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:...
April rain, delicious weeping, Washes white bones from the grave, Long enough have they been sleeping. They are cleansed, and now they crave Once more on the earth to gather...
When under the icy eaves The swallow heralds the sun, And the dove for its lost mate grieves And the young lambs play and run; When the sea is a plane of glass, And the blustering winds are still,...
Marie Fortelka, widow, mother of Josef, Now seventeen, an invalid at home In a house, in Halstead Street, his running side Aching with broken ribs, read in the Times...
What will happen, Widow La Rue? For last night at three o'clock You woke and saw by your window again Amid the shadowy locust grove The phantom of the old soldier:...
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,...
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...
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...
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 -...
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,...
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...
He sits before you silent as Buddha, And then you say This man is Rabelais. And while you wonder what his stock is, English or Irish, you behold his eyes As big and brown as those desirable crockies...
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...
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....
To Coroner Merival, greetings, but a voice Dissentient from much that goes the rounds, Concerning Elenor Murray. Here's my word: Give men and women freedom, save the land...
Vegetarian, non - resistant, free-thinker, in ethics a Christian; Orator apt at the rhine-stone rhythm of Ingersoll. Carnivorous, avenger, believer and pagan....
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....
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....
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,...