Chapter 6

It was moon-light, and the earth sparkled With new-fallen frost. It was midnight and not a soul abroad. Out of the chimney of the court-house A gray-hound of smoke leapt and chased The northwest wind. I carried a ladder to the landing of the stairs And leaned it against the frame of the trap-door In the ceiling of the portico, And I crawled under the roof and amid the rafters And flung among the seasoned timbers A lighted handful of oil-soaked waste. Then I came down and slunk away. In a little while the fire-bell rang— Clang! Clang! Clang! And the Spoon River ladder company Came with a dozen buckets and began to pour water On the glorious bon-fire, growing hotter Higher and brighter, till the walls fell in And the limestone columns where Lincoln stood Crashed like trees when the woodman fells them. When I came back from Joliet There was a new court house with a dome. For I was punished like all who destroy The past for the sake of the future.

Dillard Sissman

The buzzards wheel slowly In wide circles, in a sky Faintly hazed as from dust from the road. And a wind sweeps through the pasture where I lie Beating the grass into long waves. My kite is above the wind, Though now and then it wobbles, Like a man shaking his shoulders; And the tail streams out momentarily, Then sinks to rest. And the buzzards wheel and wheel, Sweeping the zenith with wide circles Above my kite. And the hills sleep. And a farm house, white as snow, Peeps from green trees—far away. And I watch my kite, For the thin moon will kindle herself ere long, Then she will swing like a pendulum dial To the tail of my kite. A spurt of flame like a water-dragon Dazzles my eyes— I am shaken as a banner!

Jonathan Houghton

There is the caw of a crow, And the hesitant song of a thrush. There is the tinkle of a cowbell far away, And the voice of a plowman on Shipley’s hill. The forest beyond the orchard is still With midsummer stillness; And along the road a wagon chuckles, Loaded with corn, going to Atterbury. And an old man sits under a tree asleep, And an old woman crosses the road, Coming from the orchard with a bucket of blackberries. And a boy lies in the grass Near the feet of the old man, And looks up at the sailing clouds, And longs, and longs, and longs For what, he knows not: For manhood, for life, for the unknown world! Then thirty years passed, And the boy returned worn out by life And found the orchard vanished, And the forest gone, And the house made over, And the roadway filled with dust from automobiles— And himself desiring The Hill!

E. C. Culbertson

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? And is it true that my successful labors In the County Board, without which Not one stone would have been placed on another, And the contributions out of my own pocket To build the temple, are but memories among the people, Gradually fading away, and soon to descend With them to this oblivion where I lie? In truth, I can so believe. For it is a law of the Kingdom of Heaven That whoso enters the vineyard at the eleventh hour Shall receive a full day’s pay. And it is a law of the Kingdom of this World That those who first oppose a good work Seize it and make it their own, When the corner—stone is laid, And memorial tablets are erected.

Shack Dye

The white men played all sorts of jokes on me. They took big fish off my hook And put little ones on, while I was away Getting a stringer, and made me believe I hadn’t seen aright the fish I had caught. When Burr Robbins circus came to town They got the ring master to let a tame leopard Into the ring, and made me believe I was whipping a wild beast like Samson When I, for an offer of fifty dollars, Dragged him out to his cage. One time I entered my blacksmith shop And shook as I saw some horse-shoes crawling Across the floor, as if alive— Walter Simmons had put a magnet Under the barrel of water. Yet everyone of you, you white men, Was fooled about fish and about leopards too, And you didn’t know any more than the horse-shoes did What moved you about Spoon River.

Hildrup Tubbs

I made two fights for the people. First I left my party, bearing the gonfalon Of independence, for reform, and was defeated. Next I used my rebel strength To capture the standard of my old party— And I captured it, but I was defeated. Discredited and discarded, misanthropical, I turned to the solace of gold And I used my remnant of power To fasten myself like a saprophyte Upon the putrescent carcass Of Thomas Rhodes, bankrupt bank, As assignee of the fund. Everyone now turned from me. My hair grew white, My purple lusts grew gray, Tobacco and whisky lost their savor And for years Death ignored me As he does a hog.

Henry Tripp

The bank broke and I lost my savings. I was sick of the tiresome game in Spoon River And I made up my mind to run away And leave my place in life and my family; But just as the midnight train pulled in, Quick off the steps jumped Cully Green And Martin Vise, and began to fight To settle their ancient rivalry, Striking each other with fists that sounded Like the blows of knotted clubs. Now it seemed to me that Cully was winning, When his bloody face broke into a grin Of sickly cowardice, leaning on Martin And whining out “We’re good friends, Mart, You know that I’m your friend.” But a terrible punch from Martin knocked him Around and around and into a heap. And then they arrested me as a witness, And I lost my train and staid in Spoon River To wage my battle of life to the end. Oh, Cully Green, you were my savior— You, so ashamed and drooped for years, Loitering listless about the streets, And tying rags round your festering soul, Who failed to fight it out.

Granville Calhoun

I wanted to be County Judge One more term, so as to round out a service Of thirty years. But my friends left me and joined my enemies, And they elected a new man. Then a spirit of revenge seized me, And I infected my four sons with it, And I brooded upon retaliation, Until the great physician, Nature, Smote me through with paralysis To give my soul and body a rest. Did my sons get power and money? Did they serve the people or yoke them, To till and harvest fields of self? For how could they ever forget My face at my bed-room window, Sitting helpless amid my golden cages Of singing canaries, Looking at the old court-house?

Henry C. Calhoun

I reached the highest place in Spoon River, But through what bitterness of spirit! The face of my father, sitting speechless, Child-like, watching his canaries, And looking at the court-house window Of the county judge’s room, And his admonitions to me to seek My own in life, and punish Spoon River To avenge the wrong the people did him, Filled me with furious energy To seek for wealth and seek for power. But what did he do but send me along The path that leads to the grove of the Furies? I followed the path and I tell you this: On the way to the grove you’ll pass the Fates, Shadow-eyed, bent over their weaving. Stop for a moment, and if you see The thread of revenge leap out of the shuttle Then quickly snatch from Atropos The shears and cut it, lest your sons And the children of them and their children Wear the envenomed robe.

Alfred Moir

Why was I not devoured by self-contempt, And rotted down by indifference And impotent revolt like Indignation Jones? Why, with all of my errant steps Did I miss the fate of Willard Fluke? And why, though I stood at Burchard’s bar, As a sort of decoy for the house to the boys To buy the drinks, did the curse of drink Fall on me like rain that runs off, Leaving the soul of me dry and clean? And why did I never kill a man Like Jack McGuire? But instead I mounted a little in life, And I owe it all to a book I read. But why did I go to Mason City, Where I chanced to see the book in a window, With its garish cover luring my eye? And why did my soul respond to the book, As I read it over and over?

Perry Zoll

My thanks, friends of the County Scientific Association, For this modest boulder, And its little tablet of bronze. Twice I tried to join your honored body, And was rejected And when my little brochure On the intelligence of plants Began to attract attention You almost voted me in. After that I grew beyond the need of you And your recognition. Yet I do not reject your memorial stone Seeing that I should, in so doing, Deprive you of honor to yourselves.

Dippold the Optician

What do you see now? Globes of red, yellow, purple. Just a moment! And now? My father and mother and sisters. Yes! And now? Knights at arms, beautiful women, kind faces. Try this. A field of grain—a city. Very good! And now? A young woman with angels bending over her. A heavier lens! And now? Many women with bright eyes and open lips. Try this. Just a goblet on a table. Oh I see! Try this lens! Just an open space—I see nothing in particular. Well, now! Pine trees, a lake, a summer sky. That’s better. And now? A book. Read a page for me. I can’t. My eyes are carried beyond the page. Try this lens. Depths of air. Excellent! And now! Light, just light making everything below it a toy world. Very well, we’ll make the glasses accordingly.

Magrady Graham

Tell me, was Altgeld elected Governor? For when the returns began to come in And Cleveland was sweeping the East It was too much for you, poor old heart, Who had striven for democracy In the long, long years of defeat. And like a watch that is worn I felt you growing slower until you stopped. Tell me, was Altgeld elected, And what did he do? Did they bring his head on a platter to a dancer, Or did he triumph for the people? For when I saw him And took his hand, The child-like blueness of his eyes Moved me to tears, And there was an air of eternity about him, Like the cold, clear light that rests at dawn On the hills!

Archibald Higbie

I loathed you, Spoon River. I tried to rise above you, I was ashamed of you. I despised you As the place of my nativity. And there in Rome, among the artists, Speaking Italian, speaking French, I seemed to myself at times to be free Of every trace of my origin. I seemed to be reaching the heights of art And to breathe the air that the masters breathed And to see the world with their eyes. But still they’d pass my work and say: “What are you driving at, my friend? Sometimes the face looks like Apollo’s At others it has a trace of Lincoln’s.” There was no culture, you know, in Spoon River And I burned with shame and held my peace. And what could I do, all covered over And weighted down with western soil Except aspire, and pray for another Birth in the world, with all of Spoon River Rooted out of my soul?

Tom Merritt

At first I suspected something— She acted so calm and absent-minded. And one day I heard the back door shut As I entered the front, and I saw him slink Back of the smokehouse into the lot And run across the field. And I meant to kill him on sight. But that day, walking near Fourth Bridge Without a stick or a stone at hand, All of a sudden I saw him standing Scared to death, holding his rabbits, And all I could say was, “Don’t, Don’t, Don’t,” As he aimed and fired at my heart.

Mrs. Merritt

Silent before the jury Returning no word to the judge when he asked me If I had aught to say against the sentence, Only shaking my head. What could I say to people who thought That a woman of thirty-five was at fault When her lover of nineteen killed her husband? Even though she had said to him over and over, “Go away, Elmer, go far away, I have maddened your brain with the gift of my body: You will do some terrible thing.” And just as I feared, he killed my husband; With which I had nothing to do, before God Silent for thirty years in prison And the iron gates of Joliet Swung as the gray and silent trusties Carried me out in a coffin.

Elmer Karr

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 When I returned from fourteen years in prison! Oh, helping hands that in the church received me And heard with tears my penitent confession, Who took the sacrament of bread and wine! Repent, ye living ones, and rest with Jesus.

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 foul, 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 sorrow? Child! Child Death is better than Life.

Edith Conant

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. And we—we, the memories, stand here for ourselves alone, For no eye marks us, or would know why we are here. Your husband is dead, your sister lives far away, Your father is bent with age; He has forgotten you, he scarcely leaves the house Any more. No one remembers your exquisite face, Your lyric voice! How you sang, even on the morning you were stricken, With piercing sweetness, with thrilling sorrow, Before the advent of the child which died with you. It is all forgotten, save by us, the memories, Who are forgotten by the world. All is changed, save the river and the hill— Even they are changed. Only the burning sun and the quiet stars are the same. And we—we, the memories, stand here in awe, Our eyes closed with the weariness of tears— In immeasurable weariness

Charles Webster

The pine woods on the hill, And the farmhouse miles away, Showed clear as though behind a lens Under a sky of peacock blue! But a blanket of cloud by afternoon Muffled the earth. And you walked the road And the clover field, where the only sound Was the cricket’s liquid tremolo. Then the sun went down between great drifts Of distant storms. For a rising wind Swept clean the sky and blew the flames Of the unprotected stars; And swayed the russet moon, Hanging between the rim of the hill And the twinkling boughs of the apple orchard. You walked the shore in thought Where the throats of the waves were like whip-poor-wills Singing beneath the water and crying To the wash of the wind in the cedar trees, Till you stood, too full for tears, by the cot, And looking up saw Jupiter, Tipping the spire of the giant pine, And looking down saw my vacant chair, Rocked by the wind on the lonely porch— Be brave, Beloved!

Father Malloy

You are over there, Father Malloy, Where holy ground is, and the cross marks every grave, Not here with us on the hill— Us of wavering faith, and clouded vision And drifting hope, and unforgiven sins. You were so human, Father Malloy, Taking a friendly glass sometimes with us, Siding with us who would rescue Spoon River From the coldness and the dreariness of village morality. You were like a traveler who brings a little box of sand From the wastes about the pyramids And makes them real and Egypt real. You were a part of and related to a great past, And yet you were so close to many of us. You believed in the joy of life. You did not seem to be ashamed of the flesh. You faced life as it is, And as it changes. Some of us almost came to you, Father Malloy, Seeing how your church had divined the heart, And provided for it, Through Peter the Flame, Peter the Rock.

Ami Green

Not “a youth with hoary head and haggard eye”, But an old man with a smooth skin And black hair! I had the face of a boy as long as I lived, And for years a soul that was stiff and bent, In a world which saw me just as a jest, To be hailed familiarly when it chose, And loaded up as a man when it chose, Being neither man nor boy. In truth it was soul as well as body Which never matured, and I say to you That the much-sought prize of eternal youth Is just arrested growth.

Calvin Campbell

Ye who are kicking against Fate, Tell me how it is that on this hill-side Running down to the river, Which fronts the sun and the south-wind, This plant draws from the air and soil Poison and becomes poison ivy? And this plant draws from the same air and soil Sweet elixirs and colors and becomes arbutus? And both flourish? You may blame Spoon River for what it is, But whom do you blame for the will in you That feeds itself and makes you dock-weed, Jimpson, dandelion or mullen And which can never use any soil or air So as to make you jessamine or wistaria?

Henry Layton

Whoever thou art who passest by Know that my father was gentle, And my mother was violent, While I was born the whole of such hostile halves, Not intermixed and fused, But each distinct, feebly soldered together. Some of you saw me as gentle, Some as violent, Some as both. But neither half of me wrought my ruin. It was the falling asunder of halves, Never a part of each other, That left me a lifeless soul.

Harlan Sewall

You never understood, O unknown one, Why it was I repaid Your devoted friendship and delicate ministrations First with diminished thanks, Afterward by gradually withdrawing my presence from you, So that I might not be compelled to thank you, And then with silence which followed upon Our final Separation. You had cured my diseased soul. But to cure it You saw my disease, you knew my secret, And that is why I fled from you. For though when our bodies rise from pain We kiss forever the watchful hands That gave us wormwood, while we shudder For thinking of the wormwood, A soul that’s cured is a different matter, For there we’d blot from memory The soft-toned words, the searching eyes, And stand forever oblivious, Not so much of the sorrow itself As of the hand that healed it.

Ippolit Konovaloff

I was a gun-smith in Odessa. One night the police broke in the room Where a group of us were reading Spencer. And seized our books and arrested us. But I escaped and came to New York And thence to Chicago, and then to Spoon River, Where I could study my Kant in peace And eke out a living repairing guns Look at my moulds! My architectonics One for a barrel, one for a hammer And others for other parts of a gun! Well, now suppose no gun-smith living Had anything else but duplicate moulds Of these I show you—well, all guns Would be just alike, with a hammer to hit The cap and a barrel to carry the shot All acting alike for themselves, and all Acting against each other alike. And there would be your world of guns! Which nothing could ever free from itself Except a Moulder with different moulds To mould the metal over.

Henry Phipps

I was the Sunday-school superintendent, The dummy president of the wagon works And the canning factory, Acting for Thomas Rhodes and the banking clique; My son the cashier of the bank, Wedded to Rhodes’ daughter, My week days spent in making money, My Sundays at church and in prayer. In everything a cog in the wheel of things-as-they-are: Of money, master and man, made white With the paint of the Christian creed. And then: The bank collapsed. I stood and hooked at the wrecked machine— The wheels with blow-holes stopped with putty and painted; The rotten bolts, the broken rods; And only the hopper for souls fit to be used again In a new devourer of life, When newspapers, judges and money-magicians Build over again. I was stripped to the bone, but I lay in the Rock of Ages, Seeing now through the game, no longer a dupe, And knowing “the upright shall dwell in the land But the years of the wicked shall be shortened.” Then suddenly, Dr. Meyers discovered A cancer in my liver. I was not, after all, the particular care of God Why, even thus standing on a peak Above the mists through which I had climbed, And ready for larger life in the world, Eternal forces Moved me on with a push.

Harry Wilmans

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, “Whether it be assailed by a barbarous tribe of Tagalogs Or the greatest power in Europe.” And we cheered and cheered the speech and the flag he waved As he spoke. And I went to the war in spite of my father, And followed the flag till I saw it raised By our camp in a rice field near Manila, And all of us cheered and cheered it. But there were flies and poisonous things; And there was the deadly water, And the cruel heat, And the sickening, putrid food; And the smell of the trench just back of the tents Where the soldiers went to empty themselves; And there were the whores who followed us, full of syphilis; And beastly acts between ourselves or alone, With bullying, hatred, degradation among us, And days of loathing and nights of fear To the hour of the charge through the steaming swamp, Following the flag, Till I fell with a scream, shot through the guts. Now there’s a flag over me in Spoon River. A flag! A flag!

John Wasson

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, Lengthening out the farewell to me off to the war with the British, And then the long, hard years down to the day of Yorktown. And then my search for Rebecca, Finding her at last in Virginia, Two children dead in the meanwhile. We went by oxen to Tennessee, Thence after years to Illinois, At last to Spoon River. We cut the buffalo grass, We felled the forests, We built the school houses, built the bridges, Leveled the roads and tilled the fields Alone with poverty, scourges, death— If Harry Wilmans who fought the Filipinos Is to have a flag on his grave Take it from mine.

Many Soldiers

The idea danced before us as a flag; The sound of martial music; The thrill of carrying a gun; Advancement in the world on coming home; A glint of glory, wrath for foes; A dream of duty to country or to God. But these were things in ourselves, shining before us, They were not the power behind us, Which was the Almighty hand of Life, Like fire at earth’s center making mountains, Or pent up waters that cut them through. Do you remember the iron band The blacksmith, Shack Dye, welded Around the oak on Bennet’s lawn, From which to swing a hammock, That daughter Janet might repose in, reading On summer afternoons? And that the growing tree at last Sundered the iron band? But not a cell in all the tree Knew aught save that it thrilled with life, Nor cared because the hammock fell In the dust with Milton’s Poems.

Godwin James