Part 16

John Wasson

Oh! the dew-wet grass 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 grass, 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

The idea danced before us as a flag; The sound of martial music; The thrill of carrying a gun; Advancement in the world on coming home; A glint of glory, wrath for foes; A dream of duty to country or to God. But these were things in ourselves, shining before us, They were not the power behind us, Which was the Almighty hand of Life, Like fire at earth’s center making mountains, Or pent up waters that cut them through. Do you remember the iron band The blacksmith, Shack Dye, welded Around the oak on Bennet’s lawn, From which to swing a hammock, That daughter Janet might repose in, reading On summer afternoons? And that the growing tree at last Sundered the iron band? But not a cell in all the tree Knew aught save that it thrilled with life, Nor cared because the hammock fell In the dust with Milton’s Poems.

Godwin James

Harry Wilmans! You who fell in a swamp Near Manila, following the flag You were not wounded by the greatness of a dream, Or destroyed by ineffectual work, Or driven to madness by Satanic snags; You were not torn by aching nerves, Nor did you carry great wounds to your old age. You did not starve, for the government fed you. You did not suffer yet cry “forward” To an army which you led Against a foe with mocking smiles, Sharper than bayonets. You were not smitten down By invisible bombs. You were not rejected By those for whom you were defeated. You did not eat the savorless bread Which a poor alchemy had made from ideals. You went to Manila, Harry Wilmans, While I enlisted in the bedraggled army Of bright-eyed, divine youths, Who surged forward, who were driven back and fell Sick, broken, crying, shorn of faith, Following the flag of the Kingdom of Heaven. You and I, Harry Wilmans, have fallen In our several ways, not knowing Good from bad, defeat from victory, Nor what face it is that smiles Behind the demoniac mask.

Lyman King

You may think, passer-by, that Fate Is a pit-fall outside of yourself, Around which you may walk by the use of foresight And wisdom. Thus you believe, viewing the lives of other men, As one who in God-like fashion bends over an anthill, Seeing how their difficulties could be avoided. But pass on into life: In time you shall see Fate approach you In the shape of your own image in the mirror; Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth, And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest, And you shall know that guest And read the authentic message of his eyes.

Caroline Branson

With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked, As often before, the April fields till star-light Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood, Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing Like notes of music that run together, into winning, In the inspired improvisation of love! But to put back of us as a canticle ended The rapt enchantment of the flesh, In which our souls swooned, down, down, Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves— Annihilated in love! To leave these behind for a room with lamps: And to stand with our Secret mocking itself, And hiding itself amid flowers and mandolins, Stared at by all between salad and coffee. And to see him tremble, and feel myself Prescient, as one who signs a bond— Not flaming with gifts and pledges heaped With rosy hands over his brow. And then, O night! deliberate! unlovely! With all of our wooing blotted out by the winning, In a chosen room in an hour that was known to all! Next day he sat so listless, almost cold So strangely changed, wondering why I wept, Till a kind of sick despair and voluptuous madness Seized us to make the pact of death.

A stalk of the earth-sphere, Frail as star-light; Waiting to be drawn once again Into creation’s stream. But next time to be given birth Gazed at by Raphael and St. Francis Sometimes as they pass. For I am their little brother, To be known clearly face to face Through a cycle of birth hereafter run. You may know the seed and the soil; You may feel the cold rain fall, But only the earth-sphere, only heaven Knows the secret of the seed In the nuptial chamber under the soil. Throw me into the stream again, Give me another trial— Save me, Shelley!

Anne Rutledge

Out of me unworthy and unknown The vibrations of deathless music; “With malice toward none, with charity for all.” Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions, And the beneficent face of a nation Shining with justice and truth. I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds, Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln, Wedded to him, not through union, But through separation. Bloom forever, O Republic, From the dust of my bosom!

Hamlet Micure

In a lingering fever many visions come to you: I was in the little house again With its great yard of clover Running down to the board-fence, Shadowed by the oak tree, Where we children had our swing. Yet the little house was a manor hall Set in a lawn, and by the lawn was the sea. I was in the room where little Paul Strangled from diphtheria, But yet it was not this room— It was a sunny verandah enclosed With mullioned windows And in a chair sat a man in a dark cloak With a face like Euripides. He had come to visit me, or I had gone to visit him—I could not tell. We could hear the beat of the sea, the clover nodded Under a summer wind, and little Paul came With clover blossoms to the window and smiled. Then I said: “What is ‘divine despair,’ Alfred?” “Have you read ‘Tears, Idle Tears’?” he asked. “Yes, but you do not there express divine despair.” “My poor friend,” he answered, “that was why the despair Was divine.”

Mabel Osborne

Your red blossoms amid green leaves Are drooping, beautiful geranium! But you do not ask for water. You cannot speak! You do not need to speak— Everyone knows that you are dying of thirst, Yet they do not bring water! They pass on, saying: “The geranium wants water.” And I, who had happiness to share And longed to share your happiness; I who loved you, Spoon River, And craved your love, Withered before your eyes, Spoon River— Thirsting, thirsting, Voiceless from chasteness of soul to ask you for love, You who knew and saw me perish before you, Like this geranium which someone has planted over me, And left to die.

William H. Herndon

There by the window in the old house Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley, My days of labor closed, sitting out life’s decline, Day by day did I look in my memory, As one who gazes in an enchantress’ crystal globe, And I saw the figures of the past As if in a pageant glassed by a shining dream, Move through the incredible sphere of time. And I saw a man arise from the soil like a fabled giant And throw himself over a deathless destiny, Master of great armies, head of the republic, Bringing together into a dithyramb of recreative song The epic hopes of a people; At the same time Vulcan of sovereign fires, Where imperishable shields and swords were beaten out From spirits tempered in heaven. Look in the crystal! See how he hastens on To the place where his path comes up to the path Of a child of Plutarch and Shakespeare. O Lincoln, actor indeed, playing well your part And Booth, who strode in a mimic play within the play, Often and often I saw you, As the cawing crows winged their way to the wood Over my house—top at solemn sunsets, There by my window, Alone.

Rebecca Wasson

Spring and Summer, Fall and Winter and Spring, After each other drifting, past my window drifting! And I lay so many years watching them drift and counting The years till a terror came in my heart at times, With the feeling that I had become eternal; at last My hundredth year was reached! And still I lay Hearing the tick of the clock, and the low of cattle And the scream of a jay flying through falling leaves! Day after day alone in a room of the house Of a daughter-in-law stricken with age and gray. And by night, or looking out of the window by day My thought ran back, it seemed, through infinite time To North Carolina and all my girlhood days, And John, my John, away to the war with the British, And all the children, the deaths, and all the sorrows. And that stretch of years like a prairie in Illinois Through which great figures passed like hurrying horsemen, Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Webster, Clay. O beautiful young republic for whom my John and I Gave all of our strength and love! And O my John! Why, when I lay so helpless in bed for years, Praying for you to come, was your coming delayed? Seeing that with a cry of rapture, like that I uttered When you found me in old Virginia after the war, I cried when I beheld you there by the bed, As the sun stood low in the west growing smaller and fainter In the light of your face!

Rutherford McDowell

They brought me ambrotypes Of the old pioneers to enlarge. And sometimes one sat for me— Some one who was in being When giant hands from the womb of the world Tore the republic. What was it in their eyes?— For I could never fathom That mystical pathos of drooped eyelids, And the serene sorrow of their eyes. It was like a pool of water, Amid oak trees at the edge of a forest, Where the leaves fall, As you hear the crow of a cock From a far-off farm house, seen near the hills Where the third generation lives, and the strong men And the strong women are gone and forgotten. And these grand-children and great grand-children Of the pioneers! Truly did my camera record their faces, too, With so much of the old strength gone, And the old faith gone, And the old mastery of life gone, And the old courage gone, Which labors and loves and suffers and sings Under the sun!

Hannah Armstrong

I wrote him a letter asking him for old times’ sake To discharge my sick boy from the army; But maybe he couldn’t read it. Then I went to town and had James Garber, Who wrote beautifully, write him a letter. But maybe that was lost in the mails. So I traveled all the way to Washington. I was more than an hour finding the White House. And when I found it they turned me away, Hiding their smiles. Then I thought: “Oh, well, he ain’t the same as when I boarded him And he and my husband worked together And all of us called him Abe, there in Menard.” As a last attempt I turned to a guard and said: “Please say it’s old Aunt Hannah Armstrong From Illinois, come to see him about her sick boy In the army.” Well, just in a moment they let me in! And when he saw me he broke in a laugh, And dropped his business as president, And wrote in his own hand Doug’s discharge, Talking the while of the early days, And telling stories.

Lucinda Matlock

I went to the dances at Chandlerville, And played snap-out at Winchester. One time we changed partners, Driving home in the moonlight of middle June, And then I found Davis. We were married and lived together for seventy years, Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children, Eight of whom we lost Ere I had reached the age of sixty. I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick, I made the garden, and for holiday Rambled over the fields where sang the larks, And by Spoon River gathering many a shell, And many a flower and medicinal weed— Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys. At ninety—six I had lived enough, that is all, And passed to a sweet repose. What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness, Anger, discontent and drooping hopes? Degenerate sons and daughters, Life is too strong for you— It takes life to love Life.

Davis Matlock