There by the window in the old hou… Perched on the bluff, overlooking… My days of labor closed, sitting o… Day by day did I look in my memor… As one who gazes in an enchantress…

After you have enriched your soul To the highest point, With books, thought, suffering, th… The power to interpret glances, si… The pauses in momentous transforma…

“What will you do when you come to… If all your life long you have rej… And know as you lie there, He is… Over and over I said, I, the revi… Ah, yes! but there are friends and…

Observe the clasped hands! Are they hands of farewell or gree… Hands that I helped or hands that… Would it not be well to carve a ha… With an inverted thumb, like Elag…

I was just turned twenty-one, And Henry Phipps, the Sunday-sch… Made a speech in Bindle’s Opera… “The honor of the flag must be uph… “Whether it be assailed by a barba…

They would have lynched me Had I not been secretly hurried a… To the jail at Peoria. And yet I was going peacefully ho… Carrying my jug, a little drunk,

I tried to win the nomination For president of the County-board And I made speeches all over the… Denouncing Solomon Purple, my riv… As an enemy of the people,

They called me the weakling, the s… For my brothers were strong and be… While I, the last child of parent… Inherited only their residue of po… But they, my brothers, were eaten…

Do the boys and girls still go to… For cider, after school, in late… Or gather hazel nuts among the thi… On Aaron Hatfield’s farm when the… For many times with the laughing g…

You would not believe, would you That I came from good Welsh stock… That I was purer blooded than the… And of more direct lineage than th… And Virginians of Spoon River?

Do you think that odes and sermons… And the ringing of church bells, And the blood of old men and young… Martyred for the truth they saw With eyes made bright by faith in…

I lost my patronage in Spoon Rive… From trying to put my mind in the… To catch the soul of the person. The very best picture I ever took Was of Judge Somers, attorney at…

My wife lost her health, And dwindled until she weighed sca… Then that woman, whom the men Styled Cleopatra, came along. And we—we married ones

Why was I not devoured by self-co… And rotted down by indifference And impotent revolt like Indignat… Why, with all of my errant steps Did I miss the fate of Willard F…

I wrote him a letter asking him fo… To discharge my sick boy from the… But maybe he couldn’t read it. Then I went to town and had James… Who wrote beautifully, write him a…