I was well known and much beloved And rich, as fortunes are reckoned In Spoon River, where I had live… That was the home for me, Though all my children had flown a…

They first charged me with disorde… There being no statute on blasphem… Later they locked me up as insane Where I was beaten to death by a… My offense was this:

Your red blossoms amid green leave… Are drooping, beautiful geranium! But you do not ask for water. You cannot speak! You do not need… Everyone knows that you are dying…

Out of me unworthy and unknown The vibrations of deathless music; ‘With malice toward none, with cha… Out of me the forgiveness of milli… And the beneficient face of a nati…

The Prohibitionists made me Town… When the saloons were voted out, Because when I was a drinking man… Before I joined the church, I kil… At the saw-mill near Maple Grove.

When I first came to Spoon River I did not know whether what they t… Was true or false. They would bring me an epitaph And stand around the shop while I…

Vegetarian, non-resistant, free-th… Orator apt at the rhine-stone rhyt… Carnivorous, avenger, believer and… Continent, promiscuous, changeable… Proud, with the pride that makes s…

I winged my bird, Though he flew toward the setting… But just as the shot rang out, he… Up and up through the splinters of… Till he turned right over, feather…

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?

Mr Kessler, you know, was in the… And he drew six dollars a month as… And stood on the corner talking po… Or sat at home reading Grant’s Me… And I supported the family by was…

No other man, unless it was Doc H… Did more for people in this town t… And all the weak, the halt, the im… And those who could not pay flocke… I was good-hearted, easy Doctor M…

Take note, passers-by, of the shar… Eaten in my head-stone by the wind… Almost as if an intangible Nemesi… Were marking scores against me, But to destroy, and not preserve,…

Rich, honored by my fellow citizen… The father of many children, born… All raised there In the great mansion-house, at the… Note the cedar tree on the lawn!

Grandmother! You who sang to gree… And passed to a sweet repose at ni… Here is your little Rita at last Grown old, grown forty-nine; Here stretched on your grave under…

Their spirits beat upon mine Like the wings of a thousand butte… I closed my eyes and felt their sp… I closed my eyes, yet I knew when… Fringed their cheeks from downcast…