Works

I have seen twenty men hanged, hung myself
Two in this jail, with whom I talked the night
Before they had the rope, knotted behind
The ear to break the neck. These two I hanged,...

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...

In life I was the town drunkard;
When I died the priest denied me burial
In holy ground.
The which redounded to my good fortune.
For the Protestants bought this lot,
And buried my body here,...

Who is that calling through the night,
A wail that dies when the wind roars?
We heard it first on Shipley's Hill,
It faded out at Comingoer's.

Along five miles of wintry road...

Where are the cabalists, the insidious committees,
The panders who betray the idiot cities
For miles and miles toward the prairie sprawled,
Ignorant, soul-less, rich,
Smothered in fumes of pitch?
...

The sudden death of Eugene Carman
Put me in line to be promoted to fifty dollars a month,
And I told my wife and children that night.
But it didn't come, and so I thought
Old Rhodes suspected me of stealing...

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?...

Look at that tract of land there - five good acres
Held out of use these thirty years and more.
They keep a cow there. See! the cow's there now.
She can't eat up the grass, there is so much....

I inherited forty acres from my Father
And, by working my wife, my two sons and two daughters
From dawn to dusk, I acquired
A thousand acres.
But not content,
Wishing to own two thousand acres,...

The mad wind is the warden,
And the smiling dahlias nod
To the dahlias across the garden,
And the wastes of the golden rod.

They never pray for pardon,
Nor ask his way nor forego,...

Did you ever hear of Editor Whedon
Giving to the public treasury any of the money he received
For supporting candidates for office?
Or for writing up the canning factory
To get people to invest?...

When I went to the city, Mary McNeely,
I meant to return for you, yes I did.
But Laura, my landlady's daughter,
Stole into my life somehow, and won me away.
Then after some years whom should I meet...

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) -...

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,...

(Dedicated to Vachel Lindsay and in Memory of Richard E. Burke)


Said dear old Dick
To the colored waiter:
"Here, George! be quick
Roast beef and a potato....

Because thou wast most delicate,
A woman fair for men to see,
The earth did compass thy estate,
Thou didst hold life and death in fee,
And every soul did bend the knee.
...

Look here, Jack:
You don't act natural. You have lost your laugh.
You haven't told me any stories. You
Just lie there half asleep. What's on your mind?

JACK
...

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....

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....

No other man, unless it was Doc Hill,
Did more for people in this town than I.
And all the weak, the halt, the improvident
And those who could not pay flocked to me.
I was good-hearted, easy Doctor Meyers....