Spoon River Anthology

slave
Of me the sorceress, you the knave,
And you the plotter to catch his thought.
Whatever he did, whatever he sought?
With a nature dual
Of will and mind,
A thing that sees, and a thing that’s blind.
Come! to our dance! Something hated him
Made us over him, therefore fated him. They join hands and dance. Loki

Passion, reason, custom, rules.
Creeds of the churches, lore of the schools,
Taint in the blood and strength of soul.
Flesh too weak for the will’s control;
Poverty, riches, pride of birth,
Wailing, laughter, over the earth,
Here I have you caught again,
Enter my web, ye sons of men.

Yogarindra

Look in my mirror!
Isn’t it real?
What do you think now, what do you feel?
Here is treasure of gold heaped up;
Here is wine in the festal cup.
Tendrils blossoming, turned to whips,
Love with her breasts and scarlet lips.
Breathe in their nostrils.

Beelzebub

Falsehood’s breath,
Out of nothingness into death.
Out of the mold, out of the rocks,
Wonder, mockery, paradox!
Soaring spirit, groveling flesh,
Bait the trap, and spread the mesh.
Give him hunger, lure him with truth,
Give him the iris hopes of Youth.
Starve him, shame him, fling him down,
Whirled in the vortex of the town.
Break him, age him, till he curse
The idiot face of the universe.
Over and over we mix the clay⁠—
What was dust is alive to-day.

The Three Thus is the hell-born tangle wound Swiftly, swiftly round and round. Beelzebub

Waving his trumpet.
You live! Away!

One of the Figures

How strange and new!
I am I, and another, too.

Another Figure

I was a sun-dew’s leaf, but now
What is this longing?⁠—

Another Figure

Earth below
I was a seedling magnet-tipped
Drawn down earth⁠—

Another Figure

And I was gripped
Electrons in a granite stone,
Now I think.

Another Figure Oh, how alone! Another Figure

My lips to thine. Through thee I find
Something alone by love divined!

Beelzebub

Begone! No, wait. I have bethought me, friends;
Let’s give a play.

He waves his trumpet.

To yonder green rooms go.

The figures disappear. Yogarindra

Oh, yes, a play! That’s very well, I think,
But who will be the audience? I must throw
Illusion over all.

Loki

And I must shift
The scenery, and tangle up the plot.

Beelzebub

Well, so you shall! Our audience shall come
From yonder graves.

He blows his trumpet slightly louder than before. The scene changes. A stage arises among the graves. The curtain is down, concealing the creatures just created, illuminated halfway up by spectral lights. Beelzebub stands before the curtain. Beelzebub

A terrific blast of the trumpet.
Who-o-o-o-o-o!

Immediately there is a rustling as of the shells of grasshoppers stirred by a wind; and hundreds of the dead, including those who have appeared in the Anthology, hurry to the sound of the trumpet. A Voice Gabriel! Gabriel! Many Voices The Judgment day! Beelzebub

Be quiet, if you please
At least until the stars fall and the moon.

Many Voices Save us! Save us! Beelzebub extends his hands over the audience with a benedictory motion and restores order. Beelzebub

Ladies and gentlemen, your kind attention
To my interpretation of the scene.
I rise to give your fancy comprehension,
And analyze the parts of the machine.
My mood is such that I would not deceive you,
Though still a liar and the father of it,
From judgment’s frailty I would retrieve you,
Though falsehood is my art and though I love it.
Down in the habitations whence I rise,
The roots of human sorrow boundless spread.
Long have I watched them draw the strength that lies
In clay made richer by the rotting dead.
Here is a blossom, here a twisted stalk,
Here fruit that sourly withers ere its prime;
And here a growth that sprawls across the walk,
Food for the green worm, which it turns to slime.
The ruddy apple with a core of cork
Springs from a root which in a hollow dangles,
Not skillful husbandry nor laborious work
Can save the tree which lightning breaks and tangles.
Why does the bright nasturtium scarcely flower
But that those insects multiply and grow,
Which make it food, and in the very hour
In which the veined leaves and blossoms blow?
Why does a goodly tree, while fast maturing,
Turn crooked branches covered o’er with scale?
Why does the tree whose youth was not assuring
Prosper and bear while all its fellows fail?
I under earth see much. I know the soil.
I know where mold is heavy and where thin.
I see the stones that thwart the plowman’s toil,
The crooked roots of what the priests call sin.
I know all secrets, even to the core,
What seedlings will be upas, pine or laurel;
It cannot change howe’er the field’s worked o’er.
Man’s what he is and that’s the devil’s moral.
So with the souls of the ensuing drama
They sprang from certain seed in certain earth.
Behold them in the devil’s cyclorama,
Shown in their proper light for all they’re worth.
Now to my task: I’ll give an exhibition
Of mixing the ingredients of spirit.

He waves his hand.

Come, crucible, perform your magic mission,
Come, recreative fire, and hover near it!
I’ll make a soul, or show how one is made.

He waves his wand again. Parti-colored flames appear.

This is the woman you shall see anon!

A red flame appears.

This hectic flame makes all the world afraid:
It was a soldier’s scourge which ate the bone.
His daughter bore the lady of the action,
And died at thirty-nine of scrofula.
She was a creature of a sweet attraction,
Whose sex-obsession no one ever saw.

A purple flame appears.

Lo! this denotes aristocratic strains
Back in the centuries of France’s glory.

A blue flame appears.

And this the will that pulls against the chains
Her father strove until his hair was hoary.
Sorrow and failure made his nature cold,
He never loved the child whose woe is shown,
And hence her passion for the things which gold
Brings in this world of pride, and brings alone.
The human heart that’s famished from its birth
Turns to the grosser treasures, that is plain.
Thus aspiration fallen fills the earth
With jungle growths of bitterness and pain.
Of Celtic, Gallic fire our heroine!
Courageous, cruel, passionate and proud.
False, vengeful, cunning, without fear o’ sin.
A head that oft is bloody, but not bowed.
Now if she meet a man⁠—suppose our hero,
With whom her chemistry shall war yet mix,
As if she were her Borgia to his Nero,
’Twill