Judge Selah Lively SUPPOSE you stood just five feet two,    And had worked your way as a grocery clerk,    Studying law by candle light    Until you became an attorney at law?    And then suppose through your diligence,   And regular church attendance,    You became attorney for Thomas Rhodes,    Collecting notes and mortgages,    And representing all the widows    In the Probate Court? And through it all They jeered at your size, and laughed at your clothes    And your polished boots? And then suppose    You became the County Judge?    And Jefferson Howard and Kinsey Keene,    And Harmon Whitney, and all the giants Who had sneered at you, were forced to stand    Before the bar and say “Your Honor”—    Well, don’t you think it was natural    That I made it hard for them? Jefferson Howard MY valiant fight! For I call it valiant,    With my father’s beliefs from old Virginia:    Hating slavery, but no less war.    I, full of spirit, audacity, courage    Thrown into life here in Spoon River, With its dominant forces drawn from New England,    Republicans, Calvinists, merchants, bankers,    Hating me, yet fearing my arm.    With wife and children heavy to carry—    Yet fruits of my very zest of life. Stealing odd pleasures that cost me prestige,    And reaping evils I had not sown;    Foe of the church with its charnel dankness,    Friend of the human touch of the tavern;    Tangled with fates all alien to me, Deserted by hands I called my own.    Then just as I felt my giant strength    Short of breath, behold my children    Had wound their lives in stranger gardens—    And I stood alone, as I started alone! My valiant life! I died on my feet,    Facing the silence—facing the prospect    That no one would know of the fight I made. John M. Church I was attorney for the "Q" And the Indemnity Company which insured The owners of the mine. I pulled the wires with judge and jury, And the upper courts, to beat the claims Of the crippled, the widow and orphan, And made a fortune thereat. The bar association sang my praises In a high-flown resolution. And the floral tributes were many— But the rats devoured my heart And a snake made a nest in my skull! Harmon Whitney OUT of the lights and roar of cities,    Drifting down like a spark in Spoon River,    Burnt out with the fire of drink, and broken,    The paramour of a woman I took in self-contempt,    But to hide a wounded pride as well. To be judged and loathed by a village of little minds—    I, gifted with tongues and wisdom,    Sunk here to the dust of the justice court,    A picker of rags in the rubbage of spites and wrongs,—    I, whom fortune smiled on! I in a village, Spouting to gaping yokels pages of verse,    Out of the lore of golden years,    Or raising a laugh with a flash of filthy wit    When they bought the drinks to kindle my dying mind.    To be judged by you, The soul of me hidden from you,    With its wound gangrened    By love for a wife who made the wound,    With her cold white bosom, treasonous, pure and hard,    Relentless to the last, when the touch of her hand, At any time, might have cured me of the typhus,    Caught in the jungle of life where many are lost.    And only to think that my soul could not re-act,    Like Byron’s did, in song, in something noble,    But turned on itself like a tortured snake -- Judge me this way, O world! W. Lloyd Garrison Standard VEGETARIAN, non-resistant, free-thinker, in ethics a Christian;    Orator apt at the rhine-stone rhythm of Ingersoll;    Carnivorous, avenger, believer and pagan;    Continent, promiscuous, changeable, treacherous, vain,    Proud, with the pride that makes struggle a thing for laughter; With heart cored out by the worm of theatric despair;    Wearing the coat of indifference to hide the shame of defeat;    I, child of the abolitionist idealism—    A sort of Brand in a birth of half-and-half.    What other thing could happen when I defended The patriot scamps who burned the court house,    That Spoon River might have a new one,    Than plead them guilty? When Kinsey Keene drove through    The card-board mask of my life with a spear of light,    What could I do but slink away, like the beast of myself Which I raised from a whelp, to a corner and growl.    The pyramid of my life was nought but a dune,    Barren and formless, spoiled at last by the storm. State’s Attorney Fallas I, THE scourge-wielder, balance-wrecker,    Smiter with whips and swords;    I, hater of the breakers of the law;    I, legalist, inexorable and bitter,    Driving the jury to hang the madman, Barry Holden, Was made as one dead by light too bright for eyes,    And woke to face a Truth with bloody brow:    Steel forceps fumbled by a doctor’s hand    Against my boy’s head as he entered life    Made him an idiot. I turned to books of science    To care for him.    That’s how the world of those whose minds are sick    Became my work in life, and all my world.    Poor ruined boy! You were, at last, the potter And I and all my deeds of charity    The vessels of your hand. Justice Arnett IT is true, fellow citizens,    That my old docket lying there for years    On a shelf above my head and over    The seat of justice, I say it is true    That docket had an iron rim Which gashed my baldness when it fell-- (Somehow I think it was shaken loose    By the heave of the air all over town    When the gasoline tank at the canning works    Blew up and burned Butch Weldy)-- But let us argue points in order,    And reason the whole case carefully:    First I concede my head was cut,    But second the frightful thing was this:    The leaves of the docket shot and showered Around me like a deck of cards    In the hands of a sleight of hand performer.    And up to the end I saw those leaves    Till I said at last, “Those are not leaves,    Why, can’t you see they are days and days And the days and days of seventy years?    And why do you torture me with leaves    And the little entries on them?” Granville Calhoun I WANTED to be County Judge    One more term, so as to round out a service    Of thirty years.    But my friends left me and joined my enemies,    And they elected a new man. Then a spirit of revenge seized me,    And I infected my four sons with it,    And I brooded upon retaliation,    Until the great physician, Nature,    Smote me through with paralysis To give my soul and body a rest.    Did my sons get power and money?    Did they serve the people or yoke them,    To till and harvest fields of self?    For how could they ever forget My face at my bed-room window,    Sitting helpless amid my golden cages    Of singing canaries,    Looking at the old court-house?

The Circuit Judge TAKE note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions    Eaten in my head-stone by the wind and rain --    Almost as if an intangible Nemesis or hatred    Were marking scores against me,    But to destroy, and not preserve, my memory. I in life was the Circuit Judge, a maker of notches,    Deciding cases on the points the lawyers scored,    Not on the right of the matter.    O wing and rain, leave my head-stone alone!    For worse than the anger of the wronged, The curses of the poor,    Was to lie speechless, yet with vision clear,    Seeing that even Hod Putt, the murderer,    Hanged by my sentence,    Was innocent in soul compared with me. Judge Somers HOW does it happen, tell me, That I who was the most erudite of lawyers, Who knew Blackstone and Coke Almost by heart, who made the greatest speech The court-house ever heard, and wrote A brief that won the praise of Justice Breese-- How does it happen, tell me, That I lie here unmarked, forgotten, While Chase Henry, the town drunkard, Has a marble block, topped by an urn, Wherein Nature, in a mood ironical, Has sown a flowering seed? Chase Henry IN life I was the town drunkard;    When I died the priest denied me burial    In holy ground.    The which redounded to my good fortune.    For the Protestants bought this lot, And buried my body here,    Close to the grave of the banker Nicholas,    And of his wife Priscilla.    Take note, ye prudent and pious souls,    Of the cross-currents in life Which bring honor to the dead, who lived in shame. Mrs. Charles Bliss Reverend Wiley advised me not to divorce him For the sake of the children, And Judge Somers advised him the same. So we stuck to the end of the path. But two of the children thought he was right, And two of the children thought I was right. And the two who sided with him blamed me, And the two who sided with me blamed him, And they grieved for the one they sided with. And all were torn with the guilt of judging, And tortured in soul because they could not admire Equally him and me. Now every gardener knows that plants grown in cellars Or under stones are twisted and yellow and weak. And no mother would let her baby suck Diseased milk from her breast. Yet preachers and judges advise the raising of souls Where there is no sunlight, but only twilight, No warmth, but only dampness and cold-- Preachers and judges! Tom Beatty I WAS a lawyer like Harmon Whitney Or Kinsey Keene or Garrison Standard, For I tried the rights of property. Although by lamp-light, for thirty years,    In that poker room in the opera house. And I say to you that Life’s a gambler    Head and shoulders above us all.    No mayor alive can close the house.    And if you lose, you can squeal as you will;    You’ll not get back your money. He makes the percentage hard to conquer;    He stacks the cards to catch your weakness    And not to meet your strength.    And he gives you seventy years to play:    For if you cannot win in seventy You cannot win at all.    So, if you lose, get out of the room—    Get out of the room when your time is up.    It’s mean to sit and fumble the cards,    And curse your losses, leaden-eyed, Whining to try and try. Benjamin Pantier TOGETHER in this grave lie Benjamin Pantier, attorney at law,    And Nig, his dog, constant companion, solace and friend.    Down the gray road, friends, children, men and women,    Passing one by one out of life, left me till I was alone    With Nig for partner, bed-fellow, comrade in drink.          5 In the morning of life I knew aspiration and saw glory.    Then she, who survives me, snared my soul    With a snare which bled me to death,    Till I, once strong of will, lay broken, indifferent,    Living with Nig in a room back of a dingy office.   10 Under my jaw-bone is snuggled the bony nose of Nig—    Our story is lost in silence. Go by, mad world! Jack McGuire THEY would have lynched me    Had I not been secretly hurried away    To the jail at Peoria.    And yet I was going peacefully home,    Carrying my jug, a little drunk, When Logan, the marshal, halted me,    Called me a drunken hound and shook me,    And, when I cursed him for it, struck me    With that Prohibition loaded cane—    All this before I shot him. They would have hanged me except for this:    My lawyer, Kinsey Keene, was helping to land    Old Thomas Rhodes for wrecking the bank,    And the judge was a friend of Rhodes    And wanted him to escape, And Kinsey offered to quit on Rhodes    For fourteen years for me.    And the bargain was made. I served my time    And learned to read and write. Felix Schmidt IT was only a little house of two rooms—    Almost like a child’s play-house—    With scarce five acres of ground around it;    And I had so many children to feed    And school and clothe, and a wife who was sick From bearing children.    One day lawyer Whitney came along    And proved to me that Christian Dallman,    Who owned three thousand acres of land,    Had bought the eighty that adjoined me In eighteen hundred and seventy-one    For eleven dollars, at a sale for taxes,    While my father lay in his mortal illness.    So the quarrel arose and I went to law.    But when we came to the proof, A survey of the land showed clear as day    That Dallman’s tax deed covered my ground    And my little house of two rooms.    It served me right for stirring him up.    I lost my case and lost my place. I left the court room and went to work    As Christian Dallman’s tenant.  “Butch” Weldy AFTER I got religion and steadied down    They gave me a job in the canning works,    And every morning I had to fill    The tank in the yard with gasoline,    That fed the blow-fires in the sheds To heat the soldering irons.    And I mounted a rickety ladder to do it,    Carrying buckets full of the stuff.    One morning, as I stood there pouring,    The air grew still and seemed to heave, And I shot up as the tank exploded,    And down I came with both legs broken,    And my eyes burned crisp as a couple of eggs.    For someone left a blow-fire going,    And something sucked the flame in the tank. The Circuit Judge said whoever did it    Was a fellow-servant of mine, and so    Old Rhodes’ son didn’t have to pay me.    And I sat on the witness stand as blind    As Jack the Fiddler, saying over and over, “I didn’t know him at all.” Ida Chicken AFTER I had attended lectures    At our Chautauqua, and studied French    For twenty years, committing the grammar    Almost by heart,    I thought I’d take a trip to Paris To give my culture a final polish.    So I went to Peoria for a passport—    (Thomas Rhodes was on the train that morning.)    And there the clerk of the district Court    Made me swear to support and defend The constitution—yes, even me—    Who couldn’t defend or support it at all!    And what do you think? That very morning    The Federal Judge, in the very next room    To the room where I took the oath, Decided the constitution    Exempted Rhodes from paying taxes    For the water works of Spoon River.