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....
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?...
After I got religion and steadied down They gave me a job in the canning works, And every morning I had to fill The tank in the yard with gasoline, That fed the blow-fires in the sheds...
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,...
When Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me I went to Springfield. There I met a lush, Whose father just deceased left him a fortune. He married me when drunk. My life was wretched....
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 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...
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;...
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...
Gregory Wenner's brother married the mother Of Alma Bell, the daughter of a marriage The mother made before. Kinship enough To justify a call on Wenner's power When Alma Bell was face to face with shame....
Out of the lights and roar of cities, Drifting down like a spark in Spoon River, Burnt out with the fire of drink, and broken, The paramour of a woman I took in self-contempt,...
I was just turned twenty-one, And Henry Phipps, the Sunday-school superintendent, Made a speech in Bindle's Opera House. "The honor of the flag must be upheld," he said,...
Oh! the dew-wet grass of the meadow in North Carolina Through which Rebecca followed me wailing, wailing, One child in her arms, and three that ran along wailing,...
Gregory Wenner's wife was by the sea When Gregory Wenner killed himself, half sick And half malingering, and otiose. She wept, sent for a doctor to be braced, Induced a friend to travel with her west...
I was the milliner Talked about, lied about, Mother of Dora, Whose strange disappearance Was charged to her rearing. My eye quick to beauty Saw much beside ribbons And buckles and feathers...
When the sea has devoured the ships, And the spires and the towers Have gone back to the hills. And all the cities Are one with the plains again. And the beauty of bronze,...
The pathos in your face is like a peace, It is like resignation or a grace Which smiles at the surcease Of hope. But there is in your face The shadow of pain, and there is a trace Of memory of pain....
Even as I see, and share with you in seeing, The altar flame of your love's sacrifice; And even as I bear before the hour the vision, Your little hands in hospital and prison...
I preached four thousand sermons, I conducted forty revivals, And baptized many converts. Yet no deed of mine Shines brighter in the memory of the world, And none is treasured more by me:...
To a lustful thirst she came at first And gave him her maiden's pride; And the first man scattered the flower of her love, Then turned to his chosen bride.