Spoon River Anthology

by Edgar Lee Masters

  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 æolian 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 themselve
s.

  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

  IN the lust of my strength

  I cursed God, but he paid no attention to me:

  I might as well have cursed the stars.

  In my last sickness I was in agony, but I was resolute

  And I cursed God for my suffering;

  Still He paid no attention to me;

  He left me alone, as He had always done.

  I might as well have cursed the Presbyterian steeple.

  Then, as I grew weaker, a terror came over me:

  Perhaps I had alienated God by cursing him.

  One day Lydia Humphrey brought me a bouquet

  And it occurred to me to try to make friends with God,

  So I tried to make friends with Him;

  But I might as well have tried to make friends with the bouquet.

  Now I was very close to the secret,

  For I really could make friends with the bouquet

  By holding close to me the love in me for the bouquet

  And so I was creeping upon the secret, but—

  JULIAN SCOTT

  TOWARD the last

  The truth of others was untruth to me;

  The justice of others injustice to me;

  Their reasons for death, reasons with me for life;

  Their reasons for life, reasons with me for death;

  I would have killed those they saved,

  And saved those they killed.

  And I saw how a god, if brought to earth,

  Must act out what he saw and thought,

  And could not live in this world of men

  And act among them side by side

  Without continual clashes.

  The dust’s for crawling, heaven’s for flying—

  Wherefore, O soul, whose wings are grown,

  Soar upward to the sun!

  ALFONZO CHURCHILL

  THEY laughed at me as “Prof. Moon,”

  As a boy in Spoon River, born with the thirst

  Of knowing about the stars.

  They jeered when I spoke of the lunar mountains,

  And the thrilling heat and cold,

  And the ebon valleys by silver peaks,

  And Spica quadrillions of miles away,

  And the littleness of man.

  But now that my grave is honored, friends,

  Let it not be because I taught

  The lore of the stars in Knox College,

  But rather for this: that through the stars

  I preached the greatness of man,

  Who is none the less a part of the scheme of things

  For the distance of Spica or the Spiral Nebulæ;

  Nor any the less a part of the question

  Of what the drama means.

  ZILPHA MARSH

  AT four o’clock in late October

  I sat alone in the country school-house

  Back from the road ’mid stricken fields,

  And an eddy of wind blew leaves on the pane,

  And crooned in the flue of the cannon-stove,

  With its open door blurring the shadows

  With the spectral glow of a dying fire.

  In an idle mood I was running the planchette*—

  All at once my wrist grew limp,

  And my hand moved rapidly over the board,

  Till the name of “Charles Guiteau”* was spelled,

  Who threatened to materialize before me.

  I rose and fled from the room bare-headed

  Into the dusk, afraid of my gift.

  And after that the spirits swarmed—

  Chaucer, Cæsar, Poe and Marlowe,

  Cleopatra and Mrs. Surrat*—

  Wherever I went, with messages,—

  Mere trifling twaddle, Spoon River agreed.

  You talk nonsense to children, don’t you?

  And suppose I see what you never saw

  And never heard of and have no word for,

  I must talk nonsense when you ask me

  What it is I see!

  JAMES GARBER

  DO you remember, passer-by, the path

  I wore across the lot where now stands the opera house,

  Hasting with swift feet to work through many years?

  Take its meaning to heart:

  You too may walk, after the hills at Miller’s Ford

  Seem no longer far away;

  Long after you see them near at hand,

  Beyond four miles of meadow;

  And after woman’s love is silent,

  Saying no more: “I will save you.”

  And after the faces of friends and kindred

  Become as faded photographs, pitifully silent,

  Sad for the look which means: “We cannot help you.”

  And after you no longer reproach mankind

  With being in league against your soul’s uplifted hands—

  Themselves compelled at midnight and at noon

  To watch with steadfast eye their destinies;

  After you have these understandings, think of me

  And of my path, who walked therein and knew

  That neither man nor woman, neither toil,

  Nor duty, gold nor power

  Can ease the longing of the soul,

  The loneliness of the soul!

  LYDIA HUMPHREY

  BACK and forth, back and forth, to and from the church,

  With my Bible under my arm

  Till I was gray and old;

  Unwedded, alone in the world,

  Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation,

  And children in the church.

  I know they laughed and thought me queer.

  I knew of the eagle souls that flew high in the sunlight,

  Above the spire of the church, and laughed at the church,

  Disdaining me, not seeing me.

  But if the high air was sweet to them, sweet was the church to me.

  It was the vision, vision, vision of the poets

  Democratized!

  LE ROY GOLDMAN

  “WHAT will you do when you come to die,

  If all your life long you have rejected Jesus,

  And know as you lie there, He is not your friend?”

  Over and over I said, I, the revivalist.

  Ah, yes! but there are friends and friends.

  And blessed are you, say I, who know all now,

  You who have lost, ere you pass,

  A father or mother, or old grandfather or mother,

  Some beautiful soul that lived life strongly,

  And knew you all through, and loved you ever,

  Who would not fail to speak for you,

  And give God an intimate view of your soul,

  As only one of your flesh could do it.

  That is the hand your hand will reach for,

  To lead you along the corridor
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  To the court where you are a stranger!

  GUSTAV RICHTER

  AFTER a long day of work in my hot-houses

  Sleep was sweet, but if you sleep on your left side

  Your dreams may be abruptly ended.

  I was among my flowers where some one

  Seemed to be raising them on trial,

  As if after-while to be transplanted

  To a larger garden of freer air.

  And I was disembodied vision

  Amid a light, as it were the sun

  Had floated in and touched the roof of glass

  Like a toy balloon and softly bursted,

  And etherealized in golden air.

  And all was silence, except the splendor

  Was immanent with thought as clear

  As a speaking voice, and I, as thought,

  Could hear a Presence think as he walked

  Between the boxes pinching off leaves,

  Looking for bugs and noting values,

  With an eye that saw it all:—

  “Homer, oh yes! Pericles,* good.

  Cæsar Borgia,* what shall be done with it?

  Dante, too much manure, perhaps.

  Napoleon, leave him awhile as yet.

  Shelley, more soil. Shakespeare, needs spraying—”

  Clouds, eh!—

  ARLO WILL

  DID you ever see an alligator

  Come up to the air from the mud,

  Staring blindly under the full glare of noon?

  Have you seen the stabled horses at night

  Tremble and start back at the sight of a lantern?

  Have you ever walked in darkness

  When an unknown door was open* before you

  And you stood, it seemed, in the light of a thousand candles

  Of delicate wax?

  Have you walked with the wind in your ears

  And the sunlight about you

  And found it suddenly shine with an inner splendor?

  Out of the mud many times,

  Before many doors of light,

  Through many fields of splendor,

  Where around your steps a soundless glory scatters

  Like new-fallen snow,