This way and that way measuring, Sighting from tree to tree, And from the bend of the river. This must be the place where Black Eagle Twelve hundred moons ago Stood with folded arms,...
Is it true, Spoon River, That in the hall - way of the New Court House There is a tablet of bronze Containing the embossed faces Of Editor Whedon and Thomas Rhodes?...
We stand about this place - we, the memories; And shade our eyes because we dread to read: "June 17th, 1884, aged 21 years and 3 days." And all things are changed....
To be able to see every side of every question; To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long; To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose, To use great feelings and passions of the human family...
I would I had thrust my hands of flesh Into the disk - flowers bee-infested, Into the mirror-like core of fire Of the light of life, the sun of delight. For what are anthers worth or petals...
Coroner Merival took the hundred letters Which Elenor Murray wrote to Barrett Bays, Found some of them unopened, as he said, And read them to the jury. Day by day She made a record of her life, and wrote...
I was among multitudes of children Dancing at the foot of a mountain. A breeze blew out of the east and swept them as leaves, Driving some up the slopes. . . . All was changed....
Dust of my dust, And dust with my dust, O, child who died as you entered the world, Dead with my death! Not knowing Breath, though you tried so hard, With a heart that beat when you lived with me,...
I looked like Abraham Lincoln. I was one of you, Spoon River, in all fellowship, But standing for the rights of property and for order. A regular church attendant,...
What but the love of God could have softened And made forgiving the people of Spoon River Toward me who wronged the bed of Thomas Merritt And murdered him beside? Oh, loving hearts that took me in again...
I was a peasant girl from Germany, Blue-eyed, rosy, happy and strong. And the first place I worked was at Thomas Greene's. On a summer's day when she was away He stole into the kitchen and took me...
Where is my boy, my boy In what far part of the world? The boy I loved best of all in the school? - I, the teacher, the old maid, the virgin heart, Who made them all my children....
How many times, during the twenty years I was your leader, friends of Spoon River, Did you neglect the convention and caucus, And leave the burden on my hands Of guarding and saving the people's cause? -...
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....
I began with Sir William Hamilton's lectures. Then studied Dugald Stewart; And then John Locke on the Understanding, And then Descartes, Fichte and Schelling, Kant and then Schopenhauer -...
Carl Eaton and John Campbell both were raised With Elenor Murray in LeRoy. The mother Of Eaton lived there; but these boys had gone, Now grown to manhood to Chicago, where...