Edgar Lee Masters

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

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

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

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

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 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

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 and for all your life. What do you

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

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

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

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

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

Eugenia Todd

Have any of you, passers-by, Had an old tooth that was an unceasing discomfort? Or a pain in the side that never quite left you? Or a malignant growth that grew with time? So

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lucinda Matlock

I went to the dances at Chandlerville, And played snap-out at Winchester. One time we changed partners, Driving home in the midnight of middle June, And then I found Davis. We were married and

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,

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.

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

Harry Carey Goodhue

You never marveled, dullards of Spoon River, When Chase Henry voted against the saloons To revenge himself for being shut off. But none of you was keen enough To follow my steps, or trace

Rita Matlock Gruenberg

Grandmother! You who sang to green valleys, And passed to a sweet repose at ninety-six, Here is your little Rita at last Grown old, grown forty-nine; Here stretched on your grave under the winter

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

Rosie Roberts

I was sick, but more than that, I was mad At the crooked police, and the crooked game of life. So I wrote to the Chief of Police at Peoria: “I am here in

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

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

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

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

Fletcher McGee

She took my strength by the 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

Georgine Sand Miner

A step-mother 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

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,

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

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

Mrs. Benjamin Painter

I know that he told how 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

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

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

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

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

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

The Spooniad

[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

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

Schroeder the Fisherman

I sat on the bank above Bernadotte And dropped crumbs in the water, Just to see the minnows bump each other, Until the strongest got the prize. Or I went to my little pasture,

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

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

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,

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

Charles Webster

The pine woods on the hill, And the farmhouse miles away, Showed clear as though behind a lens Under a sky of peacock blue! But a blanket of cloud by afternoon Muffled the earth.

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

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,

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

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

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

Judge Somers

How does it happen, tell me, That I who was the most erudite of lawyers, Who knew Blackstone and Coke Almost by heart, who made the greatest speech The court-house ever heard, and wrote

Thomas Rhodes

Very well, you liberals, And navigators into realms intellectual, You sailors through heights imaginative, Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets, You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits, And Tennessee Claflin Shopes You found

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

English Thornton

Here! You sons of the men Who fought with Washington at Valley Forge, And whipped Black Hawk at Starved Rock, Arise! Do battle with the descendants of those Who bought land in the loop

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,

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

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

Kinsey Keene

Your attention, Thomas Rhodes, president of the bank; Coolbaugh Wedon, editor of the Argus; Rev. Peet, pastor of the leading church; A. D. Blood, several times Mayor of Spoon River; And finally all of

O Glorious France

You have become a forge of snow-white fire, A crucible of molten steel, O France! Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn And fade in light for you, O glorious France! They

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

On a Bust

A giant as we hoped, in truth, a dwarf; A barrel of slop that shines on Lethe’s wharf’, Which at first seemed a vessel with sweet wine For thirsty lips. So down the swift

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

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

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

Rain In My Heart

There is a quiet in my heart Like on who rests from days of pain. Outside, the sparrows on the roof Are chirping in the dripping rain. Rain in my heart; rain on the

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,

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

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

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,

Silence

I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea, And the silence of the city when it pauses, And the silence of a man and a maid, And the silence of

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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