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 landscape. Then in time...
Rhodes, slave! Selling shoes and gingham, Flour and bacon, overalls, clothing, all day long For fourteen hours a day for three hundred and thirteen days For more than twenty years....
Out of the mercury shimmer of glass Over these daguerreotypes The balloon-like spread of a skirt of silk emerges With its little figure of flowers. And the enameled glair of parted hair...
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....
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...
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 unforgiven sins....
Looking like Raphael's Perugino, eyes So slightly, subtly aquiline, as brown As a buck-eye, amorous, flamed, but lightly dimmed Through thought of self while sitting for the artist;...
It was only a little house of two rooms - Almost like a child's play-house - With scarce five acres of ground around it; And I had so many children to feed And school and clothe, and a wife who was sick...
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, for all your life. What do you see, a harvest of clover?...
Elenor Murray, daughter of Henry Murray, The druggist at LeRoy, a village near The shadow of Starved Rock, this Elenor But recently returned from France, a heart Who gave her service in the world at war,...
She took my strength by 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 like stars....
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 village...
France fallen! France arisen! France of the brave! France of lost hopes! France of Promethean zeal! Napoleon's France, that bruised the despot's heel Of Europe, while the feudal world did rave....
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 Mary knows:...
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 a clear vision,...
If I could have lived another year I could have finished my flying machine, And become rich and famous. Hence it is fitting the workman Who tried to chisel a dove for me...
Said Friar Yves: "God will bless Saint Louis' other-worldliness. Whatever the fate be, still I fare To fight for the Holy Sepulcher. If I survive, I shall return With precious things from Palestine -...
How did the sculptor, Voltaire, keep you quiet and posed In an arm chair, just think, at your busiest age we are told, Being better than seventy? How did he manage to stay you...
I have studied many times The marble which was chiseled for me - A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor. In truth it pictures not my destination But my life....