Spoon River Anthology

Edgar Lee Masters

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  • The Hill
  • Jonathan Swift Somers (Author of the Spooniad)
  • Henry Layton

  • The Hill


    Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley,
    The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?
    All, all are sleeping on the hill.

    One passed in a fever,
    One was burned in a mine,
    One was killed in a brawl,
    One died in a jail,
    One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife-
    All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

    Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith,
    The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?--
    All, all are sleeping on the hill.

    One died in shameful child-birth,
    One of a thwarted love,
    One at the hands of a brute in a brothel,
    One of a broken pride, in the search for heart's desire;
    One after life in far-away London and Paris
    Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag--
    All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

    Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily,
    And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton,
    And Major Walker who had talked
    With venerable men of the revolution?--
    All, all are sleeping on the hill.

    They brought them dead sons from the war,
    And daughters whom life had crushed,
    And their children fatherless, crying--
    All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
    Where is Old Fiddler Jones
    Who played with life all his ninety years,
    Braving the sleet with bared breast,
    Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin,
    Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven?
    Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago,
    Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary's Grove,
    Of what Abe Lincoln said
    One time at Springfield.

    Hod Putt



    HERE I lie close to the grave
    Of Old Bill Piersol,
    Who grew rich trading with the Indians, and who
    Afterwards took the Bankrupt Law
    And emerged from it richer than ever
    Myself grown tired of toil and poverty
    And beholding how Old Bill and other grew in wealth
    Robbed a traveler one Night near Proctor's Grove,
    Killing him unwittingly while doing so,
    For which I was tried and hanged.
    That was my way of going into bankruptcy.
    Now we who took the bankrupt law in our respective ways
    Sleep peacefully side by side.

    Ollie McGee



    Have you seen walking through the village
    A Man with downcast eyes and haggard face?
    That is my husban who, by secret cruelty
    Never to be told, robbed me of my youth and my beauty;
    Till at last, wrinkled and with yellow teeth,
    And with broken pride and shameful humility,
    I sank into the grave.
    But what think you gnaws at my husband's heart?
    The face of what I was, the face of what he made me!
    These are driving him to the place where I lie.
    In death, therefore, i am avenged.

    Fletcher McGee



    She took my strength by minutes,
    She took my life by hours,
    She drained me like a fevered moon
    That saps the spinning world.
    The days went by like shadows,
    The minutes wheeled like stars.
    She took the pity from my heart,
    And made it into smiles.
    She was a hunk of sculptor's clay,
    My secret thoughts were fingers:
    They flew behind her pensive brow
    And lined it deep with pain.
    They set the lips, and sagged the cheeks,
    And drooped the eye with sorrow.
    My soul had entered in the clay,
    Fighting like seven devils.
    It was not mine, it was not hers;
    She held it, but its struggles
    Modeled a face she hated,
    And a face I feared to see.
    I beat the windows, shook the bolts.
    I hid me in a corner
    And then she died and haunted me,
    And hunted me for life.

    Robert Fulton Tanner



    If a man could bite the giant hand
    That catches and destroys him,
    As I was bitten by a rat
    While demonstrating my patent trap,
    In my hardware store that day.
    But a man can never avenge himself
    On the monstrous ogre Life.
    You enter the room that's being born;
    And then you must live work out your soul,
    Of the cross-current in life
    Which Bring honor to the dead, who lived in shame.

    Cassius Hueffer



    THEY have chiseled on my stone the words:
    "His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him
    That nature might stand up and say to all the world,
    This was a man."
    Those who knew me smile
    As they read this empty rhetoric.
    My epitaph should have been:
    "Life was not gentle to him,
    And the elements so mixed in him
    That he made warfare on life
    In the which he was slain."
    While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues,
    Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph
    Graven by a fool!

    Serepta Mason



    MY life's blossom might have bloomed on all sides
    Save for a bitter wind which stunted my petals
    On the side of me which you in the village could see.
    From the dust I lift a voice of protest:
    My flowering side you never saw!
    Ye living ones, ye are fools indeed
    Who do not know the ways of the wind
    And the unseen forces
    That govern the processes of life.

    Amanda Barker



    HENRY got me with child,
    Knowing that I could not bring forth life
    Without losing my own.
    In my youth therefore I entered the portals of dust.
    Traveler, it is believed in the village where I lived
    That Henry loved me with a husband's love
    But I proclaim from the dust
    That he slew me to gratify his hatred.

    Chase Henry



    IN life I was the town drunkard;
    When I died the priest denied me burial
    In holy ground.
    The which redounded to my good fortune.
    For the Protestants bought this lot,
    And buried my body here,
    Close to the grave of the banker Nicholas,
    And of his wife Priscilla.
    Take note, ye prudent and pious souls,
    Of the cross--currents in life
    Which bring honor to the dead, who lived in shame

    Judge Somers



    How does it happen, tell me,
    That I who was most erudite of lawyers,
    Who knew Blackstone and Coke
    Almost by heart, who made the greatest speech
    The court-house ever heard, and wrote
    A brief that won the praise of Justice Breese
    How does it happen, tell me,
    That I lie here unmarked, forgotten,
    While Chase Henry, the town drunkard,
    Has a marble block, topped by an urn
    Wherein Nature, in a mood ironical,
    Has sown a flowering weed?

    Benjamin Pantier



    TOGETHER in this grave lie Benjamin Panitier, attorney at law,
    And Nig, his dog, constant companion, solace and friend.
    Down the gray road, friends, children, men and women,
    Passing one by one out of life, left me till I was alone
    With Nig for partner, bed-fellow; comrade in drink.
    In the morning of lief I knew aspiration and saw dlory,
    The she, who survives me, snared my soul
    With a snare which bled me to death,
    Till I, once strong of will, lay broken, indifferent,
    Living with Nig in a room back of a dingy office.
    Under my Jaw-bone is snuggled the bony nose of Nig
    Our story is lost in silence. Go by, Mad world!

    Mrs. Benjamin Pantier



    I know that he told that I snared his soul
    With a snare which bled him to death.
    And all the men loved him,
    And most of the women pitied him.
    But suppose you are really a lady, and have delicate tastes,
    And loathe the smell of whiskey and onions,
    And the rhythm of Wordsworth's "Ode" runs in your ears,
    While he goes about from morning till night
    Repeating bits of that common thing;
    "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"
    And then, suppose;
    You are a woman well endowed,
    And the only man with whom the law and morality
    Permit you to have the marital relation
    Is the very man that fills you with disgust
    Every time you think of it while you think of it
    Every time you see him?
    That's why I drove him away from home
    To live with his dog in a dingy room
    Back of his office.

    Reuben Pantier



    WELL, Emily Sparks, your prayers were not wasted,
    Your love was not all in vain.
    I owe whatever I was in life
    To your hope that would not give me up,
    To your love that saw me still as good.
    Dear Emily Sparks, let me tell you the story.
    I pass the effect of my father and mother;
    The milliner's daughter made me trouble
    And out I went in the world,
    Where I passed through every peril known
    Of wine and women and joy of life.
    One night, in a room in the Rue de Rivoli,
    I was drinking wine with a black-eyed cocotte,
    And the tears swam into my eyes.
    She though they were amorous tears and smiled
    For thought of her conquest over me.
    But my soul was three thousand miles away,
    In the days when you taught me in Spoon River.
    And just because you no more could love me,
    Nor pray for me, nor write me letters,
    The eternal silence of you spoke instead.
    And the Black-eyed cocotte took the tears for hers,
    As well as the deceiving kisses I gave her.
    Somehow, from that hour, I had a new vision
    Dear Emily Sparks!

    Emily Sparks



    Where is my boy, my boy
    In what far part of the world?
    The boy I loved best of all in the school?--
    I, the teacher, the old maid, the virgin heart,
    Who made them all my children.
    Did I know my boy aright,
    Thinking of him as a spirit aflame,
    Active, ever aspiring?
    Oh, boy, boy, for whom I prayed and prayed
    In many a watchful hour at night,
    Do you remember the letter I wrote you
    Of the beautiful love of Christ?
    And whether you ever took it or not,
    My, boy, whereever you are,
    Work for your soul'd sake,
    That all the clay of you, all of the dross of you,
    May yield to the fire of you,
    Till the fire is nothing but light!...
    Nothing but light!

    Trainor, the Druggist



    Only the chemist can tell, and not always the chemist,
    What will result from compounding
    Fluids or solids.
    And who can tell
    How men and women will interact
    On each other, or what children will result?
    There were Benjamin Pantier and his wife,
    Good in themselved, but evil toward each other;
    He oxygen, she hydrogen,
    Their son, a devastating fire.
    I Trainor, the druggist, a miser of chemicals,
    Killed while making an experiment,
    Lived unwedded.

    Daisy Fraser



    Did you ever hear of Editor Whedon
    Giving to the public treasury any of the money he received
    Fopr supporting candidated for office?
    Or for writing up the canning factory
    To get people to invest?
    Or for suppressing the facts about the bank,
    When it was rotten and ready to break?
    Did you ever hear of the Circuit Judge
    Helping anyone except the "Q" railroad,
    Or the bankers? Or did Rev. Peet or Rev. Sibley
    Give any part of their salary, earned by keeping still,
    Or speaking out as the leaders wished them to do,
    To the building of the water works?
    But I Daisy Fraser who always passed
    Along the street through rows of nods and smiles,
    And caughs and words such as "there she goes."
    Never was taken before Justice Arnett
    Without contributing ten dollars and costs
    To the school fund of Spoon River!

    Benjamin Fraser



    THEIR spirits beat upon mine
    Like the wings of a thousand butterflies.
    I closed my eyes and felt their spirits vibrating.
    I closed my eyes, yet I knew when their lashes
    Fringed their cheeks from downcast eyes,
    And when they turned their heads;
    And when their garments clung to them,
    Or fell from them, in exquisite draperies.
    Their spirits watched my ecstasy
    With wide looks of starry unconcern.
    Their spirits looked upon my torture;
    They drank it as it were the water of life;
    With reddened cheeks, brightened eyes,
    The rising flame of my soul made their spirits gilt,
    Like the wings of a butterfly drifting suddenly into sunlight.
    And they cried to me for life, life, life.
    But in taking life for myself,
    In seizing and crushing their souls,
    As a child crushes grapes and drinks
    From its palms the purple juice,
    I came to this wingless void,
    Where neither red, nor gold, nor wine,
    Nor the rhythm of life are known.

    Minerva Jones



    I AM Minerva, the village poetess,
    Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street
    For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk,
    And all the more when "Butch" Weldy
    Captured me after a brutal hunt.
    He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers;
    And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up,
    Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice.
    Will some one go to the village newspaper,
    And gather into a book the verses I wrote?--
    I thirsted so for love
    I hungered so for life!

    "Indignation" Jones



    You would not believe, would you
    That I came from good Welsh stock?
    That I was purer blooded than the white trash here?
    And of more direct lineage than the
    New Englanders And Virginians of Spoon River?
    You would not believe that I had been to school
    And read some books.
    You saw me only as a run-down man
    With matted hair and beard
    And ragged clothes.
    Sometimes a man's life turns into a cancer
    From being bruised and continually bruised,
    And swells into a purplish mass
    Like growths on stalks of corn.
    Here was I, a carpenter, mired in a bog of life
    Into which I walked, thinking it was a meadow,
    With a slattern for a wife, and poor Minerva, my daughter,
    Whom you tormented and drove to death.
    So I crept, crept, like a snail through the days
    Of my life.
    No more you hear my footsteps in the morning,
    Resounding on the hollow sidewalk
    Going to the grocery store for a little corn meal
    And a nickel's worth of bacon.

    "Butch" Weldy



    AFTER I got religion and steadied down
    They gave me a job in the canning works,
    And every morning I had to fill
    The tank in the yard with gasoline,
    That fed the blow-fires in the sheds
    To heat the soldering irons.
    And I mounted a rickety ladder to do it,
    Carrying buckets full of the stuff.
    One morning, as I stood there pouring,
    The air grew still and seemed to heave,
    And I shot up as the tank exploded,
    And down I came with both legs broken,
    And my eyes burned crisp as a couple of eggs.
    For someone left a blow--fire going,
    And something sucked the flame in the tank.
    The Circuit Judge said whoever did it
    Was a fellow-servant of mine, and so
    Old Rhodes' son didn't have to pay me.
    And I sat on the witness stand as blind
    As lack the Fiddler, saying over and over,
    "l didn't know him at all."

    Doctor Meyers



    No other man, unless it was Doc Hill,
    Did more for people in this town than l.
    And all the weak, the halt, the improvident
    And those who could not pay flocked to me.
    I was good-hearted, easy Doctor Meyers.
    I was healthy, happy, in comfortable fortune,
    Blest with a congenial mate, my children raised,
    All wedded, doing well in the world.
    And then one night, Minerva, the poetess,
    Came to me in her trouble, crying.
    I tried to help her out--she died--
    They indicted me, the newspapers disgraced me,
    My wife perished of a broken heart.
    And pneumonia finished me.

    Mrs. Meyers



    HE protested all his life long
    The newspapers lied about him villainously;
    That he was not at fault for Minerva's fall,
    But only tried to help her.
    Poor soul so sunk in sin he could not see
    That even trying to help her, as he called it,
    He had broken the law human and divine.
    Passers by, an ancient admonition to you:
    If your ways would be ways of pleasantness,
    And all your pathways peace,
    Love God and keep his commandments.

    Knowlt Hoheimer



    I WAS the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.
    When I felt the bullet enter my heart
    I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail
    For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary,
    Instead of running away and joining the army.
    Rather a thousand times the county jail
    Than to lie under this marble figure with wings,
    And this granite pedestal Bearing the words, "Pro Patria."
    What do they mean, anyway?

    Lydia Puckett



    KNOWLT HOHEIMER ran away to the war
    The day before Curl Trenary
    Swore out a warrant through Justice Arnett
    For stealing hogs.
    But that's not the reason he turned a soldier.
    He caught me running with Lucius Atherton.
    We quarreled and I told him never again
    To cross my path.
    Then he stole the hogs and went to the war--
    Back of every soldier is a woman.

    Frank Drummer



    OUT of a cell into this darkened space--
    The end at twenty-five!
    My tongue could not speak what stirred within me,
    And the village thought me a fool.
    Yet at the start there was a clear vision,
    A high and urgent purpose in my soul
    Which drove me on trying to memorize
    The Encyclopedia Britannica!

    Hare Drummer



    Do the boys and girls still go to Siever's
    For cider, after school, in late September?
    Or gather hazel nuts among the thickets
    On Aaron Hatfield's farm when the frosts begin?
    For many times with the laughing girls and boys
    Played I along the road and over the hills
    When the sun was low and the air was cool,
    Stopping to club the walnut tree
    Standing leafless against a flaming west.
    Now, the smell of the autumn smoke,
    And the dropping acorns,
    And the echoes about the vales
    Bring dreams of life.
    They hover over me.
    They question me:
    Where are those laughing comrades?
    How many are with me, how many
    In the old orchards along the way to Siever's,
    And in the woods that overlook
    The quiet water?

    Doc Hill



    I WENT UP and down the streets
    Here and there by day and night,
    Through all hours of the night caring for the poor who were sick.
    Do you know why?
    My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs.
    And I turned to the people and poured out my love to them.
    Sweet it was to see the crowds about the lawns on the day of my
    funeral,
    And hear them murmur their love and sorrow.
    But oh, dear God, my soul trembled, scarcely able
    To hold to the railing of the new life
    When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree
    At the grave,
    Hiding herself, and her grief!

    Sarah Brown



    MAURICE, weep not, I am not here under this pine tree.
    The balmy air of spring whispers through the sweet grass,
    The stars sparkle, the whippoorwill calls,
    But thou grievest, while my soul lies rapturous
    In the blest Nirvana of eternal light!
    Go to the good heart that is my husband
    Who broods upon what he calls our guilty love:--
    Tell him that my love for you, no less than my love for him
    Wrought out my destiny-- that through the flesh
    I won spirit, and through spirit, peace.
    There is no marriage in heaven
    But there is love.

    Percy Bysshe Shelley



    MY father who owned the wagon-shop
    And grew rich shoeing horses
    Sent me to the University of Montreal.
    I learned nothing and returned home,
    Roaming the fields with Bert Kessler,
    Hunting quail and snipe.
    At Thompson's Lake the trigger of my gun
    Caught in the side of the boat
    And a great hole was shot through my heart.
    Over me a fond father erected this marble shaft,
    On which stands the figure of a woman
    Carved by an Italian artist.
    They say the ashes of my namesake
    Were scattered near the pyramid of Caius Cestius
    Somewhere near Rome.

    Flossie Cabanis



    FROM Bindle's opera house in the village
    To Broadway is a great step.
    But I tried to take it, my ambition fired
    When sixteen years of age,
    Seeing "East Lynne," played here in the village
    By Ralph Barrett, the coming
    Romantic actor, who enthralled my soul.
    True, I trailed back home, a broken failure,
    When Ralph disappeared in New York,
    Leaving me alone in the city--
    But life broke him also.
    In all this place of silence
    There are no kindred spirits.
    How I wish Duse could stand amid the pathos
    Of these quiet fields
    And read these words.

    Julia Miller



    WE quarreled that morning,
    For he was sixty--five, and I was thirty,
    And I was nervous and heavy with the child
    Whose birth I dreaded.
    I thought over the last letter written me
    By that estranged young soul
    Whose betrayal of me I had concealed
    By marrying the old man.
    Then I took morphine and sat down to read.
    Across the blackness that came over my eyes
    I see the flickering light of these words even now:
    "And Jesus said unto him, Verily
    I say unto thee, To-day thou shalt
    Be with me in paradise."

    Johnnie Sayre



    FATHER, thou canst never know
    The anguish that smote my heart
    For my disobedience, the moment I felt
    The remorseless wheel of the engine
    Sink into the crying flesh of my leg.
    As they carried me to the home of widow Morris
    I could see the school-house in the valley
    To which I played truant to steal rides upon the trains.
    I prayed to live until I could ask your forgiveness--
    And then your tears, your broken words of comfort!
    From the solace of that hour I have gained infinite happiness.
    Thou wert wise to chisel for me:
    "Taken from the evil to come."

    Charlie French



    DID YOU ever find out
    Which one of the O'Brien boys it was
    Who snapped the toy pistol against my hand?
    There when the flags were red and white
    In the breeze and "Bucky" Estil
    Was firing the cannon brought to Spoon River
    From Vicksburg by Captain Harris;
    And the lemonade stands were running
    And the band was playing,
    To have it all spoiled
    By a piece of a cap shot under the skin of my hand,
    And the boys all crowding about me saying:
    "You'll die of lock-jaw, Charlie, sure."
    Oh, dear! oh, dear!
    What chum of mine could have done it?

    Zenas Witt



    I WAS sixteen, and I had the most terrible dreams,
    And specks before my eyes, and nervous weakness.
    And I couldn't remember the books I read,
    Like Frank Drummer who memorized page after page.
    And my back was weak, and I worried and worried,
    And I was embarrassed and stammered my lessons,
    And when I stood up to recite I'd forget
    Everything that I had studied.
    Well, I saw Dr. Weese's advertisement,
    And there I read everything in print,
    Just as if he had known me;
    And about the dreams which I couldn't help.
    So I knew I was marked for an early grave.
    And I worried until I had a cough
    And then the dreams stopped.
    And then I slept the sleep without dreams
    Here on the hill by the river.

    Theodore the Poet



    As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours
    On the shore of the turbid Spoon
    With deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish's burrow,
    Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead,
    First his waving antennae, like straws of hay,
    And soon his body, colored like soap-stone,
    Gemmed with eyes of jet.
    And you wondered in a trance of thought
    What he knew, what he desired, and why he lived at all.
    But later your vision watched for men and women
    Hiding in burrows of fate amid great cities,
    Looking for the souls of them to come out,
    So that you could see
    How they lived, and for what,
    And why they kept crawling so busily
    Along the sandy way where water fails
    As the summer wanes.

    The Town Marshal



    THE: Prohibitionists made me Town Marshal
    When the saloons were voted out,
    Because when I was a drinking man,
    Before I joined the church, I killed a Swede
    At the saw-mill near Maple Grove.
    And they wanted a terrible man,
    Grim, righteous, strong, courageous,
    And a hater of saloons and drinkers,
    To keep law and order in the village.
    And they presented me with a loaded cane
    With which I struck Jack McGuire
    Before he drew the gun with which he killed
    The Prohibitionists spent their money in vain
    To hang him, for in a dream
    I appeared to one of the twelve jurymen
    And told him the whole secret story.
    Fourteen years were enough for killing me.

    Jack McGuire



    THEY would have lynched me
    Had I not been secretly hurried away
    To the jail at Peoria.
    And yet I was going peacefully home,
    Carrying my jug, a little drunk,
    When Logan, the marshal, halted me
    Called me a drunken hound and shook me
    And, when I cursed him for it, struck me
    With that Prohibition loaded cane--
    All this before I shot him.
    They would have hanged me except for this:
    My lawyer, Kinsey Keene, was helping to land
    Old Thomas Rhodes for wrecking the bank,
    And the judge was a friend of
    Rhodes And wanted him to escape,
    And Kinsey offered to quit on
    Rhodes For fourteen years for me.
    And the bargain was made.
    I served my time
    And learned to read and write.

    Jacob Goodpasture



    WHEN Fort Sumter fell and the war came
    I cried out in bitterness of soul:
    "O glorious republic now no more!"
    When they buried my soldier son
    To the call of trumpets and the sound of drums
    My heart broke beneath the weight
    Of eighty years, and I cried:
    "Oh, son who died in a cause unjust!
    In the strife of Freedom slain!"
    And I crept here under the grass.
    And now from the battlements of time, behold:
    Thrice thirty million souls being bound together
    In the love of larger truth,
    Rapt in the expectation of the birth
    Of a new Beauty,
    Sprung from Brotherhood and Wisdom.
    I with eyes of spirit see the Transfiguration
    Before you see it.
    But ye infinite brood of golden eagles nesting ever higher,
    Wheeling ever higher, the sun-- light wooing
    Of lofty places of Thought,
    Forgive the blindness of the departed owl.

    Dorcas Gustine



    I WAS not beloved of the villagers,
    But all because I spoke my mind,
    And met those who transgressed against me
    With plain remonstrance, hiding nor nurturing
    Nor secret griefs nor grudges.
    That act of the Spartan boy is greatly praised,
    Who hid the wolf under his cloak,
    Letting it devour him, uncomplainingly.
    It is braver, I think, to snatch the wolf forth
    And fight him openly, even in the street,
    Amid dust and howls of pain.
    The tongue may be an unruly member--
    But silence poisons the soul.
    Berate me who will--I am content.

    Nicholas Bindle



    Were you not ashamed, fellow citizens,
    When my estate was probated and everyone knew
    How small a fortune I left?--
    You who hounded me in life,
    To give, give, give to the churches, to the poor,
    To the village!--me who had already given much.
    And think you not I did not know
    That the pipe-organ, which I gave to the church,
    Played its christening songs when Deacon Rhodes,
    Who broke and all but ruined me,
    Worshipped for the first time after his acquittal?

    Harold Arnett



    I LEANED against the mantel, sick, sick,
    Thinking of my failure, looking into the abysm,
    Weak from the noon-day heat.
    A church bell sounded mournfully far away,
    I heard the cry of a baby,
    And the coughing of John Yarnell,
    Bed-ridden, feverish, feverish, dying,
    Then the violent voice of my wife:
    "Watch out, the potatoes are burning!"
    I smelled them . . . then there was irresistible disgust.
    I pulled the trigger . . . blackness . . . light . . .
    Unspeakable regret . . . fumbling for the world again.
    Too late! Thus I came here,
    With lungs for breathing . . . one cannot breathe here with lungs,
    Though one must breathe
    Of what use is it To rid one's self of the world,
    When no soul may ever escape the eternal destiny of life?

    Margaret Fuller Slack



    I WOULD have been as great as George Eliot
    But for an untoward fate.
    For look at the photograph of me made by Penniwit,
    Chin resting on hand, and deep--set eyes--
    Gray, too, and far-searching.
    But there was the old, old problem:
    Should it be celibacy, matrimony or unchastity?
    Then John Slack, the rich druggist, wooed me,
    Luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel,
    And I married him, giving birth to eight children,
    And had no time to write.
    It was all over with me, anyway,
    When I ran the needle in my hand
    While washing the baby's things,
    And died from lock--jaw, an ironical death.
    Hear me, ambitious souls,
    Sex is the curse of life.

    George Trimble



    Do you remember when I stood on the steps
    Of the Court House and talked free-silver,
    And the single-tax of Henry George?
    Then do you remember that, when the Peerless Leader
    Lost the first battle, I began to talk prohibition,
    And became active in the church?
    That was due to my wife,
    Who pictured to me my destruction
    If I did not prove my morality to the people.
    Well, she ruined me:
    For the radicals grew suspicious of me,
    And the conservatives were never sure of me--
    And here I lie, unwept of all.

    "Ace" Shaw



    I NEVER saw any difference
    Between playing cards for money
    And selling real estate,
    Practicing law, banking, or anything else.
    For everything is chance.
    Nevertheless
    Seest thou a man diligent in business?
    He shall stand before Kings!

    Willard Fluke



    MY wife lost her health,
    And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds.
    Then that woman, whom the men
    Styled Cleopatra, came along.
    And we-- we married ones
    All broke our vows, myself among the rest.
    Years passed and one by one
    Death claimed them all in some hideous form
    And I was borne along by dreams
    Of God's particular grace for me,
    And I began to write, write, write, reams on reams
    Of the second coming of Christ.
    Then Christ came to me and said,
    "Go into the church and stand before the congregation
    And confess your sin."
    But just as I stood up and began to speak
    I saw my little girl, who was sitting in the front seat--
    My little girl who was born blind!
    After that, all is blackness.

    Aner Clute



    OVER and over they used to ask me,
    While buying the wine or the beer,
    In Peoria first, and later in Chicago,
    Denver, Frisco, New York, wherever I lived
    How I happened to lead the life,
    And what was the start of it.
    Well, I told them a silk dress,
    And a promise of marriage from a rich man--
    (It was Lucius Atherton).
    But that was not really it at all.
    Suppose a boy steals an apple
    From the tray at the grocery store,
    And they all begin to call him a thief,
    The editor, minister, judge, and all the people--
    "A thief," "a thief," "a thief," wherever he goes
    And he can't get work, and he can't get bread
    Without stealing it, why the boy will steal.
    It's the way the people regard the theft of the apple
    That makes the boy what he is.

    Lucius Atherton



    WHEN my moustache curled,
    And my hair was black,
    And I wore tight trousers
    And a diamond stud,
    I was an excellent knave of hearts and took many a trick.
    But when the gray hairs began to appear--
    Lo! a new generation of girls
    Laughed at me, not fearing me,
    And I had no more exciting adventures
    Wherein I was all but shot for a heartless devil,
    But only drabby affairs, warmed-over affairs
    Of other days and other men.
    And time went on until I lived at
    Mayer's restaurant,
    Partaking of short-orders, a gray, untidy,
    Toothless, discarded, rural Don Juan. . . .
    There is a mighty shade here who sings
    Of one named Beatrice;
    And I see now that the force that made him great
    Drove me to the dregs of life.

    Homer Clapp



    OFTEN Aner Clute at the gate
    Refused me the parting kiss,
    Saying we should be engaged before that;
    And just with a distant clasp of the hand
    She bade me good-night, as I brought her home
    From the skating rink or the revival.
    No sooner did my departing footsteps die away
    Than Lucius Atherton,
    (So I learned when Aner went to Peoria)
    Stole in at her window, or took her riding
    Behind his spanking team of bays
    Into the country.
    The shock of it made me settle down
    And I put all the money I got from my father's estate
    Into the canning factory, to get the job
    Of head accountant, and lost it all.
    And then I knew I was one of Life's fools,
    Whom only death would treat as the equal
    Of other men, making me feel like a man.

    Deacon Taylor



    I BELONGED to the church,
    And to the party of prohibition;
    And the villagers thought I died of eating watermelon.
    In truth I had cirrhosis of the liver,
    For every noon for thirty years,
    I slipped behind the prescription partition
    In Trainor's drug store
    And poured a generous drink
    From the bottle marked "Spiritus frumenti."

    Sam Hookey



    I RAN away from home with the circus,
    Having fallen in love with Mademoiselle Estralada,
    The lion tamer.
    One time, having starved the lions
    For more than a day,
    I entered the cage and began to beat Brutus
    And Leo and Gypsy.
    Whereupon Brutus sprang upon me,
    And killed me.
    On entering these regions
    I met a shadow who cursed me,
    And said it served me right. . . .
    It was Robespierre!

    Cooney Potter



    I INHERITED forty acres from my Father
    And, by working my wife, my two sons and two daughters
    From dawn to dusk, I acquired
    A thousand acres.
    But not content,
    Wishing to own two thousand acres,
    I bustled through the years with axe and plow,
    Toiling, denying myself, my wife, my sons, my daughters.
    Squire Higbee wrongs me to say
    That I died from smoking Red Eagle cigars.
    Eating hot pie and gulping coffee
    During the scorching hours of harvest time
    Brought me here ere I had reached my sixtieth year.

    Fiddler Jones



    THE earth keeps some vibration going
    There in your heart, and that is you.
    And if the people find you can fiddle,
    Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.
    What do you see, a harvest of clover?
    Or a meadow to walk through to the river?
    The wind's in the corn; you rub your hands
    For beeves hereafter ready for market;
    Or else you hear the rustle of skirts
    Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.
    To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust
    Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;
    They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy
    Stepping it off, to "Toor-a-Loor."
    How could I till my forty acres
    Not to speak of getting more,
    With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos
    Stirred in my brain by crows and robins
    And the creak of a wind-mill--only these?
    And I never started to plow in my life
    That some one did not stop in the road
    And take me away to a dance or picnic.
    I ended up with forty acres;
    I ended up with a broken fiddle--
    And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
    And not a single regret.

    Nellie Clark



    I WAS only eight years old;
    And before I grew up and knew what it meant
    I had no words for it, except
    That I was frightened and told my
    Mother; And that my Father got a pistol
    And would have killed Charlie, who was a big boy,
    Fifteen years old, except for his Mother.
    Nevertheless the story clung to me.
    But the man who married me, a widower of thirty-five,
    Was a newcomer and never heard it
    OTill two years after we were married.
    Then he considered himself cheated,
    And the village agreed that I was not really a virgin.
    Well, he deserted me, and I died
    The following winter.

    Louise Smith



    HERBERT broke our engagement of eight years
    When Annabelle returned to the village From the
    Seminary, ah me!
    If I had let my love for him alone
    It might have grown into a beautiful sorrow--
    Who knows? -- filling my life with healing fragrance.
    But I tortured it, I poisoned it
    I blinded its eyes, and it became hatred--
    Deadly ivy instead of clematis.
    And my soul fell from its support
    Its tendrils tangled in decay.
    Do not let the will play gardener to your soul
    Unless you are sure
    It is wiser than your soul's nature.

    Herbert Marshall



    ALL your sorrow, Louise, and hatred of me
    Sprang from your delusion that it was wantonness
    Of spirit and contempt of your soul's rights
    Which made me turn to Annabelle and forsake you.
    You really grew to hate me for love of me,
    Because I was your soul's happiness,
    Formed and tempered
    To solve your life for you, and would not.
    But you were my misery.
    If you had been
    My happiness would I not have clung to you?
    This is life's sorrow:
    That one can be happy only where two are;
    And that our hearts are drawn to stars
    Which want us not.

    George Gray



    I HAVE studied many times
    The marble which was chiseled for me--
    A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.
    In truth it pictures not my destination
    But my life.
    For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;
    Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;
    Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.
    Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.
    And now I know that we must lift the sail
    And catch the winds of destiny
    Wherever they drive the boat.
    To put meaning in one's life may end in madness,
    But life without meaning is the torture
    Of restlessness and vague desire--
    It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

    Hon. Henry Bennett



    IT never came into my mind
    Until I was ready to die
    That Jenny had loved me to death, with malice of heart.
    For I was seventy, she was thirty--five,
    And I wore myself to a shadow trying to husband
    Jenny, rosy Jenny full of the ardor of life.
    For all my wisdom and grace of mind
    Gave her no delight at all, in very truth,
    But ever and anon she spoke of the giant strength
    Of Willard Shafer, and of his wonderful feat
    Of lifting a traction engine out of the ditch
    One time at Georgie Kirby's.
    So Jenny inherited my fortune and married Willard--
    That mount of brawn! That clownish soul!

    Griffy the Cooper



    THE cooper should know about tubs.
    But I learned about life as well,
    And you who loiter around these graves
    Think you know life.
    You think your eye sweeps about a wide horizon, perhaps,
    In truth you are only looking around the interior of your tub.
    You cannot lift yourself to its rim
    And see the outer world of things,
    And at the same time see yourself.
    You are submerged in the tub of yourself--
    Taboos and rules and appearances,
    Are the staves of your tub.
    Break them and dispel the witchcraft
    Of thinking your tub is life
    And that you know life.

    A. D. Blood



    IF YOU in the village think that my work was a good one,
    Who closed the saloons and stopped all playing at cards,
    And haled old Daisy Fraser before Justice Arnett,
    In many a crusade to purge the people of sin;
    Why do you let the milliner's daughter Dora,
    And the worthless son of Benjamin Pantier
    Nightly make my grave their unholy pillow?

    Dora Williams



    WHEN Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me
    I went to Springfield. There I met a lush,
    Whose father just deceased left him a fortune.
    He married me when drunk.
    My life was wretched.
    A year passed and one day they found him dead.
    That made me rich. I moved on to Chicago.
    After a time met Tyler Rountree, villain.
    I moved on to New York. A gray-haired magnate
    Went mad about me--so another fortune.
    He died one night right in my arms, you know.
    (I saw his purple face for years thereafter. )
    There was almost a scandal.
    I moved on, This time to Paris. I was now a woman,
    Insidious, subtle, versed in the world and rich.
    My sweet apartment near the Champs Elys?es
    Became a center for all sorts of people,
    Musicians, poets, dandies, artists, nobles,
    Where we spoke French and German, Italian, English.
    I wed Count Navigato, native of Cenoa.
    We went to Rome. He poisoned me, I think.
    Now in the Campo Santo overlooking
    The sea where young Columbus dreamed new worlds,
    See what they chiseled: "Contessa Navigato
    Implora eterna quiete."

    Mrs. Williams



    I WAS the milliner
    Talked about, lied about,
    Mother of Dora,
    Whose strange disappearance
    Was charged to her rearing.
    My eye quick to beauty
    Saw much beside ribbons
    And buckles and feathers
    And leghorns and felts,
    To set off sweet faces,
    And dark hair and gold.
    One thing I will tell you
    And one I will ask:
    The stealers of husbands
    Wear powder and trinkets,
    And fashionable hats.
    Wives, wear them yourselves.
    Hats may make divorces--
    They also prevent them.
    Well now, let me ask you:
    If all of the children, born here in Spoon River
    Had been reared by the
    County, somewhere on a farm;
    And the fathers and mothers had been given their freedom
    To live and enjoy, change mates if they wished,
    Do you think that Spoon River
    Had been any the worse?

    William and Emily



    THERE is something about
    Death Like love itself!
    If with some one with whom you have known passion
    And the glow of youthful love,
    You also, after years of life
    Together, feel the sinking of the fire
    And thus fade away together,
    Gradually, faintly, delicately,
    As it were in each other's arms,
    Passing from the familiar room--
    That is a power of unison between souls
    Like love itself!

    The Circuit Judge



    TAKE note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions
    Eaten in my head-stone by the wind and rain--
    Almost as if an intangible Nemesis or hatred
    Were marking scores against me,
    But to destroy, and not preserve, my memory.
    I in life was the Circuit judge, a maker of notches,
    Deciding cases on the points the lawyers scored,
    Not on the right of the matter.
    O wind and rain, leave my head-stone alone
    For worse than the anger of the wronged,
    The curses of the poor,
    Was to lie speechless, yet with vision clear,
    Seeing that even Hod Putt, the murderer,
    Hanged by my sentence,
    Was innocent in soul compared with me.

    Blind Jack



    I HAD fiddled all day at the county fair.
    But driving home "Butch" Weldy and Jack McGuire,
    Who were roaring full, made me fiddle and fiddle
    To the song of Susie Skinner, while whipping the horses
    Till they ran away. Blind as I was, I tried to get out
    As the carriage fell in the ditch,
    And was caught in the wheels and killed.
    There's a blind man here with a brow
    As big and white as a cloud.
    And all we fiddlers, from highest to lowest,
    Writers of music and tellers of stories
    Sit at his feet,
    And hear him sing of the fall of Troy.

    John Horace Burleson



    I WON the prize essay at school
    Here in the village,
    And published a novel before I was twenty-five.
    I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art;
    There married the banker's daughter,
    And later became president of the bank--
    Always looking forward to some leisure
    To write an epic novel of the war.
    Meanwhile friend of the great, and lover of letters,
    And host to Matthew Arnold and to Emerson.
    An after dinner speaker, writing essays
    For local clubs. At last brought here--
    My boyhood home, you know--
    Not even a little tablet in Chicago
    To keep my name alive.
    How great it is to write the single line:
    "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll!"

    Nancy Knapp



    WELL, don't you see this was the way of it:
    We bought the farm with what he inherited,
    And his brothers and sisters accused him of poisoning
    His fathers mind against the rest of them.
    And we never had any peace with our treasure.
    The murrain took the cattle, and the crops failed.
    And lightning struck the granary.
    So we mortgaged the farm to keep going.
    And he grew silent and was worried all the time.
    Then some of the neighbors refused to speak to us,
    And took sides with his brothers and sisters.
    And I had no place to turn, as one may say to himself,
    At an earlier time in life;
    "No matter, So and so is my friend, or I can shake this off
    With a little trip to Decatur."
    Then the dreadfulest smells infested the rooms.
    So I set fire to the beds and the old witch-house
    Went up in a roar of flame,
    As I danced in the yard with waving arms,
    While he wept like a freezing steer.

    Barry Holden



    THE very fall my sister Nancy Knapp
    Set fire to the house
    They were trying Dr. Duval
    For the murder of Zora Clemens,
    And I sat in the court two weeks
    Listening to every witness.
    It was clear he had got her in a family
    And to let the child be born
    Would not do.
    Well, how about me with eight children,
    And one coming, and the farm
    Mortgaged to Thomas Rhodes?
    And when I got home that night,
    (After listening to the story of the buggy ride,
    And the finding of Zora in the ditch,)
    The first thing I saw, right there by the steps,
    Where the boys had hacked for angle worms,
    Was the hatchet!
    And just as I entered there was my wife,
    Standing before me, big with child.
    She started the talk of the mortgaged farm,
    And I killed her.

    State's Attorney Fallas



    I, THE scourge-wielder, balance-wrecker,
    Smiter with whips and swords;
    I, hater of the breakers of the law;
    I, legalist, inexorable and bitter,
    Driving the jury to hang the madman, Barry Holden,
    Was made as one dead by light too bright for eyes,
    And woke to face a Truth with bloody brow:
    Steel forceps fumbled by a doctor's hand
    Against my boy's head as he entered life
    Made him an idiot. I turned to books of science
    To care for him.
    That's how the world of those whose minds are sick
    Became my work in life, and all my world.
    Poor ruined boy! You were, at last, the potter
    And I and all my deeds of charity
    The vessels of your hand.

    Wendell P. Bloyd



    THEY first charged me with disorderly conduct,
    There being no statute on blasphemy.
    Later they locked me up as insane
    Where I was beaten to death by a Catholic guard.
    My offense was this:
    I said God lied to Adam, and destined him
    To lead the life of a fool,
    Ignorant that there is evil in the world as well as good.
    And when Adam outwitted God by eating the apple
    And saw through the lie,
    God drove him out of Eden to keep him from taking
    The fruit of immortal life.
    For Christ's sake, you sensible people,
    Here's what God Himself says about it in the book of Genesis:
    "And the Lord God said, behold the man
    Is become as one of us" (a little envy, you see),
    "To know good and evil" (The all-is-good lie exposed):
    "And now lest he put forth his hand and take
    Also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever:
    Therefore the Lord God sent Him forth from the garden of Eden." (The
    reason I believe God crucified His Own Son
    To get out of the wretched tangle is, because it sounds just like Him. )

    Francis Turner



    I COULD not run or play In boyhood.
    In manhood I could only sip the cup,
    Not drink-- For scarlet-fever left my heart diseased.
    Yet I lie here
    Soothed by a secret none but Mary knows:
    There is a garden of acacia,
    Catalpa trees, and arbors sweet with vines--
    There on that afternoon in June By Mary's side--
    Kissing her with my soul upon my lips
    It suddenly took flight.

    Franklin Jones



    IF I could have lived another year
    I could have finished my flying machine,
    And become rich and famous.
    Hence it is fitting the workman
    Who tried to chisel a dove for me
    Made it look more like a chicken.
    For what is it all but being hatched,
    And running about the yard,
    To the day of the block?
    Save that a man has an angel's brain,
    And sees the ax from the first!

    John M. Church



    I WAS attorney for the "Q"
    And the Indemnity Company which insured
    The owners of the mine.
    I pulled the wires with judge and jury,
    And the upper courts, to beat the claims
    Of the crippled, the widow and orphan,
    And made a fortune thereat.
    The bar association sang my praises In a high-flown resolution.
    And the floral tributes were many--
    But the rats devoured my heart
    And a snake made a nest in my skull

    Russian Sonia



    I, BORN in Weimar
    Of a mother who was French
    And German father, a most learned professor,
    Orphaned at fourteen years,
    Became a dancer, known as Russian Sonia,
    All up and down the boulevards of Paris,
    Mistress betimes of sundry dukes and counts,
    And later of poor artists and of poets.
    At forty years, pass?e, I sought New York
    And met old Patrick Hummer on the boat,
    Red-faced and hale, though turned his sixtieth year,
    Returning after having sold a ship-load
    Of cattle in the German city, Hamburg.
    He brought me to Spoon River and we lived here
    For twenty years--they thought that we were married
    This oak tree near me is the favorite haunt
    Of blue jays chattering, chattering all the day.
    And why not? for my very dust is laughing
    For thinking of the humorous thing called life.

    Barney Hainsfeather



    IF the excursion train to Peoria
    Had just been wrecked, I might have escaped with my life--
    Certainly I should have escaped this place.
    But as it was burned as well, they mistook me
    For John Allen who was sent to the Hebrew Cemetery At Chicago, And
    lohn for me, so I lie here.
    It was bad enough to run a clothing store in this town,
    But to be buried here--ach!

    Petit, the Poet



    SEEDS in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
    Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel--
    Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens--
    But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.
    Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
    Ballades by the score with the same old thought:
    The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;
    And what is love but a rose that fades?
    Life all around me here in the village:
    Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,
    Courage, constancy, heroism, failure--
    All in the loom, and oh what patterns!
    Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers--
    Blind to all of it all my life long.
    Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
    Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics,
    While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines?

    Pauline Barrett



    ALMOST the shell of a woman after the surgeon's knife
    And almost a year to creep back into strength,
    Till the dawn of our wedding decennial
    Found me my seeming self again.
    We walked the forest together,
    By a path of soundless moss and turf.
    But I could not look in your eyes,
    And you could not look in my eyes,
    For such sorrow was ours--the beginning of gray in your hair.
    And I but a shell of myself.
    And what did we talk of?-- sky and water,
    Anything, Omost, to hide our thoughts.
    And then your gift of wild roses,
    Set on the table to grace our dinner.
    Poor heart, how bravely you struggled
    To imagine and live a remembered rapture!
    Then my spirit drooped as the night came on,
    And you left me alone in my room for a while,
    As you did when I was a bride, poor heart.
    And I looked in the mirror and something said:
    "One should be all dead when one is half-dead--"
    Nor ever mock life, nor ever cheat love."
    And I did it looking there in the mirror--
    Dear, have you ever understood?

    Mrs. Charles Bliss



    REVEREND WILEY advised me not to divorce him
    For the sake of the children,
    And Judge Somers advised him the same.
    So we stuck to the end of the path.
    But two of the children thought he was right,
    And two of the children thought I was right.
    And the two who sided with him blamed me,
    And the two who sided with me blamed him,
    And they grieved for the one they sided with.
    And all were torn with the guilt of judging,
    And tortured in soul because they could not admire
    Equally him and me.
    Now every gardener knows that plants grown in cellars
    Or under stones are twisted and yellow and weak.
    And no mother would let her baby suck
    Diseased milk from her breast.
    Yet preachers and judges advise the raising of souls
    Where there is no sunlight, but only twilight,
    No warmth, but only dampness and cold--
    Preachers and judges!

    Mrs. George Reece



    To this generation I would say:
    Memorize some bit of verse of truth or beauty.
    It may serve a turn in your life.
    My husband had nothing to do
    With the fall of the bank--he was only cashier.
    The wreck was due to the president, Thomas Rhodes,
    And his vain, unscrupulous son.
    Yet my husband was sent to prison,
    And I was left with the children,
    To feed and clothe and school them.
    And I did it, and sent them forth
    Into the world all clean and strong,
    And all through the wisdom of Pope, the poet:
    "Act well your part, there all the honor lies."

    Rev. Lemuel Wiley



    I PREACHED four thousand sermons,
    I conducted forty revivals,
    And baptized many converts.
    Yet no deed of mine
    Shines brighter in the memory of the world,
    And none is treasured more by me:
    Look how I saved the Blisses from divorce,
    And kept the children free from that disgrace,
    To grow up into moral men and women,
    Happy themselves, a credit to the village.

    Thomas Ross, Jr.



    THIS I saw with my own eyes: A cliff--swallow
    Made her nest in a hole of the high clay-bank
    There near Miller's Ford.
    But no sooner were the young hatched
    Than a snake crawled up to the nest
    To devour the brood.
    Then the mother swallow with swift flutterings
    And shrill cries
    Fought at the snake,
    Blinding him with the beat of her wings,
    Until he, wriggling and rearing his head,
    Fell backward down the bank
    Into Spoon River and was drowned.
    Scarcely an hour passed
    Until a shrike
    Impaled the mother swallow on a thorn.
    As for myself I overcame my lower nature
    Only to be destroyed by my brother's ambition.

    Rev. Abner Peet



    I HAD no objection at all
    To selling my household effects at auction
    On the village square.
    It gave my beloved flock the chance
    To get something which had belonged to me
    For a memorial.
    But that trunk which was struck off
    To Burchard, the grog-keeper!
    Did you know it contained the manuscripts
    Of a lifetime of sermons?
    And he burned them as waste paper.

    Jefferson Howard



    MY valiant fight! For I call it valiant,
    With my father's beliefs from old Virginia:
    Hating slavery, but no less war.
    I, full of spirit, audacity, courage
    Thrown into life here in Spoon River,
    With its dominant forces drawn from
    New England, Republicans, Calvinists, merchants, bankers,
    Hating me, yet fearing my arm.
    With wife and children heavy to carry--
    Yet fruits of my very zest of life.
    Stealing odd pleasures that cost me prestige,
    And reaping evils I had not sown;
    Foe of the church with its charnel dankness,
    Friend of the human touch of the tavern;
    Tangled with fates all alien to me,
    Deserted by hands I called my own.
    Then just as I felt my giant strength
    Short of breath, behold my children
    Had wound their lives in stranger gardens--
    And I stood alone, as I started alone
    My valiant life! I died on my feet,
    Facing the silence--facing the prospect
    That no one would know of the fight I made.

    Albert Schirding



    JONAS KEENE thought his lot a hard one
    Because his children were all failures.
    But I know of a fate more trying than that:
    It is to be a failure while your children are successes.
    For I raised a brood of eagles
    Who flew away at last, leaving me
    A crow on the abandoned bough.
    Then, with the ambition to prefix
    Honorable to my name,
    And thus to win my children's admiration,
    I ran for County Superintendent of Schools,
    Spending my accumulations to win-- and lost.
    That fall my daughter received first prize in
    Paris For her picture, entitled, "The Old Mill"--
    (It was of the water mill before Henry Wilkin put in steam.)
    The feeling that I was not worthy of her finished me.

    Jonas Keene



    WHY did Albert Schirding kill himself
    Trying to be County Superintendent of Schools,
    Blest as he was with the means of life
    And wonderful children, bringing him honor
    Ere he was sixty?
    If even one of my boys could have run a news-stand,
    Or one of my girls could have married a decent man,
    I should not have walked in the rain
    And jumped into bed with clothes all wet,
    Refusing medical aid.

    Yee Bow



    THEY got me into the Sunday-school
    In Spoon River And tried to get me to drop
    Confucius for Jesus. I could have been no worse off
    If I had tried to get them to drop Jesus for Confucius.
    For, without any warning, as if it were a prank,
    And sneaking up behind me, Harry Wiley,
    The minister's son, caved my ribs into my lungs,
    With a blow of his fist.
    Now I shall never sleep with my ancestors in Pekin,
    And no children shall worship at my grave.

    Washington McNeely



    RICH, honored by my fellow citizens,
    The father of many children, born of a noble mother,
    All raised there
    In the great mansion--house, at the edge of town.
    Note the cedar tree on the lawn!
    I sent all the boys to Ann Arbor, all of the girls to Rockford,
    The while my life went on, getting more riches and honors--
    Resting under my cedar tree at evening.
    The years went on. I sent the girls to Europe;
    I dowered them when married.
    I gave the boys money to start in business.
    They were strong children, promising as apples
    Before the bitten places show.
    But John fled the country in disgrace.
    Jenny died in child-birth--
    I sat under my cedar tree.
    Harry killed himself after a debauch, Susan was divorced--
    I sat under my cedar tree. Paul was invalided from over study,
    Mary became a recluse at home for love of a man--
    I sat under my cedar tree.
    All were gone, or broken-winged or devoured by life--
    I sat under my cedar tree.
    My mate, the mother of them, was taken--
    I sat under my cedar tree,
    Till ninety years were tolled.
    O maternal Earth, which rocks the fallen leaf to sleep.

    Mary McNeely



    PASSER-BY,
    To love is to find your own soul
    Through the soul of the beloved one.
    When the beloved one withdraws itself from your soul
    Then you have lost your soul.
    It is written: "l have a friend,
    But my sorrow has no friend."
    Hence my long years of solitude at the home of my father,
    Trying to get myself back,
    And to turn my sorrow into a supremer self.
    But there was my father with his sorrows,
    Sitting under the cedar tree,
    A picture that sank into my heart at last
    Bringing infinite repose.
    Oh, ye souls who have made life
    Fragrant and white as tube roses
    From earth's dark soil,
    Eternal peace!

    Daniel M'Cumber



    WHEN I went to the city, Mary McNeely,
    I meant to return for you, yes I did.
    But Laura, my landlady's daughter,
    Stole into my life somehow, and won me away.
    Then after some years whom should I meet
    But Georgine Miner from Niles--a sprout
    Of the free love, Fourierist gardens that flourished
    Before the war all over Ohio.
    Her dilettante lover had tired of her,
    And she turned to me for strength and solace.
    She was some kind of a crying thing
    One takes in one's arms, and all at once
    It slimes your face with its running nose,
    And voids its essence all over you;
    Then bites your hand and springs away.
    And there you stand bleeding and smelling to heaven
    Why, Mary McNeely, I was not worthy
    To kiss the hem of your robe!

    Georgine Sand Miner



    A STEPMOTHER drove me from home, embittering me.
    A squaw-man, a flaneur and dilettante took my virtue.
    For years I was his mistress--no one knew.
    I learned from him the parasite cunning
    With which I moved with the bluffs, like a flea on a dog.
    All the time I was nothing but "very private," with different men.
    Then Daniel, the radical, had me for years.
    His sister called me his mistress;
    And Daniel wrote me:
    "Shameful word, soiling our beautifullove!"
    But my anger coiled, preparing its fangs.
    My Lesbian friend next took a hand.
    She hated Daniel's sister.
    And Daniel despised her midget husband.
    And she saw a chance for a poisonous thrust:
    I must complain to the wife of Daniel's pursuit!
    But before I did that I begged him to fly to London with me.
    "Why not stay in the city just as we have?" he asked.
    Then I turned submarine and revenged his repulse
    In the arms of my dilettante friend.
    Then up to the surface, Bearing the letter that Daniel wrote me
    To prove my honor was all intact, showing it to his wife,
    My Lesbian friend and everyone.
    If Daniel had only shot me dead!
    Instead of stripping me naked of lies
    A harlot in body and soul.

    Thomas Rhodes



    VERY well, you liberals,
    And navigators into realms intellectual,
    You sailors through heights imaginative,
    Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets,
    You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits,
    And Tennessee Claflin Shopes--
    You tound with all your boasted wisdom
    How hard at the last it is
    To keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms.
    While we, seekers of earth's treasures
    Getters and hoarders of gold,
    Are self-contained, compact, harmonized,
    Even to the end.

    Penniwit, the Artist



    I LOST my patronage in Spoon River
    From trying to put my mind in the camera
    To catch the soul of the person.
    The very best picture I ever took
    Was of Judge Somers, attorney at law.
    He sat upright and had me pause
    Till he got his cross-eye straight.
    Then when he was ready he said "all right."
    And I yelled "overruled" and his eye turned up.
    And I caught him just as he used to look
    When saying "l except."

    Jim Brown



    WHILE I was handling Dom Pedro
    I got at the thing that divides the race between men who are
    For singing "Turkey in the straw" or
    "There is a fountain filled with blood"--
    (Like Rile Potter used to sing it over at Concord).
    For cards, or for Rev. Peet's lecture on the holy land;
    For skipping the light fantastic, or passing the plate;
    For Pinafore, or a Sunday school cantata;
    For men, or for money;
    For the people or against them.
    This was it: Rev. Peet and the Social Purity Club,
    Headed by Ben Pantier's wife,
    Went to the Village trustees,
    And asked them to make me take Dom Pedro
    From the barn of Wash McNeely, there at the edge of town,
    To a barn outside of the corporation,
    On the ground that it corrupted public morals.
    Well, Ben Pantier and Fiddler Jones saved the day--
    They thought it a slam on colts.

    Robert Davidson



    I GREW spiritually fat living off the souls of men.
    If I saw a soul that was strong
    I wounded its pride and devoured its strength.
    The shelters of friendship knew my cunning
    For where I could steal a friend I did so.
    And wherever I could enlarge my power
    By undermining ambition, I did so,
    Thus to make smooth my own.
    And to triumph over other souls,
    Just to assert and prove my superior strength,
    Was with me a delight,
    The keen exhilaration of soul gymnastics.
    Devouring souls, I should have lived forever.
    But their undigested remains bred in me a deadly nephritis,
    With fear, restlessness, sinking spirits,
    Hatred, suspicion, vision disturbed.
    I collapsed at last with a shriek.
    Remember the acorn;
    It does not devour other acorns.

    Elsa Wertman



    I WAS a peasant girl from Germany,
    Blue-eyed, rosy, happy and strong.
    And the first place I worked was at Thomas Greene's.
    On a summer's day when she was away
    He stole into the kitchen and took me
    Right in his arms and kissed me on my throat,
    I turning my head. Then neither of us
    Seemed to know what happened.
    And I cried for what would become of me.
    And cried and cried as my secret began to show.
    One day Mrs. Greene said she understood,
    And would make no trouble for me,
    And, being childless, would adopt it.
    (He had given her a farm to be still. )
    So she hid in the house and sent out rumors,
    As if it were going to happen to her.
    And all went well and the child was born--
    They were so kind to me.
    Later I married Gus Wertman, and years passed.
    But-- at political rallies when sitters-by thought I was crying
    At the eloquence of Hamilton Greene--
    That was not it. No! I wanted to say:
    That's my son!
    That's my son.

    Hamilton Greene



    I WAS the only child of Frances Harris of Virginia
    And Thomas Greene of Kentucky,
    Of valiant and honorable blood both.
    To them I owe all that I became,
    Judge, member of Congress, leader in the State.
    From my mother I inherited
    Vivacity, fancy, language;
    From my father will, judgment, logic.
    All honor to them
    For what service I was to the people!

    Ernest Hyde



    MY mind was a mirror:
    It saw what it saw, it knew what it knew.
    In youth my mind was just a mirror In a rapidly flying car,
    Which catches and loses bits of the landscape.
    Then in time
    Great scratches were made on the mirror,
    Letting the outside world come in,
    And letting my inner self look out.
    For this is the birth of the soul in sorrow,
    A birth with gains and losses.
    The mind sees the world as a thing apart,
    And the soul makes the world at one with itself.
    A mirror scratched reflects no image--
    And this is the silence of wisdom.

    Roger Heston



    OH many times did Ernest Hyde and I
    Argue about the freedom of the will.
    My favorite metaphor was Prickett's cow
    Roped out to grass, and free you know as far
    As the length of the rope.
    One day while arguing so, watching the cow
    Pull at the rope to get beyond the circle
    Which she had eaten bare,
    Out came the stake, and tossing up her head,
    She ran for us.
    "What's that, free-will or what?" said Ernest, running.
    I fell just as she gored me to my death.

    Amos Sibley



    NOT character, not fortitude, not patience
    Were mine, the which the village thought I had
    In bearing with my wife, while preaching on,
    Doing the work God chose for me.
    I loathed her as a termagant, as a wanton.
    I knew of her adulteries, every one.
    But even so, if I divorced the woman
    I must forsake the ministry.
    Therefore to do God's work and have it crop,
    I bore with her
    So lied I to myself
    So lied I to Spoon River!
    Yet I tried lecturing, ran for the legislature,
    Canvassed for books, with just the thought in mind:
    If I make money thus,
    I will divorce her.

    Mrs. Sibley



    THE secret of the stars-- gravitation.
    The secret of the earth-- layers of rock.
    The secret of the soil-- to receive seed.
    The secret of the seed-- the germ.
    The secret of man-- the sower.
    The secret of woman-- the soil.
    My secret: Under a mound that you shall never find.

    Adam Weirauch



    I WAS crushed between Altgeld and Armour.
    I lost many friends, much time and money
    Fighting for Altgeld whom Editor Whedon
    Denounced as the candidate of gamblers and anarchists.
    Then Armour started to ship dressed meat to Spoon River,
    Forcing me to shut down my slaughter-house
    And my butcher shop went all to pieces.
    The new forces of Altgeld and Armour caught me
    At the same time. I thought it due me, to recoup the money I lost
    And to make good the friends that left me,
    For the Governor to appoint me Canal Commissioner.
    Instead he appointed Whedon of the Spoon River Argus,
    So I ran for the legislature and was elected.
    I said to hell with principle and sold my vote
    On Charles T. Yerkes' street-car franchise.
    Of course I was one of the fellows they caught.
    Who was it, Armour, Altgeld or myself
    That ruined me?

    Ezra Bartlett



    A CHAPLAIN in the army,
    A chaplain in the prisons,
    An exhorter in Spoon River,
    Drunk with divinity, Spoon River--
    Yet bringing poor Eliza Johnson to shame,
    And myself to scorn and wretchedness.
    But why will you never see that love of women,
    And even love of wine,
    Are the stimulants by which the soul, hungering for divinity,
    Reaches the ecstatic vision
    And sees the celestial outposts?
    Only after many trials for strength,
    Only when all stimulants fail,
    Does the aspiring soul
    By its own sheer power
    Find the divine
    By resting upon itself.

    Amelia Garrick



    YES, here I lie close to a stunted rose bush
    In a forgotten place near the fence
    Where the thickets from Siever's woods
    Have crept over, growing sparsely.
    And you, you are a leader in New York,
    The wife of a noted millionaire,
    A name in the society columns,
    Beautiful, admired, magnified perhaps
    By the mirage of distance.
    You have succeeded,
    I have failed In the eyes of the world.
    You are alive, I am dead.
    Yet I know that I vanquished your spirit;
    And I know that lying here far from you,
    Unheard of among your great friends
    In the brilliant world where you move,
    I am really the unconquerable power over your life
    That robs it of complete triumph.

    John Hancock Otis



    As to democracy, fellow citizens,
    Are you not prepared to admit
    That l, who inherited riches and was to the manor born,
    Was second to none in Spoon River
    In my devotion to the cause of Liberty?
    While my contemporary, Anthony Findlay,
    Born in a shanty and beginning life
    As a water carrier to the section hands,
    Then becoming a section hand when he was grown,
    Afterwards foreman of the gang, until he rose
    To the superintendency of the railroad,
    Living in Chicago,
    Was a veritable slave driver,
    Grinding the faces of labor,
    And a bitter enemy of democracy.
    And I say to you, Spoon River,
    And to you, O republic,
    Beware of the man who rises to power
    From one suspender.

    The Unknown



    YE aspiring ones, listen to the story of the unknown
    Who lies here with no stone to mark the place.
    As a boy reckless and wanton,
    Wandering with gun in hand through the forest
    Near the mansion of Aaron Hatfield,
    I shot a hawk perched on the top
    Of a dead tree. He fell with guttural cry
    At my feet, his wing broken.
    Then I put him in a cage
    Where he lived many days cawing angrily at me
    When I offered him food.
    Daily I search the realms of Hades
    For the soul of the hawk,
    That I may offer him the friendship
    Of one whom life wounded and caged.

    Alexander Throckmorton



    IN youth my wings were strong and tireless,
    But I did not know the mountains.
    In age I knew the mountains
    But my weary wings could not follow my vision--
    Genius is wisdom and youth.

    Jonathan Swift Somers (Author of the Spooniad)



    AFTER you have enriched your soul
    To the highest point,
    With books, thought, suffering,
    The understanding of many personalities,
    The power to interpret glances, silences,
    The pauses in momentous transformations,
    The genius of divination and prophecy;
    So that you feel able at times to hold the world
    In the hollow of your hand;
    Then, if, by the crowding of so many powers
    Into the compass of your soul,
    Your soul takes fire,
    And in the conflagration of your soul
    The evil of the world is lighted up and made clear--
    Be thankful if in that hour of supreme vision
    Life does not fiddle.

    Widow McFarlane



    I WAS the Widow McFarlane,
    Weaver of carpets for all the village.
    And I pity you still at the loom of life,
    You who are singing to the shuttle
    And lovingly watching the work of your hands,
    If you reach the day of hate, of terrible truth.
    For the cloth of life is woven, you know,
    To a pattern hidden under the loom--
    A pattern you never see!
    And you weave high-hearted, singing, singing,
    You guard the threads of love and friendship
    For noble figures in gold and purple.
    And long after other eyes can see
    You have woven a moon-white strip of cloth,
    You laugh in your strength, for Hope overlays it
    With shapes of love and beauty.
    The loom stops short!
    The pattern's out
    You're alone in the room!
    You have woven a shroud
    And hate of it lays you in it.

    Carl Hamblin



    THE press of the Spoon River Clarion was wrecked,
    And I was tarred and feathered,
    For publishing this on the day the
    Anarchists were hanged in Chicago:
    "l saw a beautiful woman with bandaged eyes
    Standing on the steps of a marble temple.
    Great multitudes passed in front of her,
    Lifting their faces to her imploringly.
    In her left hand she held a sword.
    She was brandishing the sword,
    Sometimes striking a child, again a laborer,
    Again a slinking woman, again a lunatic.
    In her right hand she held a scale;
    Into the scale pieces of gold were tossed
    By those who dodged the strokes of the sword.
    A man in a black gown read from a manuscript:
    "She is no respecter of persons."
    Then a youth wearing a red cap
    Leaped to her side and snatched away the bandage.
    And lo, the lashes had been eaten away
    From the oozy eye-lids;
    The eye-balls were seared with a milky mucus;
    The madness of a dying soul
    Was written on her face--
    But the multitude saw why she wore the bandage."

    Editor Whedon



    To be able to see every side of every question;
    To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long;
    To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose,
    To use great feelings and passions of the human family
    For base designs, for cunning ends,
    To wear a mask like the Greek actors--
    Your eight-page paper-- behind which you huddle,
    Bawling through the megaphone of big type:
    "This is I, the giant."
    Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief,
    Poisoned with the anonymous words
    Of your clandestine soul.
    To scratch dirt over scandal for money,
    And exhume it to the winds for revenge,
    Or to sell papers,
    Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be,
    To win at any cost, save your own life.
    To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization,
    As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track
    And derails the express train.
    To be an editor, as I was.
    Then to lie here close by the river over the place
    Where the sewage flows from the village,
    And the empty cans and garbage are dumped,
    And abortions are hidden.

    Eugene Carman



    RHODES, slave! Selling shoes and gingham,
    Flour and bacon, overalls, clothing, all day long
    For fourteen hours a day for three hundred and thirteen days
    For more than twenty years.
    Saying "Yes'm" and "Yes, sir", and "Thank you"
    A thousand times a day, and all for fifty dollars a month.
    Living in this stinking room in the rattle-trap "Commercial."
    And compelled to go to Sunday School, and to listen
    To the Rev. Abner Peet one hundred and four times a year
    For more than an hour at a time,
    Because Thomas Rhodes ran the church
    As well as the store and the bank.
    So while I was tying my neck-tie that morning
    I suddenly saw myself in the glass:
    My hair all gray, my face like a sodden pie.
    So I cursed and cursed: You damned old thing
    You cowardly dog! You rotten pauper!
    You Rhodes' slave! Till Roger Baughman
    Thought I was having a fight with some one,
    And looked through the transom just in time
    To see me fall on the floor in a heap
    From a broken vein in my head.

    Clarence Fawcett



    THE sudden death of Eugene Carman
    Put me in line to be promoted to fifty dollars a month,
    And I told my wife and children that night.
    But it didn't come, and so I thought
    Old Rhodes suspected me of stealing
    The blankets I took and sold on the side
    For money to pay a doctor's bill for my little girl.
    Then like a bolt old Rhodes accused me,
    And promised me mercy for my family's sake
    If I confessed, and so I confessed,
    And begged him to keep it out of the papers,
    And I asked the editors, too.
    That night at home the constable took me
    And every paper, except the Clarion,
    Wrote me up as a thief
    Because old Rhodes was an advertiser
    And wanted to make an example of me.
    Oh! well, you know how the children cried,
    And how my wife pitied and hated me,
    And how I came to lie here.

    W. Lloyd Garrison Standard



    VEGETARIAN, non--resistant, free-thinker, in ethics a Christian;
    Orator apt at the rhine-stone rhythm of Ingersoll.
    Carnivorous, avenger, believer and pagan.
    Continent, promiscuous, changeable, treacherous, vain,
    Proud, with the pride that makes struggle a thing for laughter;
    With heart cored out by the worm of theatric despair.
    Wearing the coat of indifference to hide the shame of defeat;
    I, child of the abolitionist idealism--
    A sort of Brand in a birth of half-and-half.
    What other thing could happen when I defended
    The patriot scamps who burned the court house
    That Spoon River might have a new one
    Than plead them guilty?
    When Kinsey Keene drove through
    The card--board mask of my life with a spear of light,
    What could I do but slink away, like the beast of myself
    Which I raised from a whelp, to a corner and growl?
    The pyramid of my life was nought but a dune,
    Barren and formless, spoiled at last by the storm.

    Professor Newcomer



    EVERYONE laughed at Col. Prichard
    For buying an engine so powerful
    That it wrecked itself, and wrecked the grinder
    He ran it with.
    But here is a joke of cosmic size:
    The urge of nature that made a man
    Evolve from his brain a spiritual life--
    Oh miracle of the world!--
    The very same brain with which the ape and wolf
    Get food and shelter and procreate themselves.
    Nature has made man do this,
    In a world where she gives him nothing to do
    After all-- (though the strength of his soul goes round
    In a futile waste of power.
    To gear itself to the mills of the gods)--
    But get food and shelter and procreate himself!

    Ralph Rhodes



    ALL they said was true:
    I wrecked my father's bank with my loans
    To dabble in wheat; but this was true--
    I was buying wheat for him as well,
    Who couldn't margin the deal in his name
    Because of his church relationship.
    And while George Reece was serving his term
    I chased the will-o-the-wisp of women
    And the mockery of wine in New York.
    It's deathly to sicken of wine and women
    When nothing else is left in life.
    But suppose your head is gray, and bowed
    On a table covered with acrid stubs
    Of cigarettes and empty glasses,
    And a knock is heard, and you know it's the knock
    So long drowned out by popping corks
    And the pea-cock screams of demireps--
    And you look up, and there's your Theft,
    Who waited until your head was gray,
    And your heart skipped beats to say to you:
    The game is ended. I've called for you,
    Go out on Broadway and be run over,
    They'll ship you back to Spoon River.

    Mickey M'Grew



    IT was just like everything else in life:
    Something outside myself drew me down,
    My own strength never failed me.
    Why, there was the time I earned the money
    With which to go away to school,
    And my father suddenly needed help
    And I had to give him all of it.
    Just so it went till I ended up
    A man-of--all-work in Spoon River.
    Thus when I got the water-tower cleaned,
    And they hauled me up the seventy feet,
    I unhooked the rope from my waist,
    And laughingly flung my giant arms
    Over the smooth steel lips of the top of the tower--
    But they slipped from the treacherous slime,
    And down, down, down, I plunged
    Through bellowing darkness!

    Rosie Roberts



    I WAS sick, but more than that, I was mad
    At the crooked police, and the crooked game of life.
    So I wrote to the Chief of Police at Peoria:
    "l am here in my girlhood home in Spoon River,
    Gradually wasting away.
    But come and take me, I killed the son
    Of the merchant prince, in Madam Lou's
    And the papers that said he killed himself
    In his home while cleaning a hunting gun--
    Lied like the devil to hush up scandal
    For the bribe of advertising.
    In my room I shot him, at Madam Lou's,
    Because he knocked me down when I said
    That, in spite of all the money he had,
    I'd see my lover that night."

    Oscar Hummel



    I STAGGERED on through darkness,
    There was a hazy sky, a few stars
    Which I followed as best I could.
    It was nine o'clock, I was trying to get home.
    But somehow I was lost,
    Though really keeping the road.
    Then I reeled through a gate and into a yard,
    And called at the top of my voice:
    "Oh, Fiddler! Oh, Mr. Jones!"
    (I thought it was his house and he would show me the way home. )
    But who should step out but A. D. Blood,
    In his night shirt, waving a stick of wood,
    And roaring about the cursed saloons,
    And the criminals they made?
    "You drunken Oscar Hummel", he said,
    As I stood there weaving to and fro,
    Taking the blows from the stick in his hand
    Till I dropped down dead at his feet.

    Josiah Tompkins



    I WAS well known and much beloved
    And rich, as fortunes are reckoned
    In Spoon River, where I had lived and worked.
    That was the home for me,
    Though all my children had flown afar--
    Which is the way of Nature--all but one.
    The boy, who was the baby, stayed at home,
    To be my help in my failing years
    And the solace of his mother.
    But I grew weaker, as he grew stronger,
    And he quarreled with me about the business,
    And his wife said I was a hindrance to it;
    And he won his mother to see as he did,
    Till they tore me up to be transplanted
    With them to her girlhood home in Missouri.
    And so much of my fortune was gone at last,
    Though I made the will just as he drew it,
    He profited little by it.

    Roscoe Purkapile



    SHE loved me.
    Oh! how she loved me I never had a chance to escape
    From the day she first saw me.
    But then after we were married I thought
    She might prove her mortality and let me out,
    Or she might divorce me. But few die, none resign.
    Then I ran away and was gone a year on a lark.
    But she never complained. She said all would be well
    That I would return. And I did return.
    I told her that while taking a row in a boat
    I had been captured near Van Buren Street
    By pirates on Lake Michigan,
    And kept in chains, so I could not write her.
    She cried and kissed me, and said it was cruel,
    Outrageous, inhuman! I then concluded our marriage
    Was a divine dispensation
    And could not be dissolved,
    Except by death.
    I was right.

    Mrs. Purkapile



    HE ran away and was gone for a year.
    When he came home he told me the silly story
    Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan
    And kept in chains so he could not write me.
    I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well
    What he was doing, and that he met
    The milliner, Mrs. Williams, now and then
    When she went to the city to buy goods, as she said.
    But a promise is a promise
    And marriage is marriage,
    And out of respect for my own character
    I refused to be drawn into a divorce
    By the scheme of a husband who had merely grown tired
    Of his marital vow and duty.

    Mrs. Kessler



    MR. KESSLER, you know, was in the army,
    And he drew six dollars a month as a pension,
    And stood on the corner talking politics,
    Or sat at home reading Grant's Memoirs;
    And I supported the family by washing,
    Learning the secrets of all the people
    From their curtains, counterpanes, shirts and skirts.
    For things that are new grow old at length,
    They're replaced with better or none at all:
    People are prospering or falling back.
    And rents and patches widen with time;
    No thread or needle can pace decay,
    And there are stains that baffle soap,
    And there are colors that run in spite of you,
    Blamed though you are for spoiling a dress.
    Handkerchiefs, napery, have their secrets--
    The laundress, Life, knows all about it.
    And l, who went to all the funerals
    Held in Spoon River, swear I never
    Saw a dead face without thinking it looked
    Like something washed and ironed.

    Harmon Whitney



    OUT of the lights and roar of cities,
    Drifting down like a spark in Spoon River,
    Burnt out with the fire of drink, and broken,
    The paramour of a woman I took in self-contempt,
    But to hide a wounded pride as well.
    To be judged and loathed by a village of little minds--
    I, gifted with tongues and wisdom,
    Sunk here to the dust of the justice court,
    A picker of rags in the rubbage of spites and wrongs,--
    I, whom fortune smiled on!
    I in a village,
    Spouting to gaping yokels pages of verse,
    Out of the lore of golden years,
    Or raising a laugh with a flash of filthy wit
    When they bought the drinks to kindle my dying mind.
    To be judged by you,
    The soul of me hidden from you,
    With its wound gangrened
    By love for a wife who made the wound,
    With her cold white bosom, treasonous, pure and hard,
    Relentless to the last, when the touch of her hand,
    At any time, might have cured me of the typhus,
    Caught in the jungle of life where many are lost.
    And only to think that my soul could not react,
    Like Byron's did, in song, in something noble,
    But turned on itself like a tortured snake-- judge me this way,
    O world.

    Bert Kessler



    I WINGED my bird,
    Though he flew toward the setting sun;
    But just as the shot rang out, he soared
    Up and up through the splinters of golden light,
    Till he turned right over, feathers ruffled,
    With some of the down of him floating near,
    And fell like a plummet into the grass.
    I tramped about, parting the tangles,
    Till I saw a splash of blood on a stump,
    And the quail lying close to the rotten roots.
    I reached my hand, but saw no brier,
    But something pricked and stung and numbed it.
    And then, in a second, I spied the rattler--
    The shutters wide in his yellow eyes,
    The head of him arched, sunk back in the rings of him,
    A circle of filth, the color of ashes,
    Or oak leaves bleached under layers of leaves.
    I stood like a stone as he shrank and uncoiled
    And started to crawl beneath the stump,
    When I fell limp in the grass.

    Lambert Hutchins



    I HAVE two monuments besides this granite obelisk:
    One, the house I built on the hill,
    With its spires, bay windows, and roof of slate.
    The other, the lake-front in Chicago,
    Where the railroad keeps a switching yard,
    With whistling engines and crunching wheels
    And smoke and soot thrown over the city,
    And the crash of cars along the boulevard,--
    A blot like a hog-pen on the harbor
    Of a great metropolis, foul as a sty.
    I helped to give this heritage
    To generations yet unborn, with my vote
    In the House of Representatives,
    And the lure of the thing was to be at rest
    From the never--ending fright of need,
    And to give my daughters gentle breeding,
    And a sense of security in life.
    But, you see, though I had the mansion house
    And traveling passes and local distinction,
    I could hear the whispers, whispers, whispers,
    Wherever I went, and my daughters grew up
    With a look as if some one were about to strike them;
    And they married madly, helter-skelter,
    Just to get out and have a change.
    And what was the whole of the business worth?
    Why, it wasn't worth a damn!

    Lillian Stewart



    I WAS the daughter of Lambert Hutchins,
    Born in a cottage near the grist--mill,
    Reared in the mansion there on the hill,
    With its spires, bay--windows, and roof of slate.
    How proud my mother was of the mansion
    How proud of father's rise in the world!
    And how my father loved and watched us,
    And guarded our happiness.
    But I believe the house was a curse,
    For father's fortune was little beside it;
    And when my husband found he had married
    A girl who was really poor,
    He taunted me with the spires,
    And called the house a fraud on the world,
    A treacherous lure to young men, raising hopes
    Of a dowry not to be had;
    And a man while selling his vote
    Should get enough from the people's betrayal
    To wall the whole of his family in.
    He vexed my life till I went back home
    And lived like an old maid till I died,
    Keeping house for father.

    Hortense Robbins



    MY name used to be in the papers daily
    As having dined somewhere,
    Or traveled somewhere,
    Or rented a house in Paris,
    Where I entertained the nobility.
    I was forever eating or traveling,
    Or taking the cure at Baden-Baden.
    Now I am here to do honor
    To Spoon River, here beside the family whence I sprang.
    No one cares now where I dined,
    Or lived, or whom I entertained,
    Or how often I took the cure at Baden-Baden.

    Jacob Godbey



    How did you feel, you libertarians,
    Who spent your talents rallying noble reasons
    Around the saloon, as if Liberty
    Was not to be found anywhere except at the bar
    Or at a table, guzzling?
    How did you feel, Ben Pantier, and the rest of you,
    Who almost stoned me for a tyrant
    Garbed as a moralist,
    And as a wry-faced ascetic frowning upon Yorkshire pudding,
    Roast beef and ale and good will and rosy cheer--
    Things you never saw in a grog-shop in your life?
    How did you feel after I was dead and gone,
    And your goddess, Liberty, unmasked as a strumpet,
    Selling out the streets of Spoon River
    To the insolent giants
    Who manned the saloons from afar?
    Did it occur to you that personal liberty
    Is liberty of the mind,
    Rather than of the belly?

    Walter Simmons



    MY parents thought that I would be
    As great as Edison or greater:
    For as a boy I made balloons
    And wondrous kites and toys with clocks
    And little engines with tracks to run on
    And telephones of cans and thread.
    I played the cornet and painted pictures,
    Modeled in clay and took the part
    Of the villain in the "Octoroon."
    But then at twenty--one I married
    And had to live, and so, to live
    I learned the trade of making watches
    And kept the jewelry store on the square,
    Thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking,--
    Not of business, but of the engine
    I studied the calculus to build.
    And all Spoon River watched and waited
    To see it work, but it never worked.
    And a few kind souls believed my genius
    Was somehow hampered by the store.
    It wasn't true.
    The truth was this:
    I did not have the brains.

    Tom Beatty



    I WAS a lawyer like Harmon Whitney
    Or Kinsey Keene or Garrison Standard,
    For I tried the rights of property,
    Although by lamp-light, for thirty years,
    In that poker room in the opera house.
    And I say to you that Life's a gambler
    Head and shoulders above us all.
    No mayor alive can close the house.
    And if you lose, you can squeal as you will;
    You'll not get back your money.
    He makes the percentage hard to conquer;
    He stacks the cards to catch your weakness
    And not to meet your strength.
    And he gives you seventy years to play:
    For if you cannot win in seventy
    You cannot win at all.
    So, if you lose, get out of the room--
    Get out of the room when your time is up.
    It's mean to sit and fumble the cards
    And curse your losses, leaden-eyed,
    Whining to try and try.

    Roy Butler



    IF the learned Supreme Court of Illinois
    Got at the secret of every case
    As well as it does a case of rape
    It would be the greatest court in the world.
    A jury, of neighbors mostly, with "Butch" Weldy
    As foreman, found me guilty in ten minutes
    And two ballots on a case like this:
    Richard Bandle and I had trouble over a fence
    And my wife and Mrs. Bandle quarreled
    As to whether Ipava was a finer town than Table Grove.
    I awoke one morning with the love of God
    Brimming over my heart, so I went to see Richard
    To settle the fence in the spirit of Jesus Christ.
    I knocked on the door, and his wife opened;
    She smiled and asked me in.
    I entered-- She slammed the door and began to scream,
    "Take your hands off, you low down varlet!"
    Just then her husband entered.
    I waved my hands, choked up with words.
    He went for his gun, and I ran out.
    But neither the Supreme Court nor my wife
    Believed a word she said.

    Searcy Foote



    I WANTED to go away to college
    But rich Aunt Persis wouldn't help me.
    So I made gardens and raked the lawns
    And bought John Alden's books with my earnings
    And toiled for the very means of life.
    I wanted to marry Delia Prickett,
    But how could I do it with what I earned?
    And there was Aunt Persis more than seventy
    Who sat in a wheel-chair half alive
    With her throat so paralyzed, when she swallowed
    The soup ran out of her mouth like a duck--
    A gourmand yet, investing her income
    In mortgages, fretting all the time
    About her notes and rents and papers.
    That day I was sawing wood for her,
    And reading Proudhon in between.
    I went in the house for a drink of water,
    And there she sat asleep in her chair,
    And Proudhon lying on the table,
    And a bottle of chloroform on the book,
    She used sometimes for an aching tooth!
    I poured the chloroform on a handkerchief
    And held it to her nose till she died.--
    Oh Delia, Delia, you and Proudhon
    Steadied my hand, and the coroner
    Said she died of heart failure.
    I married Delia and got the money--
    A joke on you, Spoon River?

    Edmund Pollard



    I WOULD I had thrust my hands of flesh
    Into the disk--flowers bee-infested,
    Into the mirror-like core of fire
    Of the light of life, the sun of delight.
    For what are anthers worth or petals
    Or halo-rays? Mockeries, shadows
    Of the heart of the flower, the central flame
    All is yours, young passer-by;
    Enter the banquet room with the thought;
    Don't sidle in as if you were doubtful
    Whether you're welcome--the feast is yours!
    Nor take but a little, refusing more
    With a bashful "Thank you", when you're hungry.
    Is your soul alive? Then let it feed!
    Leave no balconies where you can climb;
    Nor milk-white bosoms where you can rest;
    Nor golden heads with pillows to share;
    Nor wine cups while the wine is sweet;
    Nor ecstasies of body or soul,
    You will die, no doubt, but die while living
    In depths of azure, rapt and mated,
    Kissing the queen-bee, Life!

    Thomas Trevelyan



    READING in Ovid the sorrowful story of Itys,
    Son of the love of Tereus and Procne, slain
    For the guilty passion of Tereus for Philomela,
    The flesh of him served to Tereus by Procne,
    And the wrath of Tereus, the murderess pursuing
    Till the gods made Philomela a nightingale,
    Lute of the rising moon, and Procne a swallow
    Oh livers and artists of Hellas centuries gone,
    Sealing in little thuribles dreams and wisdom,
    Incense beyond all price, forever fragrant,
    A breath whereof makes clear the eyes of the soul
    How I inhaled its sweetness here in Spoon River!
    The thurible opening when I had lived and learned
    How all of us kill the children of love, and all of us,
    Knowing not what we do, devour their flesh;
    And all of us change to singers, although it be
    But once in our lives, or change--alas!--to swallows,
    To twitter amid cold winds and falling leaves!

    Percival Sharp



    OBSERVE the clasped hands!
    Are they hands of farewell or greeting,
    Hands that I helped or hands that helped me?
    Would it not be well to carve a hand
    With an inverted thumb, like Elagabalus?
    And yonder is a broken chain,
    The weakest-link idea perhaps-- mbut what was it?
    And lambs, some lying down,
    Others standing, as if listening to the shepherd--
    Others bearing a cross, one foot lifted up--
    Why not chisel a few shambles?
    And fallen columns!
    Carve the pedestal, please,
    Or the foundations; let us see the cause of the fall.
    And compasses and mathematical instruments,
    In irony of the under tenants, ignorance
    Of determinants and the calculus of variations.
    And anchors, for those who never sailed.
    And gates ajar--yes, so they were;
    You left them open and stray goats entered your garden.
    And an eye watching like one of the Arimaspi--
    So did you--with one eye.
    And angels blowing trumpets--you are heralded--
    It is your horn and your angel and your family's estimate.
    It is all very well, but for myself
    I know I stirred certain vibrations in Spoon River
    Which are my true epitaph, more lasting than stone.

    Hiram Scates



    I TRIED to win the nomination
    For president of the County-board
    And I made speeches all over the County
    Denouncing Solomon Purple, my rival,
    As an enemy of the people,
    In league with the master-foes of man.
    Young idealists, broken warriors,
    Hobbling on one crutch of hope,
    Souls that stake their all on the truth,
    Losers of worlds at heaven's bidding,
    Flocked about me and followed my voice
    As the savior of the County.
    But Solomon won the nomination;
    And then I faced about,
    And rallied my followers to his standard,
    And made him victor, made him King
    Of the Golden Mountain with the door
    Which closed on my heels just as I entered,
    Flattered by Solomon's invitation,
    To be the County--board's secretary.
    And out in the cold stood all my followers:
    Young idealists, broken warriors
    Hobbling on one crutch of hope--
    Souls that staked their all on the truth,
    Losers of worlds at heaven's bidding,
    Watching the Devil kick the Millennium
    Over the Golden Mountain.

    Peleg Poague



    HORSES and men are just alike.
    There was my stallion, Billy Lee,
    Black as a cat and trim as a deer,
    With an eye of fire, keen to start,
    And he could hit the fastest speed
    Of any racer around Spoon River.
    But just as you'd think he couldn't lose,
    With his lead of fifty yards or more,
    He'd rear himself and throw the rider,
    And fall back over, tangled up,
    Completely gone to pieces.
    You see he was a perfect fraud:
    He couldn't win, he couldn't work,
    He was too light to haul or plow with,
    And no one wanted colts from him.
    And when I tried to drive him--well,
    He ran away and killed me.

    Jeduthan Hawley



    THERE would be a knock at the door
    And I would arise at midnight and go to the shop,
    Where belated travelers would hear me hammering
    Sepulchral boards and tacking satin.
    And often I wondered who would go with me
    To the distant land, our names the theme
    For talk, in the same week, for I've observed
    Two always go together.
    Chase Henry was paired with Edith Conant;
    And Jonathan Somers with Willie Metcalf;
    And Editor Hamblin with Francis Turner,
    When he prayed to live longer than Editor Whedon,
    And Thomas Rhodes with widow McFarlane;
    And Emily Sparks with Barry Holden;
    And Oscar Hummel with Davis Matlock;
    And Editor Whedon with Fiddler Jones;
    And Faith Matheny with Dorcas Gustine.
    And l, the solemnest man in town,
    Stepped off with Daisy Fraser.

    Abel Melveny



    I BOUGHT every kind of machine that's known--
    Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers,
    Mills and rakes and ploughs and threshers--
    And all of them stood in the rain and sun,
    Getting rusted, warped and battered,
    For I had no sheds to store them in,
    And no use for most of them.
    And toward the last, when I thought it over,
    There by my window, growing clearer
    About myself, as my pulse slowed down,
    And looked at one of the mills I bought--
    Which I didn't have the slightest need of,
    As things turned out, and I never ran--
    A fine machine, once brightly varnished,
    And eager to do its work,
    Now with its paint washed off--
    I saw myself as a good machine
    That Life had never used.

    Oaks Tutt



    MY mother was for woman's rights
    And my father was the rich miller at London Mills.
    I dreamed of the wrongs of the world and wanted to right them.
    When my father died, I set out to see peoples and countries
    In order to learn how to reform the world.
    I traveled through many lands. I saw the ruins of Rome
    And the ruins of Athens, And the ruins of Thebes.
    And I sat by moonlight amid the necropolis of Memphis.
    There I was caught up by wings of flame,
    And a voice from heaven said to me:
    "Injustice, Untruth destroyed them.
    Go forth Preach Justice! Preach Truth!"
    And I hastened back to Spoon River
    To say farewell to my mother before beginning my work.
    They all saw a strange light in my eye.
    And by and by, when I taIked, they discovered
    What had come in my mind.
    Then Jonathan Swift Somers challenged me to debate
    The subject, (I taking the negative):
    "Pontius Pilate, the Greatest Philosopher of the World."
    And he won the debate by saying at last,
    "Before you reform the world, Mr. Tutt
    Please answer the question of Pontius Pilate:
    "What is Truth?"

    Elliott Hawkins



    I LOOKED like Abraham Lincoln.
    I was one of you, Spoon River, in all fellowship,
    But standing for the rights of property and for order.
    A regular church attendant,
    Sometimes appearing in your town meetings to warn you
    Against the evils of discontent and envy
    And to denounce those who tried to destroy the Union,
    And to point to the peril of the Knights of Labor.
    My success and my example are inevitable influences
    In your young men and in generations to come,
    In spite of attacks of newspapers like the Clarion;
    A regular visitor at Springfield
    When the Legislature was in session
    To prevent raids upon the railroads
    And the men building up the state.
    Trusted by them and by you, Spoon River, equally
    In spite of the whispers that I was a lobbyist.
    Moving quietly through the world, rich and courted.
    Dying at last, of course, but lying here
    Under a stone with an open book carved upon it
    And the words "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."
    And now, you world-savers, who reaped nothing in life
    And in death have neither stones nor epitaphs,
    How do you like your silence from mouths stopped
    With the dust of my triumphant career?

    Enoch Dunlap



    How many times, during the twenty years
    I was your leader, friends of Spoon River,
    Did you neglect the convention and caucus,
    And leave the burden on my hands
    Of guarding and saving the people's cause?--
    Sometimes because you were ill;
    Or your grandmother was ill;
    Or you drank too much and fell asleep;
    Or else you said: "He is our leader,
    All will be well; he fights for us;
    We have nothing to do but follow."
    But oh, how you cursed me when I fell,
    And cursed me, saying I had betrayed you,
    In leaving the caucus room for a moment,
    When the people's enemies, there assembled,
    Waited and watched for a chance to destroy
    The Sacred Rights of the People.
    You common rabble! I left the caucus
    To go to the urinal.

    Ida Frickey



    NOTHlNG in life is alien to you:
    I was a penniless girl from Summum
    Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River.
    All the houses stood before me with closed doors
    And drawn shades--l was barred out;
    I had no place or part in any of them.
    And I walked past the old McNeely mansion,
    A castle of stone Omid walks and gardens
    With workmen about the place on guard
    And the County and State upholding it
    For its lordly owner, full of pride.
    I was so hungry I had a vision:
    I saw a giant pair of scissors
    Dip from the sky, like the beam of a dredge,
    And cut the house in two like a curtain.
    But at the "Commercial" I saw a man
    Who winked at me as I asked for work--
    It was Wash McNeely's son.
    He proved the link in the chain of title
    To half my ownership of the mansion,
    Through a breach of promise suit--the scissors.
    So, you see, the house, from the day I was born,
    Was only waiting for me.

    Seth Compton



    WHEN I died, the circulating library
    Which I built up for Spoon River,
    And managed for the good of inquiring minds,
    Was sold at auction on the public square,
    As if to destroy the last vestige
    Of my memory and influence.
    For those of you who could not see the virtue
    Of knowing Volney's "Ruins" as well as Butler's "Analogy"
    And "Faust" as well as "Evangeline,"
    Were really the power in the village,
    And often you asked me
    "What is the use of knowing the evil in the world?"
    I am out of your way now, Spoon River,
    Choose your own good and call it good.
    For I could never make you see
    That no one knows what is good
    Who knows not what is evil;
    And no one knows what is true
    Who knows not what is false.

    Felix Schmidt



    IT was only a little house of two rooms--
    Almost like a child's play-house--
    With scarce five acres of ground around it;
    And I had so many children to feed
    And school and clothe, and a wife who was sick
    From bearing children.
    One day lawyer Whitney came along
    And proved to me that Christian Dallman,
    Who owned three thousand acres of land,
    Had bought the eighty that adjoined me
    In eighteen hundred and seventy-one
    For eleven dollars, at a sale for taxes,
    While my father lay in his mortal illness.
    So the quarrel arose and I went to law.
    But when we came to the proof,
    A survey of the land showed clear as day
    That Dallman's tax deed covered my ground
    And my little house of two rooms.
    It served me right for stirring him up.
    I lost my case and lost my place.
    I left the court room and went to work
    As Christian Dallman's tenant.

    Richard Bone



    When I first came to Spoon River
    I did not know whether what they told me
    Was true or false.
    They would bring me the epitath
    And stand around the shop while I worked
    And say "He was so kind," "He was so wonderful,"
    "She was the sweetest woman," "He was a consistent Christian."
    And I chiseled for them whatever they wished,
    All in ignorance of the truth.
    But later, as I lived among the people here,
    I knew how near to the life
    Were the epitaths that were ordered for them as they died.
    But still I chiseled whatever they paid me to chisel
    And made myself party to the false chronicles
    Of the stones,
    Even as the historian does who writes
    Without knowing the truth,
    Or because he is influenced to hide it.

    Silas Dement



    It was moon-light, and the earth sparkled
    With new-fallen frost.
    It was midnight and not a soul abroad.
    Out of the chimney of the court-house
    A gray-hound of smoke leapt and chased
    The northwest wind.
    I carried a ladder to the landing of the stairs
    And leaned it against the frame of the trap-door
    In the ceiling of the portico,
    And I crawled under the roof and amid the rafters
    And flung among the seasoned timbers
    A lighted handful of oil-soaked waste.
    Then I came down and slunk away.
    In a little while the fire-bell rang--
    Clang! Clang! Clang!
    And the Spoon River ladder company
    Came with a dozen buckets and began to pour water
    On the glorious bon-fire, growing hotter
    Higher and brighter, till the walls fell in
    And the limestone columns where Lincoln stood
    Crashed like trees when the woodman fells them .
    When I came back from Joliet
    There was a new court house with a dome.
    For I was punished like all who destroy
    The past for the sake of the future.

    Dillard Sissman



    THE buzzards wheel slowly
    In wide circles, in a sky
    Faintly hazed as from dust from the road.
    And a wind sweeps through the pasture where I lie
    Beating the grass into long waves.
    My kite is above the wind,
    Though now and then it wobbles,
    Like a man shaking his shoulders;
    And the tail streams out momentarily,
    Then sinks to rest.
    And the buzzards wheel and wheel,
    Sweeping the zenith with wide circles
    Above my kite. And the hills sleep.
    And a farm house, white as snow,
    Peeps from green trees--far away.
    And I watch my kite,
    For the thin moon will kindle herself ere long,
    Then she will swing like a pendulum dial
    To the tail of my kite.
    A spurt of flame like a water-dragon
    Dazzles my eyes--
    I am shaken as a banner.

    E. C. Culbertson



    Is it true, Spoon River,
    That in the hall--way of the New Court House
    There is a tablet of bronze
    Containing the embossed faces
    Of Editor Whedon and Thomas Rhodes?
    And is it true that my successful labors
    In the County Board, without which
    Not one stone would have been placed on another,
    And the contributions out of my own pocket
    To build the temple, are but memories among the people,
    Gradually fading away, and soon to descend
    With them to this oblivion where I lie?
    In truth, I can so believe.
    For it is a law of the Kingdom of Heaven
    That whoso enters the vineyard at the eleventh hour
    Shall receive a full day's pay.
    And it is a law of the Kingdom of this World
    That those who first oppose a good work
    Seize it and make it their own,
    When the corner--stone is laid,
    And memorial tablets are erected.

    Shack Dye



    THE white men played all sorts of jokes on me.
    They took big fish off my hook
    And put little ones on, while I was away
    Getting a stringer, and made me believe
    I hadn't seen aright the fish I had caught.
    When Burr Robbins, circus came to town
    They got the ring master to let a tame leopard
    Into the ring, and made me believe
    I was whipping a wild beast like Samson
    When l, for an offer of fifty dollars,
    Dragged him out to his cage.
    One time I entered my blacksmith shop
    And shook as I saw some horse-shoes crawling
    Across the floor, as if alive--
    Walter Simmons had put a magnet
    Under the barrel of water.
    Yet everyone of you, you white men,
    Was fooled about fish and about leopards too,
    And you didn't know any more than the horse-shoes did
    What moved you about Spoon River.

    Hildrup Tubbs



    I MADE two fights for the people.
    First I left my party, bearing the gonfalon
    Of independence, for reform, and was defeated.
    Next I used my rebel strength
    To capture the standard of my old party--
    And I captured it, but I was defeated.
    Discredited and discarded, misanthropical,
    I turned to the solace of gold
    And I used my remnant of power
    To fasten myself like a saprophyte
    Upon the putrescent carcass
    Of Thomas Rhodes, bankrupt bank,
    As assignee of the fund.
    Everyone now turned from me.
    My hair grew white,
    My purple lusts grew gray,
    Tobacco and whisky lost their savor
    And for years Death ignored me
    As he does a hog.

    Henry Tripp



    THE bank broke and I lost my savings.
    I was sick of the tiresome game in Spoon River
    And I made up my mind to run away
    And leave my place in life and my family;
    But just as the midnight train pulled in,
    Quick off the steps jumped Cully Green
    And Martin Vise, and began to fight
    To settle their ancient rivalry,
    Striking each other with fists that sounded
    Like the blows of knotted clubs.
    Now it seemed to me that Cully was winning,
    When his bloody face broke into a grin
    Of sickly cowardice, leaning on Martin
    And whining out "We're good friends, Mart,
    You know that I'm your friend."
    But a terrible punch from Martin knocked him
    Around and around and into a heap.
    And then they arrested me as a witness,
    And I lost my train and staid in Spoon River
    To wage my battle of life to the end.
    Oh, Cully Green, you were my savior--
    You, so ashamed and drooped for years,
    Loitering listless about the streets,
    And tying rags ,round your festering soul,
    Who failed to fight it out.

    Granville Calhoun



    I WANTED to be County Judge
    One more term, so as to round out a service
    Of thirty years.
    But my friends left me and joined my enemies,
    And they elected a new man.
    Then a spirit of revenge seized me,
    And I infected my four sons with it,
    And I brooded upon retaliation,
    Until the great physician, Nature,
    Smote me through with paralysis
    To give my soul and body a rest.
    Did my sons get power and money?
    Did they serve the people or yoke them,
    To till and harvest fields of self?
    For how could they ever forget
    My face at my bed-room window,
    Sitting helpless amid my golden cages
    Of singing canaries,
    Looking at the old court-house?

    Henry C. Calhoun



    I REACHED the highest place in Spoon River,
    But through what bitterness of spirit!
    The face of my father, sitting speechless,
    Child-like, watching his canaries,
    And looking at the court-house window
    Of the county judge's room,
    And his admonitions to me to seek
    My own in life, and punish Spoon River
    To avenge the wrong the people did him,
    Filled me with furious energy
    To seek for wealth and seek for power.
    But what did he do but send me along
    The path that leads to the grove of the Furies?
    I followed the path and I tell you this:
    On the way to the grove you'll pass the Fates,
    Shadow-eyed, bent over their weaving.
    Stop for a moment, and if you see
    The thread of revenge leap out of the shuttle
    Then quickly snatch from Atropos
    The shears and cut it, lest your sons
    And the children of them and their children
    Wear the envenomed robe.

    Alfred Moir



    WHY was I not devoured by self-contempt,
    And rotted down by indifference
    And impotent revolt like Indignation Jones?
    Why, with all of my errant steps
    Did I miss the fate of Willard Fluke?
    And why, though I stood at Burchard's bar,
    As a sort of decoy for the house to the boys
    To buy the drinks, did the curse of drink
    Fall on me like rain that runs off,
    Leaving the soul of me dry and clean?
    And why did I never kill a man Like Jack McGuire?
    But instead I mounted a little in life,
    And I owe it all to a book I read.
    But why did I go to Mason City,
    Where I chanced to see the book in a window,
    With its garish cover luring my eye?
    And why did my soul respond to the book,
    As I read it over and over?

    Perry Zoll



    MY thanks, friends of the
    County Scientific Association,
    For this modest boulder,
    And its little tablet of bronze.
    Twice I tried to join your honored body,
    And was rejected
    And when my little brochure
    On the intelligence of plants
    Began to attract attention
    You almost voted me in.
    After that I grew beyond the need of you
    And your recognition.
    Yet I do not reject your memorial stone
    Seeing that I should, in so doing,
    Deprive you of honor to yourselves.

    Magrady Graham



    TELL me, was Altgeld elected Governor?
    For when the returns began to come in
    And Cleveland was sweeping the East
    It was too much for you, poor old heart,
    Who had striven for democracy
    In the long, long years of defeat.
    And like a watch that is worn
    I felt you growing slower until you stopped.
    Tell me, was Altgeld elected,
    And what did he do?
    Did they bring his head on a platter to a dancer,
    Or did he triumph for the people?
    For when I saw him
    And took his hand,
    The child-like blueness of his eyes
    Moved me to tears,
    And there was an air of eternity about him,
    Like the cold, clear light that rests at dawn
    On the hills!

    Archibald Higbie



    I LOATHED YOU, Spoon River.
    I tried to rise above you,
    I was ashamed of you.
    I despised you
    As the place of my nativity.
    And there in Rome, among the artists,
    Speaking Italian, speaking French,
    I seemed to myself at times to be free
    Of every trace of my origin.
    I seemed to be reaching the heights of art
    And to breathe the air that the masters breathed
    And to see the world with their eyes.
    But still they'd pass my work and say:
    "What are you driving at, my friend?
    Sometimes the face looks like Apollo's
    At others it has a trace of Lincoln's."
    There was no culture, you know, in Spoon River
    And I burned with shame and held my peace.
    And what could I do, all covered over
    And weighted down with western soil
    Except aspire, and pray for another
    Birth in the world, with all of Spoon River
    Rooted out of my soul?

    Tom Merritt



    AT first I suspected something--
    She acted so calm and absent-minded.
    And one day I heard the back door shut
    As I entered the front, and I saw him slink
    Back of the smokehouse into the lot
    And run across the field.
    And I meant to kill him on sight.
    But that day, walking near Fourth Bridge
    Without a stick or a stone at hand,
    All of a sudden I saw him standing
    Scared to death, holding his rabbits,
    And all I could say was, "Don't, Don't, Don't,"
    As he aimed and fired at my heart.

    Mrs. Merritt



    SILENT before the jury
    Returning no word to the judge when he asked me
    If I had aught to say against the sentence,
    Only shaking my head.
    What could I say to people who thought
    That a woman of thirty-five was at fault
    When her lover of nineteen killed her husband?
    Even though she had said to him over and over,
    "Go away, Elmer, go far away,
    I have maddened your brain with the gift of my body:
    You will do some terrible thing."
    And just as I feared, he killed my husband;
    With which I had nothing to do, before
    God Silent for thirty years in prison
    And the iron gates of Joliet
    Swung as the gray and silent trusties
    Carried me out in a coffin.

    Elmer Karr



    WHAT but the love of God could have softened
    And made forgiving the people of Spoon River
    Toward me who wronged the bed of Thomas Merritt
    And murdered him beside?
    Oh, loving hearts that took me in again
    When I returned from fourteen years in prison!
    Oh, helping hands that in the church received me
    And heard with tears my penitent confession,
    Who took the sacrament of bread and wine!
    Repent, ye living ones, and rest with Jesus.

    Elizabeth Childers



    DUST of my dust,
    And dust with my dust,
    O, child who died as you entered the world,
    Dead with my death!
    Not knowing
    Breath, though you tried so hard,
    With a heart that beat when you lived with me,
    And stopped when you left me for Life.
    It is well, my child.
    For you never traveled
    The long, long way that begins with school days,
    When little fingers blur under the tears
    That fall on the crooked letters.
    And the earliest wound, when a little mate
    Leaves you alone for another;
    And sickness, and the face of
    Fear by the bed;
    The death of a father or mother;
    Or shame for them, or poverty;
    The maiden sorrow of school days ended;
    And eyeless Nature that makes you drink
    From the cup of Love, though you know it's poisoned;
    To whom would your flower-face have been lifted?
    Botanist, weakling?
    Cry of what blood to yours?--
    Pure or foul, for it makes no matter,
    It's blood that calls to our blood.
    And then your children--oh, what might they be?
    And what your sorrow?
    Child! Child Death is better than Life.

    Edith Conant



    WE stand about this place--we, the memories;
    And shade our eyes because we dread to read:
    "June 17th, 1884, aged 21 years and 3 days."
    And all things are changed.
    And we--we, the memories, stand here for ourselves alone,
    For no eye marks us, or would know why we are here.
    Your husband is dead, your sister lives far away,
    Your father is bent with age;
    He has forgotten you, he scarcely leaves the house
    Any more. No one remembers your exquisite face,
    Your lyric voice!
    How you sang, even on the morning you were stricken,
    With piercing sweetness, with thrilling sorrow,
    Before the advent of the child which died with you.
    It is all forgotten, save by us, the memories,
    Who are forgotten by the world.
    All is changed, save the river and the hill--
    Even they are changed.
    Only the burning sun and the quiet stars are the same.
    And we--we, the memories, stand here in awe,
    Our eyes closed with the weariness of tears--
    In immeasurable weariness

    Father Malloy



    YOU are over there, Father Malloy,
    Where holy ground is, and the cross marks every grave,
    Not here with us on the hill--
    Us of wavering faith, and clouded vision
    And drifting hope, and unforgiven sins.
    You were so human, Father Malloy,
    Taking a friendly glass sometimes with us,
    Siding with us who would rescue Spoon River
    From the coldness and the dreariness of village morality.
    You were like a traveler who brings a little box of sand
    From the wastes about the pyramids
    And makes them real and Egypt real.
    You were a part of and related to a great past,
    And yet you were so close to many of us.
    You believed in the joy of life.
    You did not seem to be ashamed of the flesh.
    You faced life as it is,
    And as it changes.
    Some of us almost came to you, Father Malloy,
    Seeing how your church had divined the heart,
    And provided for it,
    Through Peter the Flame,
    Peter the Rock.

    Ami Green



    NOT "a youth with hoary head and haggard eye",
    But an old man with a smooth skin
    And black hair! I had the face of a boy as long as I lived,
    And for years a soul that was stiff and bent,
    In a world which saw me just as a jest,
    To be hailed familiarly when it chose,
    And loaded up as a man when it chose,
    Being neither man nor boy.
    In truth it was soul as well as body
    Which never matured, and I say to you
    That the much-sought prize of eternal youth
    Is just arrested growth.

    Calvin Campbell



    YE who are kicking against Fate,
    Tell me how it is that on this hill-side
    Running down to the river,
    Which fronts the sun and the south-wind,
    This plant draws from the air and soil
    Poison and becomes poison ivy?
    And this plant draws from the same air and soil
    Sweet elixirs and colors and becomes arbutus?
    And both flourish?
    You may blame Spoon River for what it is,
    But whom do you blame for the will in you
    That feeds itself and makes you dock-weed,
    Jimpson, dandelion or mullen
    And which can never use any soil or air
    So as to make you jessamine or wistaria?

    Henry Layton



    WHOEVER thou art who passest by
    Know that my father was gentle,
    And my mother was violent,
    While I was born the whole of such hostile halves,
    Not intermixed and fused,
    But each distinct, feebly soldered together.
    Some of you saw me as gentle,
    Some as violent,
    Some as both.
    But neither half of me wrought my ruin.
    It was the falling asunder of halves,
    Never a part of each other,
    That left me a lifeless soul.

    Harlan Sewall



    You never understood,
    O unknown one,
    Why it was I repaid
    Your devoted friendship and delicate ministrations
    First with diminished thanks,
    Afterward by gradually withdrawing my presence from you,
    So that I might not be compelled to thank you,
    And then with silence which followed upon
    Our final Separation.
    You had cured my diseased soul.
    But to cure it
    You saw my disease, you knew my secret,
    And that is why I fled from you.
    For though when our bodies rise from pain
    We kiss forever the watchful hands
    That gave us wormwood, while we shudder
    For thinking of the wormwood,
    A soul that's cured is a different matter,
    For there we'd blot from memory
    The soft--toned words, the searching eyes,
    And stand forever oblivious,
    Not so much of the sorrow itself
    As of the hand that healed it.

    Ippolit Konovaloff



    I WAS a gun-smith in Odessa.
    One night the police broke in the room
    Where a group of us were reading Spencer.
    And seized our books and arrested us.
    But I escaped and came to New York
    And thence to Chicago, and then to Spoon River,
    Where I could study my Kant in peace
    And eke out a living repairing guns
    Look at my moulds! My architectonics
    One for a barrel, one for a hammer
    And others for other parts of a gun!
    Well, now suppose no gun--smith living
    Had anything else but duplicate moulds
    Of these I show you--well, all guns
    Would be just alike, with a hammer to hit
    The cap and a barrel to carry the shot
    All acting alike for themselves, and all
    Acting against each other alike.
    And there would be your world of guns!
    Which nothing could ever free from itself
    Except a Moulder with different moulds
    To mould the metal over.

    Henry Phipps



    I WAS the Sunday-school superintendent,
    The dummy president of the wagon works
    And the canning factory,
    Acting for Thomas Rhodes and the banking clique;
    My son the cashier of the bank,
    Wedded to Rhodes, daughter,
    My week days spent in making money,
    My Sundays at church and in prayer.
    In everything a cog in the wheel of things--as--they-are:
    Of money, master and man, made white
    With the paint of the Christian creed.
    And then:
    The bank collapsed.
    I stood and hooked at the wrecked machine--
    The wheels with blow-holes stopped with putty and painted;
    The rotten bolts, the broken rods;
    And only the hopper for souls fit to be used again
    In a new devourer of life,
    When newspapers, judges and money-magicians
    Build over again.
    I was stripped to the bone, but I lay in the Rock of Ages,
    Seeing now through the game, no longer a dupe,
    And knowing "Othe upright shall dwell in the land
    But the years of the wicked shall be shortened."
    Then suddenly, Dr. Meyers discovered
    A cancer in my liver.
    I was not, after all, the particular care of God
    Why, even thus standing on a peak
    Above the mists through which I had climbed,
    And ready for larger life in the world,
    Eternal forces
    Moved me on with a push.

    Harry Wilmans



    I WAS just turned twenty-one,
    And Henry Phipps, the Sunday-school superintendent,
    Made a speech in Bindle's Opera House.
    "The honor of the flag must be upheld," he said,
    "Whether it be assailed by a barbarous tribe of Tagalogs
    Or the greatest power in Europe."
    And we cheered and cheered the speech and the flag he waved
    As he spoke.
    And I went to the war in spite of my father,
    And followed the flag till I saw it raised
    By our camp in a rice field near Manila,
    And all of us cheered and cheered it.
    But there were flies and poisonous things;
    And there was the deadly water,
    And the cruel heat,
    And the sickening, putrid food;
    And the smell of the trench just back of the tents
    Where the soldiers went to empty themselves;
    And there were the whores who followed us, full of syphilis;
    And beastly acts between ourselves or alone,
    With bullying, hatred, degradation among us,
    And days of loathing and nights of fear
    To the hour of the charge through the steaming swamp,
    Following the flag,
    Till I fell with a scream, shot through the guts.
    Now there's a flag over me in
    Spoon River. A flag!
    A flag!

    John Wasson



    OH! the dew-wet grass of the meadow in North Carolina
    Through which Rebecca followed me wailing, wailing,
    One child in her arms, and three that ran along wailing,
    Lengthening out the farewell to me off to the war with the British,
    And then the long, hard years down to the day of Yorktown.
    And then my search for Rebecca,
    Finding her at last in Virginia,
    Two children dead in the meanwhile.
    We went by oxen to Tennessee,
    Thence after years to Illinois,
    At last to Spoon River.
    We cut the buffalo grass,
    We felled the forests,
    We built the school houses, built the bridges,
    Leveled the roads and tilled the fields
    Alone with poverty, scourges, death--
    If Harry Wilmans who fought the Filipinos
    Is to have a flag on his grave
    Take it from mine.

    Many Soldiers



    THE idea danced before us as a flag;
    The sound of martial music;
    The thrill of carrying a gun;
    Advancement in the world on coming home;
    A glint of glory, wrath for foes;
    A dream of duty to country or to God.
    But these were things in ourselves, shining before us,
    They were not the power behind us,
    Which was the Almighty hand of Life,
    Like fire at earth's center making mountains,
    Or pent up waters that cut them through.
    Do you remember the iron band
    The blacksmith, Shack Dye, welded
    Around the oak on Bennet's lawn,
    From which to swing a hammock,
    That daughter Janet might repose in, reading
    On summer afternoons?
    And that the growing tree at last
    Sundered the iron band?
    But not a cell in all the tree
    Knew aught save that it thrilled with life,
    Nor cared because the hammock fell
    In the dust with Milton's Poems.

    Godwin James



    HARRY WILMANS! You who fell in a swamp
    Near Manila, following the flag
    You were not wounded by the greatness of a dream,
    Or destroyed by ineffectual work,
    Or driven to madness by Satanic snags;
    You were not torn by aching nerves,
    Nor did you carry great wounds to your old age.
    You did not starve, for the government fed you.
    You did not suffer yet cry "forward"
    To an army which you led
    Against a foe with mocking smiles,
    Sharper than bayonets.
    You were not smitten down
    By invisible bombs.
    You were not rejected
    By those for whom you were defeated.
    You did not eat the savorless bread
    Which a poor alchemy had made from ideals.
    You went to Manila, Harry Wilmans,
    While I enlisted in the bedraggled army
    Of bright-eyed, divine youths,
    Who surged forward, who were driven back and fell
    Sick, broken, crying, shorn of faith,
    Following the flag of the Kingdom of Heaven.
    You and I, Harry Wilmans, have fallen
    In our several ways, not knowing
    Good from bad, defeat from victory,
    Nor what face it is that smiles
    Behind the demoniac mask.

    Lyman King



    YOU may think, passer-by, that Fate
    Is a pit-fall outside of yourself,
    Around which you may walk by the use of foresight
    And wisdom.
    Thus you believe, viewing the lives of other men,
    As one who in God-like fashion bends over an anthill,
    Seeing how their difficulties could be avoided.
    But pass on into life:
    In time you shall see Fate approach you
    In the shape of your own image in the mirror;
    Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth,
    And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest,
    And you shall know that guest
    And read the authentic message of his eyes.

    Caroline Branson



    WITH our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked,
    As often before, the April fields till star--light
    Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness
    Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood,
    Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing
    Like notes of music that run together, into winning,
    In the inspired improvisation of love!
    But to put back of us as a canticle ended
    The rapt enchantment of the flesh,
    In which our souls swooned, down, down,
    Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves--
    Annihilated in love!
    To leave these behind for a room with lamps:
    And to stand with our Secret mocking itself,
    And hiding itself amid flowers and mandolins,
    Stared at by all between salad and coffee.
    And to see him tremble, and feel myself
    Prescient, as one who signs a bond--
    Not flaming with gifts and pledges heaped
    With rosy hands over his brow.
    And then, O night! deliberate! unlovely!
    With all of our wooing blotted out by the winning,
    In a chosen room in an hour that was known to all!
    Next day he sat so listless, almost cold
    So strangely changed, wondering why I wept,
    Till a kind of sick despair and voluptuous madness
    Seized us to make the pact of death.
    A stalk of the earth-sphere,
    Frail as star-light;
    Waiting to be drawn once again Into creation's stream.
    But next time to be given birth
    Gazed at by Raphael and St. Francis
    Sometimes as they pass.
    For I am their little brother,
    To be known clearly face to face
    Through a cycle of birth hereafter run.
    You may know the seed and the soil;
    You may feel the cold rain fall,
    But only the earth--sphere, only heaven
    Knows the secret of the seed
    In the nuptial chamber under the soil.
    Throw me into the stream again,
    Give me another trial--
    Save me, Shelley!

    Anne Rutledge



    OUT of me unworthy and unknown
    The vibrations of deathless music;
    "With malice toward none, with charity for all.',
    Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions,
    And the beneficent face of a nation
    Shining with justice and truth.
    I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds,
    Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln,
    Wedded to him, not through union, But through separation.
    Bloom forever, O Republic,
    From the dust of my bosom!

    Hamlet Micure



    IN a lingering fever many visions come to you:
    I was in the little house again
    With its great yard of clover
    Running down to the board-fence,
    Shadowed by the oak tree,
    Where we children had our swing.
    Yet the little house was a manor hall
    Set in a lawn, and by the lawn was the sea.
    I was in the room where little Paul
    Strangled from diphtheria,
    But yet it was not this room--
    It was a sunny verandah enclosed
    With mullioned windows
    And in a chair sat a man in a dark cloak
    With a face like Euripides.
    He had come to visit me, or I had gone to visit him-- I could not tell.
    We could hear the beat of the sea, the clover nodded
    Under a summer wind, and little Paul came
    With clover blossoms to the window and smiled.
    Then I said: "What is "divine despair" Alfred?"
    "Have you read OTears, Idle Tears'?" he asked.
    "Yes, but you do not there express divine despair."
    "My poor friend," he answered, "that was why the despair
    Was divine."

    Mabel Osborne



    YOUR red blossoms amid green leaves
    Are drooping, beautiful geranium!
    But you do not ask for water.
    You cannot speak!
    You do not need to speak--
    Everyone knows that you are dying of thirst,
    Yet they do not bring water!
    They pass on, saying:
    "The geranium wants water."
    And I, who had happiness to share
    And longed to share your happiness;
    I who loved you, Spoon River,
    And craved your love,
    Withered before your eyes, Spoon River--
    Thirsting, thirsting,
    Voiceless from chasteness of soul to ask you for love,
    You who knew and saw me perish before you,
    Like this geranium which someone has planted over me,
    And left to die.

    William H. Herndon



    THERE by the window in the old house
    Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley,
    My days of labor closed, sitting out life's decline,
    Day by day did I look in my memory,
    As one who gazes in an enchantress' crystal globe,
    And I saw the figures of the past
    As if in a pageant glassed by a shining dream,
    Move through the incredible sphere of time.
    And I saw a man arise from the soil like a fabled giant
    And throw himself over a deathless destiny,
    Master of great armies, head of the republic,
    Bringing together into a dithyramb of recreative song
    The epic hopes of a people;
    At the same time Vulcan of sovereign fires,
    Where imperishable shields and swords were beaten out
    From spirits tempered in heaven.
    Look in the crystal!
    See how he hastens on
    To the place where his path comes up to the path
    Of a child of Plutarch and Shakespeare.
    O Lincoln, actor indeed, playing well your part
    And Booth, who strode in a mimic play within the play,
    Often and often I saw you,
    As the cawing crows winged their way to the wood
    Over my house--top at solemn sunsets,
    There by my window,
    Alone.

    Rutherford McDowell



    THEY brought me ambrotypes
    Of the old pioneers to enlarge.
    And sometimes one sat for me--
    Some one who was in being
    When giant hands from the womb of the world
    Tore the republic.
    What was it in their eyes?--
    For I could never fathom
    That mystical pathos of drooped eyelids,
    And the serene sorrow of their eyes.
    It was like a pool of water,
    Amid oak trees at the edge of a forest,
    Where the leaves fall,
    As you hear the crow of a cock
    From a far--off farm house, seen near the hills
    Where the third generation lives, and the strong men
    And the strong women are gone and forgotten.
    And these grand--children and great grand-children
    Of the pioneers!
    Truly did my camera record their faces, too,
    With so much of the old strength gone,
    And the old faith gone,
    And the old mastery of life gone,
    And the old courage gone,
    Which labors and loves and suffers and sings
    Under the sun!

    Hannah Armstrong



    I WROTE him a letter asking him for old times, sake
    To discharge my sick boy from the army;
    But maybe he couldn't read it.
    Then I went to town and had James Garber,
    Who wrote beautifully, write him a letter.
    But maybe that was lost in the mails.
    So I traveled all the way to Washington.
    I was more than an hour finding the White House.
    And when I found it they turned me away,
    Hiding their smiles.
    Then I thought: "Oh, well, he ain't the same as when I boarded him
    And he and my husband worked together
    And all of us called him Abe, there in Menard."
    As a last attempt I turned to a guard and said:
    "Please say it's old Aunt Hannah Armstrong
    From Illinois, come to see him about her sick boy
    In the army."
    Well, just in a moment they let me in!
    And when he saw me he broke in a laugh,
    And dropped his business as president,
    And wrote in his own hand Doug's discharge,
    Talking the while of the early days,
    And telling stories.

    Lucinda Matlock



    I WENT to the dances at Chandlerville,
    And played snap-out at Winchester.
    One time we changed partners,
    Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,
    And then I found Davis.
    We were married and lived together for seventy years,
    Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
    Eight of whom we lost
    Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
    I spun,
    I wove,
    I kept the house,
    I nursed the sick,
    I made the garden, and for holiday
    Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
    And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
    And many a flower and medicinal weed--
    Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
    At ninety--six I had lived enough, that is all,
    And passed to a sweet repose.
    What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
    Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
    Degenerate sons and daughters,
    Life is too strong for you--
    It takes life to love Life.

    Davis Matlock



    SUPPOSE it is nothing but the hive:
    That there are drones and workers
    And queens, and nothing but storing honey--
    (Material things as well as culture and wisdom)--
    For the next generation, this generation never living,
    Except as it swarms in the sun-light of youth,
    Strengthening its wings on what has been gathered,
    And tasting, on the way to the hive
    From the clover field, the delicate spoil.
    Suppose all this, and suppose the truth:
    That the nature of man is greater
    Than nature's need in the hive;
    And you must bear the burden of life,
    As well as the urge from your spirit's excess--
    Well, I say to live it out like a god
    Sure of immortal life, though you are in doubt,
    Is the way to live it.
    If that doesn't make God proud of you
    Then God is nothing but gravitation
    Or sleep is the golden goal.

    Jennie M'Grew



    NOT, where the stairway turns in the dark
    A hooded figure, shriveled under a flowing cloak!
    Not yellow eyes in the room at night,
    Staring out from a surface of cobweb gray!
    And not the flap of a condor wing
    When the roar of life in your ears begins
    As a sound heard never before!
    But on a sunny afternoon,
    By a country road,
    Where purple rag-weeds bloom along a straggling fence
    And the field is gleaned, and the air is still
    To see against the sun-light something black
    Like a blot with an iris rim--
    That is the sign to eyes of second sight. . .
    And that I saw!

    Columbus Cheney



    THIS weeping willow!
    Why do you not plant a few
    For the millions of children not yet born,
    As well as for us?
    Are they not non-existent, or cells asleep
    Without mind?
    Or do they come to earth, their birth
    Rupturing the memory of previous being?
    Answer!
    The field of unexplored intuition is yours.
    But in any case why not plant willows for them,
    As well as for us?
    Marie Bateson
    You observe the carven hand
    With the index finger pointing heavenward.
    That is the direction, no doubt.
    But how shall one follow it?
    It is well to abstain from murder and lust,
    To forgive, do good to others, worship God
    Without graven images.
    But these are external means after all
    By which you chiefly do good to yourself.
    The inner kernel is freedom,
    It is light, purity--
    I can no more,
    Find the goal or lose it, according to your vision.

    Tennessee Claflin Shope



    I WAS the laughing-stock of the village,
    Chiefly of the people of good sense, as they call themselves--
    Also of the learned, like Rev. Peet, who read Greek
    The same as English.
    For instead of talking free trade,
    Or preaching some form of baptism;
    Instead of believing in the efficacy
    Of walking cracks, picking up pins the right way,
    Seeing the new moon over the right shoulder,
    Or curing rheumatism with blue glass,
    I asserted the sovereignty of my own soul.
    Before Mary Baker G. Eddy even got started
    With what she called science I had mastered the "Bhagavad Gita,"
    And cured my soul, before Mary Began to cure bodies with souls--
    Peace to all worlds!

    Imanuel Ehrenhardt



    I BEGAN with Sir William Hamilton's lectures.
    Then studied Dugald Stewart;
    And then John Locke on the Understanding,
    And then Descartes, Fichte and Schelling,
    Kant and then Schopenhauer--
    Books I borrowed from old Judge Somers.
    All read with rapturous industry
    Hoping it was reserved to me
    To grasp the tail of the ultimate secret,
    And drag it out of its hole.
    My soul flew up ten thousand miles
    And only the moon looked a little bigger.
    Then I fell back, how glad of the earth!
    All through the soul of William Jones
    Who showed me a letter of John Muir.

    Samuel Gardner



    I WHO kept the greenhouse,
    Lover of trees and flowers,
    Oft in life saw this umbrageous elm,
    Measuring its generous branches with my eye,
    And listened to its rejoicing leaves
    Lovingly patting each other
    With sweet aeolian whispers.
    And well they might:
    For the roots had grown so wide and deep
    That the soil of the hill could not withhold
    Aught of its virtue, enriched by rain,
    And warmed by the sun;
    But yielded it all to the thrifty roots,
    Through which it was drawn and whirled to the trunk,
    And thence to the branches, and into the leaves,
    Wherefrom the breeze took life and sang.
    Now I, an under--tenant of the earth, can see
    That the branches of a tree
    Spread no wider than its roots.
    And how shall the soul of a man
    Be larger than the life he has lived?

    Dow Kritt



    SAMUEL is forever talking of his elm--
    But I did not need to die to learn about roots:
    I, who dug all the ditches about Spoon River.
    Look at my elm!
    Sprung from as good a seed as his,
    Sown at the same time,
    It is dying at the top:
    Not from lack of life, nor fungus,
    Nor destroying insect, as the sexton thinks.
    Look, Samuel, where the roots have struck rock,
    And can no further spread.
    And all the while the top of the tree
    Is tiring itself out, and dying,
    Trying to grow.

    William Jones



    ONCE in a while a curious weed unknown to me,
    Needing a name from my books;
    Once in a while a letter from Yeomans.
    Out of the mussel-shells gathered along the shore
    Sometimes a pearl with a glint like meadow rue:
    Then betimes a letter from Tyndall in England,
    Stamped with the stamp of Spoon River.
    I, lover of Nature, beloved for my love of her,
    Held such converse afar with the great
    Who knew her better than I.
    Oh, there is neither lesser nor greater,
    Save as we make her greater and win from her keener delight.
    With shells from the river cover me, cover me.
    I lived in wonder, worshipping earth and heaven.
    I have passed on the march eternal of endless life.

    William Goode



    To all in the village I seemed, no doubt,
    To go this way and that way, aimlessly. .
    But here by the river you can see at twilight
    The soft--winged bats fly zig-zag here and there--
    They must fly so to catch their food.
    And if you have ever lost your way at night,
    In the deep wood near Miller's Ford,
    And dodged this way and now that,
    Wherever the light of the Milky Way shone through,
    Trying to find the path,
    You should understand I sought the way
    With earnest zeal, and all my wanderings
    Were wanderings in the quest.

    J. Milton Miles



    WHENEVER the Presbyterian bell
    Was rung by itself, I knew it as the Presbyterian bell.
    But when its sound was mingled
    With the sound of the Methodist, the Christian,
    The Baptist and the Congregational,
    I could no longer distinguish it,
    Nor any one from the others, or either of them.
    And as many voices called to me in life
    Marvel not that I could not tell
    The true from the false,
    Nor even, at last, the voice that
    I should have known.

    Faith Matheny



    AT first you will know not what they mean,
    And you may never know,
    And we may never tell you:--
    These sudden flashes in your soul,
    Like lambent lightning on snowy clouds
    At midnight when the moon is full.
    They come in solitude, or perhaps
    You sit with your friend, and all at once
    A silence falls on speech, and his eyes
    Without a flicker glow at you:--
    You two have seen the secret together,
    He sees it in you, and you in him.
    And there you sit thrilling lest the
    Mystery Stand before you and strike you dead
    With a splendor like the sun's.
    Be brave, all souls who have such visions
    As your body's alive as mine is dead,
    You're catching a little whiff of the ether
    Reserved for God Himself.

    Willie Metcalf



    I WAS Willie Metcalf.
    They used to call me "Doctor Meyers,"
    Because, they said, I looked like him.
    And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire.
    I lived in the livery stable,
    Sleeping on the floor
    Side by side with Roger Baughman's bulldog,
    Or sometimes in a stall.
    I could crawl between the legs of the wildest horses
    Without getting kicked--we knew each other.
    On spring days I tramped through the country
    To get the feeling, which I sometimes lost,
    That I was not a separate thing from the earth.
    I used to lose myself, as if in sleep,
    By lying with eyes half-open in the woods.
    Sometimes I taIked with animals-- even toads and snakes--
    Anything that had an eye to look into.
    Once I saw a stone in the sunshine
    Trying to turn into jelly.
    In April days in this cemetery
    The dead people gathered all about me,
    And grew still, like a congregation in silent prayer.
    I never knew whether I was a part of the earth
    With flowers growing in me, or whether I walked--
    Now I know.

    Willie Pennington



    THEY called me the weakling, the simpleton,
    For my brothers were strong and beautiful,
    While I, the last child of parents who had aged,
    Inherited only their residue of power.
    But they, my brothers, were eaten up
    In the fury of the flesh, which I had not,
    Made pulp in the activity of the senses, which I had not,
    Hardened by the growth of the lusts, which I had not,
    Though making names and riches for themselves.
    Then I, the weak one, the simpleton,
    Resting in a little corner of life,
    Saw a vision, and through me many saw the vision,
    Not knowing it was through me.
    Thus a tree sprang
    From me, a mustard seed.

    The Village Atheist



    YE young debaters over the doctrine
    Of the soul's immortality
    I who lie here was the village atheist,
    Talkative, contentious, versed in the arguments
    Of the infidels. But through a long sickness
    Coughing myself to death I read the
    Upanishads and the poetry of Jesus.
    And they lighted a torch of hope and intuition
    And desire which the Shadow
    Leading me swiftly through the caverns of darkness,
    Could not extinguish.
    Listen to me, ye who live in the senses
    And think through the senses only:
    Immortality is not a gift,
    Immortality is an achievement;
    And only those who strive mightily
    Shall possess it.

    John Ballard



    IN the lust of my strength
    I cursed God, but he paid no attention to me:
    I might as well have cursed the stars.
    In my last sickness I was in agony, but I was resolute
    And I cursed God for my suffering;
    Still He paid no attention to me;
    He left me alone, as He had always done.
    I might as well have cursed the Presbyterian steeple.
    Then, as I grew weaker, a terror came over me:
    Perhaps I had alienated God by cursing him.
    One day Lydia Humphrey brought me a bouquet
    And it occurred to me to try to make friends with God,
    So I tried to make friends with Him;
    But I might as well have tried to make friends with the bouquet.
    Now I was very close to the secret,
    For I really could make friends with the bouquet
    By holding close to me the love in me for the bouquet
    And so I was creeping upon the secret, but--

    Julian Scott



    TOWARD the last
    The truth of others was untruth to me;
    The justice of others injustice to me;
    Their reasons for death, reasons with me for life;
    Their reasons for life, reasons with me for death;
    I would have killed those they saved,
    And save those they killed.
    And I saw how a god, if brought to earth,
    Must act out what he saw and thought,
    And could not live in this world of men
    And act among them side by side
    Without continual clashes.
    The dust's for crawling, heaven's for flying--
    Wherefore, O soul, whose wings are grown,
    Soar upward to the sun!

    Alfonso Churchill



    THEY laughed at me as "Prof. Moon,"
    As a boy in Spoon River, born with the thirst
    Of knowing about the stars.
    They jeered when I spoke of the lunar mountains,
    And the thrilling heat and cold,
    And the ebon valleys by silver peaks,
    And Spica quadrillions of miles away,
    And the littleness of man.
    But now that my grave is honored, friends,
    Let it not be because I taught
    The lore of the stars in Knox College,
    But rather for this: that through the stars
    I preached the greatness of man,
    Who is none the less a part of the scheme of things
    For the distance of Spica or the Spiral Nebulae;
    Nor any the less a part of the question
    Of what the drama means.

    Zilpha Marsh



    AT four o'clock in late October
    I sat alone in the country school-house
    Back from the road ,mid stricken fields,
    And an eddy of wind blew leaves on the pane,
    And crooned in the flue of the cannon-stove,
    With its open door blurring the shadows
    With the spectral glow of a dying fire.
    In an idle mood I was running the planchette--
    All at once my wrist grew limp,
    And my hand moved rapidly over the board,
    OTill the name of "Charles Guiteau" was spelled,
    Who threatened to materialize before me.
    I rose and fled from the room bare-headed
    Into the dusk, afraid of my gift.
    And after that the spirits swarmed--
    Chaucer, Caesar, Poe and Marlowe,
    Cleopatra and Mrs. Surratt--
    Wherever I went, with messages,--
    Mere trifling twaddle, Spoon River agreed.
    You talk nonsense to children, don't you?
    And suppose I see what you never saw
    And never heard of and have no word for,
    I must talk nonsense when you ask me
    What it is I see!

    James Garber



    Do you remember, passer-by, the path
    I wore across the lot where now stands the opera house
    Hasting with swift feet to work through many years?
    Take its meaning to heart:
    You too may walk, after the hills at Miller's Ford
    Seem no longer far away;
    Long after you see them near at hand,
    Beyond four miles of meadow;
    And after woman's love is silent
    Saying no more: "l will save you."
    And after the faces of friends and kindred
    Become as faded photographs, pitifully silent,
    Sad for the look which means:
    "We cannot help you."
    And after you no longer reproach mankind
    With being in league against your soul's uplifted hands--
    Themselves compelled at midnight and at noon
    To watch with steadfast eye their destinies;
    After you have these understandings, think of me
    And of my path, who walked therein and knew
    That neither man nor woman, neither toil,
    Nor duty, gold nor power
    Can ease the longing of the soul,
    The loneliness of the soul!

    Lydia Humphrey



    BACK and forth, back and forth, to and from the church,
    With my Bible under my arm
    OTill I was gray and old;
    Unwedded, alone in the world,
    Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation,
    And children in the church.
    I know they laughed and thought me queer.
    I knew of the eagle souls that flew high in the sunlight,
    Above the spire of the church, and laughed at the church,
    Disdaining me, not seeing me.
    But if the high air was sweet to them, sweet was the church to me.
    It was the vision, vision, vision of the poets
    Democratized!

    Le Roy Goldman



    WHAT will you do when you come to die,
    If all your life long you have rejected Jesus,
    And know as you lie there,
    He is not your friend?"
    Over and over I said, I, the revivalist.
    Ah, yes! but there are friends and friends.
    And blessed are you, say I, who know all now,
    You who have lost ere you pass,
    A father or mother, or old grandfather or mother
    Some beautiful soul that lived life strongly
    And knew you all through, and loved you ever,
    Who would not fail to speak for you,
    And give God an intimate view of your soul
    As only one of your flesh could do it.
    That is the hand your hand will reach for,
    To lead you along the corridor
    To the court where you are a stranger!

    Gustav Richter



    AFTER a long day of work in my hot--houses
    Sleep was sweet, but if you sleep on your left side
    Your dreams may be abruptly ended.
    I was among my flowers where some one
    Seemed to be raising them on trial,
    As if after-while to be transplanted
    To a larger garden of freer air.
    And I was disembodied vision
    Amid a light, as it were the sun
    Had floated in and touched the roof of glass
    Like a toy balloon and softly bursted,
    And etherealized in golden air.
    And all was silence, except the splendor
    Was immanent with thought as clear
    As a speaking voice, and I, as thought,
    Could hear a
    Presence think as he walked
    Between the boxes pinching off leaves,
    Looking for bugs and noting values,
    With an eye that saw it all:
    "Homer, oh yes! Pericles, good.
    Caesar Borgia, what shall be done with it?
    Dante, too much manure, perhaps.
    Napoleon, leave him awhile as yet.
    Shelley, more soil. Shakespeare, needs spraying--"
    Clouds, eh!--

    Arlo Will



    DID you ever see an alligator
    Come up to the air from the mud,
    Staring blindly under the full glare of noon?
    Have you seen the stabled horses at night
    Tremble and start back at the sight of a lantern?
    Have you ever walked in darkness
    When an unknown door was open before you
    And you stood, it seemed, in the light of a thousand candles
    Of delicate wax?
    Have you walked with the wind in your ears
    And the sunlight about you
    And found it suddenly shine with an inner splendor?
    Out of the mud many times
    Before many doors of light
    Through many fields of splendor,
    Where around your steps a soundless glory scatters
    Like new--fallen snow,
    Will you go through earth, O strong of soul,
    And through unnumbered heavens
    To the final flame!

    Captain Orlando Killion



    OH, YOU young radicals and dreamers,
    You dauntless fledglings
    Who pass by my headstone,
    Mock not its record of my captaincy in the army
    And my faith in God!
    They are not denials of each other.
    Go by reverently, and read with sober care
    How a great people, riding with defiant shouts
    The centaur of Revolution,
    Spurred and whipped to frenzy,
    Shook with terror, seeing the mist of the sea
    Over the precipice they were nearing,
    And fell from his back in precipitate awe
    To celebrate the Feast of the Supreme Being.
    Moved by the same sense of vast reality
    Of life and death, and burdened as they were
    With the fate of a race,
    How was I, a little blasphemer,
    Caught in the drift of a nation's unloosened flood,
    To remain a blasphemer,
    And a captain in the army?

    Joseph Dixon



    WHO carved this shattered harp on my stone?
    I died to you, no doubt. But how many harps and pianos
    Wired I and tightened and disentangled for you,
    Making them sweet again--with tuning fork or without?
    Oh well! A harp leaps out of the ear of a man, you say,
    But whence the ear that orders the length of the strings
    To a magic of numbers flying before your thought
    Through a door that closes against your breathless wonder?
    Is there no Ear round the ear of a man, that it senses
    Through strings and columns of air the soul of sound?
    I thrill as I call it a tuning fork that catches
    The waves of mingled music and light from afar,
    The antennae of
    Thought that listens through utmost space.
    Surely the concord that ruled my spirit is proof
    Of an Ear that tuned me, able to tune me over
    And use me again if I am worthy to use.

    Russell Kincaid



    IN the last spring I ever knew,
    In those last days, I sat in the forsaken orchard
    Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered
    The hills at Miller's Ford;
    Just to muse on the apple tree
    With its ruined trunk and blasted branches,
    And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms
    Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle,
    Never to grow in fruit.
    And there was I with my spirit girded
    By the flesh half dead, the senses numb
    Yet thinking of youth and the earth in youth,--
    Such phantom blossoms palely shining
    Over the lifeless boughs of Time.
    O earth that leaves us ere heaven takes us!
    Had I been only a tree to shiver
    With dreams of spring and a leafy youth,
    Then I had fallen in the cyclone
    Which swept me out of the soul's suspense
    Where it's neither earth nor heaven.

    Aaron Hatfield



    BETTER than granite, Spoon River,
    Is the memory-picture you keep of me
    Standing before the pioneer men and women
    There at Concord Church on Communion day.
    Speaking in broken voice of the peasant youth
    Of Galilee who went to the city
    And was killed by bankers and lawyers;
    My voice mingling with the June wind
    That blew over wheat fields from Atterbury;
    While the white stones in the burying ground
    Around the Church shimmered in the summer sun.
    And there, though my own memories
    Were too great to bear, were you, O pioneers,
    With bowed heads breathing forth your sorrow
    For the sons killed in battle and the daughters
    And little children who vanished in life's morning,
    Or at the intolerable hour of noon.
    But in those moments of tragic silence,
    When the wine and bread were passed,
    Came the reconciliation for us--
    Us the ploughmen and the hewers of wood,
    Us the peasants, brothers of the peasant of Galilee--
    To us came the Comforter
    And the consolation of tongues of flame!

    Isaiah Beethoven



    THEY told me I had three months to live,
    So I crept to Bernadotte,
    And sat by the mill for hours and hours
    Where the gathered waters deeply moving
    Seemed not to move:
    O world, that's you!
    You are but a widened place in the river
    Where Life looks down and we rejoice for her
    Mirrored in us, and so we dream And turn away, but when again
    We look for the face, behold the low-lands
    And blasted cotton-wood trees where we empty
    Into the larger stream!
    But here by the mill the castled clouds
    Mocked themselves in the dizzy water;
    And over its agate floor at night
    The flame of the moon ran under my eyes
    Amid a forest stillness broken
    By a flute in a hut on the hill.
    At last when I came to lie in bed
    Weak and in pain, with the dreams about me,
    The soul of the river had entered my soul,
    And the gathered power of my soul was moving
    So swiftly it seemed to be at rest
    Under cities of cloud and under
    Spheres of silver and changing worlds--
    Until I saw a flash of trumpets
    Above the battlements over Time.

    Elijah Browning



    I WAS among multitudes of children
    Dancing at the foot of a mountain.
    A breeze blew out of the east and swept them as leaves,
    Driving some up the slopes. . . .
    All was changed.
    Here were flying lights, and mystic moons, and dream-music.
    A cloud fell upon us.
    When it lifted all was changed.
    I was now amid multitudes who were wrangling.
    Then a figure in shimmering gold, and one with a trumpet,
    And one with a sceptre stood before me.
    They mocked me and danced a rigadoon and vanished. . . .
    All was changed again.
    Out of a bower of poppies
    A woman bared her breasts and lifted her open mouth to mine.
    I kissed her.
    The taste of her lips was like salt.
    She left blood on my lips.
    I fell exhausted.
    I arose and ascended higher, but a mist as from an iceberg
    Clouded my steps.
    I was cold and in pain.
    Then the sun streamed on me again,
    And I saw the mists below me hiding all below them.
    And I, bent over my staff, knew myself
    Silhouetted against the snow.
    And above me
    Was the soundless air, pierced by a cone of ice,
    Over which hung a solitary star!
    A shudder of ecstasy, a shudder of fear
    Ran through me.
    But I could not return to the slopes--
    Nay, I wished not to return.
    For the spent waves of the symphony of freedom
    Lapped the ethereal cliffs about me.
    Therefore I climbed to the pinnacle.
    I flung away my staff.
    I touched that star
    With my outstretched hand.
    I vanished utterly.
    For the mountain delivers to
    Infinite Truth
    Whosoever touches the star.

    Webster Ford



    Do you remember, O Delphic Apollo,
    The sunset hour by the river, when Mickey M'Grew
    Cried, "There's a ghost," and I, "It's Delphic Apollo,".
    And the son of the banker derided us, saying, "It's light
    By the flags at the water's edge, you half-witted fools."
    And from thence, as the wearisome years rolled on, long after
    Poor Mickey fell down in the water tower to his death
    Down, down, through bellowing darkness, I carried
    The vision which perished with him like a rocket which falls
    And quenches its light in earth, and hid it for fear
    Of the son of the banker, calling on Plutus to save me?
    Avenged were you for the shame of a fearful heart
    Who left me alone till I saw you again in an hour
    When I seemed to be turned to a tree with trunk and branches
    Growing indurate, turning to stone, yet burgeoning
    In laurel leaves, in hosts of lambent laurel,
    Quivering, fluttering, shrinking, fighting the numbness
    Creeping into their veins from the dying trunk and branches!
    OTis vain, O youth, to fly the call of Apollo.
    Fling yourselves in the fire, die with a song of spring,
    If die you must in the spring. For none shall look
    On the face of Apollo and live, and choose you must
    OTwixt death in the flame and death after years of sorrow,
    Rooted fast in the earth, feeling the grisly hand,
    Not so much in the trunk as in the terrible numbness
    Creeping up to the laurel leaves that never cease
    To flourish until you fall. O leaves of me
    Too sere for coronal wreaths, and fit alone
    For urns of memory, treasured, perhaps, as themes
    For hearts heroic, fearless singers and livers--
    Delphic Apollo.

    The Spooniad



    OF John Cabanis, wrath and of the strife
    Of hostile parties, and his dire defeat
    Who led the common people in the cause
    Of freedom for Spoon River, and the fall
    Of Rhodes, bank that brought unnumbered woes
    And loss to many, with engendered hate
    That flamed into the torch in Anarch hands
    To burn the court--house, on whose blackened wreck
    A fairer temple rose and Progress stood--
    Sing, muse, that lit the Chian's face with smiles
    Who saw the ant-like Greeks and Trojans crawl
    About Scamander, over walls, pursued
    Or else pursuing, and the funeral pyres
    And sacred hecatombs, and first because
    Of Helen who with Paris fled to Troy
    As soul-mate; and the wrath of Peleus, son,
    Decreed to lose Chryseis, lovely spoil
    Of war, and dearest concubine.
    Say first,
    Thou son of night, called Momus, from whose eyes
    No secret hides, and Thalia, smiling one,
    What bred Otwixt Thomas Rhodes and John Cabanis
    The deadly strife? His daughter Flossie, she,
    Returning from her wandering with a troop
    Of strolling players, walked the village streets,
    Her bracelets tinkling and with sparkling rings
    And words of serpent wisdom and a smile
    Of cunning in her eyes. Then Thomas Rhodes,
    Who ruled the church and ruled the bank as well,
    Made known his disapproval of the maid;
    And all Spoon River whispered and the eyes
    Of all the church frowned on her, till she knew
    They feared her and condemned.
    But them to flout
    She gave a dance to viols and to flutes,
    Brought from Peoria, and many youths,
    But lately made regenerate through the prayers
    Of zealous preachers and of earnest souls,
    Danced merrily, and sought her in the dance,
    Who wore a dress so low of neck that eyes
    Down straying might survey the snowy swale
    OTill it was lost in whiteness.
    With the dance
    The village changed to merriment from gloom.
    The milliner, Mrs. Williams, could not fill
    Her orders for new hats, and every seamstress
    Plied busy needles making gowns; old trunks
    And chests were opened for their store of laces
    And rings and trinkets were brought out of hiding
    And all the youths fastidious grew of dress;
    Notes passed, and many a fair one's door at eve
    Knew a bouquet, and strolling lovers thronged
    About the hills that overlooked the river.
    Then, since the mercy seats more empty showed,
    One of God's chosen lifted up his voice:
    "The woman of Babylon is among us; rise
    Ye sons of light and drive the wanton forth!"
    So John Cabanis left the church and left
    The hosts of law and order with his eyes
    By anger cleared, and him the liberal cause
    Acclaimed as nominee to the mayoralty
    To vanquish A. D. Blood.
    But as the war
    Waged bitterly for votes and rumors flew
    About the bank, and of the heavy loans
    Which Rhodes, son had made to prop his loss
    In wheat, and many drew their coin and left
    The bank of Rhodes more hollow, with the talk
    Among the liberals of another bank
    Soon to be chartered, lo, the bubble burst
    OMid cries and curses; but the liberals laughed
    And in the hall of Nicholas Bindle held
    Wise converse and inspiriting debate.

    High on a stage that overlooked the chairs
    Where dozens sat, and where a pop--eyed daub
    Of Shakespeare, very like the hired man
    Of Christian Dallmann, brow and pointed beard,
    Upon a drab proscenium outward stared,
    Sat Harmon Whitney, to that eminence,
    By merit raised in ribaldry and guile,
    And to the assembled rebels thus he spake:
    "Whether to lie supine and let a clique
    Cold-blooded, scheming, hungry, singing psalms,
    Devour our substance, wreck our banks and drain
    Our little hoards for hazards on the price
    Of wheat or pork, or yet to cower beneath
    The shadow of a spire upreared to curb
    A breed of lackeys and to serve the bank
    Coadjutor in greed, that is the question.
    Shall we have music and the jocund dance,
    Or tolling bells? Or shall young romance roam
    These hills about the river, flowering now
    To April's tears, or shall they sit at home,
    Or play croquet where Thomas Rhodes may see,
    I ask you? If the blood of youth runs o'er
    And riots 'gainst this regimen of gloom,
    Shall we submit to have these youths and maids
    Branded as libertines and wantons?"
    Ere
    His words were done a woman's voice called "No!"
    Then rose a sound of moving chairs, as when
    The numerous swine o'er-run the replenished troughs;
    And every head was turned, as when a flock
    Of geese back-turning to the hunter's tread
    Rise up with flapping wings; then rang the hall
    With riotous laughter, for with battered hat
    Tilted upon her saucy head, and fist
    Raised in defiance, Daisy Fraser stood.
    Headlong she had been hurled from out the hall
    Save Wendell Bloyd, who spoke for woman's rights,
    Prevented, and the bellowing voice of Burchard.
    Then ,mid applause she hastened toward the stage
    And flung both gold and silver to the cause
    And swiftly left the hall.
    Meantime upstood
    A giant figure, bearded like the son
    Of Alcmene, deep-chested, round of paunch,
    And spoke in thunder: "Over there behold
    A man who for the truth withstood his wife--
    Such is our spirit--when that A. D. Blood
    Compelled me to remove Dom Pedro--"
    Quick
    Before Jim Brown could finish, Jefferson Howard
    Obtained the floor and spake: "Ill suits the time
    For clownish words, and trivial is our cause
    If naught's at stake but John Cabanis, wrath,
    He who was erstwhile of the other side
    And came to us for vengeance. More's at stake
    Than triumph for New England or Virginia.
    And whether rum be sold, or for two years
    As in the past two years, this town be dry
    Matters but little-- Oh yes, revenue
    For sidewalks, sewers; that is well enough!
    I wish to God this fight were now inspired
    By other passion than to salve the pride
    Of John Cabanis or his daughter.
    Why Can never contests of great moment spring
    From worthy things, not little? Still, if men
    Must always act so, and if rum must be
    The symbol and the medium to release
    From life's denial and from slavery,
    Then give me rum!"
    Exultant cries arose.
    Then, as George Trimble had o'ercome his fear
    And vacillation and begun to speak,
    The door creaked and the idiot, Willie Metcalf,
    Breathless and hatless, whiter than a sheet,
    Entered and cried: "The marshal's on his way
    To arrest you all. And if you only knew
    Who's coming here to--morrow; I was listening
    Beneath the window where the other side
    Are making plans."
    So to a smaller room
    To hear the idiot's secret some withdrew
    Selected by the Chair; the Chair himself
    And Jefferson Howard, Benjamin Pantier,
    And Wendell Bloyd, George Trimble, Adam Weirauch,
    Imanuel Ehrenhardt, Seth Compton, Godwin James
    And Enoch Dunlap, Hiram Scates, Roy Butler,
    Carl Hamblin, Roger Heston, Ernest Hyde
    And Penniwit, the artist, Kinsey Keene,
    And E. C. Culbertson and Franklin Jones,
    Benjamin Fraser, son of Benjamin Pantier
    By Daisy Fraser, some of lesser note,
    And secretly conferred.
    But in the hall
    Disorder reigned and when the marshal came
    And found it so, he marched the hoodlums out
    And locked them up.
    Meanwhile within a room
    Back in the basement of the church, with Blood
    Counseled the wisest heads. Judge Somers first,
    Deep learned in life, and next him, Elliott Hawkins
    And Lambert Hutchins; next him Thomas Rhodes
    And Editor Whedon; next him Garrison Standard,
    A traitor to the liberals, who with lip
    Upcurled in scorn and with a bitter sneer:
    "Such strife about an insult to a woman--
    A girl of eighteen "--Christian Dallman too,
    And others unrecorded. Some there were
    Who frowned not on the cup but loathed the rule
    Democracy achieved thereby, the freedom
    And lust of life it symbolized.

    Now morn with snowy fingers up the sky
    Flung like an orange at a festival
    The ruddy sun, when from their hasty beds
    Poured forth the hostile forces, and the streets
    Resounded to the rattle of the wheels
    That drove this way and that to gather in
    The tardy voters, and the cries of chieftains
    Who manned the battle. But at ten o'clock
    The liberals bellowed fraud, and at the polls
    The rival candidates growled and came to blows.
    Then proved the idiot's tale of yester-eve
    A word of warning. Suddenly on the streets
    Walked hog-eyed Allen, terror of the hills
    That looked on Bernadotte ten miles removed.
    No man of this degenerate day could lift
    The boulders which he threw, and when he spoke
    The windows rattled, and beneath his brows
    Thatched like a shed with bristling hair of black,
    His small eyes glistened like a maddened boar.
    And as he walked the boards creaked, as he walked
    A song of menace rumbled. Thus he came,
    The champion of A. D. Blood, commissioned
    To terrify the liberals. Many fled
    As when a hawk soars o'er the chicken yard.
    He passed the polls and with a playful hand
    Touched Brown, the giant, and he fell against,
    As though he were a child, the wall; so strong
    Was hog-eyed Allen. But the liberals smiled.
    For soon as hog-eyed Allen reached the walk,
    Close on his steps paced Bengal Mike, brought in
    By Kinsey Keene, the subtle-witted one,
    To match the hog-eyed Allen. He was scarce
    Three-fourths the other's bulk, but steel his arms,
    And with a tiger's heart. Two men he killed
    And many wounded in the days before,
    And no one feared.
    But when the hog-eyed one
    Saw Bengal Mike his countenance grew dark,
    The bristles o'er his red eyes twitched with rage,
    The song he rumbled lowered. Round and round
    The court-house paced he, followed stealthily
    By Bengal Mike, who jeered him every step:
    "Come, elephant, and fight! Come, hog-eyed coward!
    Come, face about and fight me, lumbering sneak!
    Come, beefy bully, hit me, if you can!
    Take out your gun, you duffer, give me reason
    To draw and kill you. Take your billy out.
    I'll crack your boar's head with a piece of brick!"
    But never a word the hog-eyed one returned
    But trod about the court-house, followed both
    By troops of boys and watched by all the men.
    All day, they walked the square. But when Apollo
    Stood with reluctant look above the hills
    As fain to see the end, and all the votes
    Were cast, and closed the polls, before the door
    Of Trainor's drug store Bengal Mike, in tones
    That echoed through the village, bawled the taunt:
    "Who was your mother, hog--eyed?" In a trice
    As when a wild boar turns upon the hound
    That through the brakes upon an August day
    Has gashed him with its teeth, the hog- one
    Rushed with his giant arms on Bengal Mike
    And grabbed him by the throat. Then rose to heaven
    The frightened cries of boys, and yells of men
    Forth rushing to the street. And Bengal Mike
    Moved this way and now that, drew in his head
    As if his neck to shorten, and bent down
    To break the death grip of the hog-eyed one;
    OTwixt guttural wrath and fast-expiring strength
    Striking his fists against the invulnerable chest
    Of hog-eyed Allen. Then, when some came in
    To part them, others stayed them, and the fight
    Spread among dozens; many valiant souls
    Went down from clubs and bricks.
    But tell me, Muse,
    What god or goddess rescued Bengal Mike?
    With one last, mighty struggle did he grasp
    The murderous hands and turning kick his foe.
    Then, as if struck by lightning, vanished all
    The strength from hog--eyed Allen, at his side
    Sank limp those giant arms and o'er his face
    Dread pallor and the sweat of anguish spread.
    And those great knees, invincible but late,
    Shook to his weight. And quickly as the lion
    Leaps on its wounded prey, did Bengal Mike
    Smite with a rock the temple of his foe,
    And down he sank and darkness o'er his eyes
    Passed like a cloud.
    As when the woodman fells
    Some giant oak upon a summer's day
    And all the songsters of the forest shrill,
    And one great hawk that has his nestling young
    Amid the topmost branches croaks, as crash
    The leafy branches through the tangled boughs
    Of brother oaks, so fell the hog--eyed one
    Amid the lamentations of the friends
    Of A. D. Blood.
    Just then, four lusty men
    Bore the town marshal, on whose iron face
    The purple pall of death already lay,
    To Trainor's drug store, shot by Jack McGuire.
    And cries went up of "Lynch him!" and the sound
    Of running feet from every side was heard
    Bent on the





    THE END







    The late Mr. Jonathan Swift Somers, laureate of Spoon River
    planned The Spooniad as an epic in twenty-four books, but
    unfortunately did not live to complete even the first book. The
    fragment was found among his papers by William Marion Reedy
    and was for the first time published in Reedy's Mirror of December
    18th, 1914.