Spoon River Anthology | Page 9

and he can't get bread?Without stealing it, why the boy will steal.?It's the way the people regard the theft of the apple?That makes the boy what he is.
Lucius Atherton
WHEN my moustache curled,?And my hair was black,?And I wore tight trousers?And a diamond stud,?I was an excellent knave of hearts and took many a trick.?But when the gray hairs began to appear--?Lo! a new generation of girls?Laughed at me, not fearing me,?And I had no more exciting adventures?Wherein I was all but shot for a heartless devil,?But only drabby affairs, warmed-over affairs?Of other days and other men.?And time went on until I lived at?Mayer's restaurant,?Partaking of short-orders, a gray, untidy,?Toothless, discarded, rural Don Juan. . . .?There is a mighty shade here who sings?Of one named Beatrice;?And I see now that the force that made him great?Drove me to the dregs of life.
Homer Clapp
OFTEN Aner Clute at the gate?Refused me the parting kiss,?Saying we should be engaged before that;?And just with a distant clasp of the hand?She bade me good-night, as I brought her home?From the skating rink or the revival.?No sooner did my departing footsteps die away?Than Lucius Atherton,?(So I learned when Aner went to Peoria)?Stole in at her window, or took her riding?Behind his spanking team of bays?Into the country.?The shock of it made me settle down?And I put all the money I got from my father's estate?Into the canning factory, to get the job?Of head accountant, and lost it all.?And then I knew I was one of Life's fools,?Whom only death would treat as the equal?Of other men, making me feel like a man.
Deacon Taylor
I BELONGED to the church,?And to the party of prohibition;?And the villagers thought I died of eating watermelon.?In truth I had cirrhosis of the liver,?For every noon for thirty years,?I slipped behind the prescription partition?In Trainor's drug store?And poured a generous drink?From the bottle marked "Spiritus frumenti."
Sam Hookey
I RAN away from home with the circus,?Having fallen in love with Mademoiselle Estralada,?The lion tamer.?One time, having starved the lions?For more than a day,?I entered the cage and began to beat Brutus?And Leo and Gypsy.?Whereupon Brutus sprang upon me,?And killed me.?On entering these regions?I met a shadow who cursed me,?And said it served me right. . . .?It was Robespierre!
Cooney Potter
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,?I bustled through the years with axe and plow,?Toiling, denying myself, my wife, my sons, my daughters.?Squire Higbee wrongs me to say?That I died from smoking Red Eagle cigars.?Eating hot pie and gulping coffee?During the scorching hours of harvest time?Brought me here ere I had reached my sixtieth year.
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.
Nellie Clark
I WAS only eight years old;?And before I grew up and knew what it meant?I had no words for it, except?That I was frightened and told my?Mother; And that my Father got a pistol?And would have killed Charlie, who was a big boy,?Fifteen years old, except for his Mother.?Nevertheless the story clung to me.?But the man who married me, a widower of thirty-five,?Was a newcomer and never heard it?'Till two years after we were married.?Then he considered himself cheated,?And the village agreed that I was not really a virgin.?Well, he deserted me, and I died?The following winter.
Louise Smith
HERBERT broke our engagement of eight years?When Annabelle returned to the village From the?Seminary, ah me!?If I had let my love for him alone?It might have grown into a beautiful sorrow--?Who knows? -- filling my life with healing fragrance.?But I tortured it, I poisoned it?I blinded its eyes, and it became hatred--?Deadly ivy instead of clematis.?And my soul fell from its support?Its tendrils tangled in decay.?Do not let the will play gardener to your soul?Unless you are sure?It is wiser than your soul's