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...
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,...
I never saw any difference Between playing cards for money And selling real estate, Practicing law, banking, or anything else. For everything is chance. Nevertheless...
I was crushed between Altgeld and Armour. I lost many friends, much time and money Fighting for Altgeld whom Editor Whedon Denounced as the candidate of gamblers and anarchists....
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 crusade to purge the people of sin;...
Jonas Keene thought his lot a hard one Because his children were all failures. But I know of a fate more trying than that: It is to be a failure while your children are successes....
They laughed at me as "Prof. Moon," As a boy in Spoon River, born with the thirst Of knowing about the stars. They jeered when I spoke of the lunar mountains, And the thrilling heat and cold,...
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?...
His father had a large family Of girls and boys and he was born and bred In a barn or kind of cattle shed. But he was a hardy youngster and grew to be A boy with eyes that sparkled like a rod...
What my name is, or where I live, or if I am that Alma Bell whose name is broached With Elenor Murray's who shall know from this? My hand-writing I hide in type, I send...
Henry got me with child, Knowing that I could not bring forth life Without losing my own. In my youth therefore I entered the portals of dust. Traveler, it is believed in the village where I lived...
Yes, here I lie close to a stunted rose bush In a forgotten place near the fence Where the thickets from Siever's woods Have crept over, growing sparsely. And you, you are a leader in New York,...
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 years a soul that was stiff and bent,...
Over and over they used to ask me, While buying the wine or the beer, In Peoria first, and later in Chicago, Denver, Frisco, New York, wherever I lived How I happened to lead the life,...
Out of me unworthy and unknown The vibrations of deathless music; "With malice toward none, with charity for all.', Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions, And the beneficent face of a nation...
Anton Sosnowski, from the Shakspeare School Where he assists the janitor, sweeps and dusts, The day now done, sits by a smeared up table Munching coarse bread and drinking beer; before him...
Twists of smoke rise from the limpness of jewelled fingers, The softness of Persian rugs hushes the room. Under a dragon lamp with a shade the color of coral Sit the readers of poems one by one....
I loathed you, Spoon River. I tried to rise above you, I was ashamed of you. I despised you As the place of my nativity. And there in Rome, among the artists, Speaking Italian, speaking French,...
Archibald Lowell, owner of the Times Lived six months of the year at Sunnyside, His Gothic castle near LeRoy, so named Because no sun was in him, it may be. His wife was much away when on this earth...
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 at the sight of a lantern?...