Spoon River Anthology | Page 7

in the village?By Ralph Barrett, the coming?Romantic actor, who enthralled my soul.?True, I trailed back home, a broken failure,?When Ralph disappeared in New York,?Leaving me alone in the city--?But life broke him also.?In all this place of silence?There are no kindred spirits.?How I wish Duse could stand amid the pathos?Of these quiet fields?And read these words.
Julia Miller
WE quarreled that morning,?For he was sixty--five, and I was thirty,?And I was nervous and heavy with the child?Whose birth I dreaded.?I thought over the last letter written me?By that estranged young soul?Whose betrayal of me I had concealed?By marrying the old man.?Then I took morphine and sat down to read.?Across the blackness that came over my eyes?I see the flickering light of these words even now:?"And Jesus said unto him, Verily?I say unto thee, To-day thou shalt?Be with me in paradise."
Johnnie Sayre
FATHER, thou canst never know?The anguish that smote my heart?For my disobedience, the moment I felt?The remorseless wheel of the engine?Sink into the crying flesh of my leg.?As they carried me to the home of widow Morris?I could see the school-house in the valley?To which I played truant to steal rides upon the trains.?I prayed to live until I could ask your forgiveness--?And then your tears, your broken words of comfort!?From the solace of that hour I have gained infinite happiness. Thou wert wise to chisel for me:?"Taken from the evil to come."
Charlie French
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?Was firing the cannon brought to Spoon River?From Vicksburg by Captain Harris;?And the lemonade stands were running?And the band was playing,?To have it all spoiled?By a piece of a cap shot under the skin of my hand,?And the boys all crowding about me saying:?"You'll die of lock-jaw, Charlie, sure."?Oh, dear! oh, dear!?What chum of mine could have done it?
Zenas Witt
I WAS sixteen, and I had the most terrible dreams,?And specks before my eyes, and nervous weakness.?And I couldn't remember the books I read,?Like Frank Drummer who memorized page after page.?And my back was weak, and I worried and worried,?And I was embarrassed and stammered my lessons,?And when I stood up to recite I'd forget?Everything that I had studied.?Well, I saw Dr. Weese's advertisement,?And there I read everything in print,?Just as if he had known me;?And about the dreams which I couldn't help.?So I knew I was marked for an early grave.?And I worried until I had a cough?And then the dreams stopped.?And then I slept the sleep without dreams?Here on the hill by the river.
Theodore the Poet
As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours?On the shore of the turbid Spoon?With deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish's burrow, Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead,?First his waving antennae, like straws of hay,?And soon his body, colored like soap-stone,?Gemmed with eyes of jet.?And you wondered in a trance of thought?What he knew, what he desired, and why he lived at all.?But later your vision watched for men and women?Hiding in burrows of fate amid great cities,?Looking for the souls of them to come out,?So that you could see?How they lived, and for what,?And why they kept crawling so busily?Along the sandy way where water fails?As the summer wanes.
The Town Marshal
THE: Prohibitionists made me Town Marshal?When the saloons were voted out,?Because when I was a drinking man,?Before I joined the church, I killed a Swede?At the saw-mill near Maple Grove.?And they wanted a terrible man,?Grim, righteous, strong, courageous,?And a hater of saloons and drinkers,?To keep law and order in the village.?And they presented me with a loaded cane?With which I struck Jack McGuire?Before he drew the gun with which he killed?The Prohibitionists spent their money in vain?To hang him, for in a dream?I appeared to one of the twelve jurymen?And told him the whole secret story.?Fourteen years were enough for killing me.
Jack McGuire
THEY would have lynched me?Had I not been secretly hurried away?To the jail at Peoria.?And yet I was going peacefully home,?Carrying my jug, a little drunk,?When Logan, the marshal, halted me?Called me a drunken hound and shook me?And, when I cursed him for it, struck me?With that Prohibition loaded cane--?All this before I shot him.?They would have hanged me except for this:?My lawyer, Kinsey Keene, was helping to land?Old Thomas Rhodes for wrecking the bank,?And the judge was a friend of?Rhodes And wanted him to escape,?And Kinsey offered to quit on?Rhodes For fourteen years for me.?And the bargain was made.?I served my time?And learned to read and write.
Jacob Goodpasture
WHEN Fort Sumter fell and the war came?I cried out in bitterness of soul:?"O glorious republic now no more!"?When they buried my soldier son?To the call of trumpets and the sound of drums?My heart broke beneath the weight?Of