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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> + + |