Book: Spoon River Anthology

• Griffy the Cooper

  The cooper should know about tubs.
  But I learned about life as well,

  15 lines
• Scholfield Huxley

  God! ask me not to record your wonders,
  I admit the stars and the suns

  23 lines
• Rutherford McDowell

  They brought me ambrotypes
  Of the old pioneers to enlarge.

  26 lines
• Dippold the Optician

  What do you see now?
  Globes of red, yellow, purple.

  27 lines
• Josiah Tompkins

  I was well known and much beloved
  And rich, as fortunes are reckoned

  18 lines
• Ernest Hyde

  My mind was a mirror:
  It saw what it saw, it knew what it knew.

  15 lines
• John Horace Burleson

  I won the prize essay at school
  Here in the village,

  17 lines
• Elizabeth Childers

  Dust of my dust,
  And dust with my dust,

  26 lines
• Richard Bone

  When I first came to Spoon River
  I did not know whether what they told me

  18 lines, 3 comments
• Bert Kessler

  I winged my bird,
  Though he flew toward the setting sun;

  20 lines
• Mrs. Kessler

  Mr Kessler, you know, was in the army,
  And he drew six dollars a month as a pension,

  21 lines
• Anne Rutledge

  Out of me unworthy and unknown
  The vibrations of deathless music;

  12 lines
• Fiddler Jones

  The earth keeps some vibration going
  There in your heart, and that is you.

  26 lines
• Knowlt Hoheimer

  I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.
  When I felt the bullet enter my heart

  10 lines
• Lucinda Matlock

  I went to the dances at Chandlerville,
  And played snap-out at Winchester.

  22 lines
• Mrs. Benjamin Painter

  I know that he told how I snared his soul
  With a snare which bled him to death.

  20 lines
• Benjamin Painter

  Together in this grave lie Benjamin Painter, attorney at law,
  And Nig, his dog, constant companion, solace and friend.

  12 lines
• Kinsey Keene

  Your attention, Thomas Rhodes, president of the bank;
  Coolbaugh Wedon, editor of the Argus;

  23 lines
• Judge Somers

  How does it happen, tell me,
  That I who was the most erudite of lawyers,

  12 lines
• Harry Carey Goodhue

  You never marveled, dullards of Spoon River,
  When Chase Henry voted against the saloons

  25 lines
• Chase Henry

  In my life I was the town drunkard;
  When I died the priest denied me burial

  11 lines
• Constance Hately

  You praise my self-sacrifice, Spoon River,
  In rearing Irene and Mary,

  10 lines
• Amanda Barker

  Henry got me with child,
  Knowing that I could not bring forth life

  8 lines
• Serepta Mason

  My life's blossom might have bloomed on all sides
  Save for a bitter wind which stunted my petals

  9 lines
• Cassius Hueffer

  They have Chiseled on my stone the words:
  'His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him

  14 lines
• Robert Fulton Tanner

  If a man could bite the giant hand
  That catches and destroys him,

  22 lines
• Fletcher McGee

  She took my strength by minutes,
  She took my life by hours,

  24 lines
• Ollie McGee

  Have you seen walking through the village
  A man with downcast eyes and haggard face?

  11 lines
• Hod Putt

  Here I lie close to the grave
  Of Old Bill Piersol,

  13 lines
• The Hill

  Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom, and Charley,
  The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?

  37 lines
• Clarence Darrow

  This is Darrow,
  Inadequately scrawled, with his young, old heart,

  6 lines
• On a Bust

  A giant as we hoped, in truth, a dwarf;
  A barrel of slop that shines on Lethe's wharf',

  8 lines
• Lucius Atherton

  When my moustache curled,
  And my hair was black,

  19 lines
• Wendell P. Bloyd

  They first charged me with disorderly conduct,
  There being no statute on blasphemy.

  23 lines
• Charlie French

  Did you ever find out
  which of the boys it was

  15 lines
• Rita Matlock Gruenberg

  Grandmother! You who sang to green valleys,
  And passed to a sweet repose at ninety-six,

  23 lines
• Nicholas Bindle

  Were you not ashamed, fellow citizens,
  When my estate was probated and everyone knew

  11 lines
• Reuben Pantier

  Well, Emily Sparks, your prayers were not wasted,
  Your love was not all in vain.

  25 lines
• Emily Sparks

  Where is my boy, my boy --
  In what far part of the world?

  19 lines
• Trainor the Druggist

  Only the chemist can tell, and not always the chemist,
  What will result from compounding

  13 lines
• Daisy Fraser

  Did you ever hear of Editor Whedon
  Giving to the public treasury any of the money he received

  19 lines
• Benjamin Fraser

  Their spirits beat upon mine
  Like the wings of a thousand butterflies.

  23 lines, 1 comment
• Minerva Jones

  I am Minerva, the village poetess,
  Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street

  12 lines
• Indignation Jones

  You would not believe, would you
  That I came from good Welsh stock?

  24 lines
• Doctor Meyers

  No other man, unless it was Doc Hill,
  Did more for people in this town than l.

  14 lines
• Mrs. Meyers

  He protested all his life long
  The newspapers lied about him villainously;

  11 lines
• Butch Weldy

  After I got religion and steadied down
  They gave me a job in the canning works,

  21 lines
• Lydia Puckett

  Knowlt Hoheimer ran away to the war
  The day before Curl Trenary

  10 lines
• Frank Drummer

  Out of a cell into this darkened space --
  The end at twenty-five!

  8 lines
• Hare Drummer

  Do the boys and girls still go to Siever's
  For cider, after school, in late September?

  19 lines
• Conrad Siever

  Not in that wasted garden
  Where bodies are drawn into grass

  17 lines
• Doc Hill

  I went up and down the streets
  Here and there by day and night,

  13 lines
• Andy the Night-Watch

  In my Spanish cloak,
  And old slouch hat,

  18 lines
• Sarah Brown

  Maurice, weep not, I am not here under this pine tree.
  The balmy air of spring whispers through the sweet grass,

  12 lines
• Percy Bysshe Shelley

  My father who owned the wagon-shop
  And grew rich shoeing horses

  15 lines
• Flossie Cabanis

  From Bindle's opera house in the village
  To Broadway is a great step.

  16 lines
• Julia Miller

  We quarreled that morning,
  For he was sixty-five, and I was thirty,

  14 lines
• Johnnie Sayre

  Father, thou canst never know
  The anguish that smote my heart

  13 lines
• Zenas Witt

  I was sixteen, and I had the most terrible dreams,
  And specks before my eyes, and nervous weakness.

  17 lines
• Theodore the Poet

  As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours
  On the shore of the turbid Spoon

  17 lines
• Lilian Stewart

  I was the daughter of Lambert Hutchins,
  Born in a cottage near the grist-mill,

  22 lines, 1 comment
• The Town Marshal

  The Prohibitionists made me Town Marshal
  When the saloons were voted out,

  17 lines
• Jack McGuire

  They would have lynched me
  Had I not been secretly hurried away

  19 lines
• Dorcas Gustine

  I was not beloved of the villagers,
  But all because I spoke my mind,

  14 lines
• Jacob Goodpasture

  When Fort Sumter fell and the war came
  I cried out in bitterness of soul:

  22 lines
• Harold Arnett

  I leaned against the mantel, sick, sick,
  Thinking of my failure, looking into the abysm,

  17 lines
• Margaret Fuller Slack

  I would have been as great as George Eliot
  But for an untoward fate.

  17 lines
• George Trimble

  Do you remember when I stood on the steps
  Of the Court House and talked free-silver,

  13 lines
• Dr. Siegfried Iseman

  I said when they handed me my diploma,
  I said to myself I will be good

  19 lines
• Ace Shaw

  I never saw any difference
  Between playing cards for money

  8 lines, 1 comment
• Lois Spears

  Here lies the body of Lois Spears,
  Born Lois Fluke, daughter of Willard Fluke,

  16 lines
• Justice Arnett

  It is true, fellow citizens,
  That my old docket lying there for years

  23 lines
• Willard Fluke

  My wife lost her health,
  And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds.

  19 lines, 1 comment
• Aner Clute

  Over and over they used to ask me,
  While buying the wine or the beer,

  19 lines
• Homer Clapp

  Often Aner Clute at the gate
  Refused me the parting kiss,

  19 lines, 1 comment
• Deacon Taylor

  I belonged to the church,
  And to the party of prohibition;

  10 lines
• Sam Hookey

  I ran away from home with the circus,
  Having fallen in love with Mademoiselle Estralada,

  13 lines
• Cooney Potter

  I inherited forty acres from my Father
  And, by working my wife, my two sons and two daughters

  12 lines
• Nellie Clark

  I was only eight years old;
  And before I grew up and knew what it meant

  15 lines
• Louise Smith

  Herbert broke our engagement of eight years
  When Annabelle returned to the village

  14 lines
• Herbert Marshall

  All your sorrow, Louise, and hatred of me
  Sprang from your delusion that it was wantonness

  14 lines
• George Gray

  I have studied many times
  The marble which was chiseled for me --

  16 lines
• Hon. Henry Bennett

  It never came into my mind
  Until I was ready to die

  14 lines
• Sexsmith the Dentist

  Do you think that odes and sermons,
  And the ringing of church bells,

  24 lines
• A.D. Blood

  If you in the village think that my work was a good one,
  Who closed the saloons and stopped all playing at cards,

  7 lines
• Robert Southey Burke

  I spent my money trying to elect you Mayor
  A. D. Blood.

  23 lines
• Dora Williams

  When Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me
  I went to Springfield. There I met a lush,

  25 lines
• Mrs. Williams

  I was the milliner
  Talked about, lied about,

  26 lines
• William and Emily

  There is something about Death
  Like love itself!

  12 lines
• The Circuit Judge

  Take note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions
  Eaten in my head-stone by the wind and rain --

  15 lines
• Blind Jack

  I had fiddled all day at the county fair.
  But driving home "Butch" Weldy and Jack McGuire,

  14 lines, 2 comments
• Nancy Knapp

  Well, don't you see this was the way of it:
  We bought the farm with what he inherited,

  20 lines
• Barry Holden

  The very fall my sister Nancy Knapp
  Set fire to the house

  22 lines
• State's Attorney Fallas

  I, the scourge-wielder, balance-wrecker,
  Smiter with whips and swords;

  17 lines
• Francis Turner

  I could not run or play
  In boyhood.

  13 lines
• Franklin Jones

  If I could have lived another year
  I could have finished my flying machine,

  11 lines
• John M. Church

  I was attorney for the "Q"
  And the Indemnity Company which insured

  12 lines
• Russian Sonia

  I, born in Weimar
  Of a mother who was French

  18 lines, 2 comments
• Isa Nutter

  Doc Meyers said I had satyriasis,
  And Doc Hill called it leucaemia --

  20 lines
• Barney Hainsfeather

  If the excursion train to Peoria
  Had just been wrecked, I might have escaped with my life --

  9 lines, 1 comment
• Pauline Barrett

  Almost the shell of a woman after the surgeon's knife!
  And almost a year to creep back into strength,

  24 lines
• Mrs. Charles Bliss

  Reverend Wiley advised me not to divorce him
  For the sake of the children,

  20 lines
• Mrs. George Reece

  To this generation I would say:
  Memorize some bit of verse of truth or beauty.

  14 lines
• Rev. Lemuel Wiley

  I preached four thousand sermons,
  I conducted forty revivals,

  10 lines
• Thomas Ross, Jr.

  This I saw with my own eyes:
  A cliff-swallow

  19 lines
• Rev. Abner Peet

  I had no objection at all
  To selling my household effects at auction

  11 lines
• Jefferson Howard

  My valiant fight! For I call it valiant,
  With my father's beliefs from old Virginia:

  23 lines
• Judge Selah Lively

  Suppose you stood just five feet two,
  And had worked your way as a grocery clerk,

  19 lines
• Albert Schirding

  Jonas Keene thought his lot a hard one
  Because his children were all failures.

  15 lines
• Jonas Keene

  Why did Albert Schirding kill himself
  Trying to be County Superintendent of Schools,

  10 lines
• Eugenia Todd

  Have any of you, passers-by,
  Had an old tooth that was an unceasing discomfort?

  15 lines
• Yee Bow

  They got me into the Sunday-school
  In Spoon River

  11 lines
• Professor Newcomer

  Everyone laughed at Col. Prichard
  For buying an engine so powerful

  16 lines
• Washington McNeely

  Rich, honored by my fellow citizens,
  The father of many children, born of a noble mother,

  29 lines
• Paul McNeely

  Dear Jane! dear winsome Jane!
  How you stole in the room (where I lay so ill)

  20 lines
• Mary McNeely

  Passer-by,
  To love is to find your own soul

  18 lines
• Daniel M'Cumber

  When I went to the city, Mary McNeely,
  I meant to return for you, yes I did.

  18 lines
• Georgine Sand Miner

  A step-mother drove me from home, embittering me.
  A squaw-man, a flaneur and dilettante took my virtue.

  25 lines
• Thomas Rhodes

  Very well, you liberals,
  And navigators into realms intellectual,

  13 lines
• Ida Chicken

  After I had attended lectures
  At our Chautauqua, and studied French

  18 lines
• Penniwit, the Artist

  I lost my patronage in Spoon River
  From trying to put my mind in the camera

  11 lines
• Jim Brown

  While I was handling Dom Pedro
  I got at the thing that divides the race between men who are

  19 lines
• Robert Davidson

  I grew spiritually fat living off the souls of men.
  If I saw a soul that was strong

  19 lines
• Elsa Wertman

  I was a peasant girl from Germany,
  Blue-eyed, rosy, happy and strong.

  24 lines
• Hamilton Greene

  I was the only child of Frances Harris of Virginia
  And Thomas Greene of Kentucky,

  10 lines
• Roger Heston

  Oh many times did Ernest Hyde and I
  Argue about the freedom of the will.

  12 lines
• Amos Sibley

  Not character, not fortitude, not patience
  Were mine, the which the village thought I had

  15 lines
• Mrs. Sibley

  The secret of the stars, -- gravitation.
  The secret of the earth, -- layers of rock.

  7 lines
• Adam Weirauch

  I was crushed between Altgeld and Armour.
  I lost many friends, much time and money

  19 lines
• Ezra Bartlett

  A chaplain in the army,
  A chaplain in the prisons,

  17 lines
• Amelia Garrick

  Yes, here I lie close to a stunted rose bush
  In a forgotten place near the fence

  18 lines
• John Hancock Otis

  As to democracy, fellow citizens,
  Are you not prepared to admit

  19 lines
• Anthony Findlay

  Both for the country and for the man,
  And for a country as well as a man,

  20 lines
• John Cabanis

  Neither spite, fellow citizens,
  Nor forgetfulness of the shiftlessness,

  20 lines
• The Unknown

  Ye aspiring ones, listen to the story of the unknown
  Who lies here with no stone to mark the place.

  16 lines
• Alexander Throckmorton

  In youth my wings were strong and tireless,
  But I did not know the mountains.

  5 lines
• Jonathan Swift Somers

  After you have enriched your soul
  To the highest point,

  15 lines
• Widow McFarlane

  I was the Widow McFarlane,
  Weaver of carpets for all the village.

  19 lines
• Carl Hamblin

  The press of the Spoon River Clarion was wrecked,
  And I was tarred and feathered,

  24 lines, 1 comment
• Editor Whedon

  To be able to see every side of every question;
  To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long;

  25 lines
• Eugene Carman

  Rhodes' slave! Selling shoes and gingham,
  Flour and bacon, overalls, clothing, all day long

  22 lines
• Clarence Fawcett

  The sudden death of Eugene Carman
  Put me in line to be promoted to fifty dollars a month,

  20 lines
• W. Lloyd Garrison Standard

  Vegetarian, non-resistant, free-thinker, in ethics a Christian;
  Orator apt at the rhine-stone rhythm of Ingersoll.

  18 lines
• Ralph Rhodes

  All they said was true:
  I wrecked my father's bank with my loans

  23 lines
• Mickey M'Grew

  It was just like everything else in life:
  Something outside myself drew me down,

  17 lines
• Rosie Roberts

  I was sick, but more than that, I was mad
  At the crooked police, and the crooked game of life.

  15 lines
• Oscar Hummel

  I staggered on through darkness,
  There was a hazy sky, a few stars

  18 lines
• Roscoe Purkapile

  She loved me. Oh! how she loved me!
  I never had a chance to escape

  21 lines
• Mrs. Purkapile

  He ran away and was gone for a year.
  When he came home he told me the silly story

  14 lines
• Harmon Whitney

  Out of the lights and roar of cities,
  Drifting down like a spark in Spoon River,

  26 lines
• Lambert Hutchins

  I have two monuments besides this granite obelisk:
  One, the house I built on the hill,

  26 lines
• Hortense Robbins

  My name used to be in the papers daily
  As having dined somewhere,

  12 lines
• Batterson Dobyns

  Did my widow flit about
  From Mackinac to Los Angeles,

  22 lines
• Jacob Godbey

  How did you feel, you libertarians,
  Who spent your talents rallying noble reasons

  19 lines
• Walter Simmons

  My parents thought that I would be
  As great as Edison or greater:

  22 lines
• Tom Beatty

  I was a lawyer like Harmon Whitney
  Or Kinsey Keene or Garrison Standard,

  21 lines
• Roy Butler

  If the learned Supreme Court of Illinois
  Got at the secret of every case

  22 lines
• Searcy Foote

  I wanted to go away to college
  But rich Aunt Persis wouldn't help me.

  28 lines
• Edmund Pollard

  I would I had thrust my hands of flesh
  Into the disk-flowers bee-infested,

  22 lines
• Thomas Trevelyan

  Reading in Ovid the sorrowful story of Itys,
  Son of the love of Tereus and Procne, slain

  18 lines
• Willie Pennington

  They called me the weakling, the simpleton,
  For my brothers were strong and beautiful,

  15 lines
• Percival Sharp

  Observe the clasped hands!
  Are they hands of farewell or greeting,

  27 lines
• Hiram Scates

  I tried to win the nomination
  For president of the County-board

  27 lines
• Peleg Poague

  Horses and men are just alike.
  There was my stallion, Billy Lee,

  17 lines
• Jeduthan Hawley

  There would be a knock at the door
  And I would arise at midnight and go to the shop,

  19 lines
• Abel Melveny

  I bought every kind of machine that's known --
  Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers,

  18 lines, 1 comment
• Oaks Tutt

  My mother was for woman's rights
  And my father was the rich miller at London Mills.

  26 lines
• Elliott Hawkins

  I looked like Abraham Lincoln.
  I was one of you, Spoon River, in all fellowship,

  25 lines
• Voltaire Johnson

  Why did you bruise me with your rough places
  If you did not want me to tell you about them?

  17 lines
• English Thornton

  Here! You sons of the men
  Who fought with Washington at Valley Forge,

  20 lines
• Enoch Dunlap

  How many times, during the twenty years
  I was your leader, friends of Spoon River,

  19 lines
• Ida Frickey

  Nothing in life is alien to you:
  I was a penniless girl from Summum

  23 lines
• Seth Compton

  When I died, the circulating library
  Which I built up for Spoon River,

  19 lines
• Felix Schmidt

  It was only a little house of two rooms --
  Almost like a child's play-house --

  22 lines
• Schroeder the Fisherman

  I sat on the bank above Bernadotte
  And dropped crumbs in the water,

  18 lines
• Silas Dement

  It was moon-light, and the earth sparkled
  With new-fallen frost.

  25 lines
• Dillard Sissman

  The buzzards wheel slowly
  In wide circles, in a sky

  22 lines
• Jonathan Houghton

  There is the caw of a crow,
  And the hesitant song of a thrush.

  24 lines
• E.C. Culbertson

  Is it true, Spoon River,
  That in the hall-way of the New Court House

  21 lines
• Shack Dye

  The white men played all sorts of jokes on me.
  They took big fish off my hook

  19 lines
• Hildrup Tubbs

  I made two fights for the people.
  First I left my party, bearing the gonfalon

  19 lines
• Henry Tripp

  The bank broke and I lost my savings.
  I was sick of the tiresome game in Spoon River

  25 lines
• Granville Calhoun

  I wanted to be County Judge
  One more term, so as to round out a service

  19 lines
• Henry C. Calhoun

  I reached the highest place in Spoon River,
  But through what bitterness of spirit!

  22 lines
• Alfred Moir

  Why was I not devoured by self-contempt,
  And rotted down by indifference

  19 lines
• Perry Zoll

  My thanks, friends of the County Scientific Association,
  For this modest boulder,

  14 lines
• Magrady Graham

  Tell me, was Altgeld elected Governor?
  For when the returns began to come in

  19 lines
• Archibald Higbie

  I loathed you, Spoon River. I tried to rise above you,
  I was ashamed of you. I despised you

  21 lines
• Tom Merritt

  At first I suspected something --
  She acted so calm and absent-minded.

  13 lines
• Mrs. Merritt

  Silent before the jury,
  Returning no word to the judge when he asked me

  17 lines
• Elmer Karr

  What but the love of God could have softened
  And made forgiving the people of Spoon River

  10 lines
• Edith Conant

  We stand about this place -- we, the memories;
  And shade our eyes because we dread to read:

  23 lines
• Charles Webster

  The pine woods on the hill,
  And the farmhouse miles away,

  25 lines
• Father Malloy

  You are over there, Father Malloy,
  Where holy ground is, and the cross marks every grave,

  23 lines
• Ami Green

  Not "a youth with hoary head and haggard eye,"
  But an old man with a smooth skin

  13 lines, 1 comment
• Calvin Campbell

  Ye who are kicking against Fate,
  Tell me how it is that on this hill-side,

  15 lines
• Henry Layton

  Whoever thou art who passest by
  Know that my father was gentle,

  13 lines
• Harlan Sewall

  You never understood, O unknown one,
  Why it was I repaid

  21 lines
• Ippolit Konovaloff

  I was a gun-smith in Odessa.
  One night the police broke in the room

  22 lines
• Henry Phipps

  I was the Sunday school superintendent,
  The dummy president of the wagon works

  30 lines

• By me, right now

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