Spoon River Anthology Part 17

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

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 gla.s.s 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 h.o.a.ry 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 pa.s.sest 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sailed 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 wh.o.r.es 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 Wa.s.son

OH! the dew-wet gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s, 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