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...
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...
I think, she said at first, My daughter did not kill herself. I'm sure Someone did violence to her, your tests, Examination will prove violence. It would be like her fate to meet with such:...
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....
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....
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...
When the sea has devoured the ships, And the spires and the towers Have gone back to the hills. And all the cities Are one with the plains again. And the beauty of bronze,...
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....
"Then what is life?" I cried. And with that cry I woke from deeper slumber - was it sleep? - And saw a hooded figure standing by The bed whereon I lay.
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...
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,...
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...
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!...
Have you seen walking through the village A Man with downcast eyes and haggard face? That is my husband who, by secret cruelty Never to be told, robbed me of my youth and my beauty;...
Your speeches seemed to answer for the nonce, They do not justify your head in bronze! Your essays! talent's failures were to you Your philosophic gamut, but things true,...
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,...
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,...
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...
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....
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?...