The Twa Jocks

Says Bauldy MacGreegor frae Gleska tae Hecky MacCrimmon frae Skye:
"That's whit I hate maist aboot fechtin' -- it makes ye sae deevilish dry;
Noo jist hae a keek at yon ferm-hoose them Gairmans are poundin' sae fine,
Weel, think o' it, doon in the dunnie there's bottles and bottles o' wine.
A' hell's fairly belchin' oot yonner, but oh, lad, I'm ettlin' tae try. . . ."
"If it's poose she'll be with ye whateffer," says Hecky MacCrimmon frae Skye.~

Says Bauldy MacGreegor frae Gleska: "Whit price fur a funeral wreath?


The Two Devines

It was shearing time at the Myall Lake,
And then rose the sound through the livelong day
Of the constant clash that the shear-blades make
When the fastest shearers are making play;
But there wasn't a man in the shearers' lines
That could shear a sheep with the two Devines.
They had rung the sheds of the east and west,
Had beaten the cracks of the Walgett side,
And the Cooma shearers had given them best --
When they saw them shear, they were satisfied.
From the southern slopes to the western pines


The Swan

I'll leave the mortal world behind,
Take wing in an flight fantastical,
With singing, my eternal soul
Will rise up swan-like in the air.

Possessing two immortal traits,
In Purgatory I won't not linger,
But rising over jealousy
I'll leave behind me kingdoms' shine.

'Tis so! Though not renowned by birth,
I am the muses favorite,
From other notables a world apart-
I'll be preferred by death itself.

The tomb will not confine me,
I will not turn to dust among the stars,


The Spooniad

[The late Mr. Jonathan Swift Somers, laureate of Spoon River, planned The Spooniad as an epic in twenty-four books, but unfortunately did not live to complete even the first book. The fragment was found among his papers by William Marion Reedy and was for the first time published in Reedy's Mirror of December 18th, 1914.]


Of John Cabanis' wrath and of the strife
Of hostile parties, and his dire defeat
Who led the common people in the cause
Of freedom for Spoon River, and the fall
Of Rhodes' bank that brought unnumbered woes


The Statue and the Bust

There's a palace in Florence, the world knows well,
And a statue watches it from the square,
And this story of both do our townsmen tell.

Ages ago, a lady there,
At the farthest window facing the East,
Asked, "Who rides by with the royal air?"

The bridesmaids' prattle around her ceased;
She leaned forth, one on either hand;
They saw how the blush of the bride increased --

They felt by its beats her heart expand --
As one at each ear and both in a breath
Whispered, "The Great-Duke Ferdinand."


The Shadow Of Night

...
Fall, Hercules, from heaven, in tempests hurl'd,
And cleanse this beastly stable of the world;
Or bend thy brazen bow against the Sun,
As in Tartessus, when thou hadst begun
Thy task of oxen: heat in more extremes
Than thou wouldst suffer, with his envious beams.
Now make him leave the world to Night and dreams.
Never were virtue's labours so envied
As in this light: shoot, shoot, and stoop his pride.
Suffer no more his lustful rays to get
The Earth with issue: let him still be set


The Right To Grief

To Certain Poets About to Die

Take your fill of intimate remorse, perfumed sorrow,
Over the dead child of a millionaire,
And the pity of Death refusing any check on the bank
Which the millionaire might order his secretary to
scratch off
And get cashed.

Very well,
You for your grief and I for mine.
Let me have a sorrow my own if I want to.

I shall cry over the dead child of a stockyards hunky.
His job is sweeping blood off the floor.
He gets a dollar seventy cents a day when he works


The Revenge of Rain-in-the-Face

In that desolate land and lone,
Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone
Roar down their mountain path,
By their fires the Sioux Chiefs
Muttered their woes and griefs
And the menace of their wrath.

"Revenge!" cried Rain-in-the-Face,
"Revenue upon all the race
Of the White Chief with yellow hair!"
And the mountains dark and high
From their crags re-echoed the cry
Of his anger and despair.

In the meadow, spreading wide
By woodland and riverside
The Indian village stood;


The Psalm Of Life

What the heart of the young man said to the psalmist
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!--
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,


The Primrose of the Rock

A Rock there is whose homely front
The passing traveller slights;
Yet there the glow-worms hang their lamps,
Like stars, at various heights;
And one coy Primrose to that Rock
The vernal breeze invites.
What hideous warfare hath been waged,
What kingdoms overthrown,
Since first I spied that Primrose-tuft
And marked it for my own;
A lasting link in Nature's chain
From highest heaven let down!

The flowers, still faithful to the stems,
Their fellowship renew;


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