Webster Ford

Listen to:

Webster Ford (2:16)

from Spoon River Anthology
by Edgar Lee Masters

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Do you remember, O Delphic Apollo,
  The sunset hour by the river, when Mickey M'Grew
  Cried, "There's a ghost," and I, "It's Delphic Apollo,".
  And the son of the banker derided us, saying, "It's light
  By the flags at the water's edge, you half-witted fools."
  And from thence, as the wearisome years rolled on, long after
  Poor Mickey fell down in the water tower to his death
  Down, down, through bellowing darkness, I carried
  The vision which perished with him like a rocket which falls
  And quenches its light in earth, and hid it for fear
  Of the son of the banker, calling on Plutus to save me?
  Avenged were you for the shame of a fearful heart
  Who left me alone till I saw you again in an hour
  When I seemed to be turned to a tree with trunk and branches
  Growing indurate, turning to stone, yet burgeoning
  In laurel leaves, in hosts of lambent laurel,
  Quivering, fluttering, shrinking, fighting the numbness
  Creeping into their veins from the dying trunk and branches!
  'Tis vain, O youth, to fly the call of Apollo.
  Fling yourselves in the fire, die with a song of spring,
  If die you must in the spring. For none shall look
  On the face of Apollo and live, and choose you must
  'Twixt death in the flame and death after years of sorrow,
  Rooted fast in the earth, feeling the grisly hand,
  Not so much in the trunk as in the terrible numbness
  Creeping up to the laurel leaves that never cease
  To flourish until you fall. O leaves of me
  Too sere for coronal wreaths, and fit alone
  For urns of memory, treasured, perhaps, as themes
  For hearts heroic, fearless singers and livers--
  Delphic Apollo.

Willie Metcalf

Listen to:

Willie Metcalf (1:23)

from Spoon River Anthology
by Edgar Lee Masters

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

I was Willie Metcalf.
  They used to call me "Doctor Meyers,"
  Because, they said, I looked like him.
  And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire.
  I lived in the livery stable,
  Sleeping on the floor
  Side by side with Roger Baughman's bulldog,
  Or sometimes in a stall.
  I could crawl between the legs of the wildest horses
  Without getting kicked--we knew each other.
   On spring days I tramped through the country
  To get the feeling, which I sometimes lost,
  That I was not a separate thing from the earth.
  I used to lose myself, as if in sleep,
  By lying with eyes half-open in the woods.
  Sometimes I talked with animals--even toads and snakes--
  Anything that had an eye to look into.
  Once I saw a stone in the sunshine
  Trying to turn into jelly.
  In April days in this cemetery
  The dead people gathered all about me,
  And grew still, like a congregation in silent prayer.
  I never knew whether I was a part of the earth
  With flowers growing in me, or whether I walked--
  Now I know.

Oaks Tutt

Listen to:

Oaks Tutt (1:31)

from Spoon River Anthology
by Edgar Lee Masters

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

My mother was for woman's rights
  And my father was the rich miller at London Mills.
  I dreamed of the wrongs of the world and wanted to right them.
  When my father died, I set out to see peoples and countries
  In order to learn how to reform the world.
  I traveled through many lands. I saw the ruins of Rome
  And the ruins of Athens, And the ruins of Thebes.
  And I sat by moonlight amid the necropolis of Memphis.
  There I was caught up by wings of flame,
  And a voice from heaven said to me:
  "Injustice, Untruth destroyed them.
  Go forth Preach Justice! Preach Truth!"
  And I hastened back to Spoon River
  To say farewell to my mother before beginning my work.
  They all saw a strange light in my eye.
  And by and by, when I talked, they discovered
  What had come in my mind.
  Then Jonathan Swift Somers challenged me to debate
  The subject, (I taking the negative):
  "Pontius Pilate, the Greatest Philosopher of the World."
  And he won the debate by saying at last,
  "Before you reform the world, Mr. Tutt
  Please answer the question of Pontius Pilate:
  "What is Truth?"

Harmon Whitney

Listen to:

Harmon Whitney (1:47)

from Spoon River Anthology
by Edgar Lee Masters

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

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 react,
  Like Byron's did, in song, in something noble,
  But turned on itself like a tortured snake--judge me this way,
  O world.

Petit the Poet

Listen to:

Petit the Poet (1:25)

from Spoon River Anthology
by Edgar Lee Masters

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

 Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
  Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel--
  Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens--
  But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.
  Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
  Ballades by the score with the same old thought:
  The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;
  And what is love but a rose that fades?
  Life all around me here in the village:
  Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,
  Courage, constancy, heroism, failure--
  All in the loom, and oh what patterns!
  Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers--
  Blind to all of it all my life long.
  Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
  Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics,
  While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines?

Fiddler Jones

Listen to:

Fiddler Jones (1:19)

from Spoon River Anthology
by Edgar Lee Masters

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

The earth keeps some vibration going
  There in your heart, and that is you.
  And if the people find you can fiddle,
  Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.
  What do you see, a harvest of clover?
  Or a meadow to walk through to the river?
  The wind's in the corn; you rub your hands
  For beeves hereafter ready for market;
  Or else you hear the rustle of skirts
  Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.
  To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust
  Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;
  They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy
  Stepping it off, to "Toor-a-Loor."
  How could I till my forty acres
  Not to speak of getting more,
  With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos
  Stirred in my brain by crows and robins
  And the creak of a wind-mill--only these?
  And I never started to plow in my life
  That some one did not stop in the road
  And take me away to a dance or picnic.
  I ended up with forty acres;
  I ended up with a broken fiddle--
  And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
  And not a single regret.

Doctor Meyers

Listen to:

Doctor Meyers (:57)

from Spoon River Anthology

by Edgar Lee Masters

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

No other man, unless it was Doc Hill,
  Did more for people in this town than I.
  And all the weak, the halt, the improvident
  And those who could not pay flocked to me.
  I was good-hearted, easy Doctor Meyers.
  I was healthy, happy, in comfortable fortune,
  Blest with a congenial mate, my children raised,
  All wedded, doing well in the world.
  And then one night, Minerva, the poetess,
  Came to me in her trouble, crying.
  I tried to help her out--she died--
  They indicted me, the newspapers disgraced me,
  My wife perished of a broken heart.
  And pneumonia finished me.

Trainor the Druggist

Listen to:

Trainor the Druggist (:46)

from Spoon River Anthology
by Edgar Lee Masters

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

   Only the chemist can tell, and not always the chemist,
  What will result from compounding
  Fluids or solids.
  And who can tell
  How men and women will interact
  On each other, or what children will result?
  There were Benjamin Pantier and his wife,
  Good in themselves, but evil toward each other;
  He oxygen, she hydrogen,
  Their son, a devastating fire.
  I Trainor, the druggist, a miser of chemicals,
  Killed while making an experiment,
  Lived unwedded.

The Hill

Listen to:

The Hill (2:27)

from Spoon River Anthology
by Edgar Lee Masters

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley,
  The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?
  All, all are sleeping on the hill.

  One passed in a fever,
  One was burned in a mine,
  One was killed in a brawl,
  One died in a jail,
  One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife--
  All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

  Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith,
  The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?--
  All, all are sleeping on the hill.

  One died in shameful child-birth,
  One of a thwarted love,
  One at the hands of a brute in a brothel,
  One of a broken pride, in the search for heart's desire;
  One after life in far-away London and Paris
  Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag--
  All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

  Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily,
  And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton,
  And Major Walker who had talked
  With venerable men of the revolution?--
  All, all are sleeping on the hill.

  They brought them dead sons from the war,
  And daughters whom life had crushed,
  And their children fatherless, crying--
  All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
  Where is Old Fiddler Jones
  Who played with life all his ninety years,
  Braving the sleet with bared breast,
  Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin,
  Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven?
  Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago,
  Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary's Grove,
  Of what Abe Lincoln said
  One time at Springfield.

The Argument of his Book

Listen to:

The Argument of his Book (1:11)

by Robert Herrick

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers,
Of April, May, of June, and July flowers.
I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes,
Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes.
I write of youth, of love, and have access
By these to sing of cleanly wantonness.
I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by piece
Of balm, of oil, of spice, and ambergris.
I sing of Time's trans-shifting; and I write
How roses first came red, and lilies white.
I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing
The court of Mab, and of the fairy king.
I write of Hell; I sing (and ever shall)
Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all.