Spoon River Anthology

  I loved and watched and pruned

  With gnarled hands

  In the long, long years;

  Here under the roots of this northern-spy

  To move in the chemic change and circle of life,

  Into the soil and into the flesh of the tree,

  And into the living epitaphs

  Of redder apples!

  DOC HILL

  I WENT up and down the streets

  Here and there by day and night,

  Through all hours of the night caring for the poor who were sick.

  Do you know why?

  My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs.

  And I turned to the people and poured out my love to them.

  Sweet it was to see the crowds about the lawns on the day of my funeral,

  And hear them murmur their love and sorrow.

  But oh, dear God, my soul trembled—scarcely able

  To hold to the railing of the new life

  When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree

  At the grave,

  Hiding herself, and her grief!

  ANDY THE NIGHT-WATCH

  IN my Spanish cloak,

  And old slouch hat,

  And overshoes of felt,

  And Tyke, my faithful dog,

  And my knotted hickory cane,

  I slipped about with a bull’s-eye lantern

  From door to door on the square,

  As the midnight stars wheeled round,

  And the bell in the steeple murmured

  From the blowing of the wind;

  And the weary steps of old Doc Hill

  Sounded like one who walks in sleep,

  And a far-off rooster crew.

  And now another is watching Spoon River

  As others watched before me.

  And here we lie, Doc Hill and I

  Where none breaks through and steals,

  And no eye needs to guard.

  SARAH BROWN

  MAURICE, weep not, I am not here under this pine tree.

  The balmy air of spring whispers through the sweet grass,

  The stars sparkle, the whippoorwill calls,

  But thou grievest, while my soul lies rapturous

  In the blest Nirvana* of eternal light!

  Go to the good heart that is my husband,

  Who broods upon what he calls our guilty love:—

  Tell him that my love for you, no less than my love for him,

  Wrought out my destiny—that through the flesh

  I won spirit, and through spirit, peace.

  There is no marriage in heaven,

  But there is love.

  PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

  MY father who owned the wagon-shop

  And grew rich shoeing horses

  Sent me to the University of Montreal.

  I learned nothing and returned home,

  Roaming the fields with Bert Kessler,

  Hunting quail and snipe.

  At Thompson’s Lake the trigger of my gun

  Caught in the side of the boat

  And a great hole was shot through my heart.

  Over me a fond father erected this marble shaft,

  On which stands the figure of a woman

  Carved by an Italian artist.*

  They say the ashes of my namesake

  Were scattered near the pyramid of Caius Cestius

  Somewhere near Rome.

  FLOSSIE CABANIS

  FROM Bindle’s opera house in the village

  To Broadway is a great step.

  But I tried to take it, my ambition fired

  When sixteen years of age,

  Seeing “East Lynne” played here in the village

  By Ralph Barrett,* the coming

  Romantic actor, who enthralled my soul.

  True, I trailed back home, a broken failure,

  When Ralph disappeared in New York,

  Leaving me alone in the city—

  But life broke him also.

  In all this place of silence

  There are no kindred spirits.

  How I wish Duse* could stand amid the pathos

  Of these quiet fields

  And read these words.

  JULIA MILLER

  WE quarreled that morning,

  For he was sixty-five, and I was thirty,

  And I was nervous and heavy with the child

  Whose birth I dreaded.

  I thought over the last letter written me

  By that estranged young soul

  Whose betrayal of me I had concealed

  By marrying the old man.

  Then I took morphine and sat down to read.

  Across the blackness that came over my eyes

  I see the flickering light of these words even now:

  “And Jesus said unto him, Verily

  I say unto thee, To-day thou shalt

  Be with me in paradise.”*

  JOHNNIE SAYRE

  FATHER, thou canst never know

  The anguish that smote my heart

  For my disobedience, the moment I felt

  The remorseless wheel of the engine

  Sink into the crying flesh of my leg.

  As they carried me to the home of widow Morris

  I could see the school-house in the valley

  To which I played truant to steal rides upon the trains.

  I prayed to live until I could ask your forgiveness—

  And then your tears, your broken words of comfort!

  From the solace of that hour I have gained infinite happiness.

  Thou wert wise to chisel for me:

  “Taken from the evil to come.”

  CHARLIE FRENCH

  DID you ever find out

  Which one of the O’Brien boys it was

  Who snapped the toy pistol against my hand?

  There when the flags were red and white

  In the breeze and “Bucky” Estil

  Was firing the cannon brought to Spoon River

  From Vicksburg by Captain Harris;

  And the lemonade stands were running

  And the band was playing,

  To have it all spoiled

  By a piece of a cap shot under the skin of my hand,

  And the boys all crowding about me saying:

  “You’ll die of lock-jaw, Charlie, sure.”

  Oh, dear! oh, dear!

  What chum of mine could have done it?

  ZENAS WITT

  I WAS sixteen, and I had the most terrible dreams,

  And specks before my eyes, and nervous weakness.

  And I couldn’t remember the books I read,

  Like Frank Drummer who memorized page after page.

  And my back was weak, and I worried and worried,

  And I was embarrassed and stammered my lessons,

  And when I stood up to recite I’d forget

  Everything that I had studied.

  Well, I saw Dr. Weese’s advertisement,

  And there I read everything in print,

  Just as if he had known me;

  And about the dreams which I couldn’t help.

  So I knew I was marked for an early grave.

  And I worried until I had a cough,

  And then the dreams stopped.

  And then I slept the sleep without dreams

  Here on the hill by the river.

  THEODORE THE POET*

  As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours

  On the shore of the turbid Spoon

  With deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish’s burrow,

  Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead,

  First his waving antennæ, like straws of hay,

  And soon his body, colored like soap-stone,

  Gemmed with eyes of jet.

  And you wondered in a trance of thought

  What he knew, what he desired, and why he lived at all.

  But later your vision watched for men and women

  Hiding in burrows of fa
te amid great cities,

  Looking for the souls of them to come out,

  So that you could see

  How they lived, and for what,

  And why they kept crawling so busily

  Along the sandy way where water fails

  As the summer wanes.

  THE TOWN MARSHAL

  THE Prohibitionists made me Town Marshal

  When the saloons were voted out,

  Because when I was a drinking man,

  Before I joined the church, I killed a Swede

  At the saw-mill near Maple Grove.

  And they wanted a terrible man,

  Grim, righteous, strong, courageous,

  And a hater of saloons and drinkers,

  To keep law and order in the village.

  And they presented me with a loaded cane

  With which I struck Jack McGuire

  Before he drew the gun with which he killed me.

  The Prohibitionists spent their money in vain

  To hang him, for in a dream

  I appeared to one of the twelve jurymen

  And told him the whole secret story.

  Fourteen years were enough for killing me.

  JACK MCGUIRE

  THEY would have lynched me

  Had I not been secretly hurried away

  To the jail at Peoria.

  And yet I was going peacefully home,

  Carrying my jug, a little drunk,

  When Logan, the marshal, halted me,

  Called me a drunken hound and shook me,

  And, when I cursed him for it, struck me

  With that Prohibition loaded cane—

  All this before I shot him.

  They would have hanged me except for this:

  My lawyer, Kinsey Keene, was helping to land

  Old Thomas Rhodes for wrecking the bank,

  And the judge was a friend of Rhodes

  And wanted him to escape,

  And Kinsey offered to quit on Rhodes

  For fourteen years for me.

  And the bargain was made. I served my time

  And learned to read and write.

  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 the bank and all but ruined me,

  Worshipped for the first time after his acquittal?

  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.

  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 Peniwit,

  Chin resting on hand, and deep-set eyes—

  Gray, too, and far-searching.

  But there was the old, old problem:

  Should it be celibacy, matrimony or unchastity?

  Then John Slack, the rich druggist, wooed me,

  Luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel,

  And I married him, giving birth to eight children,

  And had no time to write.

  It was all over with me, anyway,

  When I ran the needle in my hand

  While washing the baby’s things,

  And died from lock-jaw, an ironical death.

  Hear me, ambitious souls,

  Sex is the curse of life!

  GEORGE TRIMBLE

  Do you remember when I stood on the steps

  Of the Court House and talked free-silver,*

  And the single-tax of Henry George?*

  Then do you remember that, when the Peerless Leader*

  Lost the first battle, I began to talk prohibition,

  And became active in the church?

  That was due to my wife,

  Who pictured to me my destruction

  If I did not prove my morality to the people.

  Well, she ruined me:

  For the radicals grew suspicious of me,

  And the conservatives were never sure of me—

  And here I lie, unwept of all.

  DR. SIEGRFIED ISEMAN

  I SAID when they handed me my diploma,

  I said to myself I will be good

  And wise and brave and helpful to others;

  I said I will carry the Christian creed

  Into the practice of medicine!

  Somehow the world and the other doctors

  Know what’s in your heart as soon as you make

  This high-souled resolution.

  And the way of it is they starve you out.

  And no one comes to you but the poor.

  And you find too late that being a doctor

  Is just a way of making a living.

  And when you are poor and have to carry

  The Christian creed and wife and children

  All on your back, it is too muc
h!

  That’s why I made the Elixir of Youth,

  Which landed me in the jail at Peoria

  Branded a swindler and a crook

  By the upright Federal Judge!

  “ACE” SHAW*

  I NEVER saw any difference

  Between playing cards for money

  And selling real estate,

  Practicing law, banking, or anything else.

  For everything is chance.

  Nevertheless

  Seest thou a man diligent in business?

  He shall stand before Kings!

  LOIS SPEARS

  HERE lies the body of Lois Spears,

  Born Lois Fluke, daughter of Willard Fluke,

  Wife of Cyrus Spears,

  Mother of Myrtle and Virgil Spears,

  Children with clear eyes and sound limbs—

  (I was born blind)

  I was the happiest of women

  As wife, mother and housekeeper,

  Caring for my loved ones,

  And making my home

  A place of order and bounteous hospitality:

  For I went about the rooms,

  And about the garden

  With an instinct as sure as sight,

  As though there were eyes in my finger tips—

  Glory to God in the highest.

  JUSTICE ARNETT

  IT is true, fellow citizens,

  That my old docket lying there for years

  On a shelf above my head and over

  The seat of justice, I say it is true

  That docket had an iron rim

  Which gashed my baldness when it fell—

  (Somehow I think it was shaken loose

  By the heave of the air all over town

  When the gasoline tank at the canning works

  Blew up and burned Butch Weldy)—

  But let us argue points in order,

  And reason the whole case carefully:

  First I concede my head was cut,

  But second the frightful thing was this:

  The leaves of the docket shot and showered

  Around me like a deck of cards