Selections from Spoon River Anthology

The Hill

WHERE are Elmer, Herman, bert, Tom, and Charley,

The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?

All, all, are sleeping on the hill.

One passed in a fever,

One was burned in a mine,

One was killed in a brawl,

One died in jail,

One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife--

All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie, and Edith,

The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?--

All, all, are sleeping on the hill.

One died in shameful child-birth,

One of a thwarted love,

One at the hands of a brute in a brothel,

One of a broken pride, in a search for a heart's desire,

One after life in faraway London and Paris

Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag--

All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

Where are Uncle Issac and Aunt Emily,

And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton,

And Major Walker who had talked

With veneravle men of the revolution?--

All, all, are sleeping on the hill.

They brought them dead sons from the war,

And daughters whom life had crushed,

And their children fatherless, crying--

All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

Where is old Fiddler Jones

Who played with life all his ninety years,

Braving the sleet with bared breast,

Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin,

Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven?

Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago,

Of the horse-races long ago at Clary's Grove,

Of what Abe Lincoln said

One time at Springfield.

Edgar Lee Masters



Hod Putt

HERE I lie close to the grave

Of Old Bill Piersol,

Who grew rich trading with the indians, and who

Afterwards took the bankrupt law

And emergeed from it richer than ever.

Myself grown tired of toil and poverty

And beholding how Old Bill and others grew in wealth,

Robbed a traveler one night near Proctor's Grove,

Killing him unwittingly while doing so,

For the which I was tried and hanged.

That was my way of going into bankruptcy.

Now we who took the bankrupt law in our respective ways

Sleep peacefully side by side.

Edgar Lee Masters



Ollie McGee

HAVE you seen walking through the village

A man with downcast eyes and haggard face?

That is my husband who, by secret cruelty

never to be told, robbed me of my youth and my beauty;

Till at last, wrinkled and with yellow teeth,

And with broken pride and shameful humility,

I sank into the grave.

But what think you gnaws at my husband's heart?

The face of what I was, the face of what he made me!

These are driving him to the place where I lie.

In death, therefore, I am avenged.

Edgar Lee Masters



Fletcher McGee

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.

She took pity from my heart,

And made it into smiles.

She was a hunk of sculptor's clay,

My secret thoughts were fingers:

They flew behind her pensive brow

And lined it deep with pain.

They set the lips, and sagged the cheeks,

And drooped the eyes with sorrow.

My soul had entered in the clay,

Fighting like seven devils.

It was not mine, it was not hers;

She held it, but its struggles

Modeled a face she hated,

And a face I feared to see.

I beat the windows, shook the bolts.

I hid me in a corner--

And then she died and haunted me,

And hunted me for life.

Edgar Lee Masters



Robert Fulton Tanner

IF a man could bite the giant hand

That catches and destroys him,

As I was bitten by a rat

While demonstrating my patent trap,

In my hardware store that day.

But a man can never avenge himself

On the monstrous ogre Life.

You enter the room--that's being born;

And then you must live--work out your soul,

Aha! the bait that you crave is in view:

A woman with money you want to marry,

Prestige, place, or power in the world.

But there's work to do and things to conquer--

Oh, yes! the wires that screen the bait.

At last you get in--but you hear a step:

The ogre, Life, comes into the room,

(He was waiting and heard the clang of the spring)

To watch you nibble the wondrous cheese,

And stare with his burning eyes at you,

And scowl and laugh, and mock and curse you,

Running up and down in the trap,

Until your misery bores him.

Edgar Lee Masters



Cassius Hueffer

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

As they read this empty rhetoric.

My epitaph should have been:

'Life was not gentle to him,

And the elements so mixed in him

That he made warfare on life,

In the which he was slain.'

While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues,

Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph

Graven by a fool!

Edgar Lee Masters



Serepta Mason

MY life's blossom might have bloomed on all sides

Save for a bitter wind which stunted my petals

On the side of me which you in the village could see.

From the dust I lift a voice of protest:

My flowering side you never saw!

Ye living ones, ye are fools indeed

Who do not know the ways of the wind

And the unseen forces

That govern the processes of life.

Edgar Lee Masters



Amanda Barker

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

That Henry loved me with a husband's love,

But I proclaim from the dust

That he slew me to gratify his hatred.

Edgar Lee Masters



Constance Hately

YOU praise my self-sacrifice, Spoon River,

In rearing Irene and Mary,

Orphans of my older sister!

And you censure Irene and Mary

For their contempt of me!

But praise not my self-sacrifice,

And censure not their contempt;

I reared them, I cared for them, true enough!--

But I poisoned my benefactions

With constant reminders of their dependence.

Edgar Lee Masters



Chase Henry

IN my life I was the town drunkard;

When I died the priest denied me burial

In holy ground.

The which rebounded to my good fortune.

For the Protestants bought this lot,

And buried my body here,

Close to the grave of the banker Nicholas,

And of his wife Priscilla.

Take note, ye prudent and pious souls,

Of the cross-currents in life

Which bring honor to the dead, who lived in shame.

Edgar Lee Masters



Harry Carey Goodhue

YOU never marveled, dullards of Spoon River,

When Chase Henry voted against the saloons

To revenge himself for being shut off.

But none of you was keen enough

To follow my steps, or trace me home

As Chase's spiritual brother.

Do you remember when I fought

The bank and the courthouse ring,

For pocketing the interest on public funds?

And when I fought our leading citizens

For making the poor the pack-horses of the taxes?

And when I fought the water-works

For stealing streets and raising rates?

And when I fought the business men

Who fought me in these fights?

Then do you remember:

That staggering up from the wreck of defeat,

And the wreck of a ruined career,

I slipped from my cloak my last ideal,

Hidden from all eyes until then,

Like the cherished jawbone of an ass,

And smote the bank and the water works,

And the business men with prohibition,

And made Spoon River pay the cost

Of the fights that I had lost?

Edgar Lee Masters



Judge Somers

HOW does it happen, tell me,

That I who was the most erudite of lawyers,

Who knew Blackstone and Coke

Almost by heart, who made the greatest speech

The court-house ever heard, and wrote

A brief that won the praise of Justice Breese--

How does it happen, tell me,

That I lie here unmarked, forgotten,

While Chase Henry, the town drunkard,

Has a marble block, topped by an urn,

Wherein Nature, in a mood ironical,

Has sown a flowering seed?

Edgar Lee Masters



Kinsey Keene

YOUR attention, Thomas Rhodes, president of the bank;

Coolbaugh Wedon, editor of the Argus;

Rev. Peet, pastor of the leading church;

A.D. Blood, several times Mayor of Spoon River;

And finally all of you, members of the Social Purity Club--

Your attention to Cambronne's dying words,

Standing with heroic remnant

Of Napoleon's guard on Mount Saint Jean

At the battle field of Waterloo,

When Maitland, the Englishman, called to them:

"Surrender, brave Frenchmen!"--

There at close of day with the battle hopelessly lost,

And hordes of men no longer the army

Of the great Napoleon

Streamed from the field like ragged strips

Of thunder clouds in the storm.

Well, that Cambronne said to Maitland

Ere the English fire made smooth the brow of the hill

Against the sinking light of day

Say I to you, and all of you,

And to you, O world.

And I charge you to carve it

Upon my stone.

Edgar Lee Masters



Benjamin Painter

TOGETHER in this grave lie Benjamin Painter, attorney at law,

And Nig, his dog, constant companion, solace and friend.

Down the grey road, friends, children, men and women,

Passing one by one out of life, left me till I was alone

With Nig for partner, bed fellow, comrade in drink.

In the morning of life I knew aspiration and saw glory.

Then she, who survives me, snared my soul

With a snare which bled me to death,

Till I, once strong of sill, lay broken, indifferent,

Living with Nig in a room back of a dingy office.

Under my jaw-bone is snuggled the bony nose of Nig--

Our story is lost in silence. Go by, mad world!

Edgar Lee Masters



Mrs benjamin Painter

I KNOW that he told how I snared his soul

With a snare which bled him to death.

And all the men loved him,

And most of the women pitied him.

But suppose you are really a lady, and have delicate tastes,

And loathe the smell of whisky and onions.

And the rhythm of Wordsworth's "Ode" runs in your ears,

While he goes about from morning till night

Repeating bits of that common thing;

"Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"

And then, suppose:

You are a woman well endowed,

And the only man with whom the law and morality

Permit you to have the marital relation

Is the very man that fills you with disgust

Every time you think of it--while you think of it

Every time you see him?

That's why I drove him away from home

To live with his dog in a dingy room

Back of his office.

Edgar Lee Masters



Lucinda Matlock

I WENT to the dances at Chandlerville,

And played snap-out at Winchester.

One time we changed partners,

Driving home in the midnight of middle June,

And then I found Davis.

We were married and lived together for seventy years,

Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,

Eight of whom we lost

Ere I had reached the age of sixty.

I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,

I made the garden, and for holiday

Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,

And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,

And many a flower and medicinal weed--

Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.

At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,

And passed to a sweet repose.

What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,

Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?

Degenerate sons and daughters,

Life is too strong for you--

It takes life to love Life.

Edgar Lee Masters



Knowlt Hoheimer

I WAS the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.

When I felt the bullet enter my heart

I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail

For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary,

Instead of running away and joining the army,

Rather a thousand times the county jail

Than to lie under this marble figure with wings,

And this granite pedestal

Bearing the words 'Pro Patria.'

What do they mean, anyway?

Edgar Lee Masters



Fiddler Jones

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?

Or a meadow to walk through to the river?

The wind's in the corn; you rub your hands

For beeves hereafter ready for market;

Or else you hear the rustle of skirts

Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.

To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust

Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;

They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy

Stepping it off to 'Toor-a-Loor.'

How could I till my forty acres

Not to speak of getting more,

With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos

Stirred in my brain by crows and robins

And the creak of a wind-mill--only these?

And I never started to plow in my life

That some one did not stop in the road

And take me away to a dance or picnic.

I ended up with forty acres;

I ended up with a broken fiddle--

And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,

And not a single regret.

Edgar Lee Masters



Anne Rutledge

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 beneficient face of a nation

Shining with justice and truth.

I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds,

Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln,

Wedded to him, not through union,

But through separation.

Bloom forever, O Republic,

From the dust of my bosom!

Edgar Lee Masters



Petit, The Poet

SEEDS in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,

Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel--

Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens--

But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.

Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,

Ballades by the score with the same old thought:

The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;

And what is love but a rose that fades?

Life all around me here in the village:

Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,

Courage, constancy, heroism, failure--

All in the loom, and oh what patterns!

Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers--

Blind to all of it all my life long.

Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,

Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,

Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics,

While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines?

Edgar Lee Masters



Mrs. Kessler

MR. Kessler, you know, was in the army,

And he drew six dollars a month as a pension,

And stood on the corner talking politics,

Or sat at home reading Grant's Memoirs;

And I supported the family by washing,

Learning the secrets of all the people

From their curtains, counterpanes, shirts and skirts.

For things that are new grow old at length,

They're replaced with better or none at all:

People are prospering or falling back.

And rents and patches widen with time;

No thread or needle can pace decay,

And there are stains that baffle soap,

And there are colors that run in spite of you,

Blamed though you are for spoiling a dress.

Handkerchieds, napery, have their secrets--

The laundress, Life, knows all about it.

And I, who went to all the funerals

Held in Spoon River, swear I never

Saw a dead face without thinking it looked

Like something washed and ironed.

Edgar Lee Masters



Bert Kessler

I WINGED my bird,

Though he flew toward the setting sun;

But just as the shot rang out, he soared

Up and up through the splinters of golden light,

Till he turned right over, feathers ruffled,

With some of the down of him floating near,

And fell like a plummet into the grass.

I tramped about, parting the tangles,

Till I saw a splash of blood on a stump,

And the quail lying close to the rotton roots.

I reached my hand, but saw no brier,

But something pricked and stung and numbed it.

And then, in a second, I spied the rattler--

The shutters wide in his yellow eyes,

The head of him arched, sunk back in the rings of him,

A circle of filth, the color of ashes,

Or oak leaves bleached under layers of leaves.

I stood like a stone as he shrank and uncoiled

And started to crawl beneath the stump,

When I fell limp in the grass.

Edgar Lee Masters



Richard Bone

WHEN I first came to Spoon River

I did not know whether what they told me

Was true or false.

They would bring me an epitaph

And stand around the shop while I worked

And say "He was so kind," "He was wonderful,"

"She was the sweetest woman," "He was a consistent Christian."

And I chiseled for them whatever they wished,

All in ignorance of its truth.

But later, as I lived among the people here,

I knew how near to the life

Were the epitaphs that were ordered for them when they died.

But still I chiseled whatever they paid me to chisel

And made myself party to the false chronicles

Of the stones,

Even as the historian does who writes

Without knowing the truth,

Or because he is influenced to hide it.

Edgar Lee Masters



Elizabeth Childers

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,

And stopped when you left me for Life.

It is well, my child. For you never traveled

The long, long way that begins with school days,

When little fingers blur under the tears

That fall on the crooked letters.

And the earliest wound, when a little mate

Leaves you alone for another;

And sickness, and the face of Fear by the bed;

The death of a father or mother;

Or shame for them, or poverty;

The maiden sorrow of school days ended;

And eyeless Nature that makes you drink

From the cup of Love, though you know it's poisoned;

To whom would your flower-face have been lifted?

Botanist, weakling? Cry of what blood to yours?---

Pure or fool, for it makes no matter,

It's blood that calls to our blood.

And then your children---oh, what might they be?

And what your sorrows? Child! Child!

Death is better than Life!

Edgar Lee Masters

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