonathan Swift Somers (Author of the Spooniad) + +AFTER you have enriched your soul +To the highest point, +With books, thought, suffering, +The understanding of many personalities, +The power to interpret glances, silences, +The pauses in momentous transformations, +The genius of divination and prophecy; +So that you feel able at times to hold the world +In the hollow of your hand; +Then, if, by the crowding of so many powers +Into the compass of your soul, +Your soul takes fire, +And in the conflagration of your soul +The evil of the world is lighted up and made clear-- +Be thankful if in that hour of supreme vision +Life does not fiddle. + +Widow McFarlane + +I WAS the Widow McFarlane, +Weaver of carpets for all the village. +And I pity you still at the loom of life, +You who are singing to the shuttle +And lovingly watching the work of your hands, +If you reach the day of hate, of terrible truth. +For the cloth of life is woven, you know, +To a pattern hidden under the loom-- +A pattern you never see! +And you weave high-hearted, singing, singing, +You guard the threads of love and friendship +For noble figures in gold and purple. +And long after other eyes can see +You have woven a moon-white strip of cloth, +You laugh in your strength, for Hope overlays it +With shapes of love and beauty. +The loom stops short! +The pattern's out +You're alone in the room! +You have woven a shroud +And hate of it lays you in it. + +Carl Hamblin + +THE press of the Spoon River Clarion was wrecked, +And I was tarred and feathered, +For publishing this on the day the +Anarchists were hanged in Chicago: +"l saw a beautiful woman with bandaged eyes +Standing on the steps of a marble temple. +Great multitudes passed in front of her, +Lifting their faces to her imploringly. +In her left hand she held a sword. +She was brandishing the sword, +Sometimes striking a child, again a laborer, +Again a slinking woman, again a lunatic. +In her right hand she held a scale; +Into the scale pieces of gold were tossed +By those who dodged the strokes of the sword. +A man in a black gown read from a manuscript: +"She is no respecter of persons." +Then a youth wearing a red cap +Leaped to her side and snatched away the bandage. +And lo, the lashes had been eaten away +From the oozy eye-lids; +The eye-balls were seared with a milky mucus; +The madness of a dying soul +Was written on her face-- +But the multitude saw why she wore the bandage." + +Editor Whedon + +To be able to see every side of every question; +To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long; +To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose, +To use great feelings and passions of the human family +For base designs, for cunning ends, +To wear a mask like the Greek actors-- +Your eight-page paper-- behind which you huddle, +Bawling through the megaphone of big type: +"This is I, the giant." +Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief, +Poisoned with the anonymous words +Of your clandestine soul. +To scratch dirt over scandal for money, +And exhume it to the winds for revenge, +Or to sell papers, +Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be, +To win at any cost, save your own life. +To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization, +As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track +And derails the express train. +To be an editor, as I was. +Then to lie here close by the river over the place +Where the sewage flows from the village, +And the empty cans and garbage are dumped, +And abortions are hidden. + +Eugene Carman + +RHODES, slave! Selling shoes and gingham, +Flour and bacon, overalls, clothing, all day long +For fourteen hours a day for three hundred and thirteen days +For more than twenty years. +Saying "Yes'm" and "Yes, sir", and "Thank you" +A thousand times a day, and all for fifty dollars a month. +Living in this stinking room in the rattle-trap "Commercial." +And compelled to go to Sunday School, and to listen +To the Rev. Abner Peet one hundred and four times a year +For more than an hour at a time, +Because Thomas Rhodes ran the church +As well as the store and the bank. +So while I was tying my neck-tie that morning +I suddenly saw myself in the glass: +My hair all gray, my face like a sodden pie. +So I cursed and cursed: You damned old thing +You cowardly dog! You rotten pauper! +You Rhodes' slave! Till Roger Baughman +Thought I was having a fight with some one, +And looked through the transom just in time +To see me fall on the floor in a heap +From a broken vein in my head. + +Clarence Fawcett + +THE sudden death of Eugene Carman +Put me in line to be promoted to fifty dollars a month, +And I told my wife and children that night. +But it didn't come, and so I thought +Old Rhodes suspected me of stealing +The blankets I took and sold on the side +For money to pay a doctor's bill for my little girl. +Then like a bolt old Rhodes accused me, +And promised me mercy for my family's sake +If I confessed, and so I confessed, +And begged him to keep it out of the papers, +And I asked the editors, too. +That night at home the constable took me +And every paper, except the Clarion, +Wrote me up as a thief +Because old Rhodes was an advertiser +And wanted to make an example of me. +Oh! well, you know how the children cried, +And how my wife pitied and hated me, +And how I came to lie here. + +W. Lloyd Garrison Standard + +VEGETARIAN, non--resistant, free-thinker, in ethics a Christian; +Orator apt at the rhine-stone rhythm of Ingersoll. +Carnivorous, avenger, believer and pagan. +Continent, promiscuous, changeable, treacherous, vain, +Proud, with the pride that makes struggle a thing for laughter; +With heart cored out by the worm of theatric despair. +Wearing the coat of indifference to hide the shame of defeat; +I, child of the abolitionist idealism-- +A sort of Brand in a birth of half-and-half. +What other thing could happen when I defended +The patriot scamps who burned the court house +That Spoon River might have a new one +Than plead them guilty? +When Kinsey Keene drove through +The card--board mask of my life with a spear of light, +What could I do but slink away, like the beast of myself +Which I raised from a whelp, to a corner and growl? +The pyramid of my life was nought but a dune, +Barren and formless, spoiled at last by the storm. + +Professor Newcomer + +EVERYONE laughed at Col. Prichard +For buying an engine so powerful +That it wrecked itself, and wrecked the grinder +He ran it with. +But here is a joke of cosmic size: +The urge of nature that made a man +Evolve from his brain a spiritual life-- +Oh miracle of the world!-- +The very same brain with which the ape and wolf +Get food and shelter and procreate themselves. +Nature has made man do this, +In a world where she gives him nothing to do +After all-- (though the strength of his soul goes round +In a futile waste of power. +To gear itself to the mills of the gods)-- +But get food and shelter and procreate himself! + +Ralph Rhodes + +ALL they said was true: +I wrecked my father's bank with my loans +To dabble in wheat; but this was true-- +I was buying wheat for him as well, +Who couldn't margin the deal in his name +Because of his church relationship. +And while George Reece was serving his term +I chased the will-o-the-wisp of women +And the mockery of wine in New York. +It's deathly to sicken of wine and women +When nothing else is left in life. +But suppose your head is gray, and bowed +On a table covered with acrid stubs +Of cigarettes and empty glasses, +And a knock is heard, and you know it's the knock +So long drowned out by popping corks +And the pea-cock screams of demireps-- +And you look up, and there's your Theft, +Who waited until your head was gray, +And your heart skipped beats to say to you: +The game is ended. I've called for you, +Go out on Broadway and be run over, +They'll ship you back to Spoon River. + +Mickey M'Grew + +IT was just like everything else in life: +Something outside myself drew me down, +My own strength never failed me. +Why, there was the time I earned the money +With which to go away to school, +And my father suddenly needed help +And I had to give him all of it. +Just so it went till I ended up +A man-of--all-work in Spoon River. +Thus when I got the water-tower cleaned, +And they hauled me up the seventy feet, +I unhooked the rope from my waist, +And laughingly flung my giant arms +Over the smooth steel lips of the top of the tower-- +But they slipped from the treacherous slime, + And down, down, down, I plunged +Through bellowing darkness! + +Rosie Roberts + +I WAS sick, but more than that, I was mad +At the crooked police, and the crooked game of life. +So I wrote to the Chief of Police at Peoria: +"l am here in my girlhood home in Spoon River, +Gradually wasting away. +But come and take me, I killed the son +Of the merchant prince, in Madam Lou's +And the papers that said he killed himself +In his home while cleaning a hunting gun-- +Lied like the devil to hush up scandal +For the bribe of advertising. +In my room I shot him, at Madam Lou's, +Because he knocked me down when I said +That, in spite of all the money he had, +I'd see my lover that night." + +Oscar Hummel + +I STAGGERED on through darkness, +There was a hazy sky, a few stars +Which I followed as best I could. +It was nine o'clock, I was trying to get home. +But somehow I was lost, +Though really keeping the road. +Then I reeled through a gate and into a yard, +And called at the top of my voice: +"Oh, Fiddler! Oh, Mr. Jones!" +(I thought it was his house and he would show me the way home. ) +But who should step out but A. D. Blood, +In his night shirt, waving a stick of wood, +And roaring about the cursed saloons, +And the criminals they made? +"You drunken Oscar Hummel", he said, +As I stood there weaving to and fro, +Taking the blows from the stick in his hand +Till I dropped down dead at his feet. + +Josiah Tompkins + +I WAS well known and much beloved +And rich, as fortunes are reckoned +In Spoon River, where I had lived and worked. +That was the home for me, +Though all my children had flown afar-- +Which is the way of Nature--all but one. +The boy, who was the baby, stayed at home, +To be my help in my failing years +And the solace of his mother. +But I grew weaker, as he grew stronger, +And he quarreled with me about the business, +And his wife said I was a hindrance to it; +And he won his mother to see as he did, +Till they tore me up to be transplanted +With them to her girlhood home in Missouri. +And so much of my fortune was gone at last, +Though I made the will just as he drew it, +He profited little by it. + +Roscoe Purkapile + +SHE loved me. +Oh! how she loved me I never had a chance to escape +From the day she first saw me. +But then after we were married I thought +She might prove her mortality and let me out, +Or she might divorce me. But few die, none resign. +Then I ran away and was gone a year on a lark. +But she never complained. She said all would be well +That I would return. And I did return. +I told her that while taking a row in a boat +I had been captured near Van Buren Street +By pirates on Lake Michigan, +And kept in chains, so I could not write her. +She cried and kissed me, and said it was cruel, +Outrageous, inhuman! I then concluded our marriage +Was a divine dispensation +And could not be dissolved, +Except by death. +I was right. + +Mrs. Purkapile + +HE ran away and was gone for a year. +When he came home he told me the silly story +Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan +And kept in chains so he could not write me. +I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well +What he was doing, and that he met +The milliner, Mrs. Williams, now and then +When she went to the city to buy goods, as she said. +But a promise is a promise +And marriage is marriage, +And out of respect for my own character +I refused to be drawn into a divorce +By the scheme of a husband who had merely grown tired +Of his marital vow and duty. + +Mrs. Kessler + +MR. KESSLER, you know, was in the army, +And he drew six dollars a month as a pension, +And stood on the corner talking politics, +Or sat at home reading Grant's Memoirs; +And I supported the family by washing, +Learning the secrets of all the people +From their curtains, counterpanes, shirts and skirts. +For things that are new grow old at length, +They're replaced with better or none at all: +People are prospering or falling back. +And rents and patches widen with time; +No thread or needle can pace decay, +And there are stains that baffle soap, +And there are colors that run in spite of you, +Blamed though you are for spoiling a dress. +Handkerchiefs, napery, have their secrets-- +The laundress, Life, knows all about it. +And l, who went to all the funerals +Held in Spoon River, swear I never +Saw a dead face without thinking it looked +Like something washed and ironed. + +Harmon Whitney + +OUT of the lights and roar of cities, +Drifting down like a spark in Spoon River, +Burnt out with the fire of drink, and broken, +The paramour of a woman I took in self-contempt, +But to hide a wounded pride as well. +To be judged and loathed by a village of little minds-- +I, gifted with tongues and wisdom, +Sunk here to the dust of the justice court, +A picker of rags in the rubbage of spites and wrongs,-- +I, whom fortune smiled on! +I in a village, +Spouting to gaping yokels pages of verse, +Out of the lore of golden years, +Or raising a laugh with a flash of filthy wit +When they bought the drinks to kindle my dying mind. +To be judged by you, +The soul of me hidden from you, +With its wound gangrened +By love for a wife who made the wound, +With her cold white bosom, treasonous, pure and hard, +Relentless to the last, when the touch of her hand, +At any time, might have cured me of the typhus, +Caught in the jungle of life where many are lost. +And only to think that my soul could not react, +Like Byron's did, in song, in something noble, +But turned on itself like a tortured snake-- judge me this way, +O world. + +Bert Kessler + +I WINGED my bird, +Though he flew toward the setting sun; +But just as the shot rang out, he soared +Up and up through the splinters of golden light, +Till he turned right over, feathers ruffled, +With some of the down of him floating near, +And fell like a plummet into the grass. +I tramped about, parting the tangles, +Till I saw a splash of blood on a stump, +And the quail lying close to the rotten roots. +I reached my hand, but saw no brier, +But something pricked and stung and numbed it. +And then, in a second, I spied the rattler-- +The shutters wide in his yellow eyes, +The head of him arched, sunk back in the rings of him, +A circle of filth, the color of ashes, +Or oak leaves bleached under layers of leaves. +I stood like a stone as he shrank and uncoiled +And started to crawl beneath the stump, +When I fell limp in the grass. + +Lambert Hutchins + +I HAVE two monuments besides this granite obelisk: +One, the house I built on the hill, +With its spires, bay windows, and roof of slate. +The other, the lake-front in Chicago, +Where the railroad keeps a switching yard, +With whistling engines and crunching wheels +And smoke and soot thrown over the city, +And the crash of cars along the boulevard,-- +A blot like a hog-pen on the harbor +Of a great metropolis, foul as a sty. +I helped to give this heritage +To generations yet unborn, with my vote +In the House of Representatives, +And the lure of the thing was to be at rest +From the never--ending fright of need, +And to give my daughters gentle breeding, +And a sense of security in life. +But, you see, though I had the mansion house +And traveling passes and local distinction, +I could hear the whispers, whispers, whispers, +Wherever I went, and my daughters grew up +With a look as if some one were about to strike them; +And they married madly, helter-skelter, +Just to get out and have a change. +And what was the whole of the business worth? +Why, it wasn't worth a damn! + +Lillian Stewart + +I WAS the daughter of Lambert Hutchins, +Born in a cottage near the grist--mill, +Reared in the mansion there on the hill, +With its spires, bay--windows, and roof of slate. +How proud my mother was of the mansion +How proud of father's rise in the world! +And how my father loved and watched us, +And guarded our happiness. +But I believe the house was a curse, +For father's fortune was little beside it; +And when my husband found he had married +A girl who was really poor, +He taunted me with the spires, +And called the house a fraud on the world, +A treacherous lure to young men, raising hopes +Of a dowry not to be had; +And a man while selling his vote +Should get enough from the people's betrayal +To wall the whole of his family in. +He vexed my life till I went back home +And lived like an old maid till I died, +Keeping house for father. + +Hortense Robbins + +MY name used to be in the papers daily +As having dined somewhere, +Or traveled somewhere, +Or rented a house in Paris, +Where I entertained the nobility. +I was forever eating or traveling, +Or taking the cure at Baden-Baden. +Now I am here to do honor +To Spoon River, here beside the family whence I sprang. +No one cares now where I dined, +Or lived, or whom I entertained, +Or how often I took the cure at Baden-Baden. + +Jacob Godbey + +How did you feel, you libertarians, +Who spent your talents rallying noble reasons +Around the saloon, as if Liberty +Was not to be found anywhere except at the bar +Or at a table, guzzling? +How did you feel, Ben Pantier, and the rest of you, +Who almost stoned me for a tyrant +Garbed as a moralist, +And as a wry-faced ascetic frowning upon Yorkshire pudding, +Roast beef and ale and good will and rosy cheer-- +Things you never saw in a grog-shop in your life? +How did you feel after I was dead and gone, +And your goddess, Liberty, unmasked as a strumpet, +Selling out the streets of Spoon River +To the insolent giants +Who manned the saloons from afar? +Did it occur to you that personal liberty +Is liberty of the mind, +Rather than of the belly? + +Walter Simmons + +MY parents thought that I would be +As great as Edison or greater: +For as a boy I made balloons +And wondrous kites and toys with clocks +And little engines with tracks to run on +And telephones of cans and thread. +I played the cornet and painted pictures, +Modeled in clay and took the part +Of the villain in the "Octoroon." +But then at twenty--one I married +And had to live, and so, to live +I learned the trade of making watches +And kept the jewelry store on the square, +Thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking,-- +Not of business, but of the engine +I studied the calculus to build. +And all Spoon River watched and waited +To see it work, but it never worked. +And a few kind souls believed my genius +Was somehow hampered by the store. +It wasn't true. +The truth was this: +I did not have the brains. + +Tom Beatty + +I WAS a lawyer like Harmon Whitney +Or Kinsey Keene or Garrison Standard, +For I tried the rights of property, +Although by lamp-light, for thirty years, +In that poker room in the opera house. +And I say to you that Life's a gambler +Head and shoulders above us all. +No mayor alive can close the house. +And if you lose, you can squeal as you will; +You'll not get back your money. +He makes the percentage hard to conquer; +He stacks the cards to catch your weakness +And not to meet your strength. +And he gives you seventy years to play: +For if you cannot win in seventy +You cannot win at all. +So, if you lose, get out of the room-- +Get out of the room when your time is up. +It's mean to sit and fumble the cards +And curse your losses, leaden-eyed, +Whining to try and try. + +Roy Butler + +IF the learned Supreme Court of Illinois +Got at the secret of every case +As well as it does a case of rape +It would be the greatest court in the world. +A jury, of neighbors mostly, with "Butch" Weldy +As foreman, found me guilty in ten minutes +And two ballots on a case like this: +Richard Bandle and I had trouble over a fence +And my wife and Mrs. Bandle quarreled +As to whether Ipava was a finer town than Table Grove. +I awoke one morning with the love of God +Brimming over my heart, so I went to see Richard +To settle the fence in the spirit of Jesus Christ. +I knocked on the door, and his wife opened; +She smiled and asked me in. +I entered-- She slammed the door and began to scream, +"Take your hands off, you low down varlet!" +Just then her husband entered. +I waved my hands, choked up with words. +He went for his gun, and I ran out. +But neither the Supreme Court nor my wife +Believed a word she said. + +Searcy Foote + +I WANTED to go away to college +But rich Aunt Persis wouldn't help me. +So I made gardens and raked the lawns +And bought John Alden's books with my earnings +And toiled for the very means of life. +I wanted to marry Delia Prickett, +But how could I do it with what I earned? +And there was Aunt Persis more than seventy +Who sat in a wheel-chair half alive +With her throat so paralyzed, when she swallowed +The soup ran out of her mouth like a duck-- +A gourmand yet, investing her income +In mortgages, fretting all the time +About her notes and rents and papers. +That day I was sawing wood for her, +And reading Proudhon in between. +I went in the house for a drink of water, +And there she sat asleep in her chair, +And Proudhon lying on the table, +And a bottle of chloroform on the book, +She used sometimes for an aching tooth! +I poured the chloroform on a handkerchief +And held it to her nose till she died.-- +Oh Delia, Delia, you and Proudhon +Steadied my hand, and the coroner +Said she died of heart failure. +I married Delia and got the money-- +A joke on you, Spoon River? + +Edmund Pollard + +I WOULD I had thrust my hands of flesh +Into the disk--flowers bee-infested, +Into the mirror-like core of fire +Of the light of life, the sun of delight. +For what are anthers worth or petals +Or halo-rays? Mockeries, shadows +Of the heart of the flower, the central flame +All is yours, young passer-by; +Enter the banquet room with the thought; +Don't sidle in as if you were doubtful +Whether you're welcome--the feast is yours! +Nor take but a little, refusing more +With a bashful "Thank you", when you're hungry. +Is your soul alive? Then let it feed! +Leave no balconies where you can climb; +Nor milk-white bosoms where you can rest; +Nor golden heads with pillows to share; +Nor wine cups while the wine is sweet; +Nor ecstasies of body or soul, +You will die, no doubt, but die while living +In depths of azure, rapt and mated, +Kissing the queen-bee, Life! + +Thomas Trevelyan + +READING in Ovid the sorrowful story of Itys, +Son of the love of Tereus and Procne, slain +For the guilty passion of Tereus for Philomela, +The flesh of him served to Tereus by Procne, +And the wrath of Tereus, the murderess pursuing +Till the gods made Philomela a nightingale, +Lute of the rising moon, and Procne a swallow +Oh livers and artists of Hellas centuries gone, +Sealing in little thuribles dreams and wisdom, +Incense beyond all price, forever fragrant, +A breath whereof makes clear the eyes of the soul +How I inhaled its sweetness here in Spoon River! +The thurible opening when I had lived and learned +How all of us kill the children of love, and all of us, +Knowing not what we do, devour their flesh; +And all of us change to singers, although it be +But once in our lives, or change--alas!--to swallows, +To twitter amid cold winds and falling leaves! + +Percival Sharp + +OBSERVE the clasped hands! +Are they hands of farewell or greeting, +Hands that I helped or hands that helped me? +Would it not be well to carve a hand +With an inverted thumb, like Elagabalus? +And yonder is a broken chain, +The weakest-link idea perhaps-- mbut what was it? +And lambs, some lying down, +Others standing, as if listening to the shepherd-- +Others bearing a cross, one foot lifted up-- +Why not chisel a few shambles? +And fallen columns! +Carve the pedestal, please, +Or the foundations; let us see the cause of the fall. +And compasses and mathematical instruments, +In irony of the under tenants, ignorance +Of determinants and the calculus of variations. +And anchors, for those who never sailed. +And gates ajar--yes, so they were; +You left them open and stray goats entered your garden. +And an eye watching like one of the Arimaspi-- +So did you--with one eye. +And angels blowing trumpets--you are heralded-- +It is your horn and your angel and your family's estimate. +It is all very well, but for myself +I know I stirred certain vibrations in Spoon River +Which are my true epitaph, more lasting than stone. + +Hiram Scates + +I TRIED to win the nomination +For president of the County-board +And I made speeches all over the County +Denouncing Solomon Purple, my rival, +As an enemy of the people, +In league with the master-foes of man. +Young idealists, broken warriors, +Hobbling on one crutch of hope, +Souls that stake their all on the truth, +Losers of worlds at heaven's bidding, +Flocked about me and followed my voice +As the savior of the County. +But Solomon won the nomination; +And then I faced about, +And rallied my followers to his standard, +And made him victor, made him King +Of the Golden Mountain with the door +Which closed on my heels just as I entered, +Flattered by Solomon's invitation, +To be the County--board's secretary. +And out in the cold stood all my followers: +Young idealists, broken warriors +Hobbling on one crutch of hope-- +Souls that staked their all on the truth, +Losers of worlds at heaven's bidding, +Watching the Devil kick the Millennium +Over the Golden Mountain. + +Peleg Poague + +HORSES and men are just alike. +There was my stallion, Billy Lee, +Black as a cat and trim as a deer, +With an eye of fire, keen to start, +And he could hit the fastest speed +Of any racer around Spoon River. +But just as you'd think he couldn't lose, +With his lead of fifty yards or more, +He'd rear himself and throw the rider, +And fall back over, tangled up, +Completely gone to pieces. +You see he was a perfect fraud: +He couldn't win, he couldn't work, +He was too light to haul or plow with, +And no one wanted colts from him. +And when I tried to drive him--well, +He ran away and killed me. + +Jeduthan Hawley + +THERE would be a knock at the door +And I would arise at midnight and go to the shop, +Where belated travelers would hear me hammering +Sepulchral boards and tacking satin. +And often I wondered who would go with me +To the distant land, our names the theme +For talk, in the same week, for I've observed +Two always go together. +Chase Henry was paired with Edith Conant; +And Jonathan Somers with Willie Metcalf; +And Editor Hamblin with Francis Turner, +When he prayed to live longer than Editor Whedon, +And Thomas Rhodes with widow McFarlane; +And Emily Sparks with Barry Holden; +And Oscar Hummel with Davis Matlock; +And Editor Whedon with Fiddler Jones; +And Faith Matheny with Dorcas Gustine. +And l, the solemnest man in town, +Stepped off with Daisy Fraser. + +Abel Melveny + +I BOUGHT every kind of machine that's known-- +Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers, +Mills and rakes and ploughs and threshers-- +And all of them stood in the rain and sun, +Getting rusted, warped and battered, +For I had no sheds to store them in, +And no use for most of them. +And toward the last, when I thought it over, +There by my window, growing clearer +About myself, as my pulse slowed down, +And looked at one of the mills I bought-- +Which I didn't have the slightest need of, +As things turned out, and I never ran-- +A fine machine, once brightly varnished, +And eager to do its work, +Now with its paint washed off-- +I saw myself as a good machine +That Life had never used. + +Oaks Tutt + +MY mother was for woman's rights +And my father was the rich miller at London Mills. +I dreamed of the wrongs of the world and wanted to right them. +When my father died, I set out to see peoples and countries +In order to learn how to reform the world. +I traveled through many lands. I saw the ruins of Rome +And the ruins of Athens, And the ruins of Thebes. +And I sat by moonlight amid the necropolis of Memphis. +There I was caught up by wings of flame, +And a voice from heaven said to me: +"Injustice, Untruth destroyed them. +Go forth Preach Justice! Preach Truth!" +And I hastened back to Spoon River +To say farewell to my mother before beginning my work. +They all saw a strange light in my eye. +And by and by, when I taIked, they discovered +What had come in my mind. +Then Jonathan Swift Somers challenged me to debate +The subject, (I taking the negative): +"Pontius Pilate, the Greatest Philosopher of the World." +And he won the debate by saying at last, +"Before you reform the world, Mr. Tutt +Please answer the question of Pontius Pilate: +"What is Truth?" + +Elliott Hawkins + +I LOOKED like Abraham Lincoln. +I was one of you, Spoon River, in all fellowship, +But standing for the rights of property and for order. +A regular church attendant, +Sometimes appearing in your town meetings to warn you +Against the evils of discontent and envy +And to denounce those who tried to destroy the Union, +And to point to the peril of the Knights of Labor. +My success and my example are inevitable influences +In your young men and in generations to come, +In spite of attacks of newspapers like the Clarion; +A regular visitor at Springfield +When the Legislature was in session +To prevent raids upon the railroads +And the men building up the state. +Trusted by them and by you, Spoon River, equally +In spite of the whispers that I was a lobbyist. +Moving quietly through the world, rich and courted. +Dying at last, of course, but lying here +Under a stone with an open book carved upon it +And the words "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." +And now, you world-savers, who reaped nothing in life +And in death have neither stones nor epitaphs, +How do you like your silence from mouths stopped +With the dust of my triumphant career? + +Enoch Dunlap + +How many times, during the twenty years +I was your leader, friends of Spoon River, +Did you neglect the convention and caucus, +And leave the burden on my hands +Of guarding and saving the people's cause?-- +Sometimes because you were ill; +Or your grandmother was ill; +Or you drank too much and fell asleep; +Or else you said: "He is our leader, +All will be well; he fights for us; +We have nothing to do but follow." +But oh, how you cursed me when I fell, +And cursed me, saying I had betrayed you, +In leaving the caucus room for a moment, +When the people's enemies, there assembled, +Waited and watched for a chance to destroy +The Sacred Rights of the People. +You common rabble! I left the caucus +To go to the urinal. + +Ida Frickey + +NOTHlNG in life is alien to you: +I was a penniless girl from Summum +Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River. +All the houses stood before me with closed doors +And drawn shades--l was barred out; +I had no place or part in any of them. +And I walked past the old McNeely mansion, +A castle of stone Omid walks and gardens +With workmen about the place on guard +And the County and State upholding it +For its lordly owner, full of pride. +I was so hungry I had a vision: +I saw a giant pair of scissors +Dip from the sky, like the beam of a dredge, +And cut the house in two like a curtain. +But at the "Commercial" I saw a man +Who winked at me as I asked for work-- +It was Wash McNeely's son. +He proved the link in the chain of title +To half my ownership of the mansion, +Through a breach of promise suit--the scissors. +So, you see, the house, from the day I was born, +Was only waiting for me. + +Seth Compton + +WHEN I died, the circulating library +Which I built up for Spoon River, +And managed for the good of inquiring minds, +Was sold at auction on the public square, +As if to destroy the last vestige +Of my memory and influence. +For those of you who could not see the virtue +Of knowing Volney's "Ruins" as well as Butler's "Analogy" +And "Faust" as well as "Evangeline," +Were really the power in the village, +And often you asked me +"What is the use of knowing the evil in the world?" +I am out of your way now, Spoon River, +Choose your own good and call it good. +For I could never make you see +That no one knows what is good +Who knows not what is evil; +And no one knows what is true +Who knows not what is false. + +Felix Schmidt + +IT was only a little house of two rooms-- +Almost like a child's play-house-- +With scarce five acres of ground around it; +And I had so many children to feed +And school and clothe, and a wife who was sick +From bearing children. +One day lawyer Whitney came along +And proved to me that Christian Dallman, +Who owned three thousand acres of land, +Had bought the eighty that adjoined me +In eighteen hundred and seventy-one +For eleven dollars, at a sale for taxes, +While my father lay in his mortal illness. +So the quarrel arose and I went to law. +But when we came to the proof, +A survey of the land showed clear as day +That Dallman's tax deed covered my ground +And my little house of two rooms. +It served me right for stirring him up. +I lost my case and lost my place. +I left the court room and went to work +As Christian Dallman's tenant. + +Richard Bone + +When I first came to Spoon River +I did not know whether what they told me +Was true or false. +They would bring me the epitath +And stand around the shop while I worked +And say "He was so kind," "He was so wonderful," +"She was the sweetest woman," "He was a consistent Christian." +And I chiseled for them whatever they wished, +All in ignorance of the truth. +But later, as I lived among the people here, +I knew how near to the life +Were the epitaths that were ordered for them as they died. +But still I chiseled whatever they paid me to chisel +And made myself party to the false chronicles +Of the stones, +Even as the historian does who writes +Without knowing the truth, +Or because he is influenced to hide it. + +Silas Dement + +It was moon-light, and the earth sparkled +With new-fallen frost. +It was midnight and not a soul abroad. +Out of the chimney of the court-house +A gray-hound of smoke leapt and chased +The northwest wind. +I carried a ladder to the landing of the stairs +And leaned it against the frame of the trap-door +In the ceiling of the portico, +And I crawled under the roof and amid the rafters +And flung among the seasoned timbers +A lighted handful of oil-soaked waste. +Then I came down and slunk away. +In a little while the fire-bell rang-- +Clang! Clang! Clang! +And the Spoon River ladder company +Came with a dozen buckets and began to pour water +On the glorious bon-fire, growing hotter +Higher and brighter, till the walls fell in +And the limestone columns where Lincoln stood +Crashed like trees when the woodman fells them . +When I came back from Joliet +There was a new court house with a dome. +For I was punished like all who destroy +The past for the sake of the future. + +Dillard Sissman + +THE buzzards wheel slowly +In wide circles, in a sky +Faintly hazed as from dust from the road. +And a wind sweeps through the pasture where I lie +Beating the grass into long waves. +My kite is above the wind, +Though now and then it wobbles, +Like a man shaking his shoulders; +And the tail streams out momentarily, +Then sinks to rest. +And the buzzards wheel and wheel, +Sweeping the zenith with wide circles +Above my kite. And the hills sleep. +And a farm house, white as snow, +Peeps from green trees--far away. +And I watch my kite, +For the thin moon will kindle herself ere long, +Then she will swing like a pendulum dial +To the tail of my kite. +A spurt of flame like a water-dragon +Dazzles my eyes-- +I am shaken as a banner. + +E. C. Culbertson + +Is it true, Spoon River, +That in the hall--way of the New Court House +There is a tablet of bronze +Containing the embossed faces +Of Editor Whedon and Thomas Rhodes? +And is it true that my successful labors +In the County Board, without which +Not one stone would have been placed on another, +And the contributions out of my own pocket +To build the temple, are but memories among the people, +Gradually fading away, and soon to descend +With them to this oblivion where I lie? +In truth, I can so believe. +For it is a law of the Kingdom of Heaven +That whoso enters the vineyard at the eleventh hour +Shall receive a full day's pay. +And it is a law of the Kingdom of this World +That those who first oppose a good work +Seize it and make it their own, +When the corner--stone is laid, +And memorial tablets are erected. + +Shack Dye + +THE white men played all sorts of jokes on me. +They took big fish off my hook +And put little ones on, while I was away +Getting a stringer, and made me believe +I hadn't seen aright the fish I had caught. +When Burr Robbins, circus came to town +They got the ring master to let a tame leopard +Into the ring, and made me believe +I was whipping a wild beast like Samson +When l, for an offer of fifty dollars, +Dragged him out to his cage. +One time I entered my blacksmith shop +And shook as I saw some horse-shoes crawling +Across the floor, as if alive-- +Walter Simmons had put a magnet +Under the barrel of water. +Yet everyone of you, you white men, +Was fooled about fish and about leopards too, +And you didn't know any more than the horse-shoes did +What moved you about Spoon River. + +Hildrup Tubbs + +I MADE two fights for the people. +First I left my party, bearing the gonfalon +Of independence, for reform, and was defeated. +Next I used my rebel strength +To capture the standard of my old party-- +And I captured it, but I was defeated. +Discredited and discarded, misanthropical, +I turned to the solace of gold +And I used my remnant of power +To fasten myself like a saprophyte +Upon the putrescent carcass +Of Thomas Rhodes, bankrupt bank, +As assignee of the fund. +Everyone now turned from me. +My hair grew white, +My purple lusts grew gray, +Tobacco and whisky lost their savor +And for years Death ignored me +As he does a hog. + +Henry Tripp + +THE bank broke and I lost my savings. +I was sick of the tiresome game in Spoon River +And I made up my mind to run away +And leave my place in life and my family; +But just as the midnight train pulled in, +Quick off the steps jumped Cully Green +And Martin Vise, and began to fight +To settle their ancient rivalry, +Striking each other with fists that sounded +Like the blows of knotted clubs. +Now it seemed to me that Cully was winning, +When his bloody face broke into a grin +Of sickly cowardice, leaning on Martin +And whining out "We're good friends, Mart, +You know that I'm your friend." +But a terrible punch from Martin knocked him +Around and around and into a heap. +And then they arrested me as a witness, +And I lost my train and staid in Spoon River +To wage my battle of life to the end. +Oh, Cully Green, you were my savior-- +You, so ashamed and drooped for years, +Loitering listless about the streets, +And tying rags ,round your festering soul, +Who failed to fight it out. + +Granville Calhoun + +I WANTED to be County Judge +One more term, so as to round out a service +Of thirty years. +But my friends left me and joined my enemies, +And they elected a new man. +Then a spirit of revenge seized me, +And I infected my four sons with it, +And I brooded upon retaliation, +Until the great physician, Nature, +Smote me through with paralysis +To give my soul and body a rest. +Did my sons get power and money? +Did they serve the people or yoke them, +To till and harvest fields of self? +For how could they ever forget +My face at my bed-room window, +Sitting helpless amid my golden cages +Of singing canaries, +Looking at the old court-house? + +Henry C. Calhoun + +I REACHED the highest place in Spoon River, +But through what bitterness of spirit! +The face of my father, sitting speechless, +Child-like, watching his canaries, +And looking at the court-house window +Of the county judge's room, +And his admonitions to me to seek +My own in life, and punish Spoon River +To avenge the wrong the people did him, +Filled me with furious energy +To seek for wealth and seek for power. +But what did he do but send me along +The path that leads to the grove of the Furies? +I followed the path and I tell you this: +On the way to the grove you'll pass the Fates, +Shadow-eyed, bent over their weaving. +Stop for a moment, and if you see +The thread of revenge leap out of the shuttle +Then quickly snatch from Atropos +The shears and cut it, lest your sons +And the children of them and their children +Wear the envenomed robe. + +Alfred Moir + +WHY was I not devoured by self-contempt, +And rotted down by indifference +And impotent revolt like Indignation Jones? +Why, with all of my errant steps +Did I miss the fate of Willard Fluke? +And why, though I stood at Burchard's bar, +As a sort of decoy for the house to the boys +To buy the drinks, did the curse of drink +Fall on me like rain that runs off, +Leaving the soul of me dry and clean? +And why did I never kill a man Like Jack McGuire? +But instead I mounted a little in life, +And I owe it all to a book I read. +But why did I go to Mason City, +Where I chanced to see the book in a window, +With its garish cover luring my eye? +And why did my soul respond to the book, +As I read it over and over? + +Perry Zoll + +MY thanks, friends of the +County Scientific Association, +For this modest boulder, +And its little tablet of bronze. +Twice I tried to join your honored body, +And was rejected +And when my little brochure +On the intelligence of plants +Began to attract attention +You almost voted me in. +After that I grew beyond the need of you +And your recognition. +Yet I do not reject your memorial stone +Seeing that I should, in so doing, +Deprive you of honor to yourselves. + +Magrady Graham + +TELL me, was Altgeld elected Governor? +For when the returns began to come in +And Cleveland was sweeping the East +It was too much for you, poor old heart, +Who had striven for democracy +In the long, long years of defeat. +And like a watch that is worn +I felt you growing slower until you stopped. +Tell me, was Altgeld elected, +And what did he do? +Did they bring his head on a platter to a dancer, +Or did he triumph for the people? +For when I saw him +And took his hand, +The child-like blueness of his eyes +Moved me to tears, +And there was an air of eternity about him, +Like the cold, clear light that rests at dawn +On the hills! + +Archibald Higbie + +I LOATHED YOU, Spoon River. +I tried to rise above you, +I was ashamed of you. +I despised you +As the place of my nativity. +And there in Rome, among the artists, +Speaking Italian, speaking French, +I seemed to myself at times to be free +Of every trace of my origin. +I seemed to be reaching the heights of art +And to breathe the air that the masters breathed +And to see the world with their eyes. +But still they'd pass my work and say: +"What are you driving at, my friend? +Sometimes the face looks like Apollo's +At others it has a trace of Lincoln's." +There was no culture, you know, in Spoon River +And I burned with shame and held my peace. +And what could I do, all covered over +And weighted down with western soil +Except aspire, and pray for another +Birth in the world, with all of Spoon River +Rooted out of my soul? + +Tom Merritt + +AT first I suspected something-- +She acted so calm and absent-minded. +And one day I heard the back door shut +As I entered the front, and I saw him slink +Back of the smokehouse into the lot +And run across the field. +And I meant to kill him on sight. +But that day, walking near Fourth Bridge +Without a stick or a stone at hand, +All of a sudden I saw him standing +Scared to death, holding his rabbits, +And all I could say was, "Don't, Don't, Don't," +As he aimed and fired at my heart. + +Mrs. Merritt + +SILENT before the jury +Returning no word to the judge when he asked me +If I had aught to say against the sentence, +Only shaking my head. +What could I say to people who thought +That a woman of thirty-five was at fault +When her lover of nineteen killed her husband? +Even though she had said to him over and over, +"Go away, Elmer, go far away, +I have maddened your brain with the gift of my body: +You will do some terrible thing." +And just as I feared, he killed my husband; +With which I had nothing to do, before +God Silent for thirty years in prison +And the iron gates of Joliet +Swung as the gray and silent trusties +Carried me out in a coffin. + +Elmer Karr + +WHAT but the love of God could have softened +And made forgiving the people of Spoon River +Toward me who wronged the bed of Thomas Merritt +And murdered him beside? +Oh, loving hearts that took me in again +When I returned from fourteen years in prison! +Oh, helping hands that in the church received me +And heard with tears my penitent confession, +Who took the sacrament of bread and wine! +Repent, ye living ones, and rest with Jesus. + +Elizabeth Childers + +DUST of my dust, +And dust with my dust, +O, child who died as you entered the world, +Dead with my death! +Not knowing +Breath, though you tried so hard, +With a heart that beat when you lived with me, +And stopped when you left me for Life. +It is well, my child. +For you never traveled +The long, long way that begins with school days, +When little fingers blur under the tears +That fall on the crooked letters. +And the earliest wound, when a little mate +Leaves you alone for another; +And sickness, and the face of +Fear by the bed; +The death of a father or mother; +Or shame for them, or poverty; +The maiden sorrow of school days ended; +And eyeless Nature that makes you drink +From the cup of Love, though you know it's poisoned; +To whom would your flower-face have been lifted? +Botanist, weakling? +Cry of what blood to yours?-- +Pure or foul, for it makes no matter, +It's blood that calls to our blood. +And then your children--oh, what might they be? +And what your sorrow? +Child! Child Death is better than Life. + +Edith Conant + +WE stand about this place--we, the memories; +And shade our eyes because we dread to read: +"June 17th, 1884, aged 21 years and 3 days." +And all things are changed. +And we--we, the memories, stand here for ourselves alone, +For no eye marks us, or would know why we are here. +Your husband is dead, your sister lives far away, +Your father is bent with age; +He has forgotten you, he scarcely leaves the house +Any more. No one remembers your exquisite face, +Your lyric voice! +How you sang, even on the morning you were stricken, +With piercing sweetness, with thrilling sorrow, +Before the advent of the child which died with you. +It is all forgotten, save by us, the memories, +Who are forgotten by the world. +All is changed, save the river and the hill-- +Even they are changed. +Only the burning sun and the quiet stars are the same. +And we--we, the memories, stand here in awe, +Our eyes closed with the weariness of tears-- +In immeasurable weariness + +Father Malloy + +YOU are over there, Father Malloy, +Where holy ground is, and the cross marks every grave, +Not here with us on the hill-- +Us of wavering faith, and clouded vision +And drifting hope, and unforgiven sins. +You were so human, Father Malloy, +Taking a friendly glass sometimes with us, +Siding with us who would rescue Spoon River +From the coldness and the dreariness of village morality. +You were like a traveler who brings a little box of sand +From the wastes about the pyramids +And makes them real and Egypt real. +You were a part of and related to a great past, +And yet you were so close to many of us. +You believed in the joy of life. +You did not seem to be ashamed of the flesh. +You faced life as it is, +And as it changes. +Some of us almost came to you, Father Malloy, +Seeing how your church had divined the heart, +And provided for it, +Through Peter the Flame, +Peter the Rock. + +Ami Green + +NOT "a youth with hoary head and haggard eye", +But an old man with a smooth skin +And black hair! I had the face of a boy as long as I lived, +And for years a soul that was stiff and bent, +In a world which saw me just as a jest, +To be hailed familiarly when it chose, +And loaded up as a man when it chose, +Being neither man nor boy. +In truth it was soul as well as body +Which never matured, and I say to you +That the much-sought prize of eternal youth +Is just arrested growth. + +Calvin Campbell + +YE who are kicking against Fate, +Tell me how it is that on this hill-side +Running down to the river, +Which fronts the sun and the south-wind, +This plant draws from the air and soil +Poison and becomes poison ivy? +And this plant draws from the same air and soil +Sweet elixirs and colors and becomes arbutus? +And both flourish? +You may blame Spoon River for what it is, +But whom do you blame for the will in you +That feeds itself and makes you dock-weed, +Jimpson, dandelion or mullen +And which can never use any soil or air +So as to make you jessamine or wistaria? + +Henry Layton + +WHOEVER thou art who passest by +Know that my father was gentle, +And my mother was violent, +While I was born the whole of such hostile halves, +Not intermixed and fused, +But each distinct, feebly soldered together. +Some of you saw me as gentle, +Some as violent, +Some as both. +But neither half of me wrought my ruin. +It was the falling asunder of halves, +Never a part of each other, +That left me a lifeless soul. + +Harlan Sewall + +You never understood, +O unknown one, +Why it was I repaid +Your devoted friendship and delicate ministrations +First with diminished thanks, +Afterward by gradually withdrawing my presence from you, +So that I might not be compelled to thank you, +And then with silence which followed upon +Our final Separation. +You had cured my diseased soul. +But to cure it +You saw my disease, you knew my secret, +And that is why I fled from you. +For though when our bodies rise from pain +We kiss forever the watchful hands +That gave us wormwood, while we shudder +For thinking of the wormwood, +A soul that's cured is a different matter, +For there we'd blot from memory +The soft--toned words, the searching eyes, +And stand forever oblivious, +Not so much of the sorrow itself +As of the hand that healed it. + +Ippolit Konovaloff + +I WAS a gun-smith in Odessa. +One night the police broke in the room +Where a group of us were reading Spencer. +And seized our books and arrested us. +But I escaped and came to New York +And thence to Chicago, and then to Spoon River, +Where I could study my Kant in peace +And eke out a living repairing guns +Look at my moulds! My architectonics +One for a barrel, one for a hammer +And others for other parts of a gun! +Well, now suppose no gun--smith living +Had anything else but duplicate moulds +Of these I show you--well, all guns +Would be just alike, with a hammer to hit +The cap and a barrel to carry the shot +All acting alike for themselves, and all +Acting against each other alike. +And there would be your world of guns! +Which nothing could ever free from itself +Except a Moulder with different moulds +To mould the metal over. + +Henry Phipps + +I WAS the Sunday-school superintendent, +The dummy president of the wagon works +And the canning factory, +Acting for Thomas Rhodes and the banking clique; +My son the cashier of the bank, +Wedded to Rhodes, daughter, +My week days spent in making money, +My Sundays at church and in prayer. +In everything a cog in the wheel of things--as--they-are: +Of money, master and man, made white +With the paint of the Christian creed. +And then: +The bank collapsed. +I stood and hooked at the wrecked machine-- +The wheels with blow-holes stopped with putty and painted; +The rotten bolts, the broken rods; +And only the hopper for souls fit to be used again +In a new devourer of life, +When newspapers, judges and money-magicians +Build over again. +I was stripped to the bone, but I lay in the Rock of Ages, +Seeing now through the game, no longer a dupe, +And knowing "Othe upright shall dwell in the land +But the years of the wicked shall be shortened." +Then suddenly, Dr. Meyers discovered +A cancer in my liver. +I was not, after all, the particular care of God +Why, even thus standing on a peak +Above the mists through which I had climbed, +And ready for larger life in the world, +Eternal forces +Moved me on with a push. + +Harry Wilmans + +I WAS just turned twenty-one, +And Henry Phipps, the Sunday-school superintendent, +Made a speech in Bindle's Opera House. +"The honor of the flag must be upheld," he said, +"Whether it be assailed by a barbarous tribe of Tagalogs +Or the greatest power in Europe." +And we cheered and cheered the speech and the flag he waved +As he spoke. +And I went to the war in spite of my father, +And followed the flag till I saw it raised +By our camp in a rice field near Manila, +And all of us cheered and cheered it. +But there were flies and poisonous things; +And there was the deadly water, +And the cruel heat, +And the sickening, putrid food; +And the smell of the trench just back of the tents +Where the soldiers went to empty themselves; +And there were the whores who followed us, full of syphilis; +And beastly acts between ourselves or alone, +With bullying, hatred, degradation among us, +And days of loathing and nights of fear +To the hour of the charge through the steaming swamp, +Following the flag, +Till I fell with a scream, shot through the guts. +Now there's a flag over me in +Spoon River. A flag! +A flag! + +John Wasson + +OH! the dew-wet grass of the meadow in North Carolina +Through which Rebecca followed me wailing, wailing, +One child in her arms, and three that ran along wailing, +Lengthening out the farewell to me off to the war with the British, +And then the long, hard years down to the day of Yorktown. +And then my search for Rebecca, +Finding her at last in Virginia, +Two children dead in the meanwhile. +We went by oxen to Tennessee, +Thence after years to Illinois, +At last to Spoon River. +We cut the buffalo grass, +We felled the forests, +We built the school houses, built the bridges, +Leveled the roads and tilled the fields +Alone with poverty, scourges, death-- +If Harry Wilmans who fought the Filipinos +Is to have a flag on his grave +Take it from mine. + +Many Soldiers + +THE idea danced before us as a flag; +The sound of martial music; +The thrill of carrying a gun; +Advancement in the world on coming home; +A glint of glory, wrath for foes; +A dream of duty to country or to God. +But these were things in ourselves, shining before us, +They were not the power behind us, +Which was the Almighty hand of Life, +Like fire at earth's center making mountains, +Or pent up waters that cut them through. +Do you remember the iron band +The blacksmith, Shack Dye, welded +Around the oak on Bennet's lawn, +From which to swing a hammock, +That daughter Janet might repose in, reading +On summer afternoons? +And that the growing tree at last +Sundered the iron band? +But not a cell in all the tree +Knew aught save that it thrilled with life, +Nor cared because the hammock fell +In the dust with Milton's Poems. + +Godwin James + +HARRY WILMANS! You who fell in a swamp +Near Manila, following the flag +You were not wounded by the greatness of a dream, +Or destroyed by ineffectual work, +Or driven to madness by Satanic snags; +You were not torn by aching nerves, +Nor did you carry great wounds to your old age. +You did not starve, for the government fed you. +You did not suffer yet cry "forward" +To an army which you led +Against a foe with mocking smiles, +Sharper than bayonets. +You were not smitten down +By invisible bombs. +You were not rejected +By those for whom you were defeated. +You did not eat the savorless bread +Which a poor alchemy had made from ideals. +You went to Manila, Harry Wilmans, +While I enlisted in the bedraggled army +Of bright-eyed, divine youths, +Who surged forward, who were driven back and fell +Sick, broken, crying, shorn of faith, +Following the flag of the Kingdom of Heaven. +You and I, Harry Wilmans, have fallen +In our several ways, not knowing +Good from bad, defeat from victory, +Nor what face it is that smiles +Behind the demoniac mask. + +Lyman King + +YOU may think, passer-by, that Fate +Is a pit-fall outside of yourself, +Around which you may walk by the use of foresight +And wisdom. +Thus you believe, viewing the lives of other men, +As one who in God-like fashion bends over an anthill, +Seeing how their difficulties could be avoided. +But pass on into life: +In time you shall see Fate approach you +In the shape of your own image in the mirror; +Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth, +And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest, +And you shall know that guest +And read the authentic message of his eyes. + +Caroline Branson + +WITH our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked, +As often before, the April fields till star--light +Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness +Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood, +Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing +Like notes of music that run together, into winning, +In the inspired improvisation of love! +But to put back of us as a canticle ended +The rapt enchantment of the flesh, +In which our souls swooned, down, down, +Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves-- +Annihilated in love! +To leave these behind for a room with lamps: +And to stand with our Secret mocking itself, +And hiding itself amid flowers and mandolins, +Stared at by all between salad and coffee. +And to see him tremble, and feel myself +Prescient, as one who signs a bond-- +Not flaming with gifts and pledges heaped +With rosy hands over his brow. +And then, O night! deliberate! unlovely! +With all of our wooing blotted out by the winning, +In a chosen room in an hour that was known to all! +Next day he sat so listless, almost cold +So strangely changed, wondering why I wept, +Till a kind of sick despair and voluptuous madness +Seized us to make the pact of death. +A stalk of the earth-sphere, +Frail as star-light; +Waiting to be drawn once again Into creation's stream. +But next time to be given birth +Gazed at by Raphael and St. Francis +Sometimes as they pass. +For I am their little brother, +To be known clearly face to face +Through a cycle of birth hereafter run. +You may know the seed and the soil; +You may feel the cold rain fall, +But only the earth--sphere, only heaven +Knows the secret of the seed +In the nuptial chamber under the soil. +Throw me into the stream again, +Give me another trial-- +Save me, Shelley! + +Anne Rutledge + +OUT of me unworthy and unknown +The vibrations of deathless music; +"With malice toward none, with charity for all.', +Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions, +And the beneficent face of a nation +Shining with justice and truth. +I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds, +Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln, +Wedded to him, not through union, But through separation. +Bloom forever, O Republic, +From the dust of my bosom! + +Hamlet Micure + +IN a lingering fever many visions come to you: +I was in the little house again +With its great yard of clover +Running down to the board-fence, +Shadowed by the oak tree, +Where we children had our swing. +Yet the little house was a manor hall +Set in a lawn, and by the lawn was the sea. +I was in the room where little Paul +Strangled from diphtheria, +But yet it was not this room-- +It was a sunny verandah enclosed +With mullioned windows +And in a chair sat a man in a dark cloak +With a face like Euripides. +He had come to visit me, or I had gone to visit him-- I could not tell. +We could hear the beat of the sea, the clover nodded +Under a summer wind, and little Paul came +With clover blossoms to the window and smiled. +Then I said: "What is "divine despair" Alfred?" +"Have you read OTears, Idle Tears'?" he asked. +"Yes, but you do not there express divine despair." +"My poor friend," he answered, "that was why the despair +Was divine." + +Mabel Osborne + +YOUR red blossoms amid green leaves +Are drooping, beautiful geranium! +But you do not ask for water. +You cannot speak! +You do not need to speak-- +Everyone knows that you are dying of thirst, +Yet they do not bring water! +They pass on, saying: +"The geranium wants water." +And I, who had happiness to share +And longed to share your happiness; +I who loved you, Spoon River, +And craved your love, +Withered before your eyes, Spoon River-- +Thirsting, thirsting, +Voiceless from chasteness of soul to ask you for love, +You who knew and saw me perish before you, +Like this geranium which someone has planted over me, +And left to die. + +William H. Herndon + +THERE by the window in the old house +Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley, +My days of labor closed, sitting out life's decline, +Day by day did I look in my memory, +As one who gazes in an enchantress' crystal globe, +And I saw the figures of the past +As if in a pageant glassed by a shining dream, +Move through the incredible sphere of time. +And I saw a man arise from the soil like a fabled giant +And throw himself over a deathless destiny, +Master of great armies, head of the republic, +Bringing together into a dithyramb of recreative song +The epic hopes of a people; +At the same time Vulcan of sovereign fires, +Where imperishable shields and swords were beaten out +From spirits tempered in heaven. +Look in the crystal! +See how he hastens on +To the place where his path comes up to the path +Of a child of Plutarch and Shakespeare. +O Lincoln, actor indeed, playing well your part +And Booth, who strode in a mimic play within the play, +Often and often I saw you, +As the cawing crows winged their way to the wood +Over my house--top at solemn sunsets, +There by my window, +Alone. + +Rutherford McDowell + +THEY brought me ambrotypes +Of the old pioneers to enlarge. +And sometimes one sat for me-- +Some one who was in being +When giant hands from the womb of the world +Tore the republic. +What was it in their eyes?-- +For I could never fathom +That mystical pathos of drooped eyelids, +And the serene sorrow of their eyes. +It was like a pool of water, +Amid oak trees at the edge of a forest, +Where the leaves fall, +As you hear the crow of a cock +From a far--off farm house, seen near the hills +Where the third generation lives, and the strong men +And the strong women are gone and forgotten. +And these grand--children and great grand-children +Of the pioneers! +Truly did my camera record their faces, too, +With so much of the old strength gone, +And the old faith gone, +And the old mastery of life gone, +And the old courage gone, +Which labors and loves and suffers and sings +Under the sun! + +Hannah Armstrong + +I WROTE him a letter asking him for old times, sake +To discharge my sick boy from the army; +But maybe he couldn't read it. +Then I went to town and had James Garber, +Who wrote beautifully, write him a letter. +But maybe that was lost in the mails. +So I traveled all the way to Washington. +I was more than an hour finding the White House. +And when I found it they turned me away, +Hiding their smiles. +Then I thought: "Oh, well, he ain't the same as when I boarded him +And he and my husband worked together +And all of us called him Abe, there in Menard." +As a last attempt I turned to a guard and said: +"Please say it's old Aunt Hannah Armstrong +From Illinois, come to see him about her sick boy +In the army." +Well, just in a moment they let me in! +And when he saw me he broke in a laugh, +And dropped his business as president, +And wrote in his own hand Doug's discharge, +Talking the while of the early days, +And telling stories. + +Lucinda Matlock + +I WENT to the dances at Chandlerville, +And played snap-out at Winchester. +One time we changed partners, +Driving home in the moonlight of middle June, +And then I found Davis. +We were married and lived together for seventy years, +Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children, +Eight of whom we lost +Ere I had reached the age of sixty. +I spun, +I wove, +I kept the house, +I nursed the sick, +I made the garden, and for holiday +Rambled over the fields where sang the larks, +And by Spoon River gathering many a shell, +And many a flower and medicinal weed-- +Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys. +At ninety--six I had lived enough, that is all, +And passed to a sweet repose. +What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness, +Anger, discontent and drooping hopes? +Degenerate sons and daughters, +Life is too strong for you-- +It takes life to love Life. + +Davis Matlock + +SUPPOSE it is nothing but the hive: +That there are drones and workers +And queens, and nothing but storing honey-- +(Material things as well as culture and wisdom)-- +For the next generation, this generation never living, +Except as it swarms in the sun-light of youth, +Strengthening its wings on what has been gathered, +And tasting, on the way to the hive +From the clover field, the delicate spoil. +Suppose all this, and suppose the truth: +That the nature of man is greater +Than nature's need in the hive; +And you must bear the burden of life, +As well as the urge from your spirit's excess-- +Well, I say to live it out like a god +Sure of immortal life, though you are in doubt, +Is the way to live it. +If that doesn't make God proud of you +Then God is nothing but gravitation +Or sleep is the golden goal. + +Jennie M'Grew + +NOT, where the stairway turns in the dark +A hooded figure, shriveled under a flowing cloak! +Not yellow eyes in the room at night, +Staring out from a surface of cobweb gray! +And not the flap of a condor wing +When the roar of life in your ears begins +As a sound heard never before! +But on a sunny afternoon, +By a country road, +Where purple rag-weeds bloom along a straggling fence +And the field is gleaned, and the air is still +To see against the sun-light something black +Like a blot with an iris rim-- +That is the sign to eyes of second sight. . . +And that I saw! + +Columbus Cheney + +THIS weeping willow! +Why do you not plant a few +For the millions of children not yet born, +As well as for us? +Are they not non-existent, or cells asleep +Without mind? +Or do they come to earth, their birth +Rupturing the memory of previous being? +Answer! +The field of unexplored intuition is yours. +But in any case why not plant willows for them, +As well as for us? +Marie Bateson +You observe the carven hand +With the index finger pointing heavenward. +That is the direction, no doubt. +But how shall one follow it? +It is well to abstain from murder and lust, +To forgive, do good to others, worship God +Without graven images. +But these are external means after all +By which you chiefly do good to yourself. +The inner kernel is freedom, +It is light, purity-- +I can no more, +Find the goal or lose it, according to your vision. + +Tennessee Claflin Shope + +I WAS the laughing-stock of the village, +Chiefly of the people of good sense, as they call themselves-- +Also of the learned, like Rev. Peet, who read Greek +The same as English. +For instead of talking free trade, +Or preaching some form of baptism; +Instead of believing in the efficacy +Of walking cracks, picking up pins the right way, +Seeing the new moon over the right shoulder, +Or curing rheumatism with blue glass, +I asserted the sovereignty of my own soul. +Before Mary Baker G. Eddy even got started +With what she called science I had mastered the "Bhagavad Gita," +And cured my soul, before Mary Began to cure bodies with souls-- +Peace to all worlds! + +Imanuel Ehrenhardt + +I BEGAN with Sir William Hamilton's lectures. +Then studied Dugald Stewart; +And then John Locke on the Understanding, +And then Descartes, Fichte and Schelling, +Kant and then Schopenhauer-- +Books I borrowed from old Judge Somers. +All read with rapturous industry +Hoping it was reserved to me +To grasp the tail of the ultimate secret, +And drag it out of its hole. +My soul flew up ten thousand miles +And only the moon looked a little bigger. +Then I fell back, how glad of the earth! +All through the soul of William Jones +Who showed me a letter of John Muir. + +Samuel Gardner + +I WHO kept the greenhouse, +Lover of trees and flowers, +Oft in life saw this umbrageous elm, +Measuring its generous branches with my eye, +And listened to its rejoicing leaves +Lovingly patting each other +With sweet aeolian whispers. +And well they might: +For the roots had grown so wide and deep +That the soil of the hill could not withhold +Aught of its virtue, enriched by rain, +And warmed by the sun; +But yielded it all to the thrifty roots, +Through which it was drawn and whirled to the trunk, +And thence to the branches, and into the leaves, +Wherefrom the breeze took life and sang. +Now I, an under--tenant of the earth, can see +That the branches of a tree +Spread no wider than its roots. +And how shall the soul of a man +Be larger than the life he has lived? + +Dow Kritt + +SAMUEL is forever talking of his elm-- +But I did not need to die to learn about roots: +I, who dug all the ditches about Spoon River. +Look at my elm! +Sprung from as good a seed as his, +Sown at the same time, +It is dying at the top: +Not from lack of life, nor fungus, +Nor destroying insect, as the sexton thinks. +Look, Samuel, where the roots have struck rock, +And can no further spread. +And all the while the top of the tree +Is tiring itself out, and dying, +Trying to grow. + +William Jones + +ONCE in a while a curious weed unknown to me, +Needing a name from my books; +Once in a while a letter from Yeomans. +Out of the mussel-shells gathered along the shore +Sometimes a pearl with a glint like meadow rue: +Then betimes a letter from Tyndall in England, +Stamped with the stamp of Spoon River. +I, lover of Nature, beloved for my love of her, +Held such converse afar with the great +Who knew her better than I. +Oh, there is neither lesser nor greater, +Save as we make her greater and win from her keener delight. +With shells from the river cover me, cover me. +I lived in wonder, worshipping earth and heaven. +I have passed on the march eternal of endless life. + +William Goode + +To all in the village I seemed, no doubt, +To go this way and that way, aimlessly. . +But here by the river you can see at twilight +The soft--winged bats fly zig-zag here and there-- +They must fly so to catch their food. +And if you have ever lost your way at night, +In the deep wood near Miller's Ford, +And dodged this way and now that, +Wherever the light of the Milky Way shone through, +Trying to find the path, +You should understand I sought the way +With earnest zeal, and all my wanderings +Were wanderings in the quest. + +J. Milton Miles + +WHENEVER the Presbyterian bell +Was rung by itself, I knew it as the Presbyterian bell. +But when its sound was mingled +With the sound of the Methodist, the Christian, +The Baptist and the Congregational, +I could no longer distinguish it, +Nor any one from the others, or either of them. +And as many voices called to me in life +Marvel not that I could not tell +The true from the false, +Nor even, at last, the voice that +I should have known. + +Faith Matheny + +AT first you will know not what they mean, +And you may never know, +And we may never tell you:-- +These sudden flashes in your soul, +Like lambent lightning on snowy clouds +At midnight when the moon is full. +They come in solitude, or perhaps +You sit with your friend, and all at once +A silence falls on speech, and his eyes +Without a flicker glow at you:-- +You two have seen the secret together, +He sees it in you, and you in him. +And there you sit thrilling lest the +Mystery Stand before you and strike you dead +With a splendor like the sun's. +Be brave, all souls who have such visions +As your body's alive as mine is dead, +You're catching a little whiff of the ether +Reserved for God Himself. + +Willie Metcalf + +I WAS Willie Metcalf. +They used to call me "Doctor Meyers," +Because, they said, I looked like him. +And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire. +I lived in the livery stable, +Sleeping on the floor +Side by side with Roger Baughman's bulldog, +Or sometimes in a stall. +I could crawl between the legs of the wildest horses +Without getting kicked--we knew each other. + On spring days I tramped through the country +To get the feeling, which I sometimes lost, +That I was not a separate thing from the earth. +I used to lose myself, as if in sleep, +By lying with eyes half-open in the woods. +Sometimes I taIked with animals-- even toads and snakes-- +Anything that had an eye to look into. +Once I saw a stone in the sunshine +Trying to turn into jelly. +In April days in this cemetery +The dead people gathered all about me, +And grew still, like a congregation in silent prayer. +I never knew whether I was a part of the earth +With flowers growing in me, or whether I walked-- +Now I know. + + +Willie Pennington + +THEY called me the weakling, the simpleton, +For my brothers were strong and beautiful, +While I, the last child of parents who had aged, +Inherited only their residue of power. +But they, my brothers, were eaten up +In the fury of the flesh, which I had not, +Made pulp in the activity of the senses, which I had not, +Hardened by the growth of the lusts, which I had not, +Though making names and riches for themselves. +Then I, the weak one, the simpleton, +Resting in a little corner of life, +Saw a vision, and through me many saw the vision, +Not knowing it was through me. +Thus a tree sprang +From me, a mustard seed. + +The Village Atheist + +YE young debaters over the doctrine +Of the soul's immortality +I who lie here was the village atheist, +Talkative, contentious, versed in the arguments +Of the infidels. But through a long sickness +Coughing myself to death I read the +Upanishads and the poetry of Jesus. +And they lighted a torch of hope and intuition +And desire which the Shadow +Leading me swiftly through the caverns of darkness, +Could not extinguish. +Listen to me, ye who live in the senses +And think through the senses only: +Immortality is not a gift, +Immortality is an achievement; + And only those who strive mightily +Shall possess it. + +John Ballard + +IN the lust of my strength +I cursed God, but he paid no attention to me: +I might as well have cursed the stars. +In my last sickness I was in agony, but I was resolute +And I cursed God for my suffering; +Still He paid no attention to me; +He left me alone, as He had always done. +I might as well have cursed the Presbyterian steeple. +Then, as I grew weaker, a terror came over me: +Perhaps I had alienated God by cursing him. +One day Lydia Humphrey brought me a bouquet +And it occurred to me to try to make friends with God, +So I tried to make friends with Him; +But I might as well have tried to make friends with the bouquet. +Now I was very close to the secret, +For I really could make friends with the bouquet +By holding close to me the love in me for the bouquet +And so I was creeping upon the secret, but-- + +Julian Scott + +TOWARD the last +The truth of others was untruth to me; +The justice of others injustice to me; +Their reasons for death, reasons with me for life; +Their reasons for life, reasons with me for death; +I would have killed those they saved, +And save those they killed. +And I saw how a god, if brought to earth, +Must act out what he saw and thought, +And could not live in this world of men +And act among them side by side +Without continual clashes. +The dust's for crawling, heaven's for flying-- +Wherefore, O soul, whose wings are grown, +Soar upward to the sun! + +Alfonso Churchill + +THEY laughed at me as "Prof. Moon," +As a boy in Spoon River, born with the thirst +Of knowing about the stars. +They jeered when I spoke of the lunar mountains, +And the thrilling heat and cold, +And the ebon valleys by silver peaks, +And Spica quadrillions of miles away, +And the littleness of man. +But now that my grave is honored, friends, +Let it not be because I taught +The lore of the stars in Knox College, +But rather for this: that through the stars +I preached the greatness of man, +Who is none the less a part of the scheme of things +For the distance of Spica or the Spiral Nebulae; +Nor any the less a part of the question +Of what the drama means. + + Zilpha Marsh + +AT four o'clock in late October +I sat alone in the country school-house +Back from the road ,mid stricken fields, +And an eddy of wind blew leaves on the pane, +And crooned in the flue of the cannon-stove, +With its open door blurring the shadows +With the spectral glow of a dying fire. +In an idle mood I was running the planchette-- +All at once my wrist grew limp, +And my hand moved rapidly over the board, +OTill the name of "Charles Guiteau" was spelled, +Who threatened to materialize before me. +I rose and fled from the room bare-headed +Into the dusk, afraid of my gift. +And after that the spirits swarmed-- +Chaucer, Caesar, Poe and Marlowe, +Cleopatra and Mrs. Surratt-- +Wherever I went, with messages,-- +Mere trifling twaddle, Spoon River agreed. +You talk nonsense to children, don't you? +And suppose I see what you never saw +And never heard of and have no word for, +I must talk nonsense when you ask me +What it is I see! + +James Garber + +Do you remember, passer-by, the path +I wore across the lot where now stands the opera house +Hasting with swift feet to work through many years? +Take its meaning to heart: +You too may walk, after the hills at Miller's Ford +Seem no longer far away; +Long after you see them near at hand, +Beyond four miles of meadow; +And after woman's love is silent +Saying no more: "l will save you." +And after the faces of friends and kindred +Become as faded photographs, pitifully silent, +Sad for the look which means: +"We cannot help you." +And after you no longer reproach mankind +With being in league against your soul's uplifted hands-- +Themselves compelled at midnight and at noon +To watch with steadfast eye their destinies; +After you have these understandings, think of me +And of my path, who walked therein and knew +That neither man nor woman, neither toil, +Nor duty, gold nor power +Can ease the longing of the soul, +The loneliness of the soul! + +Lydia Humphrey + +BACK and forth, back and forth, to and from the church, +With my Bible under my arm +OTill I was gray and old; +Unwedded, alone in the world, +Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation, +And children in the church. +I know they laughed and thought me queer. +I knew of the eagle souls that flew high in the sunlight, +Above the spire of the church, and laughed at the church, +Disdaining me, not seeing me. +But if the high air was sweet to them, sweet was the church to me. +It was the vision, vision, vision of the poets +Democratized! + +Le Roy Goldman + +WHAT will you do when you come to die, +If all your life long you have rejected Jesus, +And know as you lie there, +He is not your friend?" +Over and over I said, I, the revivalist. +Ah, yes! but there are friends and friends. +And blessed are you, say I, who know all now, +You who have lost ere you pass, +A father or mother, or old grandfather or mother +Some beautiful soul that lived life strongly +And knew you all through, and loved you ever, +Who would not fail to speak for you, +And give God an intimate view of your soul +As only one of your flesh could do it. +That is the hand your hand will reach for, +To lead you along the corridor +To the court where you are a stranger! + +Gustav Richter + +AFTER a long day of work in my hot--houses +Sleep was sweet, but if you sleep on your left side +Your dreams may be abruptly ended. +I was among my flowers where some one +Seemed to be raising them on trial, +As if after-while to be transplanted +To a larger garden of freer air. +And I was disembodied vision +Amid a light, as it were the sun +Had floated in and touched the roof of glass +Like a toy balloon and softly bursted, +And etherealized in golden air. +And all was silence, except the splendor +Was immanent with thought as clear +As a speaking voice, and I, as thought, +Could hear a +Presence think as he walked +Between the boxes pinching off leaves, +Looking for bugs and noting values, +With an eye that saw it all: +"Homer, oh yes! Pericles, good. +Caesar Borgia, what shall be done with it? +Dante, too much manure, perhaps. +Napoleon, leave him awhile as yet. +Shelley, more soil. Shakespeare, needs spraying--" +Clouds, eh!-- + +Arlo Will + +DID you ever see an alligator +Come up to the air from the mud, +Staring blindly under the full glare of noon? +Have you seen the stabled horses at night +Tremble and start back at the sight of a lantern? +Have you ever walked in darkness +When an unknown door was open before you +And you stood, it seemed, in the light of a thousand candles +Of delicate wax? +Have you walked with the wind in your ears +And the sunlight about you +And found it suddenly shine with an inner splendor? +Out of the mud many times +Before many doors of light +Through many fields of splendor, +Where around your steps a soundless glory scatters +Like new--fallen snow, +Will you go through earth, O strong of soul, +And through unnumbered heavens +To the final flame! + +Captain Orlando Killion + +OH, YOU young radicals and dreamers, +You dauntless fledglings +Who pass by my headstone, +Mock not its record of my captaincy in the army +And my faith in God! +They are not denials of each other. +Go by reverently, and read with sober care +How a great people, riding with defiant shouts +The centaur of Revolution, +Spurred and whipped to frenzy, +Shook with terror, seeing the mist of the sea +Over the precipice they were nearing, +And fell from his back in precipitate awe +To celebrate the Feast of the Supreme Being. +Moved by the same sense of vast reality +Of life and death, and burdened as they were +With the fate of a race, +How was I, a little blasphemer, +Caught in the drift of a nation's unloosened flood, +To remain a blasphemer, +And a captain in the army? + +Joseph Dixon + +WHO carved this shattered harp on my stone? +I died to you, no doubt. But how many harps and pianos +Wired I and tightened and disentangled for you, +Making them sweet again--with tuning fork or without? +Oh well! A harp leaps out of the ear of a man, you say, +But whence the ear that orders the length of the strings +To a magic of numbers flying before your thought +Through a door that closes against your breathless wonder? +Is there no Ear round the ear of a man, that it senses +Through strings and columns of air the soul of sound? +I thrill as I call it a tuning fork that catches +The waves of mingled music and light from afar, +The antennae of +Thought that listens through utmost space. +Surely the concord that ruled my spirit is proof +Of an Ear that tuned me, able to tune me over +And use me again if I am worthy to use. + +Russell Kincaid + +IN the last spring I ever knew, +In those last days, I sat in the forsaken orchard +Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered +The hills at Miller's Ford; +Just to muse on the apple tree +With its ruined trunk and blasted branches, +And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms +Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle, +Never to grow in fruit. +And there was I with my spirit girded +By the flesh half dead, the senses numb +Yet thinking of youth and the earth in youth,-- +Such phantom blossoms palely shining +Over the lifeless boughs of Time. +O earth that leaves us ere heaven takes us! +Had I been only a tree to shiver +With dreams of spring and a leafy youth, +Then I had fallen in the cyclone +Which swept me out of the soul's suspense +Where it's neither earth nor heaven. + +Aaron Hatfield + +BETTER than granite, Spoon River, +Is the memory-picture you keep of me +Standing before the pioneer men and women +There at Concord Church on Communion day. +Speaking in broken voice of the peasant youth +Of Galilee who went to the city +And was killed by bankers and lawyers; +My voice mingling with the June wind +That blew over wheat fields from Atterbury; +While the white stones in the burying ground +Around the Church shimmered in the summer sun. +And there, though my own memories +Were too great to bear, were you, O pioneers, +With bowed heads breathing forth your sorrow +For the sons killed in battle and the daughters +And little children who vanished in life's morning, +Or at the intolerable hour of noon. +But in those moments of tragic silence, +When the wine and bread were passed, +Came the reconciliation for us-- +Us the ploughmen and the hewers of wood, +Us the peasants, brothers of the peasant of Galilee-- +To us came the Comforter +And the consolation of tongues of flame! + +Isaiah Beethoven + +THEY told me I had three months to live, +So I crept to Bernadotte, +And sat by the mill for hours and hours +Where the gathered waters deeply moving +Seemed not to move: +O world, that's you! +You are but a widened place in the river +Where Life looks down and we rejoice for her +Mirrored in us, and so we dream And turn away, but when again +We look for the face, behold the low-lands +And blasted cotton-wood trees where we empty +Into the larger stream! +But here by the mill the castled clouds +Mocked themselves in the dizzy water; +And over its agate floor at night +The flame of the moon ran under my eyes +Amid a forest stillness broken +By a flute in a hut on the hill. +At last when I came to lie in bed +Weak and in pain, with the dreams about me, +The soul of the river had entered my soul, +And the gathered power of my soul was moving +So swiftly it seemed to be at rest +Under cities of cloud and under +Spheres of silver and changing worlds-- +Until I saw a flash of trumpets +Above the battlements over Time. + +Elijah Browning + +I WAS among multitudes of children +Dancing at the foot of a mountain. +A breeze blew out of the east and swept them as leaves, +Driving some up the slopes. . . . +All was changed. +Here were flying lights, and mystic moons, and dream-music. +A cloud fell upon us. +When it lifted all was changed. +I was now amid multitudes who were wrangling. +Then a figure in shimmering gold, and one with a trumpet, +And one with a sceptre stood before me. +They mocked me and danced a rigadoon and vanished. . . . +All was changed again. +Out of a bower of poppies +A woman bared her breasts and lifted her open mouth to mine. +I kissed her. +The taste of her lips was like salt. +She left blood on my lips. +I fell exhausted. +I arose and ascended higher, but a mist as from an iceberg +Clouded my steps. +I was cold and in pain. +Then the sun streamed on me again, +And I saw the mists below me hiding all below them. +And I, bent over my staff, knew myself +Silhouetted against the snow. +And above me +Was the soundless air, pierced by a cone of ice, +Over which hung a solitary star! +A shudder of ecstasy, a shudder of fear +Ran through me. +But I could not return to the slopes-- +Nay, I wished not to return. +For the spent waves of the symphony of freedom +Lapped the ethereal cliffs about me. +Therefore I climbed to the pinnacle. +I flung away my staff. +I touched that star +With my outstretched hand. +I vanished utterly. +For the mountain delivers to +Infinite Truth +Whosoever touches the star. + +Webster Ford + +Do you remember, O Delphic Apollo, +The sunset hour by the river, when Mickey M'Grew +Cried, "There's a ghost," and I, "It's Delphic Apollo,". +And the son of the banker derided us, saying, "It's light +By the flags at the water's edge, you half-witted fools." +And from thence, as the wearisome years rolled on, long after +Poor Mickey fell down in the water tower to his death +Down, down, through bellowing darkness, I carried +The vision which perished with him like a rocket which falls +And quenches its light in earth, and hid it for fear +Of the son of the banker, calling on Plutus to save me? +Avenged were you for the shame of a fearful heart +Who left me alone till I saw you again in an hour +When I seemed to be turned to a tree with trunk and branches +Growing indurate, turning to stone, yet burgeoning +In laurel leaves, in hosts of lambent laurel, +Quivering, fluttering, shrinking, fighting the numbness +Creeping into their veins from the dying trunk and branches! +OTis vain, O youth, to fly the call of Apollo. +Fling yourselves in the fire, die with a song of spring, +If die you must in the spring. For none shall look +On the face of Apollo and live, and choose you must +OTwixt death in the flame and death after years of sorrow, +Rooted fast in the earth, feeling the grisly hand, +Not so much in the trunk as in the terrible numbness +Creeping up to the laurel leaves that never cease +To flourish until you fall. O leaves of me +Too sere for coronal wreaths, and fit alone +For urns of memory, treasured, perhaps, as themes +For hearts heroic, fearless singers and livers-- +Delphic Apollo. + +The Spooniad + +OF John Cabanis, wrath and of the strife +Of hostile parties, and his dire defeat +Who led the common people in the cause +Of freedom for Spoon River, and the fall +Of Rhodes, bank that brought unnumbered woes +And loss to many, with engendered hate +That flamed into the torch in Anarch hands +To burn the court--house, on whose blackened wreck +A fairer temple rose and Progress stood-- +Sing, muse, that lit the Chian's face with smiles +Who saw the ant-like Greeks and Trojans crawl +About Scamander, over walls, pursued +Or else pursuing, and the funeral pyres +And sacred hecatombs, and first because +Of Helen who with Paris fled to Troy +As soul-mate; and the wrath of Peleus, son, +Decreed to lose Chryseis, lovely spoil +Of war, and dearest concubine. + Say first, +Thou son of night, called Momus, from whose eyes +No secret hides, and Thalia, smiling one, +What bred Otwixt Thomas Rhodes and John Cabanis +The deadly strife? His daughter Flossie, she, +Returning from her wandering with a troop +Of strolling players, walked the village streets, +Her bracelets tinkling and with sparkling rings +And words of serpent wisdom and a smile +Of cunning in her eyes. Then Thomas Rhodes, +Who ruled the church and ruled the bank as well, +Made known his disapproval of the maid; +And all Spoon River whispered and the eyes +Of all the church frowned on her, till she knew +They feared her and condemned. + But them to flout +She gave a dance to viols and to flutes, +Brought from Peoria, and many youths, +But lately made regenerate through the prayers +Of zealous preachers and of earnest souls, +Danced merrily, and sought her in the dance, +Who wore a dress so low of neck that eyes +Down straying might survey the snowy swale +OTill it was lost in whiteness. + With the dance +The village changed to merriment from gloom. +The milliner, Mrs. Williams, could not fill +Her orders for new hats, and every seamstress +Plied busy needles making gowns; old trunks +And chests were opened for their store of laces +And rings and trinkets were brought out of hiding +And all the youths fastidious grew of dress; +Notes passed, and many a fair one's door at eve +Knew a bouquet, and strolling lovers thronged +About the hills that overlooked the river. +Then, since the mercy seats more empty showed, +One of God's chosen lifted up his voice: +"The woman of Babylon is among us; rise +Ye sons of light and drive the wanton forth!" +So John Cabanis left the church and left +The hosts of law and order with his eyes +By anger cleared, and him the liberal cause +Acclaimed as nominee to the mayoralty +To vanquish A. D. Blood. + But as the war +Waged bitterly for votes and rumors flew +About the bank, and of the heavy loans +Which Rhodes, son had made to prop his loss +In wheat, and many drew their coin and left +The bank of Rhodes more hollow, with the talk +Among the liberals of another bank +Soon to be chartered, lo, the bubble burst +OMid cries and curses; but the liberals laughed +And in the hall of Nicholas Bindle held +Wise converse and inspiriting debate. + +High on a stage that overlooked the chairs +Where dozens sat, and where a pop--eyed daub +Of Shakespeare, very like the hired man +Of Christian Dallmann, brow and pointed beard, +Upon a drab proscenium outward stared, +Sat Harmon Whitney, to that eminence, +By merit raised in ribaldry and guile, +And to the assembled rebels thus he spake: +"Whether to lie supine and let a clique +Cold-blooded, scheming, hungry, singing psalms, +Devour our substance, wreck our banks and drain +Our little hoards for hazards on the price +Of wheat or pork, or yet to cower beneath +The shadow of a spire upreared to curb +A breed of lackeys and to serve the bank +Coadjutor in greed, that is the question. +Shall we have music and the jocund dance, +Or tolling bells? Or shall young romance roam +These hills about the river, flowering now +To April's tears, or shall they sit at home, +Or play croquet where Thomas Rhodes may see, +I ask you? If the blood of youth runs o'er +And riots 'gainst this regimen of gloom, +Shall we submit to have these youths and maids +Branded as libertines and wantons?" + Ere +His words were done a woman's voice called "No!" +Then rose a sound of moving chairs, as when +The numerous swine o'er-run the replenished troughs; +And every head was turned, as when a flock +Of geese back-turning to the hunter's tread +Rise up with flapping wings; then rang the hall +With riotous laughter, for with battered hat +Tilted upon her saucy head, and fist +Raised in defiance, Daisy Fraser stood. +Headlong she had been hurled from out the hall +Save Wendell Bloyd, who spoke for woman's rights, +Prevented, and the bellowing voice of Burchard. +Then ,mid applause she hastened toward the stage +And flung both gold and silver to the cause +And swiftly left the hall. + Meantime upstood +A giant figure, bearded like the son +Of Alcmene, deep-chested, round of paunch, +And spoke in thunder: "Over there behold +A man who for the truth withstood his wife-- +Such is our spirit--when that A. D. Blood +Compelled me to remove Dom Pedro--" + Quick +Before Jim Brown could finish, Jefferson Howard +Obtained the floor and spake: "Ill suits the time +For clownish words, and trivial is our cause +If naught's at stake but John Cabanis, wrath, +He who was erstwhile of the other side +And came to us for vengeance. More's at stake +Than triumph for New England or Virginia. +And whether rum be sold, or for two years +As in the past two years, this town be dry +Matters but little-- Oh yes, revenue +For sidewalks, sewers; that is well enough! +I wish to God this fight were now inspired +By other passion than to salve the pride +Of John Cabanis or his daughter. +Why Can never contests of great moment spring +From worthy things, not little? Still, if men +Must always act so, and if rum must be +The symbol and the medium to release +From life's denial and from slavery, +Then give me rum!" + Exultant cries arose. +Then, as George Trimble had o'ercome his fear +And vacillation and begun to speak, +The door creaked and the idiot, Willie Metcalf, +Breathless and hatless, whiter than a sheet, +Entered and cried: "The marshal's on his way +To arrest you all. And if you only knew +Who's coming here to--morrow; I was listening +Beneath the window where the other side +Are making plans." + So to a smaller room +To hear the idiot's secret some withdrew +Selected by the Chair; the Chair himself +And Jefferson Howard, Benjamin Pantier, +And Wendell Bloyd, George Trimble, Adam Weirauch, +Imanuel Ehrenhardt, Seth Compton, Godwin James +And Enoch Dunlap, Hiram Scates, Roy Butler, +Carl Hamblin, Roger Heston, Ernest Hyde +And Penniwit, the artist, Kinsey Keene, +And E. C. Culbertson and Franklin Jones, +Benjamin Fraser, son of Benjamin Pantier +By Daisy Fraser, some of lesser note, +And secretly conferred. + But in the hall +Disorder reigned and when the marshal came +And found it so, he marched the hoodlums out +And locked them up. + Meanwhile within a room +Back in the basement of the church, with Blood +Counseled the wisest heads. Judge Somers first, +Deep learned in life, and next him, Elliott Hawkins +And Lambert Hutchins; next him Thomas Rhodes +And Editor Whedon; next him Garrison Standard, +A traitor to the liberals, who with lip +Upcurled in scorn and with a bitter sneer: +"Such strife about an insult to a woman-- +A girl of eighteen "--Christian Dallman too, +And others unrecorded. Some there were +Who frowned not on the cup but loathed the rule +Democracy achieved thereby, the freedom +And lust of life it symbolized. + +Now morn with snowy fingers up the sky +Flung like an orange at a festival +The ruddy sun, when from their hasty beds +Poured forth the hostile forces, and the streets +Resounded to the rattle of the wheels +That drove this way and that to gather in +The tardy voters, and the cries of chieftains +Who manned the battle. But at ten o'clock +The liberals bellowed fraud, and at the polls +The rival candidates growled and came to blows. +Then proved the idiot's tale of yester-eve +A word of warning. Suddenly on the streets +Walked hog-eyed Allen, terror of the hills +That looked on Bernadotte ten miles removed. +No man of this degenerate day could lift +The boulders which he threw, and when he spoke +The windows rattled, and beneath his brows +Thatched like a shed with bristling hair of black, +His small eyes glistened like a maddened boar. +And as he walked the boards creaked, as he walked +A song of menace rumbled. Thus he came, +The champion of A. D. Blood, commissioned +To terrify the liberals. Many fled +As when a hawk soars o'er the chicken yard. +He passed the polls and with a playful hand +Touched Brown, the giant, and he fell against, +As though he were a child, the wall; so strong +Was hog-eyed Allen. But the liberals smiled. +For soon as hog-eyed Allen reached the walk, +Close on his steps paced Bengal Mike, brought in +By Kinsey Keene, the subtle-witted one, +To match the hog-eyed Allen. He was scarce +Three-fourths the other's bulk, but steel his arms, +And with a tiger's heart. Two men he killed +And many wounded in the days before, +And no one feared. + But when the hog-eyed one +Saw Bengal Mike his countenance grew dark, +The bristles o'er his red eyes twitched with rage, +The song he rumbled lowered. Round and round +The court-house paced he, followed stealthily +By Bengal Mike, who jeered him every step: +"Come, elephant, and fight! Come, hog-eyed coward! +Come, face about and fight me, lumbering sneak! +Come, beefy bully, hit me, if you can! +Take out your gun, you duffer, give me reason +To draw and kill you. Take your billy out. +I'll crack your boar's head with a piece of brick!" +But never a word the hog-eyed one returned +But trod about the court-house, followed both +By troops of boys and watched by all the men. +All day, they walked the square. But when Apollo +Stood with reluctant look above the hills +As fain to see the end, and all the votes +Were cast, and closed the polls, before the door +Of Trainor's drug store Bengal Mike, in tones +That echoed through the village, bawled the taunt: +"Who was your mother, hog--eyed?" In a trice +As when a wild boar turns upon the hound +That through the brakes upon an August day +Has gashed him with its teeth, the hog- one +Rushed with his giant arms on Bengal Mike +And grabbed him by the throat. Then rose to heaven +The frightened cries of boys, and yells of men +Forth rushing to the street. And Bengal Mike +Moved this way and now that, drew in his head +As if his neck to shorten, and bent down +To break the death grip of the hog-eyed one; +OTwixt guttural wrath and fast-expiring strength +Striking his fists against the invulnerable chest +Of hog-eyed Allen. Then, when some came in +To part them, others stayed them, and the fight +Spread among dozens; many valiant souls +Went down from clubs and bricks. + But tell me, Muse, +What god or goddess rescued Bengal Mike? +With one last, mighty struggle did he grasp +The murderous hands and turning kick his foe. +Then, as if struck by lightning, vanished all +The strength from hog--eyed Allen, at his side +Sank limp those giant arms and o'er his face +Dread pallor and the sweat of anguish spread. +And those great knees, invincible but late, +Shook to his weight. And quickly as the lion +Leaps on its wounded prey, did Bengal Mike +Smite with a rock the temple of his foe, +And down he sank and darkness o'er his eyes +Passed like a cloud. + As when the woodman fells +Some giant oak upon a summer's day +And all the songsters of the forest shrill, +And one great hawk that has his nestling young +Amid the topmost branches croaks, as crash +The leafy branches through the tangled boughs +Of brother oaks, so fell the hog--eyed one +Amid the lamentations of the friends +Of A. D. Blood. + Just then, four lusty men +Bore the town marshal, on whose iron face +The purple pall of death already lay, +To Trainor's drug store, shot by Jack McGuire. +And cries went up of "Lynch him!" and the sound +Of running feet from every side was heard +Bent on the + + + + + +THE END + + + + + +The late Mr. Jonathan Swift Somers, laureate of Spoon River +planned The Spooniad as an epic in twenty-four books, but +unfortunately did not live to complete even the first book. The +fragment was found among his papers by William Marion Reedy +and was for the first time published in Reedy's Mirror of December +18th, 1914. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Spoon River Anthology, by Masters + diff --git a/old/old/sprvr10.zip b/old/old/sprvr10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..70cd54e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/old/sprvr10.zip diff --git a/old/old/sprvr11.txt b/old/old/sprvr11.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..947097b --- /dev/null +++ b/old/old/sprvr11.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5345 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Spoon River Anthology, by Masters + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. 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If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon + University" within the 60 days following each + date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) + your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, +scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty +free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution +you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / Carnegie-Mellon University". + +*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +Spoon River Anthology +by Edgar Lee Masters + + + + +Contents: + +Armstrong, Hannah +Arnett, Harold +Atherton, Lucius + +Ballard, John +Barker, Amanda +Barrett, Pauline +Bartlett, Ezra +Bateson, Marie +Beatty, Tom +Beethoven, Isaiah +Bennett, Hon. Henry +Bindle, Nicholas +Blind Jack +Bliss, Mrs. Charles +Blood, A. D. +Bloyd, Wendell P. +Bone, Richard +Branson, Caroline +Brown, Jim +Brown, Sarah +Browning, Elijah +Burleson, John Horace +Butler, Roy + +Cabanis, Flossie +Calhoun, Granville +Calhoun, Henry C. +Campbell, Calvin +Carman, Eugene +Cheney, Columbus +Childers, Elizabeth +Church, John M. +Churchill, Alfonso +Circuit Judge, The +Clapp, Homer +Clark, Nellie +Clute, Aner +Compton, Seth Conant, Edith +Culbertson, E. C. + +Davidson, Robert +Dement, Silas +Dixon, Joseph +Drummer, Frank +Drummer, Hare +Dunlap, Enoch +Dye, Shack + +Ehrenhardt, Imanuel + +Fallas, State's Attorney +Fawcett, Clarence +Fluke, Willard +Foote, Searcy +Ford, Webster +Fraser, Benjamin +Fraser, Daisy +French, Charlie +Frickey, Ida + +Garber, James +Gardner, Samuel +Garrick, Amelia +Godbey, Jacob +Goldman, Le Roy +Goode, William +Goodpasture, Jacob +Graham, Magrady +Gray, George +Green, Ami +Greene, Hamilton +Griffy the Cooper +Gustine, Dorcas + +Hainsfeather, Barney +Hamblin, Carl +Hatfield, Aaron +Hawkins, Elliott +Hawley, Jeduthan +Henry, Chase +Herndon, William H. +Heston, Roger +Higbie, Archibald +Hill, Doc +Hill, The +Hoheimer, Knowlt +Holden, Barry +Hookey, Sam +Howard, Jefferson +Hueffer, Cassius +Hummel, Oscar +Humphrey, Lydia +Hutchins, Lambert +Hyde, Ernest + +James, Godwin +Jones, Fiddler +Jones, Franklin +Jones, "Indignation" +Jones, Minerva +Jones, William + +Karr, Elmer +Keene, Jonas +Kessler, Bert +Kessler, Mrs. +Killion, Captain Orlando +Kincaid, Russell +King, Lyman +Knapp, Nancy +Konovaloff, Ippolit +Kritt, Dow + +Layton, Henry + +M'Cumber, Daniel +McDowell, Rutherford +McFarlane, Widow +McGee, Fletcher +McGee, Ollie +M'Grew, Jennie +M'Grew, Mickey +McGuire, Jack +McNeely, Mary +McNeely, Washington +Malloy, Father +Many Soldiers +Marsh, Zilpha +Marshall, Herbert +Mason, Serepta +Matheny, Faith +Matlock, Davis +Matlock, Lucinda +Melveny, Abel +Merritt, Mrs. +Merritt, Tom +Metcalf, Willie +Meyers, Doctor +Meyers, Mrs. +Micure, Hamlet +Miles, I. Milton +Miller, Julia +Miner, Georgine Sand +Moir, Alfred + +Newcomer, Professor + +Osborne, Mabel +Otis, John Hancock + +Pantier, Benjamin +Pantier, Mrs. Benjamin +Pantier, Reuben +Peet, Rev. Abner +Pennington, Willie +Penniwit, the Artist +Petit, the Poet +Phipps, Henry +Poague, Peleg +Pollard, Edmund +Potter, Cooney +Puckett, Lydia +Purkapile, Mrs. +Purkapile, Roscoe +Putt, Hod + +Reece, Mrs. George +Rhodes, Ralph +Rhodes, Thomas +Richter, Gustav +Robbins, Hortense +Roberts, Rosie +Ross, Thomas, Ir. +Russian Sonia +Rutledge, Anne + +Sayre, Johnnie +Scates, Hiram +Schirding, Albert +Schmidt, Felix +Scott, Julian +Sewall, Harlan +Sharp, Percival +Shaw, "Ace " +Shelley, Percy Bysshe +Shope, Tennessee Claflin +Sibley, Amos +Sibley, Mrs. +Simmons, Walter +Sissman, Dillard +Slack, Margaret Fuller +Smith, Louise +Somers, Jonathan Swift +Somers, Judge +Sparks, Emily +Spooniad, The +Standard, W. Lloyd Garrison +Stewart, Lillian + +Tanner, Robert Fulton +Taylor, Deacon +Theodore the Poet +Throckmorton, Alexander +Tompkins, Josiah +Town Marshal, The +Trainor, the Druggist +Trevelyan, Thomas +Trimble, George +Tripp, Henry +Tubbs, Hildrup +Turner, Francis +Tutt, Oaks + +Unknown, The + +Village Atheist, The + +Wasson, John +Weirauch, Adam +Weldy, "Butch " +Wertman, Elsa +Whedon, Editor +Whitney, Harmon +Wiley, Rev. Lemuel +Will, Arlo +William and Emily +Williams, Dora +Williams, Mrs. +Wilmans, Harry +Witt, Zenas + +Yee Bow + +Zoll, Perry + + + + +The Hill + +Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley, +The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter? +All, all are sleeping on the hill. + +One passed in a fever, +One was burned in a mine, +One was killed in a brawl, +One died in a jail, +One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife- +All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill. + +Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith, +The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?-- +All, all are sleeping on the hill. + +One died in shameful child-birth, +One of a thwarted love, +One at the hands of a brute in a brothel, +One of a broken pride, in the search for heart's desire; +One after life in far-away London and Paris +Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag-- +All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill. + +Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily, +And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton, +And Major Walker who had talked +With venerable men of the revolution?-- +All, all are sleeping on the hill. + +They brought them dead sons from the war, +And daughters whom life had crushed, +And their children fatherless, crying-- +All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill. +Where is Old Fiddler Jones +Who played with life all his ninety years, +Braving the sleet with bared breast, +Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin, +Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven? +Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago, +Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary's Grove, +Of what Abe Lincoln said +One time at Springfield. + +Hod Putt + +HERE I lie close to the grave +Of Old Bill Piersol, +Who grew rich trading with the Indians, and who +Afterwards took the Bankrupt Law +And emerged from it richer than ever +Myself grown tired of toil and poverty +And beholding how Old Bill and other grew in wealth +Robbed a traveler one Night near Proctor's Grove, +Killing him unwittingly while doing so, +For which I was tried and hanged. +That was my way of going into bankruptcy. +Now we who took the bankrupt law in our respective ways +Sleep peacefully side by side. + +Ollie McGee + +Have you seen walking through the village +A Man with downcast eyes and haggard face? +That is my husband who, by secret cruelty +Never to be told, robbed me of my youth and my beauty; +Till at last, wrinkled and with yellow teeth, +And with broken pride and shameful humility, +I sank into the grave. +But what think you gnaws at my husband's heart? +The face of what I was, the face of what he made me! +These are driving him to the place where I lie. +In death, therefore, I am avenged. + +Fletcher McGee + +She took my strength by minutes, +She took my life by hours, +She drained me like a fevered moon +That saps the spinning world. +The days went by like shadows, +The minutes wheeled like stars. +She took the pity from my heart, +And made it into smiles. +She was a hunk of sculptor's clay, +My secret thoughts were fingers: +They flew behind her pensive brow +And lined it deep with pain. +They set the lips, and sagged the cheeks, +And drooped the eye with sorrow. +My soul had entered in the clay, +Fighting like seven devils. +It was not mine, it was not hers; +She held it, but its struggles +Modeled a face she hated, +And a face I feared to see. +I beat the windows, shook the bolts. +I hid me in a corner +And then she died and haunted me, +And hunted me for life. + +Robert Fulton Tanner + +If a man could bite the giant hand +That catches and destroys him, +As I was bitten by a rat +While demonstrating my patent trap, +In my hardware store that day. +But a man can never avenge himself +On the monstrous ogre Life. +You enter the room that's being born; +And then you must live work out your soul, +Of the cross-current in life +Which Bring honor to the dead, who lived in shame. + +Cassius Hueffer + +THEY have chiseled on my stone the words: +"His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him +That nature might stand up and say to all the world, +This was a man." +Those who knew me smile +As they read this empty rhetoric. +My epitaph should have been: +"Life was not gentle to him, +And the elements so mixed in him +That he made warfare on life +In the which he was slain." +While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues, +Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph +Graven by a fool! + +Serepta Mason + +MY life's blossom might have bloomed on all sides +Save for a bitter wind which stunted my petals +On the side of me which you in the village could see. +From the dust I lift a voice of protest: +My flowering side you never saw! +Ye living ones, ye are fools indeed +Who do not know the ways of the wind +And the unseen forces +That govern the processes of life. + +Amanda Barker + +HENRY got me with child, +Knowing that I could not bring forth life +Without losing my own. +In my youth therefore I entered the portals of dust. +Traveler, it is believed in the village where I lived +That Henry loved me with a husband's love +But I proclaim from the dust +That he slew me to gratify his hatred. + +Chase Henry + +IN life I was the town drunkard; +When I died the priest denied me burial +In holy ground. +The which redounded to my good fortune. +For the Protestants bought this lot, +And buried my body here, +Close to the grave of the banker Nicholas, +And of his wife Priscilla. +Take note, ye prudent and pious souls, +Of the cross--currents in life +Which bring honor to the dead, who lived in shame + +Judge Somers + +How does it happen, tell me, +That I who was most erudite of lawyers, +Who knew Blackstone and Coke +Almost by heart, who made the greatest speech +The court-house ever heard, and wrote +A brief that won the praise of Justice Breese +How does it happen, tell me, +That I lie here unmarked, forgotten, +While Chase Henry, the town drunkard, +Has a marble block, topped by an urn +Wherein Nature, in a mood ironical, +Has sown a flowering weed? + +Benjamin Pantier + +TOGETHER in this grave lie Benjamin Pantier, attorney at law, +And Nig, his dog, constant companion, solace and friend. +Down the gray road, friends, children, men and women, +Passing one by one out of life, left me till I was alone +With Nig for partner, bed-fellow; comrade in drink. +In the morning of life I knew aspiration and saw glory, +The she, who survives me, snared my soul +With a snare which bled me to death, +Till I, once strong of will, lay broken, indifferent, +Living with Nig in a room back of a dingy office. +Under my Jaw-bone is snuggled the bony nose of Nig +Our story is lost in silence. Go by, Mad world! + +Mrs. Benjamin Pantier + +I know that he told that I snared his soul +With a snare which bled him to death. +And all the men loved him, +And most of the women pitied him. +But suppose you are really a lady, and have delicate tastes, +And loathe the smell of whiskey and onions, +And the rhythm of Wordsworth's "Ode" runs in your ears, +While he goes about from morning till night +Repeating bits of that common thing; +"Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" +And then, suppose; +You are a woman well endowed, +And the only man with whom the law and morality +Permit you to have the marital relation +Is the very man that fills you with disgust +Every time you think of it while you think of it +Every time you see him? +That's why I drove him away from home +To live with his dog in a dingy room +Back of his office. + +Reuben Pantier + +WELL, Emily Sparks, your prayers were not wasted, +Your love was not all in vain. +I owe whatever I was in life +To your hope that would not give me up, +To your love that saw me still as good. +Dear Emily Sparks, let me tell you the story. +I pass the effect of my father and mother; +The milliner's daughter made me trouble +And out I went in the world, +Where I passed through every peril known +Of wine and women and joy of life. +One night, in a room in the Rue de Rivoli, +I was drinking wine with a black-eyed cocotte, +And the tears swam into my eyes. +She though they were amorous tears and smiled +For thought of her conquest over me. +But my soul was three thousand miles away, +In the days when you taught me in Spoon River. +And just because you no more could love me, +Nor pray for me, nor write me letters, +The eternal silence of you spoke instead. +And the Black-eyed cocotte took the tears for hers, +As well as the deceiving kisses I gave her. +Somehow, from that hour, I had a new vision +Dear Emily Sparks! + +Emily Sparks + +Where is my boy, my boy +In what far part of the world? +The boy I loved best of all in the school?-- +I, the teacher, the old maid, the virgin heart, +Who made them all my children. +Did I know my boy aright, +Thinking of him as a spirit aflame, +Active, ever aspiring? +Oh, boy, boy, for whom I prayed and prayed +In many a watchful hour at night, +Do you remember the letter I wrote you +Of the beautiful love of Christ? +And whether you ever took it or not, +My, boy, wherever you are, +Work for your soul's sake, +That all the clay of you, all of the dross of you, +May yield to the fire of you, +Till the fire is nothing but light!... +Nothing but light! + +Trainor, the Druggist + +Only the chemist can tell, and not always the chemist, +What will result from compounding +Fluids or solids. +And who can tell +How men and women will interact +On each other, or what children will result? +There were Benjamin Pantier and his wife, +Good in themselves, but evil toward each other; +He oxygen, she hydrogen, +Their son, a devastating fire. +I Trainor, the druggist, a miser of chemicals, +Killed while making an experiment, +Lived unwedded. + +Daisy Fraser + +Did you ever hear of Editor Whedon +Giving to the public treasury any of the money he received +For supporting candidates for office? +Or for writing up the canning factory +To get people to invest? +Or for suppressing the facts about the bank, +When it was rotten and ready to break? +Did you ever hear of the Circuit Judge +Helping anyone except the "Q" railroad, +Or the bankers? Or did Rev. Peet or Rev. Sibley +Give any part of their salary, earned by keeping still, +Or speaking out as the leaders wished them to do, +To the building of the water works? +But I Daisy Fraser who always passed +Along the street through rows of nods and smiles, +And caughs and words such as "there she goes." +Never was taken before Justice Arnett +Without contributing ten dollars and costs +To the school fund of Spoon River! + +Benjamin Fraser + +THEIR spirits beat upon mine +Like the wings of a thousand butterflies. +I closed my eyes and felt their spirits vibrating. +I closed my eyes, yet I knew when their lashes +Fringed their cheeks from downcast eyes, +And when they turned their heads; +And when their garments clung to them, +Or fell from them, in exquisite draperies. +Their spirits watched my ecstasy +With wide looks of starry unconcern. +Their spirits looked upon my torture; +They drank it as it were the water of life; +With reddened cheeks, brightened eyes, +The rising flame of my soul made their spirits gilt, +Like the wings of a butterfly drifting suddenly into sunlight. +And they cried to me for life, life, life. +But in taking life for myself, +In seizing and crushing their souls, +As a child crushes grapes and drinks +From its palms the purple juice, +I came to this wingless void, +Where neither red, nor gold, nor wine, +Nor the rhythm of life are known. + +Minerva Jones + +I AM Minerva, the village poetess, +Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street +For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk, +And all the more when "Butch" Weldy +Captured me after a brutal hunt. +He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers; +And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up, +Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice. +Will some one go to the village newspaper, +And gather into a book the verses I wrote?-- +I thirsted so for love +I hungered so for life! + +"Indignation" Jones + +You would not believe, would you +That I came from good Welsh stock? +That I was purer blooded than the white trash here? +And of more direct lineage than the +New Englanders And Virginians of Spoon River? +You would not believe that I had been to school +And read some books. +You saw me only as a run-down man +With matted hair and beard +And ragged clothes. +Sometimes a man's life turns into a cancer +From being bruised and continually bruised, +And swells into a purplish mass +Like growths on stalks of corn. +Here was I, a carpenter, mired in a bog of life +Into which I walked, thinking it was a meadow, +With a slattern for a wife, and poor Minerva, my daughter, +Whom you tormented and drove to death. +So I crept, crept, like a snail through the days +Of my life. +No more you hear my footsteps in the morning, +Resounding on the hollow sidewalk +Going to the grocery store for a little corn meal +And a nickel's worth of bacon. + +"Butch" Weldy + +AFTER I got religion and steadied down +They gave me a job in the canning works, +And every morning I had to fill +The tank in the yard with gasoline, +That fed the blow-fires in the sheds +To heat the soldering irons. +And I mounted a rickety ladder to do it, +Carrying buckets full of the stuff. +One morning, as I stood there pouring, +The air grew still and seemed to heave, +And I shot up as the tank exploded, +And down I came with both legs broken, +And my eyes burned crisp as a couple of eggs. +For someone left a blow--fire going, +And something sucked the flame in the tank. +The Circuit Judge said whoever did it +Was a fellow-servant of mine, and so +Old Rhodes' son didn't have to pay me. +And I sat on the witness stand as blind +As lack the Fiddler, saying over and over, +"l didn't know him at all." + +Doctor Meyers + +No other man, unless it was Doc Hill, +Did more for people in this town than l. +And all the weak, the halt, the improvident +And those who could not pay flocked to me. +I was good-hearted, easy Doctor Meyers. +I was healthy, happy, in comfortable fortune, +Blest with a congenial mate, my children raised, +All wedded, doing well in the world. +And then one night, Minerva, the poetess, +Came to me in her trouble, crying. +I tried to help her out--she died-- +They indicted me, the newspapers disgraced me, +My wife perished of a broken heart. +And pneumonia finished me. + +Mrs. Meyers + +HE protested all his life long +The newspapers lied about him villainously; +That he was not at fault for Minerva's fall, +But only tried to help her. +Poor soul so sunk in sin he could not see +That even trying to help her, as he called it, +He had broken the law human and divine. +Passers by, an ancient admonition to you: +If your ways would be ways of pleasantness, +And all your pathways peace, +Love God and keep his commandments. + +Knowlt Hoheimer + +I WAS the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge. +When I felt the bullet enter my heart +I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail +For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary, +Instead of running away and joining the army. +Rather a thousand times the county jail +Than to lie under this marble figure with wings, +And this granite pedestal Bearing the words, "Pro Patria." +What do they mean, anyway? + +Lydia Puckett + +KNOWLT HOHEIMER ran away to the war +The day before Curl Trenary +Swore out a warrant through Justice Arnett +For stealing hogs. +But that's not the reason he turned a soldier. +He caught me running with Lucius Atherton. +We quarreled and I told him never again +To cross my path. +Then he stole the hogs and went to the war-- +Back of every soldier is a woman. + +Frank Drummer + +OUT of a cell into this darkened space-- +The end at twenty-five! +My tongue could not speak what stirred within me, +And the village thought me a fool. +Yet at the start there was a clear vision, +A high and urgent purpose in my soul +Which drove me on trying to memorize +The Encyclopedia Britannica! + +Hare Drummer + +Do the boys and girls still go to Siever's +For cider, after school, in late September? +Or gather hazel nuts among the thickets +On Aaron Hatfield's farm when the frosts begin? +For many times with the laughing girls and boys +Played I along the road and over the hills +When the sun was low and the air was cool, +Stopping to club the walnut tree +Standing leafless against a flaming west. +Now, the smell of the autumn smoke, +And the dropping acorns, +And the echoes about the vales +Bring dreams of life. +They hover over me. +They question me: +Where are those laughing comrades? +How many are with me, how many +In the old orchards along the way to Siever's, +And in the woods that overlook +The quiet water? + +Doc Hill + +I WENT UP and down the streets +Here and there by day and night, +Through all hours of the night caring for the poor who were sick. +Do you know why? +My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs. +And I turned to the people and poured out my love to them. +Sweet it was to see the crowds about the lawns on the day of my +funeral, +And hear them murmur their love and sorrow. +But oh, dear God, my soul trembled, scarcely able +To hold to the railing of the new life +When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree +At the grave, +Hiding herself, and her grief! + +Sarah Brown + +MAURICE, weep not, I am not here under this pine tree. +The balmy air of spring whispers through the sweet grass, +The stars sparkle, the whippoorwill calls, +But thou grievest, while my soul lies rapturous +In the blest Nirvana of eternal light! +Go to the good heart that is my husband +Who broods upon what he calls our guilty love:-- +Tell him that my love for you, no less than my love for him +Wrought out my destiny-- that through the flesh +I won spirit, and through spirit, peace. +There is no marriage in heaven +But there is love. + +Percy Bysshe Shelley + +MY father who owned the wagon-shop +And grew rich shoeing horses +Sent me to the University of Montreal. +I learned nothing and returned home, +Roaming the fields with Bert Kessler, +Hunting quail and snipe. +At Thompson's Lake the trigger of my gun +Caught in the side of the boat +And a great hole was shot through my heart. +Over me a fond father erected this marble shaft, +On which stands the figure of a woman +Carved by an Italian artist. +They say the ashes of my namesake +Were scattered near the pyramid of Caius Cestius +Somewhere near Rome. + +Flossie Cabanis + +FROM Bindle's opera house in the village +To Broadway is a great step. +But I tried to take it, my ambition fired +When sixteen years of age, +Seeing "East Lynne," played here in the village +By Ralph Barrett, the coming +Romantic actor, who enthralled my soul. +True, I trailed back home, a broken failure, +When Ralph disappeared in New York, +Leaving me alone in the city-- +But life broke him also. +In all this place of silence +There are no kindred spirits. +How I wish Duse could stand amid the pathos +Of these quiet fields +And read these words. + +Julia Miller + +WE quarreled that morning, +For he was sixty--five, and I was thirty, +And I was nervous and heavy with the child +Whose birth I dreaded. +I thought over the last letter written me +By that estranged young soul +Whose betrayal of me I had concealed +By marrying the old man. +Then I took morphine and sat down to read. +Across the blackness that came over my eyes +I see the flickering light of these words even now: +"And Jesus said unto him, Verily +I say unto thee, To-day thou shalt +Be with me in paradise." + +Johnnie Sayre + +FATHER, thou canst never know +The anguish that smote my heart +For my disobedience, the moment I felt +The remorseless wheel of the engine +Sink into the crying flesh of my leg. +As they carried me to the home of widow Morris +I could see the school-house in the valley +To which I played truant to steal rides upon the trains. +I prayed to live until I could ask your forgiveness-- +And then your tears, your broken words of comfort! +From the solace of that hour I have gained infinite happiness. +Thou wert wise to chisel for me: +"Taken from the evil to come." + +Charlie French + +DID YOU ever find out +Which one of the O'Brien boys it was +Who snapped the toy pistol against my hand? +There when the flags were red and white +In the breeze and "Bucky" Estil +Was firing the cannon brought to Spoon River +From Vicksburg by Captain Harris; +And the lemonade stands were running +And the band was playing, +To have it all spoiled +By a piece of a cap shot under the skin of my hand, +And the boys all crowding about me saying: +"You'll die of lock-jaw, Charlie, sure." +Oh, dear! oh, dear! +What chum of mine could have done it? + +Zenas Witt + +I WAS sixteen, and I had the most terrible dreams, +And specks before my eyes, and nervous weakness. +And I couldn't remember the books I read, +Like Frank Drummer who memorized page after page. +And my back was weak, and I worried and worried, +And I was embarrassed and stammered my lessons, +And when I stood up to recite I'd forget +Everything that I had studied. +Well, I saw Dr. Weese's advertisement, +And there I read everything in print, +Just as if he had known me; +And about the dreams which I couldn't help. +So I knew I was marked for an early grave. +And I worried until I had a cough +And then the dreams stopped. +And then I slept the sleep without dreams +Here on the hill by the river. + +Theodore the Poet + +As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours +On the shore of the turbid Spoon +With deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish's burrow, +Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead, +First his waving antennae, like straws of hay, +And soon his body, colored like soap-stone, +Gemmed with eyes of jet. +And you wondered in a trance of thought +What he knew, what he desired, and why he lived at all. +But later your vision watched for men and women +Hiding in burrows of fate amid great cities, +Looking for the souls of them to come out, +So that you could see +How they lived, and for what, +And why they kept crawling so busily +Along the sandy way where water fails +As the summer wanes. + +The Town Marshal + +THE: Prohibitionists made me Town Marshal +When the saloons were voted out, +Because when I was a drinking man, +Before I joined the church, I killed a Swede +At the saw-mill near Maple Grove. +And they wanted a terrible man, +Grim, righteous, strong, courageous, +And a hater of saloons and drinkers, +To keep law and order in the village. +And they presented me with a loaded cane +With which I struck Jack McGuire +Before he drew the gun with which he killed +The Prohibitionists spent their money in vain +To hang him, for in a dream +I appeared to one of the twelve jurymen +And told him the whole secret story. +Fourteen years were enough for killing me. + +Jack McGuire + +THEY would have lynched me +Had I not been secretly hurried away +To the jail at Peoria. +And yet I was going peacefully home, +Carrying my jug, a little drunk, +When Logan, the marshal, halted me +Called me a drunken hound and shook me +And, when I cursed him for it, struck me +With that Prohibition loaded cane-- +All this before I shot him. +They would have hanged me except for this: +My lawyer, Kinsey Keene, was helping to land +Old Thomas Rhodes for wrecking the bank, +And the judge was a friend of +Rhodes And wanted him to escape, +And Kinsey offered to quit on +Rhodes For fourteen years for me. +And the bargain was made. +I served my time +And learned to read and write. + +Jacob Goodpasture + +WHEN Fort Sumter fell and the war came +I cried out in bitterness of soul: +"O glorious republic now no more!" +When they buried my soldier son +To the call of trumpets and the sound of drums +My heart broke beneath the weight +Of eighty years, and I cried: +"Oh, son who died in a cause unjust! +In the strife of Freedom slain!" +And I crept here under the grass. +And now from the battlements of time, behold: +Thrice thirty million souls being bound together +In the love of larger truth, +Rapt in the expectation of the birth +Of a new Beauty, +Sprung from Brotherhood and Wisdom. +I with eyes of spirit see the Transfiguration +Before you see it. +But ye infinite brood of golden eagles nesting ever higher, +Wheeling ever higher, the sun-- light wooing +Of lofty places of Thought, +Forgive the blindness of the departed owl. + +Dorcas Gustine + +I WAS not beloved of the villagers, +But all because I spoke my mind, +And met those who transgressed against me +With plain remonstrance, hiding nor nurturing +Nor secret griefs nor grudges. +That act of the Spartan boy is greatly praised, +Who hid the wolf under his cloak, +Letting it devour him, uncomplainingly. +It is braver, I think, to snatch the wolf forth +And fight him openly, even in the street, +Amid dust and howls of pain. +The tongue may be an unruly member-- +But silence poisons the soul. +Berate me who will--I am content. + +Nicholas Bindle + +Were you not ashamed, fellow citizens, +When my estate was probated and everyone knew +How small a fortune I left?-- +You who hounded me in life, +To give, give, give to the churches, to the poor, +To the village!--me who had already given much. +And think you not I did not know +That the pipe-organ, which I gave to the church, +Played its christening songs when Deacon Rhodes, +Who broke and all but ruined me, +Worshipped for the first time after his acquittal? + +Harold Arnett + +I LEANED against the mantel, sick, sick, +Thinking of my failure, looking into the abysm, +Weak from the noon-day heat. +A church bell sounded mournfully far away, +I heard the cry of a baby, +And the coughing of John Yarnell, +Bed-ridden, feverish, feverish, dying, +Then the violent voice of my wife: +"Watch out, the potatoes are burning!" +I smelled them . . . then there was irresistible disgust. +I pulled the trigger . . . blackness . . . light . . . +Unspeakable regret . . . fumbling for the world again. +Too late! Thus I came here, +With lungs for breathing . . . one cannot breathe here with lungs, +Though one must breathe +Of what use is it To rid one's self of the world, +When no soul may ever escape the eternal destiny of life? + +Margaret Fuller Slack + +I WOULD have been as great as George Eliot +But for an untoward fate. +For look at the photograph of me made by Penniwit, +Chin resting on hand, and deep--set eyes-- +Gray, too, and far-searching. +But there was the old, old problem: +Should it be celibacy, matrimony or unchastity? +Then John Slack, the rich druggist, wooed me, +Luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel, +And I married him, giving birth to eight children, +And had no time to write. +It was all over with me, anyway, +When I ran the needle in my hand +While washing the baby's things, +And died from lock--jaw, an ironical death. +Hear me, ambitious souls, +Sex is the curse of life. + +George Trimble + +Do you remember when I stood on the steps +Of the Court House and talked free-silver, +And the single-tax of Henry George? +Then do you remember that, when the Peerless Leader +Lost the first battle, I began to talk prohibition, +And became active in the church? +That was due to my wife, +Who pictured to me my destruction +If I did not prove my morality to the people. +Well, she ruined me: +For the radicals grew suspicious of me, +And the conservatives were never sure of me-- +And here I lie, unwept of all. + +"Ace" Shaw + +I NEVER saw any difference +Between playing cards for money +And selling real estate, +Practicing law, banking, or anything else. +For everything is chance. +Nevertheless +Seest thou a man diligent in business? +He shall stand before Kings! + +Willard Fluke + +MY wife lost her health, +And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds. +Then that woman, whom the men +Styled Cleopatra, came along. +And we-- we married ones +All broke our vows, myself among the rest. +Years passed and one by one +Death claimed them all in some hideous form +And I was borne along by dreams +Of God's particular grace for me, +And I began to write, write, write, reams on reams +Of the second coming of Christ. +Then Christ came to me and said, +"Go into the church and stand before the congregation +And confess your sin." +But just as I stood up and began to speak +I saw my little girl, who was sitting in the front seat-- +My little girl who was born blind! +After that, all is blackness. + +Aner Clute + +OVER and over they used to ask me, +While buying the wine or the beer, +In Peoria first, and later in Chicago, +Denver, Frisco, New York, wherever I lived +How I happened to lead the life, +And what was the start of it. +Well, I told them a silk dress, +And a promise of marriage from a rich man-- +(It was Lucius Atherton). +But that was not really it at all. +Suppose a boy steals an apple +From the tray at the grocery store, +And they all begin to call him a thief, +The editor, minister, judge, and all the people-- +"A thief," "a thief," "a thief," wherever he goes +And he can't get work, and he can't get bread +Without stealing it, why the boy will steal. +It's the way the people regard the theft of the apple +That makes the boy what he is. + +Lucius Atherton + +WHEN my moustache curled, +And my hair was black, +And I wore tight trousers +And a diamond stud, +I was an excellent knave of hearts and took many a trick. +But when the gray hairs began to appear-- +Lo! a new generation of girls +Laughed at me, not fearing me, +And I had no more exciting adventures +Wherein I was all but shot for a heartless devil, +But only drabby affairs, warmed-over affairs +Of other days and other men. +And time went on until I lived at +Mayer's restaurant, +Partaking of short-orders, a gray, untidy, +Toothless, discarded, rural Don Juan. . . . +There is a mighty shade here who sings +Of one named Beatrice; +And I see now that the force that made him great +Drove me to the dregs of life. + +Homer Clapp + +OFTEN Aner Clute at the gate +Refused me the parting kiss, +Saying we should be engaged before that; +And just with a distant clasp of the hand +She bade me good-night, as I brought her home +From the skating rink or the revival. +No sooner did my departing footsteps die away +Than Lucius Atherton, +(So I learned when Aner went to Peoria) +Stole in at her window, or took her riding +Behind his spanking team of bays +Into the country. +The shock of it made me settle down +And I put all the money I got from my father's estate +Into the canning factory, to get the job +Of head accountant, and lost it all. +And then I knew I was one of Life's fools, +Whom only death would treat as the equal +Of other men, making me feel like a man. + +Deacon Taylor + +I BELONGED to the church, +And to the party of prohibition; +And the villagers thought I died of eating watermelon. +In truth I had cirrhosis of the liver, +For every noon for thirty years, +I slipped behind the prescription partition +In Trainor's drug store +And poured a generous drink +From the bottle marked "Spiritus frumenti." + +Sam Hookey + +I RAN away from home with the circus, +Having fallen in love with Mademoiselle Estralada, +The lion tamer. +One time, having starved the lions +For more than a day, +I entered the cage and began to beat Brutus +And Leo and Gypsy. +Whereupon Brutus sprang upon me, +And killed me. +On entering these regions +I met a shadow who cursed me, +And said it served me right. . . . +It was Robespierre! + +Cooney Potter + +I INHERITED forty acres from my Father +And, by working my wife, my two sons and two daughters +From dawn to dusk, I acquired +A thousand acres. +But not content, +Wishing to own two thousand acres, +I bustled through the years with axe and plow, +Toiling, denying myself, my wife, my sons, my daughters. +Squire Higbee wrongs me to say +That I died from smoking Red Eagle cigars. +Eating hot pie and gulping coffee +During the scorching hours of harvest time +Brought me here ere I had reached my sixtieth year. + +Fiddler Jones + +THE earth keeps some vibration going +There in your heart, and that is you. +And if the people find you can fiddle, +Why, fiddle you must, for all your life. +What do you see, a harvest of clover? +Or a meadow to walk through to the river? +The wind's in the corn; you rub your hands +For beeves hereafter ready for market; +Or else you hear the rustle of skirts +Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove. +To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust +Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth; +They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy +Stepping it off, to "Toor-a-Loor." +How could I till my forty acres +Not to speak of getting more, +With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos +Stirred in my brain by crows and robins +And the creak of a wind-mill--only these? +And I never started to plow in my life +That some one did not stop in the road +And take me away to a dance or picnic. +I ended up with forty acres; +I ended up with a broken fiddle-- +And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories, +And not a single regret. + +Nellie Clark + +I WAS only eight years old; +And before I grew up and knew what it meant +I had no words for it, except +That I was frightened and told my +Mother; And that my Father got a pistol +And would have killed Charlie, who was a big boy, +Fifteen years old, except for his Mother. +Nevertheless the story clung to me. +But the man who married me, a widower of thirty-five, +Was a newcomer and never heard it +'Till two years after we were married. +Then he considered himself cheated, +And the village agreed that I was not really a virgin. +Well, he deserted me, and I died +The following winter. + +Louise Smith + +HERBERT broke our engagement of eight years +When Annabelle returned to the village From the +Seminary, ah me! +If I had let my love for him alone +It might have grown into a beautiful sorrow-- +Who knows? -- filling my life with healing fragrance. +But I tortured it, I poisoned it +I blinded its eyes, and it became hatred-- +Deadly ivy instead of clematis. +And my soul fell from its support +Its tendrils tangled in decay. +Do not let the will play gardener to your soul +Unless you are sure +It is wiser than your soul's nature. + +Herbert Marshall + +ALL your sorrow, Louise, and hatred of me +Sprang from your delusion that it was wantonness +Of spirit and contempt of your soul's rights +Which made me turn to Annabelle and forsake you. +You really grew to hate me for love of me, +Because I was your soul's happiness, +Formed and tempered +To solve your life for you, and would not. +But you were my misery. +If you had been +My happiness would I not have clung to you? +This is life's sorrow: +That one can be happy only where two are; +And that our hearts are drawn to stars +Which want us not. + +George Gray + +I HAVE studied many times +The marble which was chiseled for me-- +A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor. +In truth it pictures not my destination +But my life. +For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment; +Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid; +Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances. +Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life. +And now I know that we must lift the sail +And catch the winds of destiny +Wherever they drive the boat. +To put meaning in one's life may end in madness, +But life without meaning is the torture +Of restlessness and vague desire-- +It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid. + +Hon. Henry Bennett + +IT never came into my mind +Until I was ready to die +That Jenny had loved me to death, with malice of heart. +For I was seventy, she was thirty--five, +And I wore myself to a shadow trying to husband +Jenny, rosy Jenny full of the ardor of life. +For all my wisdom and grace of mind +Gave her no delight at all, in very truth, +But ever and anon she spoke of the giant strength +Of Willard Shafer, and of his wonderful feat +Of lifting a traction engine out of the ditch +One time at Georgie Kirby's. +So Jenny inherited my fortune and married Willard-- +That mount of brawn! That clownish soul! + +Griffy the Cooper + +THE cooper should know about tubs. +But I learned about life as well, +And you who loiter around these graves +Think you know life. +You think your eye sweeps about a wide horizon, perhaps, +In truth you are only looking around the interior of your tub. +You cannot lift yourself to its rim +And see the outer world of things, +And at the same time see yourself. +You are submerged in the tub of yourself-- +Taboos and rules and appearances, +Are the staves of your tub. +Break them and dispel the witchcraft +Of thinking your tub is life +And that you know life. + +A. D. Blood + +IF YOU in the village think that my work was a good one, +Who closed the saloons and stopped all playing at cards, +And haled old Daisy Fraser before Justice Arnett, +In many a crusade to purge the people of sin; +Why do you let the milliner's daughter Dora, +And the worthless son of Benjamin Pantier +Nightly make my grave their unholy pillow? + +Dora Williams + +WHEN Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me +I went to Springfield. There I met a lush, +Whose father just deceased left him a fortune. +He married me when drunk. +My life was wretched. +A year passed and one day they found him dead. +That made me rich. I moved on to Chicago. +After a time met Tyler Rountree, villain. +I moved on to New York. A gray-haired magnate +Went mad about me--so another fortune. +He died one night right in my arms, you know. +(I saw his purple face for years thereafter. ) +There was almost a scandal. +I moved on, This time to Paris. I was now a woman, +Insidious, subtle, versed in the world and rich. +My sweet apartment near the Champs Elysees +Became a center for all sorts of people, +Musicians, poets, dandies, artists, nobles, +Where we spoke French and German, Italian, English. +I wed Count Navigato, native of Genoa. +We went to Rome. He poisoned me, I think. +Now in the Campo Santo overlooking +The sea where young Columbus dreamed new worlds, +See what they chiseled: "Contessa Navigato +Implora eterna quiete." + +Mrs. Williams + +I WAS the milliner +Talked about, lied about, +Mother of Dora, +Whose strange disappearance +Was charged to her rearing. +My eye quick to beauty +Saw much beside ribbons +And buckles and feathers +And leghorns and felts, +To set off sweet faces, +And dark hair and gold. +One thing I will tell you +And one I will ask: +The stealers of husbands +Wear powder and trinkets, +And fashionable hats. +Wives, wear them yourselves. +Hats may make divorces-- +They also prevent them. +Well now, let me ask you: +If all of the children, born here in Spoon River +Had been reared by the +County, somewhere on a farm; +And the fathers and mothers had been given their freedom +To live and enjoy, change mates if they wished, +Do you think that Spoon River +Had been any the worse? + +William and Emily + +THERE is something about +Death Like love itself! +If with some one with whom you have known passion +And the glow of youthful love, +You also, after years of life +Together, feel the sinking of the fire +And thus fade away together, +Gradually, faintly, delicately, +As it were in each other's arms, +Passing from the familiar room-- +That is a power of unison between souls +Like love itself! + +The Circuit Judge + +TAKE note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions +Eaten in my head-stone by the wind and rain-- +Almost as if an intangible Nemesis or hatred +Were marking scores against me, +But to destroy, and not preserve, my memory. +I in life was the Circuit judge, a maker of notches, +Deciding cases on the points the lawyers scored, +Not on the right of the matter. +O wind and rain, leave my head-stone alone +For worse than the anger of the wronged, +The curses of the poor, +Was to lie speechless, yet with vision clear, +Seeing that even Hod Putt, the murderer, +Hanged by my sentence, +Was innocent in soul compared with me. + +Blind Jack + +I HAD fiddled all day at the county fair. +But driving home "Butch" Weldy and Jack McGuire, +Who were roaring full, made me fiddle and fiddle +To the song of Susie Skinner, while whipping the horses +Till they ran away. Blind as I was, I tried to get out +As the carriage fell in the ditch, +And was caught in the wheels and killed. +There's a blind man here with a brow +As big and white as a cloud. +And all we fiddlers, from highest to lowest, +Writers of music and tellers of stories +Sit at his feet, +And hear him sing of the fall of Troy. + +John Horace Burleson + +I WON the prize essay at school +Here in the village, +And published a novel before I was twenty-five. +I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art; +There married the banker's daughter, +And later became president of the bank-- +Always looking forward to some leisure +To write an epic novel of the war. +Meanwhile friend of the great, and lover of letters, +And host to Matthew Arnold and to Emerson. +An after dinner speaker, writing essays +For local clubs. At last brought here-- +My boyhood home, you know-- +Not even a little tablet in Chicago +To keep my name alive. +How great it is to write the single line: +"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll!" + +Nancy Knapp + +WELL, don't you see this was the way of it: +We bought the farm with what he inherited, +And his brothers and sisters accused him of poisoning +His fathers mind against the rest of them. +And we never had any peace with our treasure. +The murrain took the cattle, and the crops failed. +And lightning struck the granary. +So we mortgaged the farm to keep going. +And he grew silent and was worried all the time. +Then some of the neighbors refused to speak to us, +And took sides with his brothers and sisters. +And I had no place to turn, as one may say to himself, +At an earlier time in life; +"No matter, So and so is my friend, or I can shake this off +With a little trip to Decatur." +Then the dreadfulest smells infested the rooms. +So I set fire to the beds and the old witch-house +Went up in a roar of flame, +As I danced in the yard with waving arms, +While he wept like a freezing steer. + +Barry Holden + +THE very fall my sister Nancy Knapp +Set fire to the house +They were trying Dr. Duval +For the murder of Zora Clemens, +And I sat in the court two weeks +Listening to every witness. +It was clear he had got her in a family +And to let the child be born +Would not do. +Well, how about me with eight children, +And one coming, and the farm +Mortgaged to Thomas Rhodes? +And when I got home that night, +(After listening to the story of the buggy ride, +And the finding of Zora in the ditch,) +The first thing I saw, right there by the steps, +Where the boys had hacked for angle worms, +Was the hatchet! +And just as I entered there was my wife, +Standing before me, big with child. +She started the talk of the mortgaged farm, +And I killed her. + +State's Attorney Fallas + +l, THE scourge-wielder, balance-wrecker, +Smiter with whips and swords; +I, hater of the breakers of the law; +I, legalist, inexorable and bitter, +Driving the jury to hang the madman, Barry Holden, +Was made as one dead by light too bright for eyes, +And woke to face a Truth with bloody brow: +Steel forceps fumbled by a doctor's hand +Against my boy's head as he entered life +Made him an idiot. I turned to books of science +To care for him. +That's how the world of those whose minds are sick +Became my work in life, and all my world. +Poor ruined boy! You were, at last, the potter +And I and all my deeds of charity +The vessels of your hand. + +Wendell P. Bloyd + +THEY first charged me with disorderly conduct, +There being no statute on blasphemy. +Later they locked me up as insane +Where I was beaten to death by a Catholic guard. +My offense was this: +I said God lied to Adam, and destined him +To lead the life of a fool, +Ignorant that there is evil in the world as well as good. +And when Adam outwitted God by eating the apple +And saw through the lie, +God drove him out of Eden to keep him from taking +The fruit of immortal life. +For Christ's sake, you sensible people, +Here's what God Himself says about it in the book of Genesis: +"And the Lord God said, behold the man +Is become as one of us" (a little envy, you see), +"To know good and evil" (The all-is-good lie exposed): +"And now lest he put forth his hand and take +Also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever: +Therefore the Lord God sent Him forth from the garden of Eden." (The +reason I believe God crucified His Own Son +To get out of the wretched tangle is, because it sounds just like Him. ) + +Francis Turner + +I COULD not run or play +In boyhood. +In manhood I could only sip the cup, +Not drink--For scarlet-fever left my heart diseased. +Yet I lie here +Soothed by a secret none but Mary knows: +There is a garden of acacia, +Catalpa trees, and arbors sweet with vines-- +There on that afternoon in June +By Mary's side-- +Kissing her with my soul upon my lips +It suddenly took flight. + +Franklin Jones + +IF I could have lived another year +I could have finished my flying machine, +And become rich and famous. +Hence it is fitting the workman +Who tried to chisel a dove for me +Made it look more like a chicken. +For what is it all but being hatched, +And running about the yard, +To the day of the block? +Save that a man has an angel's brain, +And sees the ax from the first! + +John M. Church + +I WAS attorney for the "Q" +And the Indemnity Company which insured +The owners of the mine. +I pulled the wires with judge and jury, +And the upper courts, to beat the claims +Of the crippled, the widow and orphan, +And made a fortune thereat. +The bar association sang my praises +In a high-flown resolution. +And the floral tributes were many-- +But the rats devoured my heart +And a snake made a nest in my skull + +Russian Sonia + +I, BORN in Weimar +Of a mother who was French +And German father, a most learned professor, +Orphaned at fourteen years, +Became a dancer, known as Russian Sonia, +All up and down the boulevards of Paris, +Mistress betimes of sundry dukes and counts, +And later of poor artists and of poets. +At forty years, passe, I sought New York +And met old Patrick Hummer on the boat, +Red-faced and hale, though turned his sixtieth year, +Returning after having sold a ship-load +Of cattle in the German city, Hamburg. +He brought me to Spoon River and we lived here +For twenty years--they thought that we were married +This oak tree near me is the favorite haunt +Of blue jays chattering, chattering all the day. +And why not? for my very dust is laughing +For thinking of the humorous thing called life. +Barney Hainsfeather + +IF the excursion train to Peoria +Had just been wrecked, I might have escaped with my life-- +Certainly I should have escaped this place. +But as it was burned as well, they mistook me +For John Allen who was sent to the Hebrew Cemetery +At Chicago, +And John for me, so I lie here. +It was bad enough to run a clothing store in this town, +But to be buried here--ach! + +Petit, the Poet + +SEEDS in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, +Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel-- +Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens-- +But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof. +Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus, +Ballades by the score with the same old thought: +The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished; +And what is love but a rose that fades? +Life all around me here in the village: +Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth, +Courage, constancy, heroism, failure-- +All in the loom, and oh what patterns! +Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers-- +Blind to all of it all my life long. +Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus, +Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics, +While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines? + +Pauline Barrett + +ALMOST the shell of a woman after the surgeon's knife +And almost a year to creep back into strength, +Till the dawn of our wedding decennial +Found me my seeming self again. +We walked the forest together, +By a path of soundless moss and turf. +But I could not look in your eyes, +And you could not look in my eyes, +For such sorrow was ours--the beginning of gray in your hair. +And I but a shell of myself. +And what did we talk of?-- sky and water, +Anything, 'most, to hide our thoughts. +And then your gift of wild roses, +Set on the table to grace our dinner. +Poor heart, how bravely you struggled +To imagine and live a remembered rapture! +Then my spirit drooped as the night came on, +And you left me alone in my room for a while, +As you did when I was a bride, poor heart. +And I looked in the mirror and something said: +"One should be all dead when one is half-dead--" +Nor ever mock life, nor ever cheat love." +And I did it looking there in the mirror-- +Dear, have you ever understood? + +Mrs. Charles Bliss + +REVEREND WILEY advised me not to divorce him +For the sake of the children, +And Judge Somers advised him the same. +So we stuck to the end of the path. +But two of the children thought he was right, +And two of the children thought I was right. +And the two who sided with him blamed me, +And the two who sided with me blamed him, +And they grieved for the one they sided with. +And all were torn with the guilt of judging, +And tortured in soul because they could not admire +Equally him and me. +Now every gardener knows that plants grown in cellars +Or under stones are twisted and yellow and weak. +And no mother would let her baby suck +Diseased milk from her breast. +Yet preachers and judges advise the raising of souls +Where there is no sunlight, but only twilight, +No warmth, but only dampness and cold-- +Preachers and judges! + +Mrs. George Reece + +To this generation I would say: +Memorize some bit of verse of truth or beauty. +It may serve a turn in your life. +My husband had nothing to do +With the fall of the bank--he was only cashier. +The wreck was due to the president, Thomas Rhodes, +And his vain, unscrupulous son. +Yet my husband was sent to prison, +And I was left with the children, +To feed and clothe and school them. +And I did it, and sent them forth +Into the world all clean and strong, +And all through the wisdom of Pope, the poet: +"Act well your part, there all the honor lies." + +Rev. Lemuel Wiley + +I PREACHED four thousand sermons, +I conducted forty revivals, +And baptized many converts. +Yet no deed of mine +Shines brighter in the memory of the world, +And none is treasured more by me: +Look how I saved the Blisses from divorce, +And kept the children free from that disgrace, +To grow up into moral men and women, +Happy themselves, a credit to the village. + +Thomas Ross, Jr. + +THIS I saw with my own eyes: A cliff--swallow +Made her nest in a hole of the high clay-bank +There near Miller's Ford. +But no sooner were the young hatched +Than a snake crawled up to the nest +To devour the brood. +Then the mother swallow with swift flutterings +And shrill cries +Fought at the snake, +Blinding him with the beat of her wings, +Until he, wriggling and rearing his head, +Fell backward down the bank +Into Spoon River and was drowned. +Scarcely an hour passed +Until a shrike +Impaled the mother swallow on a thorn. +As for myself I overcame my lower nature +Only to be destroyed by my brother's ambition. + +Rev. Abner Peet + +I HAD no objection at all +To selling my household effects at auction +On the village square. +It gave my beloved flock the chance +To get something which had belonged to me +For a memorial. +But that trunk which was struck off +To Burchard, the grog-keeper! +Did you know it contained the manuscripts +Of a lifetime of sermons? +And he burned them as waste paper. + +Jefferson Howard + +MY valiant fight! For I call it valiant, +With my father's beliefs from old Virginia: +Hating slavery, but no less war. +I, full of spirit, audacity, courage +Thrown into life here in Spoon River, +With its dominant forces drawn from +New England, Republicans, Calvinists, merchants, bankers, +Hating me, yet fearing my arm. +With wife and children heavy to carry-- +Yet fruits of my very zest of life. +Stealing odd pleasures that cost me prestige, +And reaping evils I had not sown; +Foe of the church with its charnel dankness, +Friend of the human touch of the tavern; +Tangled with fates all alien to me, +Deserted by hands I called my own. +Then just as I felt my giant strength +Short of breath, behold my children +Had wound their lives in stranger gardens-- +And I stood alone, as I started alone +My valiant life! I died on my feet, +Facing the silence--facing the prospect +That no one would know of the fight I made. + +Albert Schirding + +JONAS KEENE thought his lot a hard one +Because his children were all failures. +But I know of a fate more trying than that: +It is to be a failure while your children are successes. +For I raised a brood of eagles +Who flew away at last, leaving me +A crow on the abandoned bough. +Then, with the ambition to prefix +Honorable to my name, +And thus to win my children's admiration, +I ran for County Superintendent of Schools, +Spending my accumulations to win-- and lost. +That fall my daughter received first prize in +Paris For her picture, entitled, "The Old Mill"-- +(It was of the water mill before Henry Wilkin put in steam.) +The feeling that I was not worthy of her finished me. + +Jonas Keene + +WHY did Albert Schirding kill himself +Trying to be County Superintendent of Schools, +Blest as he was with the means of life +And wonderful children, bringing him honor +Ere he was sixty? +If even one of my boys could have run a news-stand, +Or one of my girls could have married a decent man, +I should not have walked in the rain +And jumped into bed with clothes all wet, +Refusing medical aid. + +Yee Bow + +THEY got me into the Sunday-school +In Spoon River And tried to get me to drop +Confucius for Jesus. I could have been no worse off +If I had tried to get them to drop Jesus for Confucius. +For, without any warning, as if it were a prank, +And sneaking up behind me, Harry Wiley, +The minister's son, caved my ribs into my lungs, +With a blow of his fist. +Now I shall never sleep with my ancestors in Pekin, +And no children shall worship at my grave. + +Washington McNeely + +RICH, honored by my fellow citizens, +The father of many children, born of a noble mother, +All raised there +In the great mansion--house, at the edge of town. +Note the cedar tree on the lawn! +I sent all the boys to Ann Arbor, all of the girls to Rockford, +The while my life went on, getting more riches and honors-- +Resting under my cedar tree at evening. +The years went on. I sent the girls to Europe; +I dowered them when married. +I gave the boys money to start in business. +They were strong children, promising as apples +Before the bitten places show. +But John fled the country in disgrace. +Jenny died in child-birth-- +I sat under my cedar tree. +Harry killed himself after a debauch, Susan was divorced-- +I sat under my cedar tree. Paul was invalided from over study, +Mary became a recluse at home for love of a man-- +I sat under my cedar tree. +All were gone, or broken-winged or devoured by life-- +I sat under my cedar tree. +My mate, the mother of them, was taken-- +I sat under my cedar tree, +Till ninety years were tolled. +O maternal Earth, which rocks the fallen leaf to sleep. + +Mary McNeely + +PASSER-BY, +To love is to find your own soul +Through the soul of the beloved one. +When the beloved one withdraws itself from your soul +Then you have lost your soul. +It is written: "l have a friend, +But my sorrow has no friend." +Hence my long years of solitude at the home of my father, +Trying to get myself back, +And to turn my sorrow into a supremer self. +But there was my father with his sorrows, +Sitting under the cedar tree, +A picture that sank into my heart at last +Bringing infinite repose. +Oh, ye souls who have made life +Fragrant and white as tube roses +From earth's dark soil, +Eternal peace! + +Daniel M'Cumber + +WHEN I went to the city, Mary McNeely, +I meant to return for you, yes I did. +But Laura, my landlady's daughter, +Stole into my life somehow, and won me away. +Then after some years whom should I meet +But Georgine Miner from Niles--a sprout +Of the free love, Fourierist gardens that flourished +Before the war all over Ohio. +Her dilettante lover had tired of her, +And she turned to me for strength and solace. +She was some kind of a crying thing +One takes in one's arms, and all at once +It slimes your face with its running nose, +And voids its essence all over you; +Then bites your hand and springs away. +And there you stand bleeding and smelling to heaven +Why, Mary McNeely, I was not worthy +To kiss the hem of your robe! + +Georgine Sand Miner + +A STEPMOTHER drove me from home, embittering me. +A squaw-man, a flaneur and dilettante took my virtue. +For years I was his mistress--no one knew. +I learned from him the parasite cunning +With which I moved with the bluffs, like a flea on a dog. +All the time I was nothing but "very private," with different men. +Then Daniel, the radical, had me for years. +His sister called me his mistress; +And Daniel wrote me: +"Shameful word, soiling our beautiful love!" +But my anger coiled, preparing its fangs. +My Lesbian friend next took a hand. +She hated Daniel's sister. +And Daniel despised her midget husband. +And she saw a chance for a poisonous thrust: +I must complain to the wife of Daniel's pursuit! +But before I did that I begged him to fly to London with me. +"Why not stay in the city just as we have?" he asked. +Then I turned submarine and revenged his repulse +In the arms of my dilettante friend. +Then up to the surface, Bearing the letter that Daniel wrote me +To prove my honor was all intact, showing it to his wife, +My Lesbian friend and everyone. +If Daniel had only shot me dead! +Instead of stripping me naked of lies +A harlot in body and soul. + +Thomas Rhodes + +VERY well, you liberals, +And navigators into realms intellectual, +You sailors through heights imaginative, +Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets, +You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits, +And Tennessee Claflin Shopes-- +You found with all your boasted wisdom +How hard at the last it is +To keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms. +While we, seekers of earth's treasures +Getters and hoarders of gold, +Are self-contained, compact, harmonized, +Even to the end. + +Penniwit, the Artist + +I LOST my patronage in Spoon River +From trying to put my mind in the camera +To catch the soul of the person. +The very best picture I ever took +Was of Judge Somers, attorney at law. +He sat upright and had me pause +Till he got his cross-eye straight. +Then when he was ready he said "all right." +And I yelled "overruled" and his eye turned up. +And I caught him just as he used to look +When saying "l except." + +Jim Brown + +WHILE I was handling Dom Pedro +I got at the thing that divides the race between men who are +For singing "Turkey in the straw" or +"There is a fountain filled with blood"-- +(Like Rile Potter used to sing it over at Concord). +For cards, or for Rev. Peet's lecture on the holy land; +For skipping the light fantastic, or passing the plate; +For Pinafore, or a Sunday school cantata; +For men, or for money; +For the people or against them. +This was it: Rev. Peet and the Social Purity Club, +Headed by Ben Pantier's wife, +Went to the Village trustees, +And asked them to make me take Dom Pedro +From the barn of Wash McNeely, there at the edge of town, +To a barn outside of the corporation, +On the ground that it corrupted public morals. +Well, Ben Pantier and Fiddler Jones saved the day-- +They thought it a slam on colts. + +Robert Davidson + +I GREW spiritually fat living off the souls of men. +If I saw a soul that was strong +I wounded its pride and devoured its strength. +The shelters of friendship knew my cunning +For where I could steal a friend I did so. +And wherever I could enlarge my power +By undermining ambition, I did so, +Thus to make smooth my own. +And to triumph over other souls, +Just to assert and prove my superior strength, +Was with me a delight, +The keen exhilaration of soul gymnastics. +Devouring souls, I should have lived forever. +But their undigested remains bred in me a deadly nephritis, +With fear, restlessness, sinking spirits, +Hatred, suspicion, vision disturbed. +I collapsed at last with a shriek. +Remember the acorn; +It does not devour other acorns. + +Elsa Wertman + +I WAS a peasant girl from Germany, +Blue-eyed, rosy, happy and strong. +And the first place I worked was at Thomas Greene's. +On a summer's day when she was away +He stole into the kitchen and took me +Right in his arms and kissed me on my throat, +I turning my head. Then neither of us +Seemed to know what happened. +And I cried for what would become of me. +And cried and cried as my secret began to show. +One day Mrs. Greene said she understood, +And would make no trouble for me, +And, being childless, would adopt it. +(He had given her a farm to be still. ) +So she hid in the house and sent out rumors, +As if it were going to happen to her. +And all went well and the child was born-- +They were so kind to me. +Later I married Gus Wertman, and years passed. +But-- at political rallies when sitters-by thought I was crying +At the eloquence of Hamilton Greene-- +That was not it. No! I wanted to say: +That's my son! +That's my son. + +Hamilton Greene + +I WAS the only child of Frances Harris of Virginia +And Thomas Greene of Kentucky, +Of valiant and honorable blood both. +To them I owe all that I became, +Judge, member of Congress, leader in the State. +From my mother I inherited +Vivacity, fancy, language; +From my father will, judgment, logic. +All honor to them +For what service I was to the people! + +Ernest Hyde + +MY mind was a mirror: +It saw what it saw, it knew what it knew. +In youth my mind was just a mirror In a rapidly flying car, +Which catches and loses bits of the landscape. +Then in time +Great scratches were made on the mirror, +Letting the outside world come in, +And letting my inner self look out. +For this is the birth of the soul in sorrow, +A birth with gains and losses. +The mind sees the world as a thing apart, +And the soul makes the world at one with itself. +A mirror scratched reflects no image-- +And this is the silence of wisdom. + +Roger Heston + +OH many times did Ernest Hyde and I +Argue about the freedom of the will. +My favorite metaphor was Prickett's cow +Roped out to grass, and free you know as far +As the length of the rope. +One day while arguing so, watching the cow +Pull at the rope to get beyond the circle +Which she had eaten bare, +Out came the stake, and tossing up her head, +She ran for us. +"What's that, free-will or what?" said Ernest, running. +I fell just as she gored me to my death. + +Amos Sibley + +NOT character, not fortitude, not patience +Were mine, the which the village thought I had +In bearing with my wife, while preaching on, +Doing the work God chose for me. +I loathed her as a termagant, as a wanton. +I knew of her adulteries, every one. +But even so, if I divorced the woman +I must forsake the ministry. +Therefore to do God's work and have it crop, +I bore with her +So lied I to myself +So lied I to Spoon River! +Yet I tried lecturing, ran for the legislature, +Canvassed for books, with just the thought in mind: +If I make money thus, +I will divorce her. + +Mrs. Sibley + +THE secret of the stars-- gravitation. +The secret of the earth-- layers of rock. +The secret of the soil-- to receive seed. +The secret of the seed-- the germ. +The secret of man-- the sower. +The secret of woman-- the soil. +My secret: Under a mound that you shall never find. + +Adam Weirauch + +I WAS crushed between Altgeld and Armour. +I lost many friends, much time and money +Fighting for Altgeld whom Editor Whedon +Denounced as the candidate of gamblers and anarchists. +Then Armour started to ship dressed meat to Spoon River, +Forcing me to shut down my slaughter-house +And my butcher shop went all to pieces. +The new forces of Altgeld and Armour caught me +At the same time. I thought it due me, to recoup the money I lost +And to make good the friends that left me, +For the Governor to appoint me Canal Commissioner. +Instead he appointed Whedon of the Spoon River Argus, +So I ran for the legislature and was elected. +I said to hell with principle and sold my vote +On Charles T. Yerkes' street-car franchise. +Of course I was one of the fellows they caught. +Who was it, Armour, Altgeld or myself +That ruined me? + +Ezra Bartlett + +A CHAPLAIN in the army, +A chaplain in the prisons, +An exhorter in Spoon River, +Drunk with divinity, Spoon River-- +Yet bringing poor Eliza Johnson to shame, +And myself to scorn and wretchedness. +But why will you never see that love of women, +And even love of wine, +Are the stimulants by which the soul, hungering for divinity, +Reaches the ecstatic vision +And sees the celestial outposts? +Only after many trials for strength, +Only when all stimulants fail, +Does the aspiring soul +By its own sheer power +Find the divine +By resting upon itself. + +Amelia Garrick + +YES, here I lie close to a stunted rose bush +In a forgotten place near the fence +Where the thickets from Siever's woods +Have crept over, growing sparsely. +And you, you are a leader in New York, +The wife of a noted millionaire, +A name in the society columns, +Beautiful, admired, magnified perhaps +By the mirage of distance. +You have succeeded, +I have failed In the eyes of the world. +You are alive, I am dead. +Yet I know that I vanquished your spirit; +And I know that lying here far from you, +Unheard of among your great friends +In the brilliant world where you move, +I am really the unconquerable power over your life +That robs it of complete triumph. + +John Hancock Otis + +As to democracy, fellow citizens, +Are you not prepared to admit +That l, who inherited riches and was to the manor born, +Was second to none in Spoon River +In my devotion to the cause of Liberty? +While my contemporary, Anthony Findlay, +Born in a shanty and beginning life +As a water carrier to the section hands, +Then becoming a section hand when he was grown, +Afterwards foreman of the gang, until he rose +To the superintendency of the railroad, +Living in Chicago, +Was a veritable slave driver, +Grinding the faces of labor, +And a bitter enemy of democracy. +And I say to you, Spoon River, +And to you, O republic, +Beware of the man who rises to power +From one suspender. + +The Unknown + +YE aspiring ones, listen to the story of the unknown +Who lies here with no stone to mark the place. +As a boy reckless and wanton, +Wandering with gun in hand through the forest +Near the mansion of Aaron Hatfield, +I shot a hawk perched on the top +Of a dead tree. He fell with guttural cry +At my feet, his wing broken. +Then I put him in a cage +Where he lived many days cawing angrily at me +When I offered him food. +Daily I search the realms of Hades +For the soul of the hawk, +That I may offer him the friendship +Of one whom life wounded and caged. +Alexander Throckmorton + +IN youth my wings were strong and tireless, +But I did not know the mountains. +In age I knew the mountains +But my weary wings could not follow my vision-- +Genius is wisdom and youth. + +Jonathan Swift Somers (Author of the Spooniad) + +AFTER you have enriched your soul +To the highest point, +With books, thought, suffering, +The understanding of many personalities, +The power to interpret glances, silences, +The pauses in momentous transformations, +The genius of divination and prophecy; +So that you feel able at times to hold the world +In the hollow of your hand; +Then, if, by the crowding of so many powers +Into the compass of your soul, +Your soul takes fire, +And in the conflagration of your soul +The evil of the world is lighted up and made clear-- +Be thankful if in that hour of supreme vision +Life does not fiddle. + +Widow McFarlane + +I WAS the Widow McFarlane, +Weaver of carpets for all the village. +And I pity you still at the loom of life, +You who are singing to the shuttle +And lovingly watching the work of your hands, +If you reach the day of hate, of terrible truth. +For the cloth of life is woven, you know, +To a pattern hidden under the loom-- +A pattern you never see! +And you weave high-hearted, singing, singing, +You guard the threads of love and friendship +For noble figures in gold and purple. +And long after other eyes can see +You have woven a moon-white strip of cloth, +You laugh in your strength, for Hope overlays it +With shapes of love and beauty. +The loom stops short! +The pattern's out +You're alone in the room! +You have woven a shroud +And hate of it lays you in it. + +Carl Hamblin + +THE press of the Spoon River Clarion was wrecked, +And I was tarred and feathered, +For publishing this on the day the +Anarchists were hanged in Chicago: +"l saw a beautiful woman with bandaged eyes +Standing on the steps of a marble temple. +Great multitudes passed in front of her, +Lifting their faces to her imploringly. +In her left hand she held a sword. +She was brandishing the sword, +Sometimes striking a child, again a laborer, +Again a slinking woman, again a lunatic. +In her right hand she held a scale; +Into the scale pieces of gold were tossed +By those who dodged the strokes of the sword. +A man in a black gown read from a manuscript: +"She is no respecter of persons." +Then a youth wearing a red cap +Leaped to her side and snatched away the bandage. +And lo, the lashes had been eaten away +From the oozy eye-lids; +The eye-balls were seared with a milky mucus; +The madness of a dying soul +Was written on her face-- +But the multitude saw why she wore the bandage." + +Editor Whedon + +To be able to see every side of every question; +To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long; +To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose, +To use great feelings and passions of the human family +For base designs, for cunning ends, +To wear a mask like the Greek actors-- +Your eight-page paper-- behind which you huddle, +Bawling through the megaphone of big type: +"This is I, the giant." +Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief, +Poisoned with the anonymous words +Of your clandestine soul. +To scratch dirt over scandal for money, +And exhume it to the winds for revenge, +Or to sell papers, +Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be, +To win at any cost, save your own life. +To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization, +As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track +And derails the express train. +To be an editor, as I was. +Then to lie here close by the river over the place +Where the sewage flows from the village, +And the empty cans and garbage are dumped, +And abortions are hidden. + +Eugene Carman + +RHODES, slave! Selling shoes and gingham, +Flour and bacon, overalls, clothing, all day long +For fourteen hours a day for three hundred and thirteen days +For more than twenty years. +Saying "Yes'm" and "Yes, sir", and "Thank you" +A thousand times a day, and all for fifty dollars a month. +Living in this stinking room in the rattle-trap "Commercial." +And compelled to go to Sunday School, and to listen +To the Rev. Abner Peet one hundred and four times a year +For more than an hour at a time, +Because Thomas Rhodes ran the church +As well as the store and the bank. +So while I was tying my neck-tie that morning +I suddenly saw myself in the glass: +My hair all gray, my face like a sodden pie. +So I cursed and cursed: You damned old thing +You cowardly dog! You rotten pauper! +You Rhodes' slave! Till Roger Baughman +Thought I was having a fight with some one, +And looked through the transom just in time +To see me fall on the floor in a heap +From a broken vein in my head. + +Clarence Fawcett + +THE sudden death of Eugene Carman +Put me in line to be promoted to fifty dollars a month, +And I told my wife and children that night. +But it didn't come, and so I thought +Old Rhodes suspected me of stealing +The blankets I took and sold on the side +For money to pay a doctor's bill for my little girl. +Then like a bolt old Rhodes accused me, +And promised me mercy for my family's sake +If I confessed, and so I confessed, +And begged him to keep it out of the papers, +And I asked the editors, too. +That night at home the constable took me +And every paper, except the Clarion, +Wrote me up as a thief +Because old Rhodes was an advertiser +And wanted to make an example of me. +Oh! well, you know how the children cried, +And how my wife pitied and hated me, +And how I came to lie here. + +W. Lloyd Garrison Standard + +VEGETARIAN, non--resistant, free-thinker, in ethics a Christian; +Orator apt at the rhine-stone rhythm of Ingersoll. +Carnivorous, avenger, believer and pagan. +Continent, promiscuous, changeable, treacherous, vain, +Proud, with the pride that makes struggle a thing for laughter; +With heart cored out by the worm of theatric despair. +Wearing the coat of indifference to hide the shame of defeat; +I, child of the abolitionist idealism-- +A sort of Brand in a birth of half-and-half. +What other thing could happen when I defended +The patriot scamps who burned the court house +That Spoon River might have a new one +Than plead them guilty? +When Kinsey Keene drove through +The card--board mask of my life with a spear of light, +What could I do but slink away, like the beast of myself +Which I raised from a whelp, to a corner and growl? +The pyramid of my life was nought but a dune, +Barren and formless, spoiled at last by the storm. + +Professor Newcomer + +EVERYONE laughed at Col. Prichard +For buying an engine so powerful +That it wrecked itself, and wrecked the grinder +He ran it with. +But here is a joke of cosmic size: +The urge of nature that made a man +Evolve from his brain a spiritual life-- +Oh miracle of the world!-- +The very same brain with which the ape and wolf +Get food and shelter and procreate themselves. +Nature has made man do this, +In a world where she gives him nothing to do +After all-- (though the strength of his soul goes round +In a futile waste of power. +To gear itself to the mills of the gods)-- +But get food and shelter and procreate himself! + +Ralph Rhodes + +ALL they said was true: +I wrecked my father's bank with my loans +To dabble in wheat; but this was true-- +I was buying wheat for him as well, +Who couldn't margin the deal in his name +Because of his church relationship. +And while George Reece was serving his term +I chased the will-o-the-wisp of women +And the mockery of wine in New York. +It's deathly to sicken of wine and women +When nothing else is left in life. +But suppose your head is gray, and bowed +On a table covered with acrid stubs +Of cigarettes and empty glasses, +And a knock is heard, and you know it's the knock +So long drowned out by popping corks +And the pea-cock screams of demireps-- +And you look up, and there's your Theft, +Who waited until your head was gray, +And your heart skipped beats to say to you: +The game is ended. I've called for you, +Go out on Broadway and be run over, +They'll ship you back to Spoon River. + +Mickey M'Grew + +IT was just like everything else in life: +Something outside myself drew me down, +My own strength never failed me. +Why, there was the time I earned the money +With which to go away to school, +And my father suddenly needed help +And I had to give him all of it. +Just so it went till I ended up +A man-of--all-work in Spoon River. +Thus when I got the water-tower cleaned, +And they hauled me up the seventy feet, +I unhooked the rope from my waist, +And laughingly flung my giant arms +Over the smooth steel lips of the top of the tower-- +But they slipped from the treacherous slime, + And down, down, down, I plunged +Through bellowing darkness! + +Rosie Roberts + +I WAS sick, but more than that, I was mad +At the crooked police, and the crooked game of life. +So I wrote to the Chief of Police at Peoria: +"l am here in my girlhood home in Spoon River, +Gradually wasting away. +But come and take me, I killed the son +Of the merchant prince, in Madam Lou's +And the papers that said he killed himself +In his home while cleaning a hunting gun-- +Lied like the devil to hush up scandal +For the bribe of advertising. +In my room I shot him, at Madam Lou's, +Because he knocked me down when I said +That, in spite of all the money he had, +I'd see my lover that night." + +Oscar Hummel + +I STAGGERED on through darkness, +There was a hazy sky, a few stars +Which I followed as best I could. +It was nine o'clock, I was trying to get home. +But somehow I was lost, +Though really keeping the road. +Then I reeled through a gate and into a yard, +And called at the top of my voice: +"Oh, Fiddler! Oh, Mr. Jones!" +(I thought it was his house and he would show me the way home. ) +But who should step out but A. D. Blood, +In his night shirt, waving a stick of wood, +And roaring about the cursed saloons, +And the criminals they made? +"You drunken Oscar Hummel", he said, +As I stood there weaving to and fro, +Taking the blows from the stick in his hand +Till I dropped down dead at his feet. + +Josiah Tompkins + +I WAS well known and much beloved +And rich, as fortunes are reckoned +In Spoon River, where I had lived and worked. +That was the home for me, +Though all my children had flown afar-- +Which is the way of Nature--all but one. +The boy, who was the baby, stayed at home, +To be my help in my failing years +And the solace of his mother. +But I grew weaker, as he grew stronger, +And he quarreled with me about the business, +And his wife said I was a hindrance to it; +And he won his mother to see as he did, +Till they tore me up to be transplanted +With them to her girlhood home in Missouri. +And so much of my fortune was gone at last, +Though I made the will just as he drew it, +He profited little by it. + +Roscoe Purkapile + +SHE loved me. +Oh! how she loved me I never had a chance to escape +From the day she first saw me. +But then after we were married I thought +She might prove her mortality and let me out, +Or she might divorce me. But few die, none resign. +Then I ran away and was gone a year on a lark. +But she never complained. She said all would be well +That I would return. And I did return. +I told her that while taking a row in a boat +I had been captured near Van Buren Street +By pirates on Lake Michigan, +And kept in chains, so I could not write her. +She cried and kissed me, and said it was cruel, +Outrageous, inhuman! I then concluded our marriage +Was a divine dispensation +And could not be dissolved, +Except by death. +I was right. + +Mrs. Purkapile + +HE ran away and was gone for a year. +When he came home he told me the silly story +Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan +And kept in chains so he could not write me. +I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well +What he was doing, and that he met +The milliner, Mrs. Williams, now and then +When she went to the city to buy goods, as she said. +But a promise is a promise +And marriage is marriage, +And out of respect for my own character +I refused to be drawn into a divorce +By the scheme of a husband who had merely grown tired +Of his marital vow and duty. + +Mrs. Kessler + +MR. KESSLER, you know, was in the army, +And he drew six dollars a month as a pension, +And stood on the corner talking politics, +Or sat at home reading Grant's Memoirs; +And I supported the family by washing, +Learning the secrets of all the people +From their curtains, counterpanes, shirts and skirts. +For things that are new grow old at length, +They're replaced with better or none at all: +People are prospering or falling back. +And rents and patches widen with time; +No thread or needle can pace decay, +And there are stains that baffle soap, +And there are colors that run in spite of you, +Blamed though you are for spoiling a dress. +Handkerchiefs, napery, have their secrets-- +The laundress, Life, knows all about it. +And l, who went to all the funerals +Held in Spoon River, swear I never +Saw a dead face without thinking it looked +Like something washed and ironed. + +Harmon Whitney + +OUT of the lights and roar of cities, +Drifting down like a spark in Spoon River, +Burnt out with the fire of drink, and broken, +The paramour of a woman I took in self-contempt, +But to hide a wounded pride as well. +To be judged and loathed by a village of little minds-- +I, gifted with tongues and wisdom, +Sunk here to the dust of the justice court, +A picker of rags in the rubbage of spites and wrongs,-- +I, whom fortune smiled on! +I in a village, +Spouting to gaping yokels pages of verse, +Out of the lore of golden years, +Or raising a laugh with a flash of filthy wit +When they bought the drinks to kindle my dying mind. +To be judged by you, +The soul of me hidden from you, +With its wound gangrened +By love for a wife who made the wound, +With her cold white bosom, treasonous, pure and hard, +Relentless to the last, when the touch of her hand, +At any time, might have cured me of the typhus, +Caught in the jungle of life where many are lost. +And only to think that my soul could not react, +Like Byron's did, in song, in something noble, +But turned on itself like a tortured snake-- judge me this way, +O world. + +Bert Kessler + +I WINGED my bird, +Though he flew toward the setting sun; +But just as the shot rang out, he soared +Up and up through the splinters of golden light, +Till he turned right over, feathers ruffled, +With some of the down of him floating near, +And fell like a plummet into the grass. +I tramped about, parting the tangles, +Till I saw a splash of blood on a stump, +And the quail lying close to the rotten roots. +I reached my hand, but saw no brier, +But something pricked and stung and numbed it. +And then, in a second, I spied the rattler-- +The shutters wide in his yellow eyes, +The head of him arched, sunk back in the rings of him, +A circle of filth, the color of ashes, +Or oak leaves bleached under layers of leaves. +I stood like a stone as he shrank and uncoiled +And started to crawl beneath the stump, +When I fell limp in the grass. + +Lambert Hutchins + +I HAVE two monuments besides this granite obelisk: +One, the house I built on the hill, +With its spires, bay windows, and roof of slate. +The other, the lake-front in Chicago, +Where the railroad keeps a switching yard, +With whistling engines and crunching wheels +And smoke and soot thrown over the city, +And the crash of cars along the boulevard,-- +A blot like a hog-pen on the harbor +Of a great metropolis, foul as a sty. +I helped to give this heritage +To generations yet unborn, with my vote +In the House of Representatives, +And the lure of the thing was to be at rest +From the never--ending fright of need, +And to give my daughters gentle breeding, +And a sense of security in life. +But, you see, though I had the mansion house +And traveling passes and local distinction, +I could hear the whispers, whispers, whispers, +Wherever I went, and my daughters grew up +With a look as if some one were about to strike them; +And they married madly, helter-skelter, +Just to get out and have a change. +And what was the whole of the business worth? +Why, it wasn't worth a damn! + +Lillian Stewart + +I WAS the daughter of Lambert Hutchins, +Born in a cottage near the grist--mill, +Reared in the mansion there on the hill, +With its spires, bay--windows, and roof of slate. +How proud my mother was of the mansion +How proud of father's rise in the world! +And how my father loved and watched us, +And guarded our happiness. +But I believe the house was a curse, +For father's fortune was little beside it; +And when my husband found he had married +A girl who was really poor, +He taunted me with the spires, +And called the house a fraud on the world, +A treacherous lure to young men, raising hopes +Of a dowry not to be had; +And a man while selling his vote +Should get enough from the people's betrayal +To wall the whole of his family in. +He vexed my life till I went back home +And lived like an old maid till I died, +Keeping house for father. + +Hortense Robbins + +MY name used to be in the papers daily +As having dined somewhere, +Or traveled somewhere, +Or rented a house in Paris, +Where I entertained the nobility. +I was forever eating or traveling, +Or taking the cure at Baden-Baden. +Now I am here to do honor +To Spoon River, here beside the family whence I sprang. +No one cares now where I dined, +Or lived, or whom I entertained, +Or how often I took the cure at Baden-Baden. + +Jacob Godbey + +How did you feel, you libertarians, +Who spent your talents rallying noble reasons +Around the saloon, as if Liberty +Was not to be found anywhere except at the bar +Or at a table, guzzling? +How did you feel, Ben Pantier, and the rest of you, +Who almost stoned me for a tyrant +Garbed as a moralist, +And as a wry-faced ascetic frowning upon Yorkshire pudding, +Roast beef and ale and good will and rosy cheer-- +Things you never saw in a grog-shop in your life? +How did you feel after I was dead and gone, +And your goddess, Liberty, unmasked as a strumpet, +Selling out the streets of Spoon River +To the insolent giants +Who manned the saloons from afar? +Did it occur to you that personal liberty +Is liberty of the mind, +Rather than of the belly? + +Walter Simmons + +MY parents thought that I would be +As great as Edison or greater: +For as a boy I made balloons +And wondrous kites and toys with clocks +And little engines with tracks to run on +And telephones of cans and thread. +I played the cornet and painted pictures, +Modeled in clay and took the part +Of the villain in the "Octoroon." +But then at twenty--one I married +And had to live, and so, to live +I learned the trade of making watches +And kept the jewelry store on the square, +Thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking,-- +Not of business, but of the engine +I studied the calculus to build. +And all Spoon River watched and waited +To see it work, but it never worked. +And a few kind souls believed my genius +Was somehow hampered by the store. +It wasn't true. +The truth was this: +I did not have the brains. + +Tom Beatty + +I WAS a lawyer like Harmon Whitney +Or Kinsey Keene or Garrison Standard, +For I tried the rights of property, +Although by lamp-light, for thirty years, +In that poker room in the opera house. +And I say to you that Life's a gambler +Head and shoulders above us all. +No mayor alive can close the house. +And if you lose, you can squeal as you will; +You'll not get back your money. +He makes the percentage hard to conquer; +He stacks the cards to catch your weakness +And not to meet your strength. +And he gives you seventy years to play: +For if you cannot win in seventy +You cannot win at all. +So, if you lose, get out of the room-- +Get out of the room when your time is up. +It's mean to sit and fumble the cards +And curse your losses, leaden-eyed, +Whining to try and try. + +Roy Butler + +IF the learned Supreme Court of Illinois +Got at the secret of every case +As well as it does a case of rape +It would be the greatest court in the world. +A jury, of neighbors mostly, with "Butch" Weldy +As foreman, found me guilty in ten minutes +And two ballots on a case like this: +Richard Bandle and I had trouble over a fence +And my wife and Mrs. Bandle quarreled +As to whether Ipava was a finer town than Table Grove. +I awoke one morning with the love of God +Brimming over my heart, so I went to see Richard +To settle the fence in the spirit of Jesus Christ. +I knocked on the door, and his wife opened; +She smiled and asked me in. +I entered-- She slammed the door and began to scream, +"Take your hands off, you low down varlet!" +Just then her husband entered. +I waved my hands, choked up with words. +He went for his gun, and I ran out. +But neither the Supreme Court nor my wife +Believed a word she said. + +Searcy Foote + +I WANTED to go away to college +But rich Aunt Persis wouldn't help me. +So I made gardens and raked the lawns +And bought John Alden's books with my earnings +And toiled for the very means of life. +I wanted to marry Delia Prickett, +But how could I do it with what I earned? +And there was Aunt Persis more than seventy +Who sat in a wheel-chair half alive +With her throat so paralyzed, when she swallowed +The soup ran out of her mouth like a duck-- +A gourmand yet, investing her income +In mortgages, fretting all the time +About her notes and rents and papers. +That day I was sawing wood for her, +And reading Proudhon in between. +I went in the house for a drink of water, +And there she sat asleep in her chair, +And Proudhon lying on the table, +And a bottle of chloroform on the book, +She used sometimes for an aching tooth! +I poured the chloroform on a handkerchief +And held it to her nose till she died.-- +Oh Delia, Delia, you and Proudhon +Steadied my hand, and the coroner +Said she died of heart failure. +I married Delia and got the money-- +A joke on you, Spoon River? + +Edmund Pollard + +I WOULD I had thrust my hands of flesh +Into the disk--flowers bee-infested, +Into the mirror-like core of fire +Of the light of life, the sun of delight. +For what are anthers worth or petals +Or halo-rays? Mockeries, shadows +Of the heart of the flower, the central flame +All is yours, young passer-by; +Enter the banquet room with the thought; +Don't sidle in as if you were doubtful +Whether you're welcome--the feast is yours! +Nor take but a little, refusing more +With a bashful "Thank you", when you're hungry. +Is your soul alive? Then let it feed! +Leave no balconies where you can climb; +Nor milk-white bosoms where you can rest; +Nor golden heads with pillows to share; +Nor wine cups while the wine is sweet; +Nor ecstasies of body or soul, +You will die, no doubt, but die while living +In depths of azure, rapt and mated, +Kissing the queen-bee, Life! + +Thomas Trevelyan + +READING in Ovid the sorrowful story of Itys, +Son of the love of Tereus and Procne, slain +For the guilty passion of Tereus for Philomela, +The flesh of him served to Tereus by Procne, +And the wrath of Tereus, the murderess pursuing +Till the gods made Philomela a nightingale, +Lute of the rising moon, and Procne a swallow +Oh livers and artists of Hellas centuries gone, +Sealing in little thuribles dreams and wisdom, +Incense beyond all price, forever fragrant, +A breath whereof makes clear the eyes of the soul +How I inhaled its sweetness here in Spoon River! +The thurible opening when I had lived and learned +How all of us kill the children of love, and all of us, +Knowing not what we do, devour their flesh; +And all of us change to singers, although it be +But once in our lives, or change--alas!--to swallows, +To twitter amid cold winds and falling leaves! + +Percival Sharp + +OBSERVE the clasped hands! +Are they hands of farewell or greeting, +Hands that I helped or hands that helped me? +Would it not be well to carve a hand +With an inverted thumb, like Elagabalus? +And yonder is a broken chain, +The weakest-link idea perhaps--but what was it? +And lambs, some lying down, +Others standing, as if listening to the shepherd-- +Others bearing a cross, one foot lifted up-- +Why not chisel a few shambles? +And fallen columns! +Carve the pedestal, please, +Or the foundations; let us see the cause of the fall. +And compasses and mathematical instruments, +In irony of the under tenants, ignorance +Of determinants and the calculus of variations. +And anchors, for those who never sailed. +And gates ajar--yes, so they were; +You left them open and stray goats entered your garden. +And an eye watching like one of the Arimaspi-- +So did you--with one eye. +And angels blowing trumpets--you are heralded-- +It is your horn and your angel and your family's estimate. +It is all very well, but for myself +I know I stirred certain vibrations in Spoon River +Which are my true epitaph, more lasting than stone. + +Hiram Scates + +I TRIED to win the nomination +For president of the County-board +And I made speeches all over the County +Denouncing Solomon Purple, my rival, +As an enemy of the people, +In league with the master-foes of man. +Young idealists, broken warriors, +Hobbling on one crutch of hope, +Souls that stake their all on the truth, +Losers of worlds at heaven's bidding, +Flocked about me and followed my voice +As the savior of the County. +But Solomon won the nomination; +And then I faced about, +And rallied my followers to his standard, +And made him victor, made him King +Of the Golden Mountain with the door +Which closed on my heels just as I entered, +Flattered by Solomon's invitation, +To be the County--board's secretary. +And out in the cold stood all my followers: +Young idealists, broken warriors +Hobbling on one crutch of hope-- +Souls that staked their all on the truth, +Losers of worlds at heaven's bidding, +Watching the Devil kick the Millennium +Over the Golden Mountain. + +Peleg Poague + +HORSES and men are just alike. +There was my stallion, Billy Lee, +Black as a cat and trim as a deer, +With an eye of fire, keen to start, +And he could hit the fastest speed +Of any racer around Spoon River. +But just as you'd think he couldn't lose, +With his lead of fifty yards or more, +He'd rear himself and throw the rider, +And fall back over, tangled up, +Completely gone to pieces. +You see he was a perfect fraud: +He couldn't win, he couldn't work, +He was too light to haul or plow with, +And no one wanted colts from him. +And when I tried to drive him--well, +He ran away and killed me. + +Jeduthan Hawley + +THERE would be a knock at the door +And I would arise at midnight and go to the shop, +Where belated travelers would hear me hammering +Sepulchral boards and tacking satin. +And often I wondered who would go with me +To the distant land, our names the theme +For talk, in the same week, for I've observed +Two always go together. +Chase Henry was paired with Edith Conant; +And Jonathan Somers with Willie Metcalf; +And Editor Hamblin with Francis Turner, +When he prayed to live longer than Editor Whedon, +And Thomas Rhodes with widow McFarlane; +And Emily Sparks with Barry Holden; +And Oscar Hummel with Davis Matlock; +And Editor Whedon with Fiddler Jones; +And Faith Matheny with Dorcas Gustine. +And l, the solemnest man in town, +Stepped off with Daisy Fraser. + +Abel Melveny + +I BOUGHT every kind of machine that's known-- +Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers, +Mills and rakes and ploughs and threshers-- +And all of them stood in the rain and sun, +Getting rusted, warped and battered, +For I had no sheds to store them in, +And no use for most of them. +And toward the last, when I thought it over, +There by my window, growing clearer +About myself, as my pulse slowed down, +And looked at one of the mills I bought-- +Which I didn't have the slightest need of, +As things turned out, and I never ran-- +A fine machine, once brightly varnished, +And eager to do its work, +Now with its paint washed off-- +I saw myself as a good machine +That Life had never used. + +Oaks Tutt + +MY mother was for woman's rights +And my father was the rich miller at London Mills. +I dreamed of the wrongs of the world and wanted to right them. +When my father died, I set out to see peoples and countries +In order to learn how to reform the world. +I traveled through many lands. I saw the ruins of Rome +And the ruins of Athens, And the ruins of Thebes. +And I sat by moonlight amid the necropolis of Memphis. +There I was caught up by wings of flame, +And a voice from heaven said to me: +"Injustice, Untruth destroyed them. +Go forth Preach Justice! Preach Truth!" +And I hastened back to Spoon River +To say farewell to my mother before beginning my work. +They all saw a strange light in my eye. +And by and by, when I talked, they discovered +What had come in my mind. +Then Jonathan Swift Somers challenged me to debate +The subject, (I taking the negative): +"Pontius Pilate, the Greatest Philosopher of the World." +And he won the debate by saying at last, +"Before you reform the world, Mr. Tutt +Please answer the question of Pontius Pilate: +"What is Truth?" + +Elliott Hawkins + +I LOOKED like Abraham Lincoln. +I was one of you, Spoon River, in all fellowship, +But standing for the rights of property and for order. +A regular church attendant, +Sometimes appearing in your town meetings to warn you +Against the evils of discontent and envy +And to denounce those who tried to destroy the Union, +And to point to the peril of the Knights of Labor. +My success and my example are inevitable influences +In your young men and in generations to come, +In spite of attacks of newspapers like the Clarion; +A regular visitor at Springfield +When the Legislature was in session +To prevent raids upon the railroads +And the men building up the state. +Trusted by them and by you, Spoon River, equally +In spite of the whispers that I was a lobbyist. +Moving quietly through the world, rich and courted. +Dying at last, of course, but lying here +Under a stone with an open book carved upon it +And the words "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." +And now, you world-savers, who reaped nothing in life +And in death have neither stones nor epitaphs, +How do you like your silence from mouths stopped +With the dust of my triumphant career? + +Enoch Dunlap + +How many times, during the twenty years +I was your leader, friends of Spoon River, +Did you neglect the convention and caucus, +And leave the burden on my hands +Of guarding and saving the people's cause?-- +Sometimes because you were ill; +Or your grandmother was ill; +Or you drank too much and fell asleep; +Or else you said: "He is our leader, +All will be well; he fights for us; +We have nothing to do but follow." +But oh, how you cursed me when I fell, +And cursed me, saying I had betrayed you, +In leaving the caucus room for a moment, +When the people's enemies, there assembled, +Waited and watched for a chance to destroy +The Sacred Rights of the People. +You common rabble! I left the caucus +To go to the urinal. + +Ida Frickey + +NOTHlNG in life is alien to you: +I was a penniless girl from Summum +Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River. +All the houses stood before me with closed doors +And drawn shades--l was barred out; +I had no place or part in any of them. +And I walked past the old McNeely mansion, +A castle of stone 'mid walks and gardens +With workmen about the place on guard +And the County and State upholding it +For its lordly owner, full of pride. +I was so hungry I had a vision: +I saw a giant pair of scissors +Dip from the sky, like the beam of a dredge, +And cut the house in two like a curtain. +But at the "Commercial" I saw a man +Who winked at me as I asked for work-- +It was Wash McNeely's son. +He proved the link in the chain of title +To half my ownership of the mansion, +Through a breach of promise suit--the scissors. +So, you see, the house, from the day I was born, +Was only waiting for me. + +Seth Compton + +WHEN I died, the circulating library +Which I built up for Spoon River, +And managed for the good of inquiring minds, +Was sold at auction on the public square, +As if to destroy the last vestige +Of my memory and influence. +For those of you who could not see the virtue +Of knowing Volney's "Ruins" as well as Butler's "Analogy" +And "Faust" as well as "Evangeline," +Were really the power in the village, +And often you asked me +"What is the use of knowing the evil in the world?" +I am out of your way now, Spoon River, +Choose your own good and call it good. +For I could never make you see +That no one knows what is good +Who knows not what is evil; +And no one knows what is true +Who knows not what is false. + +Felix Schmidt + +IT was only a little house of two rooms-- +Almost like a child's play-house-- +With scarce five acres of ground around it; +And I had so many children to feed +And school and clothe, and a wife who was sick +From bearing children. +One day lawyer Whitney came along +And proved to me that Christian Dallman, +Who owned three thousand acres of land, +Had bought the eighty that adjoined me +In eighteen hundred and seventy-one +For eleven dollars, at a sale for taxes, +While my father lay in his mortal illness. +So the quarrel arose and I went to law. +But when we came to the proof, +A survey of the land showed clear as day +That Dallman's tax deed covered my ground +And my little house of two rooms. +It served me right for stirring him up. +I lost my case and lost my place. +I left the court room and went to work +As Christian Dallman's tenant. + +Richard Bone + +When I first came to Spoon River +I did not know whether what they told me +Was true or false. +They would bring me the epitaph +And stand around the shop while I worked +And say "He was so kind," "He was so wonderful," +"She was the sweetest woman," "He was a consistent Christian." +And I chiseled for them whatever they wished, +All in ignorance of the truth. +But later, as I lived among the people here, +I knew how near to the life +Were the epitaphs that were ordered for them as they died. +But still I chiseled whatever they paid me to chisel +And made myself party to the false chronicles +Of the stones, +Even as the historian does who writes +Without knowing the truth, +Or because he is influenced to hide it. + +Silas Dement + +It was moon-light, and the earth sparkled +With new-fallen frost. +It was midnight and not a soul abroad. +Out of the chimney of the court-house +A gray-hound of smoke leapt and chased +The northwest wind. +I carried a ladder to the landing of the stairs +And leaned it against the frame of the trap-door +In the ceiling of the portico, +And I crawled under the roof and amid the rafters +And flung among the seasoned timbers +A lighted handful of oil-soaked waste. +Then I came down and slunk away. +In a little while the fire-bell rang-- +Clang! Clang! Clang! +And the Spoon River ladder company +Came with a dozen buckets and began to pour water +On the glorious bon-fire, growing hotter +Higher and brighter, till the walls fell in +And the limestone columns where Lincoln stood +Crashed like trees when the woodman fells them . +When I came back from Joliet +There was a new court house with a dome. +For I was punished like all who destroy +The past for the sake of the future. + +Dillard Sissman + +THE buzzards wheel slowly +In wide circles, in a sky +Faintly hazed as from dust from the road. +And a wind sweeps through the pasture where I lie +Beating the grass into long waves. +My kite is above the wind, +Though now and then it wobbles, +Like a man shaking his shoulders; +And the tail streams out momentarily, +Then sinks to rest. +And the buzzards wheel and wheel, +Sweeping the zenith with wide circles +Above my kite. And the hills sleep. +And a farm house, white as snow, +Peeps from green trees--far away. +And I watch my kite, +For the thin moon will kindle herself ere long, +Then she will swing like a pendulum dial +To the tail of my kite. +A spurt of flame like a water-dragon +Dazzles my eyes-- +I am shaken as a banner. + +E. C. Culbertson + +Is it true, Spoon River, +That in the hall--way of the New Court House +There is a tablet of bronze +Containing the embossed faces +Of Editor Whedon and Thomas Rhodes? +And is it true that my successful labors +In the County Board, without which +Not one stone would have been placed on another, +And the contributions out of my own pocket +To build the temple, are but memories among the people, +Gradually fading away, and soon to descend +With them to this oblivion where I lie? +In truth, I can so believe. +For it is a law of the Kingdom of Heaven +That whoso enters the vineyard at the eleventh hour +Shall receive a full day's pay. +And it is a law of the Kingdom of this World +That those who first oppose a good work +Seize it and make it their own, +When the corner--stone is laid, +And memorial tablets are erected. + +Shack Dye + +THE white men played all sorts of jokes on me. +They took big fish off my hook +And put little ones on, while I was away +Getting a stringer, and made me believe +I hadn't seen aright the fish I had caught. +When Burr Robbins, circus came to town +They got the ring master to let a tame leopard +Into the ring, and made me believe +I was whipping a wild beast like Samson +When l, for an offer of fifty dollars, +Dragged him out to his cage. +One time I entered my blacksmith shop +And shook as I saw some horse-shoes crawling +Across the floor, as if alive-- +Walter Simmons had put a magnet +Under the barrel of water. +Yet everyone of you, you white men, +Was fooled about fish and about leopards too, +And you didn't know any more than the horse-shoes did +What moved you about Spoon River. + +Hildrup Tubbs + +I MADE two fights for the people. +First I left my party, bearing the gonfalon +Of independence, for reform, and was defeated. +Next I used my rebel strength +To capture the standard of my old party-- +And I captured it, but I was defeated. +Discredited and discarded, misanthropical, +I turned to the solace of gold +And I used my remnant of power +To fasten myself like a saprophyte +Upon the putrescent carcass +Of Thomas Rhodes, bankrupt bank, +As assignee of the fund. +Everyone now turned from me. +My hair grew white, +My purple lusts grew gray, +Tobacco and whisky lost their savor +And for years Death ignored me +As he does a hog. + +Henry Tripp + +THE bank broke and I lost my savings. +I was sick of the tiresome game in Spoon River +And I made up my mind to run away +And leave my place in life and my family; +But just as the midnight train pulled in, +Quick off the steps jumped Cully Green +And Martin Vise, and began to fight +To settle their ancient rivalry, +Striking each other with fists that sounded +Like the blows of knotted clubs. +Now it seemed to me that Cully was winning, +When his bloody face broke into a grin +Of sickly cowardice, leaning on Martin +And whining out "We're good friends, Mart, +You know that I'm your friend." +But a terrible punch from Martin knocked him +Around and around and into a heap. +And then they arrested me as a witness, +And I lost my train and staid in Spoon River +To wage my battle of life to the end. +Oh, Cully Green, you were my savior-- +You, so ashamed and drooped for years, +Loitering listless about the streets, +And tying rags ,round your festering soul, +Who failed to fight it out. + +Granville Calhoun + +I WANTED to be County Judge +One more term, so as to round out a service +Of thirty years. +But my friends left me and joined my enemies, +And they elected a new man. +Then a spirit of revenge seized me, +And I infected my four sons with it, +And I brooded upon retaliation, +Until the great physician, Nature, +Smote me through with paralysis +To give my soul and body a rest. +Did my sons get power and money? +Did they serve the people or yoke them, +To till and harvest fields of self? +For how could they ever forget +My face at my bed-room window, +Sitting helpless amid my golden cages +Of singing canaries, +Looking at the old court-house? + +Henry C. Calhoun + +I REACHED the highest place in Spoon River, +But through what bitterness of spirit! +The face of my father, sitting speechless, +Child-like, watching his canaries, +And looking at the court-house window +Of the county judge's room, +And his admonitions to me to seek +My own in life, and punish Spoon River +To avenge the wrong the people did him, +Filled me with furious energy +To seek for wealth and seek for power. +But what did he do but send me along +The path that leads to the grove of the Furies? +I followed the path and I tell you this: +On the way to the grove you'll pass the Fates, +Shadow-eyed, bent over their weaving. +Stop for a moment, and if you see +The thread of revenge leap out of the shuttle +Then quickly snatch from Atropos +The shears and cut it, lest your sons +And the children of them and their children +Wear the envenomed robe. + +Alfred Moir + +WHY was I not devoured by self-contempt, +And rotted down by indifference +And impotent revolt like Indignation Jones? +Why, with all of my errant steps +Did I miss the fate of Willard Fluke? +And why, though I stood at Burchard's bar, +As a sort of decoy for the house to the boys +To buy the drinks, did the curse of drink +Fall on me like rain that runs off, +Leaving the soul of me dry and clean? +And why did I never kill a man Like Jack McGuire? +But instead I mounted a little in life, +And I owe it all to a book I read. +But why did I go to Mason City, +Where I chanced to see the book in a window, +With its garish cover luring my eye? +And why did my soul respond to the book, +As I read it over and over? + +Perry Zoll + +MY thanks, friends of the +County Scientific Association, +For this modest boulder, +And its little tablet of bronze. +Twice I tried to join your honored body, +And was rejected +And when my little brochure +On the intelligence of plants +Began to attract attention +You almost voted me in. +After that I grew beyond the need of you +And your recognition. +Yet I do not reject your memorial stone +Seeing that I should, in so doing, +Deprive you of honor to yourselves. + +Magrady Graham + +TELL me, was Altgeld elected Governor? +For when the returns began to come in +And Cleveland was sweeping the East +It was too much for you, poor old heart, +Who had striven for democracy +In the long, long years of defeat. +And like a watch that is worn +I felt you growing slower until you stopped. +Tell me, was Altgeld elected, +And what did he do? +Did they bring his head on a platter to a dancer, +Or did he triumph for the people? +For when I saw him +And took his hand, +The child-like blueness of his eyes +Moved me to tears, +And there was an air of eternity about him, +Like the cold, clear light that rests at dawn +On the hills! + +Archibald Higbie + +I LOATHED YOU, Spoon River. +I tried to rise above you, +I was ashamed of you. +I despised you +As the place of my nativity. +And there in Rome, among the artists, +Speaking Italian, speaking French, +I seemed to myself at times to be free +Of every trace of my origin. +I seemed to be reaching the heights of art +And to breathe the air that the masters breathed +And to see the world with their eyes. +But still they'd pass my work and say: +"What are you driving at, my friend? +Sometimes the face looks like Apollo's +At others it has a trace of Lincoln's." +There was no culture, you know, in Spoon River +And I burned with shame and held my peace. +And what could I do, all covered over +And weighted down with western soil +Except aspire, and pray for another +Birth in the world, with all of Spoon River +Rooted out of my soul? + +Tom Merritt + +AT first I suspected something-- +She acted so calm and absent-minded. +And one day I heard the back door shut +As I entered the front, and I saw him slink +Back of the smokehouse into the lot +And run across the field. +And I meant to kill him on sight. +But that day, walking near Fourth Bridge +Without a stick or a stone at hand, +All of a sudden I saw him standing +Scared to death, holding his rabbits, +And all I could say was, "Don't, Don't, Don't," +As he aimed and fired at my heart. + +Mrs. Merritt + +SILENT before the jury +Returning no word to the judge when he asked me +If I had aught to say against the sentence, +Only shaking my head. +What could I say to people who thought +That a woman of thirty-five was at fault +When her lover of nineteen killed her husband? +Even though she had said to him over and over, +"Go away, Elmer, go far away, +I have maddened your brain with the gift of my body: +You will do some terrible thing." +And just as I feared, he killed my husband; +With which I had nothing to do, before +God Silent for thirty years in prison +And the iron gates of Joliet +Swung as the gray and silent trusties +Carried me out in a coffin. + +Elmer Karr + +WHAT but the love of God could have softened +And made forgiving the people of Spoon River +Toward me who wronged the bed of Thomas Merritt +And murdered him beside? +Oh, loving hearts that took me in again +When I returned from fourteen years in prison! +Oh, helping hands that in the church received me +And heard with tears my penitent confession, +Who took the sacrament of bread and wine! +Repent, ye living ones, and rest with Jesus. + +Elizabeth Childers + +DUST of my dust, +And dust with my dust, +O, child who died as you entered the world, +Dead with my death! +Not knowing +Breath, though you tried so hard, +With a heart that beat when you lived with me, +And stopped when you left me for Life. +It is well, my child. +For you never traveled +The long, long way that begins with school days, +When little fingers blur under the tears +That fall on the crooked letters. +And the earliest wound, when a little mate +Leaves you alone for another; +And sickness, and the face of +Fear by the bed; +The death of a father or mother; +Or shame for them, or poverty; +The maiden sorrow of school days ended; +And eyeless Nature that makes you drink +From the cup of Love, though you know it's poisoned; +To whom would your flower-face have been lifted? +Botanist, weakling? +Cry of what blood to yours?-- +Pure or foul, for it makes no matter, +It's blood that calls to our blood. +And then your children--oh, what might they be? +And what your sorrow? +Child! Child Death is better than Life. + +Edith Conant + +WE stand about this place--we, the memories; +And shade our eyes because we dread to read: +"June 17th, 1884, aged 21 years and 3 days." +And all things are changed. +And we--we, the memories, stand here for ourselves alone, +For no eye marks us, or would know why we are here. +Your husband is dead, your sister lives far away, +Your father is bent with age; +He has forgotten you, he scarcely leaves the house +Any more. No one remembers your exquisite face, +Your lyric voice! +How you sang, even on the morning you were stricken, +With piercing sweetness, with thrilling sorrow, +Before the advent of the child which died with you. +It is all forgotten, save by us, the memories, +Who are forgotten by the world. +All is changed, save the river and the hill-- +Even they are changed. +Only the burning sun and the quiet stars are the same. +And we--we, the memories, stand here in awe, +Our eyes closed with the weariness of tears-- +In immeasurable weariness + +Father Malloy + +YOU are over there, Father Malloy, +Where holy ground is, and the cross marks every grave, +Not here with us on the hill-- +Us of wavering faith, and clouded vision +And drifting hope, and unforgiven sins. +You were so human, Father Malloy, +Taking a friendly glass sometimes with us, +Siding with us who would rescue Spoon River +From the coldness and the dreariness of village morality. +You were like a traveler who brings a little box of sand +From the wastes about the pyramids +And makes them real and Egypt real. +You were a part of and related to a great past, +And yet you were so close to many of us. +You believed in the joy of life. +You did not seem to be ashamed of the flesh. +You faced life as it is, +And as it changes. +Some of us almost came to you, Father Malloy, +Seeing how your church had divined the heart, +And provided for it, +Through Peter the Flame, +Peter the Rock. + +Ami Green + +NOT "a youth with hoary head and haggard eye", +But an old man with a smooth skin +And black hair! I had the face of a boy as long as I lived, +And for years a soul that was stiff and bent, +In a world which saw me just as a jest, +To be hailed familiarly when it chose, +And loaded up as a man when it chose, +Being neither man nor boy. +In truth it was soul as well as body +Which never matured, and I say to you +That the much-sought prize of eternal youth +Is just arrested growth. + +Calvin Campbell + +YE who are kicking against Fate, +Tell me how it is that on this hill-side +Running down to the river, +Which fronts the sun and the south-wind, +This plant draws from the air and soil +Poison and becomes poison ivy? +And this plant draws from the same air and soil +Sweet elixirs and colors and becomes arbutus? +And both flourish? +You may blame Spoon River for what it is, +But whom do you blame for the will in you +That feeds itself and makes you dock-weed, +Jimpson, dandelion or mullen +And which can never use any soil or air +So as to make you jessamine or wistaria? + +Henry Layton + +WHOEVER thou art who passest by +Know that my father was gentle, +And my mother was violent, +While I was born the whole of such hostile halves, +Not intermixed and fused, +But each distinct, feebly soldered together. +Some of you saw me as gentle, +Some as violent, +Some as both. +But neither half of me wrought my ruin. +It was the falling asunder of halves, +Never a part of each other, +That left me a lifeless soul. + +Harlan Sewall + +You never understood, +O unknown one, +Why it was I repaid +Your devoted friendship and delicate ministrations +First with diminished thanks, +Afterward by gradually withdrawing my presence from you, +So that I might not be compelled to thank you, +And then with silence which followed upon +Our final Separation. +You had cured my diseased soul. +But to cure it +You saw my disease, you knew my secret, +And that is why I fled from you. +For though when our bodies rise from pain +We kiss forever the watchful hands +That gave us wormwood, while we shudder +For thinking of the wormwood, +A soul that's cured is a different matter, +For there we'd blot from memory +The soft--toned words, the searching eyes, +And stand forever oblivious, +Not so much of the sorrow itself +As of the hand that healed it. + +Ippolit Konovaloff + +I WAS a gun-smith in Odessa. +One night the police broke in the room +Where a group of us were reading Spencer. +And seized our books and arrested us. +But I escaped and came to New York +And thence to Chicago, and then to Spoon River, +Where I could study my Kant in peace +And eke out a living repairing guns +Look at my moulds! My architectonics +One for a barrel, one for a hammer +And others for other parts of a gun! +Well, now suppose no gun--smith living +Had anything else but duplicate moulds +Of these I show you--well, all guns +Would be just alike, with a hammer to hit +The cap and a barrel to carry the shot +All acting alike for themselves, and all +Acting against each other alike. +And there would be your world of guns! +Which nothing could ever free from itself +Except a Moulder with different moulds +To mould the metal over. + +Henry Phipps + +I WAS the Sunday-school superintendent, +The dummy president of the wagon works +And the canning factory, +Acting for Thomas Rhodes and the banking clique; +My son the cashier of the bank, +Wedded to Rhodes, daughter, +My week days spent in making money, +My Sundays at church and in prayer. +In everything a cog in the wheel of things--as--they-are: +Of money, master and man, made white +With the paint of the Christian creed. +And then: +The bank collapsed. +I stood and hooked at the wrecked machine-- +The wheels with blow-holes stopped with putty and painted; +The rotten bolts, the broken rods; +And only the hopper for souls fit to be used again +In a new devourer of life, +When newspapers, judges and money-magicians +Build over again. +I was stripped to the bone, but I lay in the Rock of Ages, +Seeing now through the game, no longer a dupe, +And knowing "'the upright shall dwell in the land +But the years of the wicked shall be shortened." +Then suddenly, Dr. Meyers discovered +A cancer in my liver. +I was not, after all, the particular care of God +Why, even thus standing on a peak +Above the mists through which I had climbed, +And ready for larger life in the world, +Eternal forces +Moved me on with a push. + +Harry Wilmans + +I WAS just turned twenty-one, +And Henry Phipps, the Sunday-school superintendent, +Made a speech in Bindle's Opera House. +"The honor of the flag must be upheld," he said, +"Whether it be assailed by a barbarous tribe of Tagalogs +Or the greatest power in Europe." +And we cheered and cheered the speech and the flag he waved +As he spoke. +And I went to the war in spite of my father, +And followed the flag till I saw it raised +By our camp in a rice field near Manila, +And all of us cheered and cheered it. +But there were flies and poisonous things; +And there was the deadly water, +And the cruel heat, +And the sickening, putrid food; +And the smell of the trench just back of the tents +Where the soldiers went to empty themselves; +And there were the whores who followed us, full of syphilis; +And beastly acts between ourselves or alone, +With bullying, hatred, degradation among us, +And days of loathing and nights of fear +To the hour of the charge through the steaming swamp, +Following the flag, +Till I fell with a scream, shot through the guts. +Now there's a flag over me in +Spoon River. A flag! +A flag! + +John Wasson + +OH! the dew-wet grass of the meadow in North Carolina +Through which Rebecca followed me wailing, wailing, +One child in her arms, and three that ran along wailing, +Lengthening out the farewell to me off to the war with the British, +And then the long, hard years down to the day of Yorktown. +And then my search for Rebecca, +Finding her at last in Virginia, +Two children dead in the meanwhile. +We went by oxen to Tennessee, +Thence after years to Illinois, +At last to Spoon River. +We cut the buffalo grass, +We felled the forests, +We built the school houses, built the bridges, +Leveled the roads and tilled the fields +Alone with poverty, scourges, death-- +If Harry Wilmans who fought the Filipinos +Is to have a flag on his grave +Take it from mine. + +Many Soldiers + +THE idea danced before us as a flag; +The sound of martial music; +The thrill of carrying a gun; +Advancement in the world on coming home; +A glint of glory, wrath for foes; +A dream of duty to country or to God. +But these were things in ourselves, shining before us, +They were not the power behind us, +Which was the Almighty hand of Life, +Like fire at earth's center making mountains, +Or pent up waters that cut them through. +Do you remember the iron band +The blacksmith, Shack Dye, welded +Around the oak on Bennet's lawn, +From which to swing a hammock, +That daughter Janet might repose in, reading +On summer afternoons? +And that the growing tree at last +Sundered the iron band? +But not a cell in all the tree +Knew aught save that it thrilled with life, +Nor cared because the hammock fell +In the dust with Milton's Poems. + +Godwin James + +HARRY WILMANS! You who fell in a swamp +Near Manila, following the flag +You were not wounded by the greatness of a dream, +Or destroyed by ineffectual work, +Or driven to madness by Satanic snags; +You were not torn by aching nerves, +Nor did you carry great wounds to your old age. +You did not starve, for the government fed you. +You did not suffer yet cry "forward" +To an army which you led +Against a foe with mocking smiles, +Sharper than bayonets. +You were not smitten down +By invisible bombs. +You were not rejected +By those for whom you were defeated. +You did not eat the savorless bread +Which a poor alchemy had made from ideals. +You went to Manila, Harry Wilmans, +While I enlisted in the bedraggled army +Of bright-eyed, divine youths, +Who surged forward, who were driven back and fell +Sick, broken, crying, shorn of faith, +Following the flag of the Kingdom of Heaven. +You and I, Harry Wilmans, have fallen +In our several ways, not knowing +Good from bad, defeat from victory, +Nor what face it is that smiles +Behind the demoniac mask. + +Lyman King + +YOU may think, passer-by, that Fate +Is a pit-fall outside of yourself, +Around which you may walk by the use of foresight +And wisdom. +Thus you believe, viewing the lives of other men, +As one who in God-like fashion bends over an anthill, +Seeing how their difficulties could be avoided. +But pass on into life: +In time you shall see Fate approach you +In the shape of your own image in the mirror; +Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth, +And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest, +And you shall know that guest +And read the authentic message of his eyes. + +Caroline Branson + +WITH our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked, +As often before, the April fields till star--light +Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness +Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood, +Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing +Like notes of music that run together, into winning, +In the inspired improvisation of love! +But to put back of us as a canticle ended +The rapt enchantment of the flesh, +In which our souls swooned, down, down, +Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves-- +Annihilated in love! +To leave these behind for a room with lamps: +And to stand with our Secret mocking itself, +And hiding itself amid flowers and mandolins, +Stared at by all between salad and coffee. +And to see him tremble, and feel myself +Prescient, as one who signs a bond-- +Not flaming with gifts and pledges heaped +With rosy hands over his brow. +And then, O night! deliberate! unlovely! +With all of our wooing blotted out by the winning, +In a chosen room in an hour that was known to all! +Next day he sat so listless, almost cold +So strangely changed, wondering why I wept, +Till a kind of sick despair and voluptuous madness +Seized us to make the pact of death. +A stalk of the earth-sphere, +Frail as star-light; +Waiting to be drawn once again Into creation's stream. +But next time to be given birth +Gazed at by Raphael and St. Francis +Sometimes as they pass. +For I am their little brother, +To be known clearly face to face +Through a cycle of birth hereafter run. +You may know the seed and the soil; +You may feel the cold rain fall, +But only the earth--sphere, only heaven +Knows the secret of the seed +In the nuptial chamber under the soil. +Throw me into the stream again, +Give me another trial-- +Save me, Shelley! + +Anne Rutledge + +OUT of me unworthy and unknown +The vibrations of deathless music; +"With malice toward none, with charity for all.', +Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions, +And the beneficent face of a nation +Shining with justice and truth. +I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds, +Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln, +Wedded to him, not through union, But through separation. +Bloom forever, O Republic, +From the dust of my bosom! + +Hamlet Micure + +IN a lingering fever many visions come to you: +I was in the little house again +With its great yard of clover +Running down to the board-fence, +Shadowed by the oak tree, +Where we children had our swing. +Yet the little house was a manor hall +Set in a lawn, and by the lawn was the sea. +I was in the room where little Paul +Strangled from diphtheria, +But yet it was not this room-- +It was a sunny verandah enclosed +With mullioned windows +And in a chair sat a man in a dark cloak +With a face like Euripides. +He had come to visit me, or I had gone to visit him-- I could not tell. +We could hear the beat of the sea, the clover nodded +Under a summer wind, and little Paul came +With clover blossoms to the window and smiled. +Then I said: "What is "divine despair" Alfred?" +"Have you read 'Tears, Idle Tears'?" he asked. +"Yes, but you do not there express divine despair." +"My poor friend," he answered, "that was why the despair +Was divine." + +Mabel Osborne + +YOUR red blossoms amid green leaves +Are drooping, beautiful geranium! +But you do not ask for water. +You cannot speak! +You do not need to speak-- +Everyone knows that you are dying of thirst, +Yet they do not bring water! +They pass on, saying: +"The geranium wants water." +And I, who had happiness to share +And longed to share your happiness; +I who loved you, Spoon River, +And craved your love, +Withered before your eyes, Spoon River-- +Thirsting, thirsting, +Voiceless from chasteness of soul to ask you for love, +You who knew and saw me perish before you, +Like this geranium which someone has planted over me, +And left to die. + +William H. Herndon + +THERE by the window in the old house +Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley, +My days of labor closed, sitting out life's decline, +Day by day did I look in my memory, +As one who gazes in an enchantress' crystal globe, +And I saw the figures of the past +As if in a pageant glassed by a shining dream, +Move through the incredible sphere of time. +And I saw a man arise from the soil like a fabled giant +And throw himself over a deathless destiny, +Master of great armies, head of the republic, +Bringing together into a dithyramb of recreative song +The epic hopes of a people; +At the same time Vulcan of sovereign fires, +Where imperishable shields and swords were beaten out +From spirits tempered in heaven. +Look in the crystal! +See how he hastens on +To the place where his path comes up to the path +Of a child of Plutarch and Shakespeare. +O Lincoln, actor indeed, playing well your part +And Booth, who strode in a mimic play within the play, +Often and often I saw you, +As the cawing crows winged their way to the wood +Over my house--top at solemn sunsets, +There by my window, +Alone. + +Rutherford McDowell + +THEY brought me ambrotypes +Of the old pioneers to enlarge. +And sometimes one sat for me-- +Some one who was in being +When giant hands from the womb of the world +Tore the republic. +What was it in their eyes?-- +For I could never fathom +That mystical pathos of drooped eyelids, +And the serene sorrow of their eyes. +It was like a pool of water, +Amid oak trees at the edge of a forest, +Where the leaves fall, +As you hear the crow of a cock +From a far--off farm house, seen near the hills +Where the third generation lives, and the strong men +And the strong women are gone and forgotten. +And these grand--children and great grand-children +Of the pioneers! +Truly did my camera record their faces, too, +With so much of the old strength gone, +And the old faith gone, +And the old mastery of life gone, +And the old courage gone, +Which labors and loves and suffers and sings +Under the sun! + +Hannah Armstrong + +I WROTE him a letter asking him for old times, sake +To discharge my sick boy from the army; +But maybe he couldn't read it. +Then I went to town and had James Garber, +Who wrote beautifully, write him a letter. +But maybe that was lost in the mails. +So I traveled all the way to Washington. +I was more than an hour finding the White House. +And when I found it they turned me away, +Hiding their smiles. +Then I thought: "Oh, well, he ain't the same as when I boarded him +And he and my husband worked together +And all of us called him Abe, there in Menard." +As a last attempt I turned to a guard and said: +"Please say it's old Aunt Hannah Armstrong +From Illinois, come to see him about her sick boy +In the army." +Well, just in a moment they let me in! +And when he saw me he broke in a laugh, +And dropped his business as president, +And wrote in his own hand Doug's discharge, +Talking the while of the early days, +And telling stories. + +Lucinda Matlock + +I WENT to the dances at Chandlerville, +And played snap-out at Winchester. +One time we changed partners, +Driving home in the moonlight of middle June, +And then I found Davis. +We were married and lived together for seventy years, +Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children, +Eight of whom we lost +Ere I had reached the age of sixty. +I spun, +I wove, +I kept the house, +I nursed the sick, +I made the garden, and for holiday +Rambled over the fields where sang the larks, +And by Spoon River gathering many a shell, +And many a flower and medicinal weed-- +Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys. +At ninety--six I had lived enough, that is all, +And passed to a sweet repose. +What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness, +Anger, discontent and drooping hopes? +Degenerate sons and daughters, +Life is too strong for you-- +It takes life to love Life. + +Davis Matlock + +SUPPOSE it is nothing but the hive: +That there are drones and workers +And queens, and nothing but storing honey-- +(Material things as well as culture and wisdom)-- +For the next generation, this generation never living, +Except as it swarms in the sun-light of youth, +Strengthening its wings on what has been gathered, +And tasting, on the way to the hive +From the clover field, the delicate spoil. +Suppose all this, and suppose the truth: +That the nature of man is greater +Than nature's need in the hive; +And you must bear the burden of life, +As well as the urge from your spirit's excess-- +Well, I say to live it out like a god +Sure of immortal life, though you are in doubt, +Is the way to live it. +If that doesn't make God proud of you +Then God is nothing but gravitation +Or sleep is the golden goal. + +Jennie M'Grew + +NOT, where the stairway turns in the dark +A hooded figure, shriveled under a flowing cloak! +Not yellow eyes in the room at night, +Staring out from a surface of cobweb gray! +And not the flap of a condor wing +When the roar of life in your ears begins +As a sound heard never before! +But on a sunny afternoon, +By a country road, +Where purple rag-weeds bloom along a straggling fence +And the field is gleaned, and the air is still +To see against the sun-light something black +Like a blot with an iris rim-- +That is the sign to eyes of second sight. . . +And that I saw! + +Columbus Cheney + +THIS weeping willow! +Why do you not plant a few +For the millions of children not yet born, +As well as for us? +Are they not non-existent, or cells asleep +Without mind? +Or do they come to earth, their birth +Rupturing the memory of previous being? +Answer! +The field of unexplored intuition is yours. +But in any case why not plant willows for them, +As well as for us? +Marie Bateson +You observe the carven hand +With the index finger pointing heavenward. +That is the direction, no doubt. +But how shall one follow it? +It is well to abstain from murder and lust, +To forgive, do good to others, worship God +Without graven images. +But these are external means after all +By which you chiefly do good to yourself. +The inner kernel is freedom, +It is light, purity-- +I can no more, +Find the goal or lose it, according to your vision. + +Tennessee Claflin Shope + +I WAS the laughing-stock of the village, +Chiefly of the people of good sense, as they call themselves-- +Also of the learned, like Rev. Peet, who read Greek +The same as English. +For instead of talking free trade, +Or preaching some form of baptism; +Instead of believing in the efficacy +Of walking cracks, picking up pins the right way, +Seeing the new moon over the right shoulder, +Or curing rheumatism with blue glass, +I asserted the sovereignty of my own soul. +Before Mary Baker G. Eddy even got started +With what she called science I had mastered the "Bhagavad Gita," +And cured my soul, before Mary Began to cure bodies with souls-- +Peace to all worlds! + +Imanuel Ehrenhardt + +I BEGAN with Sir William Hamilton's lectures. +Then studied Dugald Stewart; +And then John Locke on the Understanding, +And then Descartes, Fichte and Schelling, +Kant and then Schopenhauer-- +Books I borrowed from old Judge Somers. +All read with rapturous industry +Hoping it was reserved to me +To grasp the tail of the ultimate secret, +And drag it out of its hole. +My soul flew up ten thousand miles +And only the moon looked a little bigger. +Then I fell back, how glad of the earth! +All through the soul of William Jones +Who showed me a letter of John Muir. + +Samuel Gardner + +I WHO kept the greenhouse, +Lover of trees and flowers, +Oft in life saw this umbrageous elm, +Measuring its generous branches with my eye, +And listened to its rejoicing leaves +Lovingly patting each other +With sweet aeolian whispers. +And well they might: +For the roots had grown so wide and deep +That the soil of the hill could not withhold +Aught of its virtue, enriched by rain, +And warmed by the sun; +But yielded it all to the thrifty roots, +Through which it was drawn and whirled to the trunk, +And thence to the branches, and into the leaves, +Wherefrom the breeze took life and sang. +Now I, an under--tenant of the earth, can see +That the branches of a tree +Spread no wider than its roots. +And how shall the soul of a man +Be larger than the life he has lived? + +Dow Kritt + +SAMUEL is forever talking of his elm-- +But I did not need to die to learn about roots: +I, who dug all the ditches about Spoon River. +Look at my elm! +Sprung from as good a seed as his, +Sown at the same time, +It is dying at the top: +Not from lack of life, nor fungus, +Nor destroying insect, as the sexton thinks. +Look, Samuel, where the roots have struck rock, +And can no further spread. +And all the while the top of the tree +Is tiring itself out, and dying, +Trying to grow. + +William Jones + +ONCE in a while a curious weed unknown to me, +Needing a name from my books; +Once in a while a letter from Yeomans. +Out of the mussel-shells gathered along the shore +Sometimes a pearl with a glint like meadow rue: +Then betimes a letter from Tyndall in England, +Stamped with the stamp of Spoon River. +I, lover of Nature, beloved for my love of her, +Held such converse afar with the great +Who knew her better than I. +Oh, there is neither lesser nor greater, +Save as we make her greater and win from her keener delight. +With shells from the river cover me, cover me. +I lived in wonder, worshipping earth and heaven. +I have passed on the march eternal of endless life. + +William Goode + +To all in the village I seemed, no doubt, +To go this way and that way, aimlessly. . +But here by the river you can see at twilight +The soft--winged bats fly zig-zag here and there-- +They must fly so to catch their food. +And if you have ever lost your way at night, +In the deep wood near Miller's Ford, +And dodged this way and now that, +Wherever the light of the Milky Way shone through, +Trying to find the path, +You should understand I sought the way +With earnest zeal, and all my wanderings +Were wanderings in the quest. + +J. Milton Miles + +WHENEVER the Presbyterian bell +Was rung by itself, I knew it as the Presbyterian bell. +But when its sound was mingled +With the sound of the Methodist, the Christian, +The Baptist and the Congregational, +I could no longer distinguish it, +Nor any one from the others, or either of them. +And as many voices called to me in life +Marvel not that I could not tell +The true from the false, +Nor even, at last, the voice that +I should have known. + +Faith Matheny + +AT first you will know not what they mean, +And you may never know, +And we may never tell you:-- +These sudden flashes in your soul, +Like lambent lightning on snowy clouds +At midnight when the moon is full. +They come in solitude, or perhaps +You sit with your friend, and all at once +A silence falls on speech, and his eyes +Without a flicker glow at you:-- +You two have seen the secret together, +He sees it in you, and you in him. +And there you sit thrilling lest the +Mystery Stand before you and strike you dead +With a splendor like the sun's. +Be brave, all souls who have such visions +As your body's alive as mine is dead, +You're catching a little whiff of the ether +Reserved for God Himself. + +Willie Metcalf + +I WAS Willie Metcalf. +They used to call me "Doctor Meyers," +Because, they said, I looked like him. +And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire. +I lived in the livery stable, +Sleeping on the floor +Side by side with Roger Baughman's bulldog, +Or sometimes in a stall. +I could crawl between the legs of the wildest horses +Without getting kicked--we knew each other. + On spring days I tramped through the country +To get the feeling, which I sometimes lost, +That I was not a separate thing from the earth. +I used to lose myself, as if in sleep, +By lying with eyes half-open in the woods. +Sometimes I talked with animals-- even toads and snakes-- +Anything that had an eye to look into. +Once I saw a stone in the sunshine +Trying to turn into jelly. +In April days in this cemetery +The dead people gathered all about me, +And grew still, like a congregation in silent prayer. +I never knew whether I was a part of the earth +With flowers growing in me, or whether I walked-- +Now I know. + + +Willie Pennington + +THEY called me the weakling, the simpleton, +For my brothers were strong and beautiful, +While I, the last child of parents who had aged, +Inherited only their residue of power. +But they, my brothers, were eaten up +In the fury of the flesh, which I had not, +Made pulp in the activity of the senses, which I had not, +Hardened by the growth of the lusts, which I had not, +Though making names and riches for themselves. +Then I, the weak one, the simpleton, +Resting in a little corner of life, +Saw a vision, and through me many saw the vision, +Not knowing it was through me. +Thus a tree sprang +From me, a mustard seed. + +The Village Atheist + +YE young debaters over the doctrine +Of the soul's immortality +I who lie here was the village atheist, +Talkative, contentious, versed in the arguments +Of the infidels. But through a long sickness +Coughing myself to death I read the +Upanishads and the poetry of Jesus. +And they lighted a torch of hope and intuition +And desire which the Shadow +Leading me swiftly through the caverns of darkness, +Could not extinguish. +Listen to me, ye who live in the senses +And think through the senses only: +Immortality is not a gift, +Immortality is an achievement; + And only those who strive mightily +Shall possess it. + +John Ballard + +IN the lust of my strength +I cursed God, but he paid no attention to me: +I might as well have cursed the stars. +In my last sickness I was in agony, but I was resolute +And I cursed God for my suffering; +Still He paid no attention to me; +He left me alone, as He had always done. +I might as well have cursed the Presbyterian steeple. +Then, as I grew weaker, a terror came over me: +Perhaps I had alienated God by cursing him. +One day Lydia Humphrey brought me a bouquet +And it occurred to me to try to make friends with God, +So I tried to make friends with Him; +But I might as well have tried to make friends with the bouquet. +Now I was very close to the secret, +For I really could make friends with the bouquet +By holding close to me the love in me for the bouquet +And so I was creeping upon the secret, but-- + +Julian Scott + +TOWARD the last +The truth of others was untruth to me; +The justice of others injustice to me; +Their reasons for death, reasons with me for life; +Their reasons for life, reasons with me for death; +I would have killed those they saved, +And save those they killed. +And I saw how a god, if brought to earth, +Must act out what he saw and thought, +And could not live in this world of men +And act among them side by side +Without continual clashes. +The dust's for crawling, heaven's for flying-- +Wherefore, O soul, whose wings are grown, +Soar upward to the sun! + +Alfonso Churchill + +THEY laughed at me as "Prof. Moon," +As a boy in Spoon River, born with the thirst +Of knowing about the stars. +They jeered when I spoke of the lunar mountains, +And the thrilling heat and cold, +And the ebon valleys by silver peaks, +And Spica quadrillions of miles away, +And the littleness of man. +But now that my grave is honored, friends, +Let it not be because I taught +The lore of the stars in Knox College, +But rather for this: that through the stars +I preached the greatness of man, +Who is none the less a part of the scheme of things +For the distance of Spica or the Spiral Nebulae; +Nor any the less a part of the question +Of what the drama means. + + Zilpha Marsh + +AT four o'clock in late October +I sat alone in the country school-house +Back from the road ,mid stricken fields, +And an eddy of wind blew leaves on the pane, +And crooned in the flue of the cannon-stove, +With its open door blurring the shadows +With the spectral glow of a dying fire. +In an idle mood I was running the planchette-- +All at once my wrist grew limp, +And my hand moved rapidly over the board, +'Till the name of "Charles Guiteau" was spelled, +Who threatened to materialize before me. +I rose and fled from the room bare-headed +Into the dusk, afraid of my gift. +And after that the spirits swarmed-- +Chaucer, Caesar, Poe and Marlowe, +Cleopatra and Mrs. Surratt-- +Wherever I went, with messages,-- +Mere trifling twaddle, Spoon River agreed. +You talk nonsense to children, don't you? +And suppose I see what you never saw +And never heard of and have no word for, +I must talk nonsense when you ask me +What it is I see! + +James Garber + +Do you remember, passer-by, the path +I wore across the lot where now stands the opera house +Hasting with swift feet to work through many years? +Take its meaning to heart: +You too may walk, after the hills at Miller's Ford +Seem no longer far away; +Long after you see them near at hand, +Beyond four miles of meadow; +And after woman's love is silent +Saying no more: "l will save you." +And after the faces of friends and kindred +Become as faded photographs, pitifully silent, +Sad for the look which means: +"We cannot help you." +And after you no longer reproach mankind +With being in league against your soul's uplifted hands-- +Themselves compelled at midnight and at noon +To watch with steadfast eye their destinies; +After you have these understandings, think of me +And of my path, who walked therein and knew +That neither man nor woman, neither toil, +Nor duty, gold nor power +Can ease the longing of the soul, +The loneliness of the soul! + +Lydia Humphrey + +BACK and forth, back and forth, to and from the church, +With my Bible under my arm +'Till I was gray and old; +Unwedded, alone in the world, +Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation, +And children in the church. +I know they laughed and thought me queer. +I knew of the eagle souls that flew high in the sunlight, +Above the spire of the church, and laughed at the church, +Disdaining me, not seeing me. +But if the high air was sweet to them, sweet was the church to me. +It was the vision, vision, vision of the poets +Democratized! + +Le Roy Goldman + +WHAT will you do when you come to die, +If all your life long you have rejected Jesus, +And know as you lie there, +He is not your friend?" +Over and over I said, I, the revivalist. +Ah, yes! but there are friends and friends. +And blessed are you, say I, who know all now, +You who have lost ere you pass, +A father or mother, or old grandfather or mother +Some beautiful soul that lived life strongly +And knew you all through, and loved you ever, +Who would not fail to speak for you, +And give God an intimate view of your soul +As only one of your flesh could do it. +That is the hand your hand will reach for, +To lead you along the corridor +To the court where you are a stranger! + +Gustav Richter + +AFTER a long day of work in my hot--houses +Sleep was sweet, but if you sleep on your left side +Your dreams may be abruptly ended. +I was among my flowers where some one +Seemed to be raising them on trial, +As if after-while to be transplanted +To a larger garden of freer air. +And I was disembodied vision +Amid a light, as it were the sun +Had floated in and touched the roof of glass +Like a toy balloon and softly bursted, +And etherealized in golden air. +And all was silence, except the splendor +Was immanent with thought as clear +As a speaking voice, and I, as thought, +Could hear a +Presence think as he walked +Between the boxes pinching off leaves, +Looking for bugs and noting values, +With an eye that saw it all: +"Homer, oh yes! Pericles, good. +Caesar Borgia, what shall be done with it? +Dante, too much manure, perhaps. +Napoleon, leave him awhile as yet. +Shelley, more soil. Shakespeare, needs spraying--" +Clouds, eh!-- + +Arlo Will + +DID you ever see an alligator +Come up to the air from the mud, +Staring blindly under the full glare of noon? +Have you seen the stabled horses at night +Tremble and start back at the sight of a lantern? +Have you ever walked in darkness +When an unknown door was open before you +And you stood, it seemed, in the light of a thousand candles +Of delicate wax? +Have you walked with the wind in your ears +And the sunlight about you +And found it suddenly shine with an inner splendor? +Out of the mud many times +Before many doors of light +Through many fields of splendor, +Where around your steps a soundless glory scatters +Like new--fallen snow, +Will you go through earth, O strong of soul, +And through unnumbered heavens +To the final flame! + +Captain Orlando Killion + +OH, YOU young radicals and dreamers, +You dauntless fledglings +Who pass by my headstone, +Mock not its record of my captaincy in the army +And my faith in God! +They are not denials of each other. +Go by reverently, and read with sober care +How a great people, riding with defiant shouts +The centaur of Revolution, +Spurred and whipped to frenzy, +Shook with terror, seeing the mist of the sea +Over the precipice they were nearing, +And fell from his back in precipitate awe +To celebrate the Feast of the Supreme Being. +Moved by the same sense of vast reality +Of life and death, and burdened as they were +With the fate of a race, +How was I, a little blasphemer, +Caught in the drift of a nation's unloosened flood, +To remain a blasphemer, +And a captain in the army? + +Joseph Dixon + +WHO carved this shattered harp on my stone? +I died to you, no doubt. But how many harps and pianos +Wired I and tightened and disentangled for you, +Making them sweet again--with tuning fork or without? +Oh well! A harp leaps out of the ear of a man, you say, +But whence the ear that orders the length of the strings +To a magic of numbers flying before your thought +Through a door that closes against your breathless wonder? +Is there no Ear round the ear of a man, that it senses +Through strings and columns of air the soul of sound? +I thrill as I call it a tuning fork that catches +The waves of mingled music and light from afar, +The antennae of +Thought that listens through utmost space. +Surely the concord that ruled my spirit is proof +Of an Ear that tuned me, able to tune me over +And use me again if I am worthy to use. + +Russell Kincaid + +IN the last spring I ever knew, +In those last days, I sat in the forsaken orchard +Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered +The hills at Miller's Ford; +Just to muse on the apple tree +With its ruined trunk and blasted branches, +And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms +Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle, +Never to grow in fruit. +And there was I with my spirit girded +By the flesh half dead, the senses numb +Yet thinking of youth and the earth in youth,-- +Such phantom blossoms palely shining +Over the lifeless boughs of Time. +O earth that leaves us ere heaven takes us! +Had I been only a tree to shiver +With dreams of spring and a leafy youth, +Then I had fallen in the cyclone +Which swept me out of the soul's suspense +Where it's neither earth nor heaven. + +Aaron Hatfield + +BETTER than granite, Spoon River, +Is the memory-picture you keep of me +Standing before the pioneer men and women +There at Concord Church on Communion day. +Speaking in broken voice of the peasant youth +Of Galilee who went to the city +And was killed by bankers and lawyers; +My voice mingling with the June wind +That blew over wheat fields from Atterbury; +While the white stones in the burying ground +Around the Church shimmered in the summer sun. +And there, though my own memories +Were too great to bear, were you, O pioneers, +With bowed heads breathing forth your sorrow +For the sons killed in battle and the daughters +And little children who vanished in life's morning, +Or at the intolerable hour of noon. +But in those moments of tragic silence, +When the wine and bread were passed, +Came the reconciliation for us-- +Us the ploughmen and the hewers of wood, +Us the peasants, brothers of the peasant of Galilee-- +To us came the Comforter +And the consolation of tongues of flame! + +Isaiah Beethoven + +THEY told me I had three months to live, +So I crept to Bernadotte, +And sat by the mill for hours and hours +Where the gathered waters deeply moving +Seemed not to move: +O world, that's you! +You are but a widened place in the river +Where Life looks down and we rejoice for her +Mirrored in us, and so we dream And turn away, but when again +We look for the face, behold the low-lands +And blasted cotton-wood trees where we empty +Into the larger stream! +But here by the mill the castled clouds +Mocked themselves in the dizzy water; +And over its agate floor at night +The flame of the moon ran under my eyes +Amid a forest stillness broken +By a flute in a hut on the hill. +At last when I came to lie in bed +Weak and in pain, with the dreams about me, +The soul of the river had entered my soul, +And the gathered power of my soul was moving +So swiftly it seemed to be at rest +Under cities of cloud and under +Spheres of silver and changing worlds-- +Until I saw a flash of trumpets +Above the battlements over Time. + +Elijah Browning + +I WAS among multitudes of children +Dancing at the foot of a mountain. +A breeze blew out of the east and swept them as leaves, +Driving some up the slopes. . . . +All was changed. +Here were flying lights, and mystic moons, and dream-music. +A cloud fell upon us. +When it lifted all was changed. +I was now amid multitudes who were wrangling. +Then a figure in shimmering gold, and one with a trumpet, +And one with a sceptre stood before me. +They mocked me and danced a rigadoon and vanished. . . . +All was changed again. +Out of a bower of poppies +A woman bared her breasts and lifted her open mouth to mine. +I kissed her. +The taste of her lips was like salt. +She left blood on my lips. +I fell exhausted. +I arose and ascended higher, but a mist as from an iceberg +Clouded my steps. +I was cold and in pain. +Then the sun streamed on me again, +And I saw the mists below me hiding all below them. +And I, bent over my staff, knew myself +Silhouetted against the snow. +And above me +Was the soundless air, pierced by a cone of ice, +Over which hung a solitary star! +A shudder of ecstasy, a shudder of fear +Ran through me. +But I could not return to the slopes-- +Nay, I wished not to return. +For the spent waves of the symphony of freedom +Lapped the ethereal cliffs about me. +Therefore I climbed to the pinnacle. +I flung away my staff. +I touched that star +With my outstretched hand. +I vanished utterly. +For the mountain delivers to +Infinite Truth +Whosoever touches the star. + +Webster Ford + +Do you remember, O Delphic Apollo, +The sunset hour by the river, when Mickey M'Grew +Cried, "There's a ghost," and I, "It's Delphic Apollo,". +And the son of the banker derided us, saying, "It's light +By the flags at the water's edge, you half-witted fools." +And from thence, as the wearisome years rolled on, long after +Poor Mickey fell down in the water tower to his death +Down, down, through bellowing darkness, I carried +The vision which perished with him like a rocket which falls +And quenches its light in earth, and hid it for fear +Of the son of the banker, calling on Plutus to save me? +Avenged were you for the shame of a fearful heart +Who left me alone till I saw you again in an hour +When I seemed to be turned to a tree with trunk and branches +Growing indurate, turning to stone, yet burgeoning +In laurel leaves, in hosts of lambent laurel, +Quivering, fluttering, shrinking, fighting the numbness +Creeping into their veins from the dying trunk and branches! +'Tis vain, O youth, to fly the call of Apollo. +Fling yourselves in the fire, die with a song of spring, +If die you must in the spring. For none shall look +On the face of Apollo and live, and choose you must +'Twixt death in the flame and death after years of sorrow, +Rooted fast in the earth, feeling the grisly hand, +Not so much in the trunk as in the terrible numbness +Creeping up to the laurel leaves that never cease +To flourish until you fall. O leaves of me +Too sere for coronal wreaths, and fit alone +For urns of memory, treasured, perhaps, as themes +For hearts heroic, fearless singers and livers-- +Delphic Apollo. + +The Spooniad + +OF John Cabanis, wrath and of the strife +Of hostile parties, and his dire defeat +Who led the common people in the cause +Of freedom for Spoon River, and the fall +Of Rhodes, bank that brought unnumbered woes +And loss to many, with engendered hate +That flamed into the torch in Anarch hands +To burn the court--house, on whose blackened wreck +A fairer temple rose and Progress stood-- +Sing, muse, that lit the Chian's face with smiles +Who saw the ant-like Greeks and Trojans crawl +About Scamander, over walls, pursued +Or else pursuing, and the funeral pyres +And sacred hecatombs, and first because +Of Helen who with Paris fled to Troy +As soul-mate; and the wrath of Peleus, son, +Decreed to lose Chryseis, lovely spoil +Of war, and dearest concubine. + Say first, +Thou son of night, called Momus, from whose eyes +No secret hides, and Thalia, smiling one, +What bred 'twixt Thomas Rhodes and John Cabanis +The deadly strife? His daughter Flossie, she, +Returning from her wandering with a troop +Of strolling players, walked the village streets, +Her bracelets tinkling and with sparkling rings +And words of serpent wisdom and a smile +Of cunning in her eyes. Then Thomas Rhodes, +Who ruled the church and ruled the bank as well, +Made known his disapproval of the maid; +And all Spoon River whispered and the eyes +Of all the church frowned on her, till she knew +They feared her and condemned. + But them to flout +She gave a dance to viols and to flutes, +Brought from Peoria, and many youths, +But lately made regenerate through the prayers +Of zealous preachers and of earnest souls, +Danced merrily, and sought her in the dance, +Who wore a dress so low of neck that eyes +Down straying might survey the snowy swale +'Till it was lost in whiteness. + With the dance +The village changed to merriment from gloom. +The milliner, Mrs. Williams, could not fill +Her orders for new hats, and every seamstress +Plied busy needles making gowns; old trunks +And chests were opened for their store of laces +And rings and trinkets were brought out of hiding +And all the youths fastidious grew of dress; +Notes passed, and many a fair one's door at eve +Knew a bouquet, and strolling lovers thronged +About the hills that overlooked the river. +Then, since the mercy seats more empty showed, +One of God's chosen lifted up his voice: +"The woman of Babylon is among us; rise +Ye sons of light and drive the wanton forth!" +So John Cabanis left the church and left +The hosts of law and order with his eyes +By anger cleared, and him the liberal cause +Acclaimed as nominee to the mayoralty +To vanquish A. D. Blood. + But as the war +Waged bitterly for votes and rumors flew +About the bank, and of the heavy loans +Which Rhodes, son had made to prop his loss +In wheat, and many drew their coin and left +The bank of Rhodes more hollow, with the talk +Among the liberals of another bank +Soon to be chartered, lo, the bubble burst +'Mid cries and curses; but the liberals laughed +And in the hall of Nicholas Bindle held +Wise converse and inspiriting debate. + +High on a stage that overlooked the chairs +Where dozens sat, and where a pop--eyed daub +Of Shakespeare, very like the hired man +Of Christian Dallman, brow and pointed beard, +Upon a drab proscenium outward stared, +Sat Harmon Whitney, to that eminence, +By merit raised in ribaldry and guile, +And to the assembled rebels thus he spake: +"Whether to lie supine and let a clique +Cold-blooded, scheming, hungry, singing psalms, +Devour our substance, wreck our banks and drain +Our little hoards for hazards on the price +Of wheat or pork, or yet to cower beneath +The shadow of a spire upreared to curb +A breed of lackeys and to serve the bank +Coadjutor in greed, that is the question. +Shall we have music and the jocund dance, +Or tolling bells? Or shall young romance roam +These hills about the river, flowering now +To April's tears, or shall they sit at home, +Or play croquet where Thomas Rhodes may see, +I ask you? If the blood of youth runs o'er +And riots 'gainst this regimen of gloom, +Shall we submit to have these youths and maids +Branded as libertines and wantons?" + Ere +His words were done a woman's voice called "No!" +Then rose a sound of moving chairs, as when +The numerous swine o'er-run the replenished troughs; +And every head was turned, as when a flock +Of geese back-turning to the hunter's tread +Rise up with flapping wings; then rang the hall +With riotous laughter, for with battered hat +Tilted upon her saucy head, and fist +Raised in defiance, Daisy Fraser stood. +Headlong she had been hurled from out the hall +Save Wendell Bloyd, who spoke for woman's rights, +Prevented, and the bellowing voice of Burchard. +Then ,mid applause she hastened toward the stage +And flung both gold and silver to the cause +And swiftly left the hall. + Meantime upstood +A giant figure, bearded like the son +Of Alcmene, deep-chested, round of paunch, +And spoke in thunder: "Over there behold +A man who for the truth withstood his wife-- +Such is our spirit--when that A. D. Blood +Compelled me to remove Dom Pedro--" + Quick +Before Jim Brown could finish, Jefferson Howard +Obtained the floor and spake: "Ill suits the time +For clownish words, and trivial is our cause +If naught's at stake but John Cabanis, wrath, +He who was erstwhile of the other side +And came to us for vengeance. More's at stake +Than triumph for New England or Virginia. +And whether rum be sold, or for two years +As in the past two years, this town be dry +Matters but little-- Oh yes, revenue +For sidewalks, sewers; that is well enough! +I wish to God this fight were now inspired +By other passion than to salve the pride +Of John Cabanis or his daughter. +Why Can never contests of great moment spring +From worthy things, not little? Still, if men +Must always act so, and if rum must be +The symbol and the medium to release +From life's denial and from slavery, +Then give me rum!" + Exultant cries arose. +Then, as George Trimble had o'ercome his fear +And vacillation and begun to speak, +The door creaked and the idiot, Willie Metcalf, +Breathless and hatless, whiter than a sheet, +Entered and cried: "The marshal's on his way +To arrest you all. And if you only knew +Who's coming here to--morrow; I was listening +Beneath the window where the other side +Are making plans." + So to a smaller room +To hear the idiot's secret some withdrew +Selected by the Chair; the Chair himself +And Jefferson Howard, Benjamin Pantier, +And Wendell Bloyd, George Trimble, Adam Weirauch, +Imanuel Ehrenhardt, Seth Compton, Godwin James +And Enoch Dunlap, Hiram Scates, Roy Butler, +Carl Hamblin, Roger Heston, Ernest Hyde +And Penniwit, the artist, Kinsey Keene, +And E. C. Culbertson and Franklin Jones, +Benjamin Fraser, son of Benjamin Pantier +By Daisy Fraser, some of lesser note, +And secretly conferred. + But in the hall +Disorder reigned and when the marshal came +And found it so, he marched the hoodlums out +And locked them up. + Meanwhile within a room +Back in the basement of the church, with Blood +Counseled the wisest heads. Judge Somers first, +Deep learned in life, and next him, Elliott Hawkins +And Lambert Hutchins; next him Thomas Rhodes +And Editor Whedon; next him Garrison Standard, +A traitor to the liberals, who with lip +Upcurled in scorn and with a bitter sneer: +"Such strife about an insult to a woman-- +A girl of eighteen "--Christian Dallman too, +And others unrecorded. Some there were +Who frowned not on the cup but loathed the rule +Democracy achieved thereby, the freedom +And lust of life it symbolized. + +Now morn with snowy fingers up the sky +Flung like an orange at a festival +The ruddy sun, when from their hasty beds +Poured forth the hostile forces, and the streets +Resounded to the rattle of the wheels +That drove this way and that to gather in +The tardy voters, and the cries of chieftains +Who manned the battle. But at ten o'clock +The liberals bellowed fraud, and at the polls +The rival candidates growled and came to blows. +Then proved the idiot's tale of yester-eve +A word of warning. Suddenly on the streets +Walked hog-eyed Allen, terror of the hills +That looked on Bernadotte ten miles removed. +No man of this degenerate day could lift +The boulders which he threw, and when he spoke +The windows rattled, and beneath his brows +Thatched like a shed with bristling hair of black, +His small eyes glistened like a maddened boar. +And as he walked the boards creaked, as he walked +A song of menace rumbled. Thus he came, +The champion of A. D. Blood, commissioned +To terrify the liberals. Many fled +As when a hawk soars o'er the chicken yard. +He passed the polls and with a playful hand +Touched Brown, the giant, and he fell against, +As though he were a child, the wall; so strong +Was hog-eyed Allen. But the liberals smiled. +For soon as hog-eyed Allen reached the walk, +Close on his steps paced Bengal Mike, brought in +By Kinsey Keene, the subtle-witted one, +To match the hog-eyed Allen. He was scarce +Three-fourths the other's bulk, but steel his arms, +And with a tiger's heart. Two men he killed +And many wounded in the days before, +And no one feared. + But when the hog-eyed one +Saw Bengal Mike his countenance grew dark, +The bristles o'er his red eyes twitched with rage, +The song he rumbled lowered. Round and round +The court-house paced he, followed stealthily +By Bengal Mike, who jeered him every step: +"Come, elephant, and fight! Come, hog-eyed coward! +Come, face about and fight me, lumbering sneak! +Come, beefy bully, hit me, if you can! +Take out your gun, you duffer, give me reason +To draw and kill you. Take your billy out. +I'll crack your boar's head with a piece of brick!" +But never a word the hog-eyed one returned +But trod about the court-house, followed both +By troops of boys and watched by all the men. +All day, they walked the square. But when Apollo +Stood with reluctant look above the hills +As fain to see the end, and all the votes +Were cast, and closed the polls, before the door +Of Trainor's drug store Bengal Mike, in tones +That echoed through the village, bawled the taunt: +"Who was your mother, hog--eyed?" In a trice +As when a wild boar turns upon the hound +That through the brakes upon an August day +Has gashed him with its teeth, the hog- one +Rushed with his giant arms on Bengal Mike +And grabbed him by the throat. Then rose to heaven +The frightened cries of boys, and yells of men +Forth rushing to the street. And Bengal Mike +Moved this way and now that, drew in his head +As if his neck to shorten, and bent down +To break the death grip of the hog-eyed one; +'Twixt guttural wrath and fast-expiring strength +Striking his fists against the invulnerable chest +Of hog-eyed Allen. Then, when some came in +To part them, others stayed them, and the fight +Spread among dozens; many valiant souls +Went down from clubs and bricks. + But tell me, Muse, +What god or goddess rescued Bengal Mike? +With one last, mighty struggle did he grasp +The murderous hands and turning kick his foe. +Then, as if struck by lightning, vanished all +The strength from hog--eyed Allen, at his side +Sank limp those giant arms and o'er his face +Dread pallor and the sweat of anguish spread. +And those great knees, invincible but late, +Shook to his weight. And quickly as the lion +Leaps on its wounded prey, did Bengal Mike +Smite with a rock the temple of his foe, +And down he sank and darkness o'er his eyes +Passed like a cloud. + As when the woodman fells +Some giant oak upon a summer's day +And all the songsters of the forest shrill, +And one great hawk that has his nestling young +Amid the topmost branches croaks, as crash +The leafy branches through the tangled boughs +Of brother oaks, so fell the hog--eyed one +Amid the lamentations of the friends +Of A. D. Blood. + Just then, four lusty men +Bore the town marshal, on whose iron face +The purple pall of death already lay, +To Trainor's drug store, shot by Jack McGuire. +And cries went up of "Lynch him!" and the sound +Of running feet from every side was heard +Bent on the + + + + + +THE END + + + + + +The late Mr. Jonathan Swift Somers, laureate of Spoon River +planned The Spooniad as an epic in twenty-four books, but +unfortunately did not live to complete even the first book. The +fragment was found among his papers by William Marion Reedy +and was for the first time published in Reedy's Mirror of December +18th, 1914. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Spoon River Anthology, by Masters + diff --git a/old/old/sprvr11.zip b/old/old/sprvr11.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..884346c --- /dev/null +++ b/old/old/sprvr11.zip |
