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,...
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...
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,...
Ye who are kicking against Fate, Tell me how it is that on this hill-side Running down to the river, Which fronts the sun and the south-wind, This plant draws from the air and soil...
How beautiful are the bodies of men - The agonists! Their hearts beat deep as a brazen gong For their strength's behests. Their arms are lithe as a seasoned thong...
Oh, you young radicals and dreamers, You dauntless fledglings Who pass by my headstone, Mock not its record of my captaincy in the army And my faith in God! They are not denials of each other....
The press of the Spoon River Clarion was wrecked, And I was tarred and feathered, For publishing this on the day the Anarchists were hanged in Chicago: "l saw a beautiful woman with bandaged eyes...
With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked, As often before, the April fields till star - light Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood,...
They have chiseled on my stone the words: "His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him That nature might stand up and say to all the world, This was a man." Those who knew me smile...
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,...
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,...
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...
I lectured last upon the morbus sacer, Or falling sickness, epilepsy, of old In Palestine and Greece so much ascribed To deities or devils. To resume We find it caused by morphological...