#Americans
I was the daughter of Lambert Hut… Born in a cottage near the grist-m… Reared in the mansion there on the… With its spires, bay-windows, and… How proud my mother was of the man…
To this generation I would say: Memorize some bit of verse of trut… It may serve a turn in your life. My husband had nothing to do With the fall of the bank—he was o…
Out of a cell into this darkened s… The end at twenty-five! My tongue could not speak what sti… And the village thought me a fool. Yet at the start there was a clear…
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.
They got me into the Sunday-schoo… In Spoon River And tried to get me to drop Confu… I could have been no worse off If I had tried to get them to dro…
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…
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…
Your attention, Thomas Rhodes, pr… Coolbaugh Wedon, editor of the Ar… Rev. Peet, pastor of the leading… A.D. Blood, several times Mayor… And finally all of you, members of…
Ye young debaters over the doctrin… Of the soul’s immortality I who lie here was the village ath… Talkative, contentious, versed in… Of the infidels.
I would have been as great as Geo… But for an untoward fate. For look at the photograph of me m… Chin resting on hand, and deep-set… Gray, too, and far-searching.
Oh! the dew-wet grass of the meado… Through which Rebecca followed me… One child in her arms, and three t… Lengthening out the farewell to me… And then the long, hard years down…
I won the prize essay at school Here in the village, And published a novel before I wa… I went to the city for themes and… There married the banker’s daughte…
I was Willie Metcalf. They used to call me “Doctor Meye… Because, they said, I looked like… And he was my father, according to… I lived in the livery stable,
Father, thou canst never know The anguish that smote my heart For my disobedience, the moment I… The remorseless wheel of the engin… Sink into the crying flesh of my l…
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…