Chapter 7

Harry Wilmans! You who fell in a swamp Near Manila, following the flag You were not wounded by the greatness of a dream, Or destroyed by ineffectual work, Or driven to madness by Satanic snags; You were not torn by aching nerves, Nor did you carry great wounds to your old age. You did not starve, for the government fed you. You did not suffer yet cry “forward” To an army which you led Against a foe with mocking smiles, Sharper than bayonets. You were not smitten down By invisible bombs. You were not rejected By those for whom you were defeated. You did not eat the savorless bread Which a poor alchemy had made from ideals. You went to Manila, Harry Wilmans, While I enlisted in the bedraggled army Of bright-eyed, divine youths, Who surged forward, who were driven back and fell Sick, broken, crying, shorn of faith, Following the flag of the Kingdom of Heaven. You and I, Harry Wilmans, have fallen In our several ways, not knowing Good from bad, defeat from victory, Nor what face it is that smiles Behind the demoniac mask.

Lyman King

You may think, passer-by, that Fate Is a pit-fall outside of yourself, Around which you may walk by the use of foresight And wisdom. Thus you believe, viewing the lives of other men, As one who in God-like fashion bends over an anthill, Seeing how their difficulties could be avoided. But pass on into life: In time you shall see Fate approach you In the shape of your own image in the mirror; Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth, And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest, And you shall know that guest And read the authentic message of his eyes.

Caroline Branson

With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked, As often before, the April fields till star-light Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood, Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing Like notes of music that run together, into winning, In the inspired improvisation of love! But to put back of us as a canticle ended The rapt enchantment of the flesh, In which our souls swooned, down, down, Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves— Annihilated in love! To leave these behind for a room with lamps: And to stand with our Secret mocking itself, And hiding itself amid flowers and mandolins, Stared at by all between salad and coffee. And to see him tremble, and feel myself Prescient, as one who signs a bond— Not flaming with gifts and pledges heaped With rosy hands over his brow. And then, O night! deliberate! unlovely! With all of our wooing blotted out by the winning, In a chosen room in an hour that was known to all! Next day he sat so listless, almost cold So strangely changed, wondering why I wept, Till a kind of sick despair and voluptuous madness Seized us to make the pact of death.

A stalk of the earth-sphere, Frail as star-light; Waiting to be drawn once again Into creation’s stream. But next time to be given birth Gazed at by Raphael and St. Francis Sometimes as they pass. For I am their little brother, To be known clearly face to face Through a cycle of birth hereafter run. You may know the seed and the soil; You may feel the cold rain fall, But only the earth-sphere, only heaven Knows the secret of the seed In the nuptial chamber under the soil. Throw me into the stream again, Give me another trial— Save me, Shelley!

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 beneficent 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!

Hamlet Micure

In a lingering fever many visions come to you: I was in the little house again With its great yard of clover Running down to the board-fence, Shadowed by the oak tree, Where we children had our swing. Yet the little house was a manor hall Set in a lawn, and by the lawn was the sea. I was in the room where little Paul Strangled from diphtheria, But yet it was not this room— It was a sunny verandah enclosed With mullioned windows And in a chair sat a man in a dark cloak With a face like Euripides. He had come to visit me, or I had gone to visit him—I could not tell. We could hear the beat of the sea, the clover nodded Under a summer wind, and little Paul came With clover blossoms to the window and smiled. Then I said: “What is ‘divine despair,’ Alfred?” “Have you read ‘Tears, Idle Tears’?” he asked. “Yes, but you do not there express divine despair.” “My poor friend,” he answered, “that was why the despair Was divine.”

Mabel Osborne

Your red blossoms amid green leaves Are drooping, beautiful geranium! But you do not ask for water. You cannot speak! You do not need to speak— Everyone knows that you are dying of thirst, Yet they do not bring water! They pass on, saying: “The geranium wants water.” And I, who had happiness to share And longed to share your happiness; I who loved you, Spoon River, And craved your love, Withered before your eyes, Spoon River— Thirsting, thirsting, Voiceless from chasteness of soul to ask you for love, You who knew and saw me perish before you, Like this geranium which someone has planted over me, And left to die.

William H. Herndon

There by the window in the old house Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley, My days of labor closed, sitting out life’s decline, Day by day did I look in my memory, As one who gazes in an enchantress’ crystal globe, And I saw the figures of the past As if in a pageant glassed by a shining dream, Move through the incredible sphere of time. And I saw a man arise from the soil like a fabled giant And throw himself over a deathless destiny, Master of great armies, head of the republic, Bringing together into a dithyramb of recreative song The epic hopes of a people; At the same time Vulcan of sovereign fires, Where imperishable shields and swords were beaten out From spirits tempered in heaven. Look in the crystal! See how he hastens on To the place where his path comes up to the path Of a child of Plutarch and Shakespeare. O Lincoln, actor indeed, playing well your part And Booth, who strode in a mimic play within the play, Often and often I saw you, As the cawing crows winged their way to the wood Over my house—top at solemn sunsets, There by my window, Alone.

Rebecca Wasson

Spring and Summer, Fall and Winter and Spring, After each other drifting, past my window drifting! And I lay so many years watching them drift and counting The years till a terror came in my heart at times, With the feeling that I had become eternal; at last My hundredth year was reached! And still I lay Hearing the tick of the clock, and the low of cattle And the scream of a jay flying through falling leaves! Day after day alone in a room of the house Of a daughter-in-law stricken with age and gray. And by night, or looking out of the window by day My thought ran back, it seemed, through infinite time To North Carolina and all my girlhood days, And John, my John, away to the war with the British, And all the children, the deaths, and all the sorrows. And that stretch of years like a prairie in Illinois Through which great figures passed like hurrying horsemen, Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Webster, Clay. O beautiful young republic for whom my John and I Gave all of our strength and love! And O my John! Why, when I lay so helpless in bed for years, Praying for you to come, was your coming delayed? Seeing that with a cry of rapture, like that I uttered When you found me in old Virginia after the war, I cried when I beheld you there by the bed, As the sun stood low in the west growing smaller and fainter In the light of your face!

Rutherford McDowell

They brought me ambrotypes Of the old pioneers to enlarge. And sometimes one sat for me— Some one who was in being When giant hands from the womb of the world Tore the republic. What was it in their eyes?— For I could never fathom That mystical pathos of drooped eyelids, And the serene sorrow of their eyes. It was like a pool of water, Amid oak trees at the edge of a forest, Where the leaves fall, As you hear the crow of a cock From a far-off farm house, seen near the hills Where the third generation lives, and the strong men And the strong women are gone and forgotten. And these grand-children and great grand-children Of the pioneers! Truly did my camera record their faces, too, With so much of the old strength gone, And the old faith gone, And the old mastery of life gone, And the old courage gone, Which labors and loves and suffers and sings Under the sun!

Hannah Armstrong

I wrote him a letter asking him for old times’ sake To discharge my sick boy from the army; But maybe he couldn’t read it. Then I went to town and had James Garber, Who wrote beautifully, write him a letter. But maybe that was lost in the mails. So I traveled all the way to Washington. I was more than an hour finding the White House. And when I found it they turned me away, Hiding their smiles. Then I thought: “Oh, well, he ain’t the same as when I boarded him And he and my husband worked together And all of us called him Abe, there in Menard.” As a last attempt I turned to a guard and said: “Please say it’s old Aunt Hannah Armstrong From Illinois, come to see him about her sick boy In the army.” Well, just in a moment they let me in! And when he saw me he broke in a laugh, And dropped his business as president, And wrote in his own hand Doug’s discharge, Talking the while of the early days, And telling stories.

Lucinda Matlock

I went to the dances at Chandlerville, And played snap-out at Winchester. One time we changed partners, Driving home in the moonlight 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.

Davis Matlock

Suppose it is nothing but the hive: That there are drones and workers And queens, and nothing but storing honey— (Material things as well as culture and wisdom)— For the next generation, this generation never living, Except as it swarms in the sun-light of youth, Strengthening its wings on what has been gathered, And tasting, on the way to the hive From the clover field, the delicate spoil. Suppose all this, and suppose the truth: That the nature of man is greater Than nature’s need in the hive; And you must bear the burden of life, As well as the urge from your spirit’s excess— Well, I say to live it out like a god Sure of immortal life, though you are in doubt, Is the way to live it. If that doesn’t make God proud of you Then God is nothing but gravitation Or sleep is the golden goal.

Herman Altman

Did I follow Truth wherever she led, And stand against the whole world for a cause, And uphold the weak against the strong? If I did I would be remembered among men As I was known in life among the people, And as I was hated and loved on earth, Therefore, build no monument to me, And carve no bust for me, Lest, though I become not a demi-god, The reality of my soul be lost, So that thieves and liars, Who were my enemies and destroyed me, And the children of thieves and liars, May claim me and affirm before my bust That they stood with me in the days of my defeat. Build me no monument Lest my memory be perverted to the uses Of lying and oppression. My lovers and their children must not be dispossessed of me; I would be the untarnished possession forever Of those for whom I lived.

Jennie M’Grew

Not, where the stairway turns in the dark A hooded figure, shriveled under a flowing cloak! Not yellow eyes in the room at night, Staring out from a surface of cobweb gray! And not the flap of a condor wing When the roar of life in your ears begins As a sound heard never before! But on a sunny afternoon, By a country road, Where purple rag-weeds bloom along a straggling fence And the field is gleaned, and the air is still To see against the sun-light something black Like a blot with an iris rim— That is the sign to eyes of second sight. . . And that I saw!

Columbus Cheney

This weeping willow! Why do you not plant a few For the millions of children not yet born, As well as for us? Are they not non-existent, or cells asleep Without mind? Or do they come to earth, their birth Rupturing the memory of previous being? Answer! The field of unexplored intuition is yours. But in any case why not plant willows for them, As well as for us?

Wallace Ferguson

There at Geneva where Mt. Blanc floated above The wine-hued lake like a cloud, when a breeze was blown Out of an empty sky of blue, and the roaring Rhone Hurried under the bridge through chasms of rock; And the music along the cafés was part of the splendor Of dancing water under a torrent of light; And the purer part of the genius of Jean Rousseau Was the silent music of all we saw or heard— There at Geneva, I say, was the rapture less Because I could not link myself with the I of yore, When twenty years before I wandered about Spoon River? Nor remember what I was nor what I felt? We live in the hour all free of the hours gone by. Therefore, O soul, if you lose yourself in death, And wake in some Geneva by some Mt. Blanc, What do you care if you know not yourself as the you Who lived and loved in a little corner of earth Known as Spoon River ages and ages vanished?

Marie Bateson

You observe the carven hand With the index finger pointing heavenward. That is the direction, no doubt. But how shall one follow it? It is well to abstain from murder and lust, To forgive, do good to others, worship God Without graven images. But these are external means after all By which you chiefly do good to yourself. The inner kernel is freedom, It is light, purity— I can no more, Find the goal or lose it, according to your vision.

Tennessee Claflin Shope

I was the laughing-stock of the village, Chiefly of the people of good sense, as they call themselves— Also of the learned, like Rev. Peet, who read Greek The same as English. For instead of talking free trade, Or preaching some form of baptism; Instead of believing in the efficacy Of walking cracks, picking up pins the right way, Seeing the new moon over the right shoulder, Or curing rheumatism with blue glass, I asserted the sovereignty of my own soul. Before Mary Baker G. Eddy even got started With what she called science I had mastered the “Bhagavad Gita,” And cured my soul, before Mary Began to cure bodies with souls— Peace to all worlds!

Plymouth Rock Joe

Why are you running so fast hither and thither Chasing midges or butterflies? Some of you are standing solemnly scratching for grubs; Some of you are waiting for corn to be scattered. This is life, is it? Cock-a-doodle-do! Very well, Thomas Rhodes, You are cock of the walk, no doubt. But here comes Elliott Hawkins, Gluck, Gluck, Gluck, attracting political followers. Quah! quah! quah! why so poetical, Minerva, This gray morning? Kittie—quah—quah! for shame, Lucius Atherton, The raucous squawk you evoked from the throat Of Aner Clute will be taken up later By Mrs. Benjamin Pantier as a cry Of votes for women: Ka dook—dook! What inspiration has come to you, Margaret Fuller Slack? And why does your gooseberry eye Flit so liquidly, Tennessee Claflin Shope? Are you trying to fathom the esotericism of an egg? Your voice is very metallic this morning, Hortense Robbins— Almost like a guinea hen’s! Quah! That was a guttural sigh, Isaiah Beethoven; Did you see the shadow of the hawk, Or did you step upon the drumsticks Which the cook threw out this morning? Be chivalric, heroic, or aspiring, Metaphysical, religious, or rebellious, You shall never get out of the barnyard Except by way of over the fence Mixed with potato peelings and such into the trough!

Imanuel Ehrenhardt

I began with Sir William Hamilton’s lectures. Then studied Dugald Stewart; And then John Locke on the Understanding, And then Descartes, Fichte and Schelling, Kant and then Schopenhauer— Books I borrowed from old Judge Somers. All read with rapturous industry Hoping it was reserved to me To grasp the tail of the ultimate secret, And drag it out of its hole. My soul flew up ten thousand miles And only the moon looked a little bigger. Then I fell back, how glad of the earth! All through the soul of William Jones Who showed me a letter of John Muir.

Samuel Gardner

I who kept the greenhouse, Lover of trees and flowers, Oft in life saw this umbrageous elm, Measuring its generous branches with my eye, And listened to its rejoicing leaves Lovingly patting each other With sweet aeolian whispers. And well they might: For the roots had grown so wide and deep That the soil of the hill could not withhold Aught of its virtue, enriched by rain, And warmed by the sun; But yielded it all to the thrifty roots, Through which it was drawn and whirled to the trunk, And thence to the branches, and into the leaves, Wherefrom the breeze took life and sang. Now I, an under-tenant of the earth, can see That the branches of a tree Spread no wider than its roots. And how shall the soul of a man Be larger than the life he has lived?

Dow Kritt

Samuel is forever talking of his elm— But I did not need to die to learn about roots: I, who dug all the ditches about Spoon River. Look at my elm! Sprung from as good a seed as his, Sown at the same time, It is dying at the top: Not from lack of life, nor fungus, Nor destroying insect, as the sexton thinks. Look, Samuel, where the roots have struck rock, And can no further spread. And all the while the top of the tree Is tiring itself out, and dying, Trying to grow.

William Jones

Once in a while a curious weed unknown to me, Needing a name from my books; Once in a while a letter from Yeomans. Out of the mussel-shells gathered along the shore Sometimes a pearl with a glint like meadow rue: Then betimes a letter from Tyndall in England, Stamped with the stamp of Spoon River. I, lover of Nature, beloved for my love of her, Held such converse afar with the great Who knew her better than I. Oh, there is neither lesser nor greater, Save as we make her greater and win from her keener delight. With shells from the river cover me, cover me. I lived in wonder, worshipping earth and heaven. I have passed on the march eternal of endless life.

William Goode

To all in the village I seemed, no doubt, To go this way and that way, aimlessly. But here by the river you can see at twilight The soft-winged bats fly zig-zag here and there— They must fly so to catch their food. And if you have ever lost your way at night, In the deep wood near Miller’s Ford, And dodged this way and now that, Wherever the light of the Milky Way shone through, Trying to find the path, You should understand I sought the way With earnest zeal, and all my wanderings Were wanderings in the quest.

J. Milton Miles

Whenever the Presbyterian bell Was rung by itself, I knew it as the Presbyterian bell. But when its sound was mingled With the sound of the Methodist, the Christian, The Baptist and the Congregational, I could no longer distinguish it, Nor any one from the others, or either of them. And as many voices called to me in life Marvel not that I could not tell The true from the false, Nor even, at last, the voice that I should have known.

Faith Matheny

At first you will know not what they mean, And you may never know, And we may never tell you:— These sudden flashes in your soul, Like lambent lightning on snowy clouds At midnight when the moon is full. They come in solitude, or perhaps You sit with your friend, and all at once A silence falls on speech, and his eyes Without a flicker glow at you:— You two have seen the secret together, He sees it in you, and you in him. And there you sit thrilling lest the Mystery Stand before you and strike you dead With a splendor like the sun’s. Be brave, all souls who have such visions As your body’s alive as mine is dead, You’re catching a little whiff of the ether Reserved for God Himself.

Scholfield Hurley

God! ask me not to record your wonders, I admit the stars and the suns And the countless worlds. But I have measured their distances And weighed them and discovered their substances. I have devised wings for the air, And keels for water, And horses of iron for the earth. I have lengthened the vision you gave me a million times, And the hearing you gave me a million times, I have leaped over space with speech, And taken fire for light out of the air. I have built great cities and bored through the hills, And bridged majestic waters. I have written the Iliad and Hamlet; And I have explored your mysteries, And searched for you without ceasing, And found you again after losing you In hours of weariness— And I ask you: How would you like to create a sun And the next day have the worms Slipping in and out between your fingers?

Willie Metcalf

I was Willie Metcalf. They used to call me “Doctor Meyers,” Because, they said, I looked like him. And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire. I lived in the livery stable, Sleeping on the floor Side by side with Roger Baughman’s bulldog, Or sometimes in a stall. I could crawl between the legs of the wildest horses Without getting kicked—we knew each other. On spring days I tramped through the country To get the feeling, which I sometimes lost, That I was not a separate thing from the earth. I used to lose myself, as if in sleep, By lying with eyes half-open in the woods. Sometimes I talked with animals—even toads and snakes— Anything that had an eye to look into. Once I saw a stone in the sunshine Trying to turn into jelly. In April days in this cemetery The dead people gathered all about me, And grew still, like a congregation in silent prayer. I never knew whether I was a part of the earth With flowers growing in me, or whether I walked— Now I know.

Willie Pennington

They called me the weakling, the simpleton, For my brothers were strong and beautiful, While I, the last child of parents who had aged, Inherited only their residue of power. But they, my brothers, were eaten up In the fury of the flesh, which I had not, Made pulp in the activity of the senses, which I had not, Hardened by the growth of the lusts, which I had not, Though making names and riches for themselves. Then I, the weak one, the simpleton, Resting in a little corner of life, Saw a vision, and through me many saw the vision, Not knowing it was through me. Thus a tree sprang From me, a mustard seed.

The Village Atheist

Ye young debaters over the doctrine Of the soul’s immortality I who lie here was the village atheist, Talkative, contentious, versed in the arguments Of the infidels. But through a long sickness Coughing myself to death I read the Upanishads and the poetry of Jesus. And they lighted a torch of hope and intuition And desire which the Shadow Leading me swiftly through the caverns of darkness, Could not extinguish. Listen to me, ye who live in the senses And think through the senses only: Immortality is not a gift, Immortality is an achievement; And only those who strive mightily Shall possess it.

John Ballard