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    Spoon River Anthology
    Spoon River Anthology
    Spoon River Anthology
    Ebook291 pages2 hours

    Spoon River Anthology

    By Edgar Lee Masters

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    About this ebook

    "Spoon River Anthology" is a collection of poetry taken from the tombstones of the dead in a small rural American town. There is of course no Spoon River as the entire town and its inhabitants are fictional. "Spoon River Anthology" is Masters's masterpiece, a collection of poetry that reveals the posthumous confessions of the transgressions of a group of small-town Americans. Together this collection reads like a novel exposing the fallacy in the idea of the rural American utopia. "Spoon River Anthology" is a truly original work of American literature.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2010
    ISBN9781596741218
    Author

    Edgar Lee Masters

    Edgar LeeMasters (1868–1950) was an American attorney, poet, biographer, and dramatist. Born in Garnett, Kansas to attorney Hardin Wallace Masters and Emma Jerusha Dexter, they later moved to Lewistown, Illinois, where Masters attended high school and had his first publication in the Chicago Daily News. After working in his father’s law office, he was admitted to the Illinois State Bar and moved to Chicago. In 1898 he married Helen M. Jenkins and had three children. Masters died on March 5, 1950, in Melrose Park, Pennsylvania, at the age of eighty-one. He is buried in Oakland Cemetery in Petersburg, Illinois.

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    Reviews for Spoon River Anthology

    4/5

    466 ratings17 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Heard about this for the first time while reading Richard Price's Samaritan. It's a tremendous achievement. Witty and dour, morbid and feather-light. I will have to dip back into it again for all human life can be found within.
    • 4/5
      Whether because of emotional connections to the moments when I discovered individual poems, or the fact that such close study in acting class yoked me to this book (both figuratively and literally), I adore Masters' concept and his execution. It is perhaps not perfect, and yet could anyone pull this off personally? Either way, I'm never going to be objective about this book, so I shan't waste time trying!
    • 4/5
      I can appreciate why, at the time of its publication in 1915, the book was seen as creative in its structure -- lots of short poems, each in the voice or a different deceased former resident of the town of Spoon River, Illinois -- and bracingly blunt in its substance. Some of the deceased admit to having committed murder or adultery; others offer sardonic reflections - all is vanity and chasing the wind. Since then, of course, the themes have become commonplace, and been explored with greater nuance and explicitness elsewhere. The structure has been imitated in other works - a prose example is the book 253, by Geoff Ryman, with each chapter about a different passenger on an ill-fated subway train. While the Spoon River Anthology now seems relatively tame, it's still enjoyable, and the trick of offering one story from a handful of radically divergent points of view still works. Many of the poems are forgettable, but some are haunting: Mickey M'Grew, who died cleaning the town water tank; Conrad Siever, buried under one of his apple trees; Mrs. Sibley, pastor's wife and free spirit; Elsa Wertman, German immigrant and mother of a successful politician who has no idea he is her son.
    • 4/5
      Published in 1915, each poem in this volume is a monologue spoken by a dead person. It is as if the reader is visiting a cemetery in the fictional town of Spoon River, and each name on a tombstone speaks for himself or herself. People from all walks of society are here. Much is revealed here. The reader often understands what each person is trying to say. It’s not necessarily all morbid or maudlin.
    • 4/5
      For what could have just been a gimmick, it turns out to be surprisingly good.
    • 5/5
      Spoon River Anthology (1915), by Edgar Lee Masters, is a collection of short free-form poems that collectively describe the life of the fictional small town of Spoon River, named after the real Spoon River that ran near Masters' home town. The collection includes two hundred and twelve separate characters, all providing two-hundred forty-four accounts of their lives and losses.
    • 4/5
      holds up very well
    • 5/5
      Masters created a town of Spoon River and lets us look into the goings on there. This is nothing unusual in fiction. However, in this case we see the town through the voices of the dead. Every piece in this collection of free verse is that of one of the former inhabitants speaking from the grave. Some are funny, some of gut-wrenchingly sad, some are inspiring. Some connect together so a bit of a story emerges; many stand along.
    • 4/5
      Indeholder "Introduction", "The Hill", "Hod Putt", "Ollie McGee", "Fletcher McGee", "Robert Fulton Tanner", "Cassius Hueffer", "Serepta Mason", "Amanda Barker", "Constance Hately", "Chase Henry", "Harry Carey Goodhue", "Judge Somers", "Kinsey Keene", "Benjamin Pantier", "Mrs Benjamin Pantier", "Reuben Pantier", "Emily Sparks", "Trainor, the Druggist", "Daisy Fraser", "Benjamin Fraser", "Minerva Jones", "'Indignation' Jones", "Doctor Meyers", "Mrs Meyers", "'Butch' Weldy", "Knowlt Hoheimer", "Lydia Puckett", "Frank Drummer", "Hare Drummer", "Conrad Siever", "Doc Hill", "Andy the night-watch", "Sarah Brown", "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "Flossie Cabanis", "Julia Miller", "Johnnie Sayre", "Charlie French", "Zenas Witt", "Theodore the Poet", "The Town Marshal", "Jack McGuire", "Dorcas Gustine", "Nicholas Bindle", "Jacob Goodpasture", "Harold Arnett", "Margaret Fuller Slack", "George Trimble", "Dr. Siegfried Iseman", "'Ace' Shaw", "Lois Spear", "Justice Arnett", "Willard Fluke", "Aner Clute", "Lucius Atherton", "Homer Clapp", "Deacon Taylor", "Sam Hookey", "Cooney Potter", "Fiddler Jones", "Nellie Clark", "Louise Smith", "Herbert Marshall", "George Gray", "Hon. Henry Bennett", "Griffy the Cooper", "A. D. Blood", "Robert Southey Burke", "Dora Williams", "Mrs Williams", "William and Emily", "The Circuit Judge", "Blind Jack", "John Horace Burleson", "Nancy Knapp", "Barry Holden", "State's Attorney Fallas", "Wendell P. Bloyd", "Francis Turner", "Franklin Jones", "John M. Church", "Russian Sonia", "Isa Nutter", "Barney Hainsfeather", "Petit, the Poet", "Pauline Barrett", "Mrs. Charles Bliss", "Mrs. George Reece", "Rev. Lemuel Wiley", "Thomas Ross, Jr.", "Rev. Abner Peet", "Jefferson Howard", "Judge Selah Lively", "Albert Schirding", "Jonas Keene", "Eugenia Todd", "Yee Bow", "Washington McNeely", "Paul McNeely", "Mary McNeely", "Daniel M'Cumber", "Georgine Sand Miner", "Thomas Rhodes", "Ida Chicken", "Penniwit, the Artist", "Jim Brown", "Robert Davidson", "Elsa Wertman", "Hamilton Greene", "Ernest Hyde", "Roger Heston", "Amos Sibley", "Mrs. Sibley", "Adam Weirauch", "Ezra Bartlett", "Amelia Garrick", "John Hancock Otis", "Anthony Findlay", "John Cabanis", "The Unknown", "Alexander Throckmorton", "Jonathan Swift Somers (Author of the Spooniad)", "Widow McFarlane", "Carl Hamblin", "Editor Whedon", "Eugene Carman", "Clarence Fawcett", "W. Lloyd Garrison Standard", "Professor Newcomer", "Ralph Rhodes", "Mickey M'Grew", "Rosie Roberts", "Oscar Hummel", "Roscoe Purkapile", "Mrs Purkapile", "Josiah Tompkins", "Mrs. Kessler", "Harmon Whitney", "Bert Kessler", "Lambert Hutchins", "Lillian Stewart", "Hortense Robbins", "Batterton Dobyns", "Jacob Godbey", "Tom Beatty", "Roy Butler", "Searcy Foote", "Edmund Pollard", "Thomas Trevelyan", "Percival Sharp", "Hiram Scates", "Peleg Poague", "Jeduthan Hawley", "Abel Melveny", "Oaks Tutt", "Elliott Hawkins", "Voltaire Johnson", "English Thornton", "Enoch Dunlap", "Ida Frickey", "Seth Compton", "Felix Schmidt", "Shrœder the Fisherman", "Richard Bone", "Silas Dement", "Dillard Sissman", "Jonathan Houghton", "E C Culbertson", "Shack Dye", "Hildrup Tubbs", "Henry Tripp", "Granville Calhoun", "Henry C Calhoun", "Alfred Moir", "Dippold the Optician", "Magrady Graham", "Archibald Higbie", "Tom Merritt", "Mrs. Merritt", "Elmer Karr", "Elizabeth Childers", "Edith Conant", "Charles Webster", "Father Malloy", "Ami Green", "Calvin Campbell", "Henry Layton", "Harlan Sewall", "Ippolit Konovaloff", "Henry Phipps", "Harry Wilmans", "John Wasson", "Many Soldiers", "Godwin James", "Lyman King", "Caroline Branson", "Anne Rutledge", "Hamlet Micure", "Mabel Osborne", "William H. Herndon", "Rebecca Wasson", "Rutherford McDowell", "Hannah Armstrong", "Lucinda Matlock", "Davis Matlock", "Herman Altman", "Jennie M'Grew", "Columbus Cheney", "Wallace Ferguson", "Marie Bateson", "Tennessee Claflin Shope", "Plymouth Rock Joe", "Imanuel Ehrenhardt", "Samuel Gardner", "Dow Kritt", "William Jones", "William Goode", "J. Milton Miles", "Faith Matheny", "Scholfield Huxley", "Willie Metcalf", "Willie Pennington", "The Village Atheist", "John Ballard", "Julian Scott", "Alfonso Churchill", "Zilpha Marsh", "James Garber", "Lydia Humphrey", "Le Roy Goldman", "Gustav Richter", "Arlo Will", "Captain Orlando Killion", "Jeremy Carlisle", "Joseph Dixon", "Judson Stoddard", "Russell Kincaid", "Aaron Hatfield", "Isaiah Beethoven", "Elijah Browning", "Webster Ford", "The Spooniad".De handler alle om livet og døden i en lille by. Mange hemmeligheder kommer frem og ikke alle er lige artige.
    • 5/5
      An amazing collection of poems, ostensibly the voices of the dead in Spoon River cemetery. Each person has something to say about his or her life, and as you read, you find the poems interlacing and telling more of a story than any of the poems can tell singly. I've loved this collection for years.
    • 4/5
      "You two have seen the secret together,He sees it in you, and you in him.And there you sit thrilling lest the MysteryStand before you and strike you deadWith a splendor like the sun's..." (from "Faith Matheny")
    • 5/5
      I read this after seeing the play version and absolutely fell in love with Masters stories.
    • 3/5
      This is a conceptually intriguing book in which the residents (represented by over 200 poems) of a small town cemetery speak from the grave about the truth as they see it, being free from social pressure or potential retribution to present themselves or others in a good light.I think it's important to remember that Masters was a lawyer by profession, a person who had heard people's testimonies about incidents and different people and had seen how judges and juries dealt with them. This book isn't simply about a small town, it's about humanity and justice, sometimes in the legal sense and sometimes in the larger sense. It's also about how people perceive themselves and others. We get more than one perspective on different characters or events that come up as the individuals speak.This is a book-length work that was written in sections that appeared serially before being collected into a single volume. As many people note, the poems at the beginning of the book are almost unremittingly depressing. They're largely about people who experienced injustice or floundered in the face of events they couldn't control. This lets up in the last third of the book, though not necessarily to good effect. I felt that Masters continued the project after it's vital energy had waned.Women may be a little dissatisfied with the book because so few women are represented, 50 out of 244, and often in stereotypical ways. This isn't surprising considering that most of these poems appeared before women had even been granted the right to vote. Though the lack of representation is still a disappointment, it's worth acknowledging that he did give women a voice and laid bare some injustices toward them and community attitudes toward stereotypes represented that were unjust. He doesn't let things be simple.The copy I read had a had an introduction by John Hollander and footnotes clarifying the many historical and literary allusions in the poems. I highly recommend people get a volume with the footnotes.Much has been written about this work. In fact, it's the only book of poetry I've ever heard of that has its own website (spoonriveranthology.net), essentially a fan site. It's worth reading and rereading. By the end, I the many people/poems had become a blur and I'm not able to say which were my favorites. The next time through I'll mark them. And there will definitely be a next time through. Not all of the poems were great but many of them were superb and I'd like to find them again.I don't think this book is for everyone but it struck me as a good book to have students read and discuss at the high school level because if offers so much to talk about, whether matters of poetics or history or justice. I intend to give a copy to my brother, who is a lawyer and would appreciate the many perspectives that turn up in the book. I also think any serious student of poetry should read it as an example of a big project. In our formal education, we so rarely presented with even remotely contemporary examples of book-length poems or projects. I was quite miffed to be left clueless about this book until running into it at my local library.I want to warn the readers of this review that Spoon River Anthology is generally considered the only work of Masters worth preserving. As John Hollander put it, a "quite uninspired poet, who in the unique format, and under imaginative pressures, excelled himself by producing a masterpiece." His other poetry is very conventional rhymed verse and only in throwing off convention in middle age was he able to speak in a variety of voices and from a variety of perspectives to produce this fascinating work.
    • 4/5
      The edition I have of this book was published in 1915 shortly after the poems were serialized in" Reedy's Mirror".The book begins with the poem "The Hill" which introduces the reader to the town cemetery. The residents of the cemetery tell the tale of their lives in remainder of the poems. The author does a good job of telling a short story in two or three paragraphs of verse. There are separate stories from a husband and wife, members of a family or different people involved in the failure of a bank. There is a mixture of humor and tragedy as thethe history of the town unfolds.Towards the end of the book the author runs out of "A" material and I did not care for the last poem "The Spooniad" a nine page contribution attributed to a town resident. All in all it is an entertaining book for the short time it takes to read.
    • 3/5
      Some of the writing, albeit morbid, is downright delicious. Best taken in small doses, however. He beats the theme like a dead horse. I pride myself on a high tolerance for grief and morbidity, and I could only make it halfway through. Not surprising that James Franco made a contest of adapting it into a short film. There are about eight minutes' worth of gripping, compelling, poetry in this book. Save the rest for when you're feeling Poe-ish, or have just gone through a break-up and want to read about a caste of characters who are all worse off than you.
    • 4/5
      Masters weaves a great story between the main characters of these short poems. The over-arching theme, of course, if the irony of "the good life" and "death as the great equalizer," but some of the poems are especially powerful. The inspiration for "Winesburg, Ohio" by Sherwood Anderson, many say.
    • 5/5
      Astonishing! Wonderful!

    Book preview

    Spoon River Anthology - Edgar Lee Masters

    SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY

    BY EDGAR LEE MASTERS

    A Digireads.com Book

    Digireads.com Publishing

    Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-2597-5

    Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-59674-121-8

    This edition copyright © 2011

    Please visit www.digireads.com

    CONTENTS

    The Hill

    Hod Putt

    Ollie McGee

    Fletcher McGee

    Robert Fulton Tanner

    Cassius Hueffer

    Serepta Mason

    Amanda Barker

    Constance Hately

    Chase Henry

    Harry Carey Goodhue

    Judge Somers

    Kinsey Keene

    Benjamin Pantier

    Mrs. Benjamin Pantier

    Reuben Pantier

    Emily Sparks

    Trainor, the Druggist

    Daisy Fraser

    Benjamin Fraser

    Minerva Jones

    Indignation Jones

    Doctor Meyers

    Mrs. Meyers

    Butch Weldy

    Knowlt Hoheimer

    Lydia Puckett

    Frank Drummer

    Hare Drummer

    Conrad Siever

    Doc Hill

    Andy the Night-Watch

    Sarah Brown

    Percy Bysshe Shelley

    Flossie Cabanis

    Julia Miller

    Johnnie Sayre

    Charlie French

    Zenas Witt

    Theodore the Poet

    The Town Marshal

    Jack McGuire

    Dorcas Gustine

    Nicholas Bindle

    Jacob Goodpasture

    Harold Arnett

    Margaret Fuller Slack

    George Trimble

    Dr. Siegfried Iseman

    Ace Shaw

    Lois Spears

    Justice Arnett

    Willard Fluke

    Aner Clute

    Lucius Atherton

    Homer Clapp

    Deacon Taylor

    Sam Hookey

    Cooney Potter

    Fiddler Jones

    Nellie Clark

    Louise Smith

    Herbert Marshall

    George Gray

    Hon. Henry Bennett

    Griffy the Cooper

    Sexsmith the Dentist

    A. D. Blood

    Robert Southey Burke

    Dora Williams

    Mrs. Williams

    William and Emily

    The Circuit Judge

    Blind Jack

    John Horace Burleson

    Nancy Knapp

    Barry Holden

    State's Attorney Fallas

    Wendell P. Bloyd

    Francis Turner

    Franklin Jones

    John M. Church

    Russian Sonia

    Isa Nutter

    Barney Hainsfeather

    Petit, the Poet

    Pauline Barrett

    Mrs. Charles Bliss

    Mrs. George Reece

    Rev. Lemuel Wiley

    Thomas Ross, Jr.

    Rev. Abner Peet

    Jefferson Howard

    Judge Selah Lively

    Albert Schirding

    Jonas Keene

    Eugenia Todd

    Yee Bow

    Washington McNeely

    Paul McNeely

    Mary McNeely

    Daniel M'Cumber

    Georgine Sand Miner

    Thomas Rhodes

    Ida Chicken

    Penniwit, the Artist

    Jim Brown

    Robert Davidson

    Elsa Wertman

    Hamilton Greene

    Ernest Hyde

    Roger Heston

    Amos Sibley

    Mrs. Sibley

    Adam Weirauch

    Ezra Bartlett

    Amelia Garrick

    John Hancock Otis

    Anthony Findlay

    John Cabanis

    The Unknown

    Alexander Throckmorton

    Jonathan Swift Somers

    Widow McFarlane

    Carl Hamblin

    Editor Whedon

    Eugene Carman

    Clarence Fawcett

    W. Lloyd Garrison Standard

    Professor Newcomer

    Ralph Rhodes

    Mickey M'Grew

    Rosie Roberts

    Oscar Hummel

    Roscoe Purkapile

    Mrs. Purkapile

    Josiah Tompkins

    Mrs. Kessler

    Harmon Whitney

    Bert Kessler

    Lambert Hutchins

    Lillian Stewart

    Hortense Robbins

    Batterton Dobyns

    Jacob Godbey

    Walter Simmons

    Tom Beatty

    Roy Butler

    Searcy Foote

    Edmund Pollard

    Thomas Trevelyan

    Percival Sharp

    Hiram Scates

    Peleg Poague

    Jeduthan Hawley

    Abel Melveny

    Oaks Tutt

    Elliott Hawkins

    Voltaire Johnson

    English Thornton

    Enoch Dunlap

    Ida Frickey

    Seth Compton

    Felix Schmidt

    Schroeder the Fisherman

    Richard Bone

    Silas Dement

    Dillard Sissman

    Jonathan Houghton

    E. C. Culbertson

    Shack Dye

    Hildrup Tubbs

    Henry Tripp

    Granville Calhoun

    Henry C. Calhoun

    Alfred Moir

    Perry Zoll

    Dippold the Optician

    Magrady Graham

    Archibald Higbie

    Tom Merritt

    Mrs. Merritt

    Elmer Karr

    Elizabeth Childers

    Edith Conant

    Charles Webster

    Father Malloy

    Ami Green

    Calvin Campbell

    Henry Layton

    Harlan Sewall

    Ippolit Konovaloff

    Henry Phipps

    Harry Wilmans

    John Wasson

    Many Soldiers

    Godwin James

    Lyman King

    Caroline Branson

    Anne Rutledge

    Hamlet Micure

    Mabel Osborne

    William H. Herndon

    Rebecca Wasson

    Rutherford McDowell

    Hannah Armstrong

    Lucinda Matlock

    Davis Matlock

    Herman Altman

    Jennie M'Grew

    Columbus Cheney

    Wallace Ferguson

    Marie Bateson

    Tennessee Claflin Shope

    Plymouth Rock Joe

    Immanuel Ehrenhardt

    Samuel Gardner

    Dow Kritt

    William Jones

    William Goode

    J. Milton Miles

    Faith Matheny

    Scholfield Huxley

    Willie Metcalf

    Willie Pennington

    The Village Atheist

    John Ballard

    Julian Scott

    Alfonso Churchill

    Zilpha Marsh

    James Garber

    Lydia Humphrey

    Le Roy Goldman

    Gustav Richter

    Arlo Will

    Captain Orlando Killion

    Jeremy Carlisle

    Joseph Dixon

    Judson Stoddard

    Russell Kincaid

    Aaron Hatfield

    Isaiah Beethoven

    Elijah Browning

    Webster Ford

    The Spooniad

    Epilogue

    The Hill

    Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley,

    The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?

    All, all are sleeping on the hill.

    One passed in a fever,

    One was burned in a mine,

    One was killed in a brawl,

    One died in a jail,

    One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife-

    All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

    Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith,

    The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?—

    All, all are sleeping on the hill.

    One died in shameful child-birth,

    One of a thwarted love,

    One at the hands of a brute in a brothel,

    One of a broken pride, in the search for heart's desire;

    One after life in far-away London and Paris

    Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag—

    All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

    Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily,

    And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton,

    And Major Walker who had talked

    With venerable men of the revolution?—

    All, all are sleeping on the hill.

    They brought them dead sons from the war,

    And daughters whom life had crushed,

    And their children fatherless, crying—

    All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

    Where is Old Fiddler Jones

    Who played with life all his ninety years,

    Braving the sleet with bared breast,

    Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin,

    Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven?

    Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago,

    Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary's Grove,

    Of what Abe Lincoln said

    One time at Springfield.

    Hod Putt

    Here I lie close to the grave

    Of Old Bill Piersol,

    Who grew rich trading with the Indians, and who

    Afterwards took the Bankrupt Law

    And emerged from it richer than ever

    Myself grown tired of toil and poverty

    And beholding how Old Bill and other grew in wealth

    Robbed a traveler one Night near Proctor's Grove,

    Killing him unwittingly while doing so,

    For which I was tried and hanged.

    That was my way of going into bankruptcy.

    Now we who took the bankrupt law in our respective ways

    Sleep peacefully side by side.

    Ollie McGee

    Have you seen walking through the village

    A Man with downcast eyes and haggard face?

    That is my husband who, by secret cruelty

    Never to be told, robbed me of my youth and my beauty;

    Till at last, wrinkled and with yellow teeth,

    And with broken pride and shameful humility,

    I sank into the grave.

    But what think you gnaws at my husband's heart?

    The face of what I was, the face of what he made me!

    These are driving him to the place where I lie.

    In death, therefore, I am avenged.

    Fletcher McGee

    She took my strength by minutes,

    She took my life by hours,

    She drained me like a fevered moon

    That saps the spinning world.

    The days went by like shadows,

    The minutes wheeled like stars.

    She took the pity from my heart,

    And made it into smiles.

    She was a hunk of sculptor's clay,

    My secret thoughts were fingers:

    They flew behind her pensive brow

    And lined it deep with pain.

    They set the lips, and sagged the cheeks,

    And drooped the eye with sorrow.

    My soul had entered in the clay,

    Fighting like seven devils.

    It was not mine, it was not hers;

    She held it, but its struggles

    Modeled a face she hated,

    And a face I feared to see.

    I beat the windows, shook the bolts.

    I hid me in a corner—

    And then she died and haunted me,

    And hunted me for life.

    Robert Fulton Tanner

    If a man could bite the giant hand

    That catches and destroys him,

    As I was bitten by a rat

    While demonstrating my patent trap,

    In my hardware store that day.

    But a man can never avenge himself

    On the monstrous ogre Life.

    You enter the room—that's being born;

    And then you must live—work out your soul,

    Aha! the bait that you crave is in view:

    A woman with money you want to marry,

    Prestige, place, or power in the world.

    But there's work to do and things to conquer—

    Oh, yes! the wires that screen the bait.

    At last you get in—but you hear a step:

    The ogre, Life, comes into the room,

    (He was waiting and heard the clang of the spring)

    To watch you nibble the wondrous cheese,

    And stare with his burning eyes at you,

    And scowl and laugh, and mock and curse you,

    Running up and down in the trap,

    Until your misery bores him.

    Cassius Hueffer

    They have chiseled on my stone the words:

    "His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him

    That nature might stand up and say to all the world,

    This was a man."

    Those who knew me smile

    As they read this empty rhetoric.

    My epitaph should have been:

    "Life was not gentle to him,

    And the elements so mixed in him

    That he made warfare on life

    In the which he was slain."

    While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues,

    Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph

    Graven by a fool!

    Serepta Mason

    My life's blossom might have bloomed on all sides

    Save for a bitter wind which stunted my petals

    On the side of me which you in the village could see.

    From the dust I lift a voice of protest:

    My flowering side you never saw!

    Ye living ones, ye are fools indeed

    Who do not know the ways of the wind

    And the unseen forces

    That govern the processes of life.

    Amanda Barker

    Henry got me with child,

    Knowing that I could not bring forth life

    Without losing my own.

    In my youth therefore I entered the portals of dust.

    Traveler, it is believed in the village where I lived

    That Henry loved me with a husband's love

    But I proclaim from the dust

    That he slew me to gratify his hatred.

    Constance Hately

    You praise my self-sacrifice, Spoon River,

    In rearing Irene and Mary,

    Orphans of my older sister!

    And you censure Irene and Mary

    For their contempt for me!

    But praise not my self-sacrifice,

    And censure not their contempt;

    I reared them, I cared for them, true enough!—

    But I poisoned my benefactions

    With constant reminders of their dependence.

    Chase Henry

    In life I was the town drunkard;

    When I died the priest denied me burial

    In holy ground.

    The which redounded to my good fortune.

    For the Protestants bought this lot,

    And buried my body here,

    Close to the grave of the banker Nicholas,

    And of his wife Priscilla.

    Take note, ye prudent and pious souls,

    Of the cross-currents in life

    Which bring honor to the dead, who lived in shame.

    Harry Carey Goodhue

    You never marveled, dullards of Spoon River,

    When Chase Henry voted against the saloons

    To revenge himself for being shut off.

    But none of you was keen enough

    To follow my steps, or trace me home

    As Chase's spiritual brother.

    Do you remember when I fought

    The bank and the courthouse ring,

    For pocketing the interest on public funds?

    And when I fought our leading citizens

    For making the poor the pack-horses of the taxes?

    And when I fought the water works

    For stealing streets and raising rates?

    And when I fought the business men

    Who fought me in these fights?

    Then do you remember:

    That staggering up from the wreck of defeat,

    And the wreck of a ruined career,

    I slipped from my cloak my last ideal,

    Hidden from all eyes until then,

    Like the cherished jawbone of an ass,

    And smote the bank and the water works,

    And the business men with prohibition,

    And made Spoon River pay the cost

    Of the fights that I had lost?

    Judge Somers

    How does it happen, tell me,

    That I who was most erudite of lawyers,

    Who knew Blackstone and Coke

    Almost by heart, who made the greatest speech

    The court-house ever heard, and wrote

    A brief that won the praise of Justice Breese

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