However, it must be. The world’s great garden
Is not all mine. I only sow the tares.
Wheat should be made immune, or else the Warden
Should stop their coming in the world’s affairs.
But to our hero! Long ere he was born
I knew what would repel him and attract.
Such spirit mathematics, fig or thorn,
I can prognosticate before the fact.
This is a grandsire’s treason in an orchard
Against a maid whose nature with his mated.
And this his memory distrait and tortured,
Which marked the child with hate because she hated.
Our heroine’s grand dame was that maid’s own cousin—
But never this our man and woman knew.
The child, in time, of lovers had a dozen,
Then wed a gentleman upright and true.
And thus our hero had a double nature:
One half of him was bad, the other good.
The devil must exhaust his nomenclature
To make this puzzle rightly understood.
But when our hero and our heroine met
They were at once attracted, the repulsion
Was hidden under Passion, with her net
Which must enmesh you ere you feel revulsion.
The virus coursing in the soldier’s blood,
The orchard’s ghost, the unknown kinship ’twixt them,
Our hero’s mother’s lovers round them stood,
Shadows that smiled to see how Fate had fixed them.
This twain pledge vows and marry, that’s the play.
And then the tragic features rise and deepen.
He is a tender husband. When away
The serpents from the orchard slyly creep in.
Our heroine, born of spirit none too loyal,
Picks fruit of knowledge—leaves the tree of life.
Her fancy turns to France corrupt and royal,
Soon she forgets her duty as a wife.
You know the rest, so far as that’s concerned,
She met exposure and her husband slew her.
He lost his reason, for the love she spurned.
He prized her as his own—how slight he knew her.
Now here he sits condemned to mount the gallows—
He could not tell his story—he is dumb.
Love, says your poets, is a grace that hallows,
I call it suffering and martyrdom.
The judge with pointed finger says, “You killed her.”
Well, so he did—but here’s the explanation;
He could not give it. I, the drama-builder,
Show you the various truths and their relation.
Now, to begin. The curtain is ascending,
They meet at tea upon a flowery lawn.
Fair, is it not? How sweet their souls are blending—
The author calls the play Laocoön.
With which we are done.
A flash of a comet
Upon the earth stream.
A dream twice removed,
A spectral confusion
Of earth’s dread illusion.
These are the ghosts
From the desolate coasts.
Would you go to them?
Only pursue them.
Whatever enshrined is
Within you is you.
In a place where no wind is,
Out of the damps,
Be ye as lamps.
Flame-like aspire,
To me alone true,
The Life and the Fire.
The springtime is come, the winter departed,
She wakens from slumber and dances light-hearted.
The sun is returning.
We are done with alarms,
Earth lifts her face burning,
Held close in his arms.
The sun is an eagle
Who broods o’er his young,
The earth is his nursling
In whom he has flung
The life-flame in seed,
In blossom desire,
Till fire become life,
And life become fire.
I slip and I vanish,
I baffle your eye;
I dive and I climb,
I change and I fly.
You have me, you lose me,
Who have me too well,
Now find me and use me—
I am here in a cell.
You are there in a cell?
Oh, now for a rod
With which to divine you—
When the waking waters rise from their beds of snow, under the hill,
In little rooms of stone where they sleep when icicles reign,
The April breezes scurry through woodlands, saying “Fulfill!
Awaken roots under cover of soil—it is Spring again.”
Then the sun exults, the moon is at peace, and voices
Call to the silver shadows to lift the flowers from their dreams.
And a longing, longing enters my heart of sorrow, my heart that rejoices
In the fleeting glimpse of a shining face, and her hair that gleams.
I arise and follow alone for hours the winding way by the river,
Hunting a vanishing light, and a solace for joy too deep.
Where do you lead me, wild one, on and on forever?
Over the hill, over the hill, and down to the meadows of sleep.
Over the soundless depths of space for a hundred million miles
Speeds the soul of me, silent thunder, struck from a harp of fire.
Before my eyes the planets wheel and a universe defiles,
I but a luminant speck of dust upborne in a vast desire.
What is my universe that obeys me—myself compelled to obey
A power that holds me and whirls me over a path that has no end?
And there are my children who call me great, the giver of life and day,
Myself a child who cry for life and know not whither I tend.
A million million suns above me, as if the curtain of night
Were hung before creation’s flame, that shone through the weave of the cloth,
Each with its worlds and worlds and worlds crying upward for light,
For each is drawn in its course to what?—as the candle draws the moth.
Orbits unending,
Life never ending,
Power without end.
Wouldst thou be lord,
Not peace but a sword.
Not heart’s desire—
Ever aspire.
Worship thy power,
Conquer thy hour,
Sleep not but strive,
So shalt thou live.
Infinite Law,
Infinite Life.
Endnotes
-
Author of The Spooniad. ↩
-
See Jonathan Swift Somers. ↩
Colophon
Spoon River Anthology
was published in 1916 by
Edgar Lee Masters.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Brad Taylor,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2007 by
An Anonymous Volunteer
for
spoonriveranthology.net
and on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted
