Chapter M (4)

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

Mabel Osborne

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

William H. Herndon

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

Rebecca Wasson

Spring and Summer, Fall and Winter and Spring, After each other drifting, past my window drifting! And I lay so many years watching them drift and counting The years till a terror came in my heart at times, With the feeling that I had become eternal; at last My hundredth year was reached! And still I lay Hearing the tick of the clock, and the low of cattle And the scream of a jay flying through falling leaves! Day after day alone in a room of the house Of a daughter-in-law stricken with age and gray. And by night, or looking out of the window by day My thought ran back, it seemed, through infinite time To North Carolina and all my girlhood days, And John, my John, away to the war with the British, And all the children, the deaths, and all the sorrows. And that stretch of years like a prairie in Illinois Through which great figures passed like hurrying horsemen, Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Webster, Clay. O beautiful young republic for whom my John and I Gave all of our strength and love! And O my John! Why, when I lay so helpless in bed for years, Praying for you to come, was your coming delayed? Seeing that with a cry of rapture, like that I uttered When you found me in old Virginia after the war, I cried when I beheld you there by the bed, As the sun stood low in the west growing smaller and fainter In the light of your face!

Rutherford McDowell

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

Hannah Armstrong

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

Lucinda Matlock

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

Davis Matlock

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

Herman Altman

Did I follow Truth wherever she led, And stand against the whole world for a cause, And uphold the weak against the strong? If I did I would be remembered among men As I was known in life among the people, And as I was hated and loved on earth, Therefore, build no monument to me, And carve no bust for me, Lest, though I become not a demi-god, The reality of my soul be lost, So that thieves and liars, Who were my enemies and destroyed me, And the children of thieves and liars, May claim me and affirm before my bust That they stood with me in the days of my defeat. Build me no monument Lest my memory be perverted to the uses Of lying and oppression. My lovers and their children must not be dispossessed of me; I would be the untarnished possession forever Of those for whom I lived.

Jennie M’Grew

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

Columbus Cheney

This weeping willow! Why do you not plant a few For the millions of children not yet born, As well as for us? Are they not non-existent, or cells asleep Without mind? Or do they come to earth, their birth Rupturing the memory of previous being? Answer! The field of unexplored intuition is yours. But in any case why not plant willows for them, As well as for us?

Wallace Ferguson

There at Geneva where Mt. Blanc floated above The wine-hued lake like a cloud, when a breeze was blown Out of an empty sky of blue, and the roaring Rhone Hurried under the bridge through chasms of rock; And the music along the cafés was part of the splendor Of dancing water under a torrent of light; And the purer part of the genius of Jean Rousseau Was the silent music of all we saw or heard— There at Geneva, I say, was the rapture less Because I could not link myself with the I of yore, When twenty years before I wandered about Spoon River? Nor remember what I was nor what I felt? We live in the hour all free of the hours gone by. Therefore, O soul, if you lose yourself in death, And wake in some Geneva by some Mt. Blanc, What do you care if you know not yourself as the you Who lived and loved in a little corner of earth Known as Spoon River ages and ages vanished?

Marie Bateson

You observe the carven hand With the index finger pointing heavenward. That is the direction, no doubt. But how shall one follow it? It is well to abstain from murder and lust, To forgive, do good to others, worship God Without graven images. But these are external means after all By which you chiefly do good to yourself. The inner kernel is freedom, It is light, purity— I can no more, Find the goal or lose it, according to your vision.

Tennessee Claflin Shope

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

Plymouth Rock Joe

Why are you running so fast hither and thither Chasing midges or butterflies? Some of you are standing solemnly scratching for grubs; Some of you are waiting for corn to be scattered. This is life, is it? Cock-a-doodle-do! Very well, Thomas Rhodes, You are cock of the walk, no doubt. But here comes Elliott Hawkins, Gluck, Gluck, Gluck, attracting political followers. Quah! quah! quah! why so poetical, Minerva, This gray morning? Kittie—quah—quah! for shame, Lucius Atherton, The raucous squawk you evoked from the throat Of Aner Clute will be taken up later By Mrs. Benjamin Pantier as a cry Of votes for women: Ka dook—dook! What inspiration has come to you, Margaret Fuller Slack? And why does your gooseberry eye Flit so liquidly, Tennessee Claflin Shope? Are you trying to fathom the esotericism of an egg? Your voice is very metallic this morning, Hortense Robbins— Almost like a guinea hen’s! Quah! That was a guttural sigh, Isaiah Beethoven; Did you see the shadow of the hawk, Or did you step upon the drumsticks Which the cook threw out this morning? Be chivalric, heroic, or aspiring, Metaphysical, religious, or rebellious, You shall never get out of the barnyard Except by way of over the fence Mixed with potato peelings and such into the trough!

Imanuel Ehrenhardt

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

Samuel Gardner

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

Dow Kritt

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

William Jones

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

William Goode

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

J. Milton Miles

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

Faith Matheny

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

Scholfield Hurley

God! ask me not to record your wonders, I admit the stars and the suns And the countless worlds. But I have measured their distances And weighed them and discovered their substances. I have devised wings for the air, And keels for water, And horses of iron for the earth. I have lengthened the vision you gave me a million times, And the hearing you gave me a million times, I have leaped over space with speech, And taken fire for light out of the air. I have built great cities and bored through the hills, And bridged majestic waters. I have written the Iliad and Hamlet; And I have explored your mysteries, And searched for you without ceasing, And found you again after losing you In hours of weariness— And I ask you: How would you like to create a sun And the next day have the worms Slipping in and out between your fingers?

Willie Metcalf

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

Willie Pennington

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

The Village Atheist

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

John Ballard

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

Julian Scott

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

Alfonso Churchill

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

Zilpha Marsh

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

James Garber

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

Lydia Humphrey

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

Le Roy Goldman

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

Gustav Richter

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

Arlo Will

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

Captain Orlando Killion

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

Jeremy Carlisle

Passer-by, sin beyond any sin Is the sin of blindness of souls to other souls. And joy beyond any joy is the joy Of having the good in you seen, and seeing the good At the miraculous moment! Here I confess to a lofty scorn, And an acrid skepticism. But do you remember the liquid that Penniwit Poured on tintypes making them blue With a mist like hickory smoke? Then how the picture began to clear Till the face came forth like life? So you appeared to me, neglected ones, And enemies too, as I went along With my face growing clearer to you as yours Grew clearer to me. We were ready then to walk together And sing in chorus and chant the dawn Of life that is wholly life.

Joseph Dixon

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

Judson Stoddard

On a mountain top above the clouds That streamed like a sea below me I said that peak is the thought of Budda, And that one is the prayer of Jesus, And this one is the dream of Plato, And that one there the song of Dante, And this is Kant and this is Newton, And this is Milton and this is Shakespeare, And this the hope of the Mother Church, And this—why all these peaks are poems, Poems and prayers that pierce the clouds. And I said “What does God do with mountains That rise almost to heaven?”

Russell Kincaid

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

Aaron Hatfield

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

Isaiah Beethoven

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

Elijah Browning

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

Webster Ford

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

The Spooniad

[_The late Mr. Jonathan Swift Somers, laureate of Spoon River (see page 111), planned The Spooniad as an epic in twenty-four books, but unfortunately did not live to complete even the first book. The fragment was found among his papers by William Marion Reedy and was for the first time published in Reedy’s Mirror of December 18th, 1914._]

Of John Cabanis’ wrath and of the strife Of hostile parties, and his dire defeat Who led the common people in the cause Of freedom for Spoon River, and the fall Of Rhodes, bank that brought unnumbered woes And loss to many, with engendered hate That flamed into the torch in Anarch hands To burn the court-house, on whose blackened wreck A fairer temple rose and Progress stood— Sing, muse, that lit the Chian’s face with smiles Who saw the ant-like Greeks and Trojans crawl About Scamander, over walls, pursued Or else pursuing, and the funeral pyres And sacred hecatombs, and first because Of Helen who with Paris fled to Troy As soul-mate; and the wrath of Peleus, son, Decreed to lose Chryseis, lovely spoil Of war, and dearest concubine.

Say first, Thou son of night, called Momus, from whose eyes No secret hides, and Thalia, smiling one, What bred ’twixt Thomas Rhodes and John Cabanis The deadly strife? His daughter Flossie, she, Returning from her wandering with a troop Of strolling players, walked the village streets, Her bracelets tinkling and with sparkling rings And words of serpent wisdom and a smile Of cunning in her eyes. Then Thomas Rhodes, Who ruled the church and ruled the bank as well, Made known his disapproval of the maid; And all Spoon River whispered and the eyes Of all the church frowned on her, till she knew They feared her and condemned.

But them to flout She gave a dance to viols and to flutes, Brought from Peoria, and many youths, But lately made regenerate through the prayers Of zealous preachers and of earnest souls, Danced merrily, and sought her in the dance, Who wore a dress so low of neck that eyes Down straying might survey the snowy swale ’Till it was lost in whiteness.

With the dance The village changed to merriment from gloom. The milliner, Mrs. Williams, could not fill Her orders for new hats, and every seamstress Plied busy needles making gowns; old trunks And chests were opened for their store of laces And rings and trinkets were brought out of hiding And all the youths fastidious grew of dress; Notes passed, and many a fair one’s door at eve Knew a bouquet, and strolling lovers thronged About the hills that overlooked the river. Then, since the mercy seats more empty showed, One of God’s chosen lifted up his voice: “The woman of Babylon is among us; rise Ye sons of light and drive the wanton forth!” So John Cabanis left the church and left The hosts of law and order with his eyes By anger cleared, and him the liberal cause Acclaimed as nominee to the mayoralty To vanquish A. D. Blood.

But as the war Waged bitterly for votes and rumors flew About the bank, and of the heavy loans Which Rhodes, son had made to prop his loss In wheat, and many drew their coin and left The bank of Rhodes more hollow, with the talk Among the liberals of another bank Soon to be chartered, lo, the bubble burst ’Mid cries and curses; but the liberals laughed And in the hall of Nicholas Bindle held Wise converse and inspiriting debate.

High on a stage that overlooked the chairs Where dozens sat, and where a pop-eyed daub Of Shakespeare, very like the hired man Of Christian Dallman, brow and pointed beard, Upon a drab proscenium outward stared, Sat Harmon Whitney, to that eminence, By merit raised in ribaldry and guile, And to the assembled rebels thus he spake: “Whether to lie supine and let a clique Cold-blooded, scheming, hungry, singing psalms, Devour our substance, wreck our banks and drain Our little hoards for hazards on the price Of wheat or pork, or yet to cower beneath The shadow of a spire upreared to curb A breed of lackeys and to serve the bank Coadjutor in greed, that is the question. Shall we have music and the jocund dance, Or tolling bells? Or shall young romance roam These hills about the river, flowering now To April’s tears, or shall they sit at home, Or play croquet where Thomas Rhodes may see, I ask you? If the blood of youth runs o’er And riots ’gainst this regimen of gloom, Shall we submit to have these youths and maids Branded as libertines and wantons?”

Ere His words were done a woman’s voice called “No!” Then rose a sound of moving chairs, as when The numerous swine o’er-run the replenished troughs; And every head was turned, as when a flock Of geese back-turning to the hunter’s tread Rise up with flapping wings; then rang the hall With riotous laughter, for with battered hat Tilted upon her saucy head, and fist Raised in defiance, Daisy Fraser stood. Headlong she had been hurled from out the hall Save Wendell Bloyd, who spoke for woman’s rights, Prevented, and the bellowing voice of Burchard. Then, mid applause she hastened toward the stage And flung both gold and silver to the cause And swiftly left the hall. Meantime upstood A giant figure, bearded like the son Of Alcmene, deep-chested, round of paunch, And spoke in thunder: “Over there behold A man who for the truth withstood his wife— Such is our spirit—when that A. D. Blood Compelled me to remove Dom Pedro—”

Quick Before Jim Brown could finish, Jefferson Howard Obtained the floor and spake: “Ill suits the time For clownish words, and trivial is our cause If naught’s at stake but John Cabanis, wrath, He who was erstwhile of the other side And came to us for vengeance. More’s at stake Than triumph for New England or Virginia. And whether rum be sold, or for two years As in the past two years, this town be dry Matters but little— Oh yes, revenue For sidewalks, sewers; that is well enough! I wish to God this fight were now inspired By other passion than to salve the pride Of John Cabanis or his daughter. Why Can never contests of great moment spring From worthy things, not little? Still, if men Must always act so, and if rum must be The symbol and the medium to release From life’s denial and from slavery, Then give me rum!”

Exultant cries arose. Then, as George Trimble had o’ercome his fear And vacillation and begun to speak, The door creaked and the idiot, Willie Metcalf, Breathless and hatless, whiter than a sheet, Entered and cried: “The marshal’s on his way To arrest you all. And if you only knew Who’s coming here to-morrow; I was listening Beneath the window where the other side Are making plans.”

So to a smaller room To hear the idiot’s secret some withdrew Selected by the Chair; the Chair himself And Jefferson Howard, Benjamin Pantier, And Wendell Bloyd, George Trimble, Adam Weirauch, Imanuel Ehrenhardt, Seth Compton, Godwin James And Enoch Dunlap, Hiram Scates, Roy Butler, Carl Hamblin, Roger Heston, Ernest Hyde And Penniwit, the artist, Kinsey Keene, And E. C. Culbertson and Franklin Jones, Benjamin Fraser, son of Benjamin Pantier By Daisy Fraser, some of lesser note, And secretly conferred.

But in the hall Disorder reigned and when the marshal came And found it so, he marched the hoodlums out And locked them up.

Meanwhile within a room Back in the basement of the church, with Blood Counseled the wisest heads. Judge Somers first, Deep learned in life, and next him, Elliott Hawkins And Lambert Hutchins; next him Thomas Rhodes And Editor Whedon; next him Garrison Standard, A traitor to the liberals, who with lip Upcurled in scorn and with a bitter sneer: “Such strife about an insult to a woman— A girl of eighteen” —Christian Dallman too, And others unrecorded. Some there were Who frowned not on the cup but loathed the rule Democracy achieved thereby, the freedom And lust of life it symbolized.

Now morn with snowy fingers up the sky Flung like an orange at a festival The ruddy sun, when from their hasty beds Poured forth the hostile forces, and the streets Resounded to the rattle of the wheels That drove this way and that to gather in The tardy voters, and the cries of chieftains Who manned the battle. But at ten o’clock The liberals bellowed fraud, and at the polls The rival candidates growled and came to blows. Then proved the idiot’s tale of yester-eve A word of warning. Suddenly on the streets Walked hog-eyed Allen, terror of the hills That looked on Bernadotte ten miles removed. No man of this degenerate day could lift The boulders which he threw, and when he spoke The windows rattled, and beneath his brows Thatched like a shed with bristling hair of black, His small eyes glistened like a maddened boar. And as he walked the boards creaked, as he walked A song of menace rumbled. Thus he came, The champion of A. D. Blood, commissioned To terrify the liberals. Many fled As when a hawk soars o’er the chicken yard. He passed the polls and with a playful hand Touched Brown, the giant, and he fell against, As though he were a child, the wall; so strong Was hog-eyed Allen. But the liberals smiled. For soon as hog-eyed Allen reached the walk, Close on his steps paced Bengal Mike, brought in By Kinsey Keene, the subtle-witted one, To match the hog-eyed Allen. He was scarce Three-fourths the other’s bulk, but steel his arms, And with a tiger’s heart. Two men he killed And many wounded in the days before, And no one feared.

But when the hog-eyed one Saw Bengal Mike his countenance grew dark, The bristles o’er his red eyes twitched with rage, The song he rumbled lowered. Round and round The court-house paced he, followed stealthily By Bengal Mike, who jeered him every step: “Come, elephant, and fight! Come, hog-eyed coward! Come, face about and fight me, lumbering sneak! Come, beefy bully, hit me, if you can! Take out your gun, you duffer, give me reason To draw and kill you. Take your billy out. I’ll crack your boar’s head with a piece of brick!” But never a word the hog-eyed one returned But trod about the court-house, followed both By troops of boys and watched by all the men. All day, they walked the square. But when Apollo Stood with reluctant look above the hills As fain to see the end, and all the votes Were cast, and closed the polls, before the door Of Trainor’s drug store Bengal Mike, in tones That echoed through the village, bawled the taunt: “Who was your mother, hog—eyed?” In a trice As when a wild boar turns upon the hound That through the brakes upon an August day Has gashed him with its teeth, the hog-eyed one Rushed with his giant arms on Bengal Mike And grabbed him by the throat. Then rose to heaven The frightened cries of boys, and yells of men Forth rushing to the street. And Bengal Mike Moved this way and now that, drew in his head As if his neck to shorten, and bent down To break the death grip of the hog-eyed one; ’Twixt guttural wrath and fast-expiring strength Striking his fists against the invulnerable chest Of hog-eyed Allen. Then, when some came in To part them, others stayed them, and the fight Spread among dozens; many valiant souls Went down from clubs and bricks.

But tell me, Muse, What god or goddess rescued Bengal Mike? With one last, mighty struggle did he grasp The murderous hands and turning kick his foe. Then, as if struck by lightning, vanished all The strength from hog-eyed Allen, at his side Sank limp those giant arms and o’er his face Dread pallor and the sweat of anguish spread. And those great knees, invincible but late, Shook to his weight. And quickly as the lion Leaps on its wounded prey, did Bengal Mike Smite with a rock the temple of his foe, And down he sank and darkness o’er his eyes Passed like a cloud.

As when the woodman fells Some giant oak upon a summer’s day And all the songsters of the forest shrill, And one great hawk that has his nestling young Amid the topmost branches croaks, as crash The leafy branches through the tangled boughs Of brother oaks, so fell the hog-eyed one Amid the lamentations of the friends Of A. D. Blood.

Just then, four lusty men Bore the town marshal, on whose iron face The purple pall of death already lay, To Trainor’s drug store, shot by Jack McGuire. And cries went up of “Lynch him!” and the sound Of running feet from every side was heard Bent on the

Epilogue

(THE GRAVEYARD OF SPOON RIVER. TWO VOICES ARE HEARD BEHIND A SCREEN DECORATED WITH DIABOLICAL AND ANGELIC FIGURES IN VARIOUS ALLEGORICAL RELATIONS. A FAINT LIGHT SHOWS DIMLY THROUGH THE SCREEN AS IF IT WERE WOVEN OF LEAVES, BRANCHES AND SHADOWS.)

FIRST VOICE. A game of checkers?

SECOND VOICE Well, I don’t mind.

FIRST VOICE I move the Will.

SECOND VOICE You’re playing it blind.

FIRST VOICE Then here’s the Soul.

SECOND VOICE Checked by the Will.

FIRST VOICE Eternal Good!

SECOND VOICE And Eternal Ill.

FIRST VOICE I haste for the King row.

SECOND VOICE Save your breath.

FIRST VOICE I was moving Life.

SECOND VOICE You’re checked by Death.

FIRST VOICE Very good, here’s Moses.

SECOND VOICE And here’s the Jew.

FIRST VOICE My next move is Jesus.

SECOND VOICE St. Paul for you!

FIRST VOICE Yes, but St. Peter—

SECOND VOICE You might have foreseen—

FIRST VOICE You’re in the King row—

SECOND VOICE With Constantine!

FIRST VOICE I’ll go back to Athens.

SECOND VOICE Well, here’s the Persian.

FIRST VOICE All right, the Bible.