I was the daughter of Lambert Hutchins,
Born in a cottage near the grist-mill,
Reared in the mansion there on the hill,
With its spires, bay-windows, and roof of slate.
How proud my mother was of the mansion
How proud of father’s rise in the world!
And how my father loved and watched us,
And guarded our happiness.
But I believe the house was a curse,
For father’s fortune was little beside it;
And when my husband found he had married
A girl who was really poor,
He taunted me with the spires,
And called the house a fraud on the world,
A treacherous lure to young men, raising hopes
Of a dowry not to be had;
I have two monuments besides this granite obelisk:
One, the house I built on the hill,
With its spires, bay windows, and roof of slate.
The other, the lake-front in Chicago,
Where the railroad keeps a switching yard,
With whistling engines and crunching wheels
And smoke and soot thrown over the city,
And the crash of cars along the boulevard,—
A blot like a hog-pen on the harbor
Of a great metropolis, foul as a sty.
I helped to give this heritage
To generations yet unborn, with my vote
In the House of Representatives,
And the lure of the thing was to be at rest
From the never—ending fright of need,
And to give my daughters gentle breeding,
I was well known and much beloved
And rich, as fortunes are reckoned
In Spoon River, where I had lived and worked.
That was the home for me,
Though all my children had flown afar—
Which is the way of Nature—all but one.
The boy, who was the baby, stayed at home,
To be my help in my failing years
And the solace of his mother.
But I grew weaker, as he grew stronger,
And he quarreled with me about the business,
And his wife said I was a hindrance to it;
And he won his mother to see as he did,
Till they tore me up to be transplanted
With them to her girlhood home in Missouri.
And so much of my fortune was gone at last,
I staggered on through darkness,
There was a hazy sky, a few stars
Which I followed as best I could.
It was nine o’clock, I was trying to get home.
But somehow I was lost,
Though really keeping the road.
Then I reeled through a gate and into a yard,
And called at the top of my voice:
“Oh, Fiddler! Oh, Mr. Jones!”
(I thought it was his house and he would show me the way home. )
But who should step out but A. D. Blood,
In his night shirt, waving a stick of wood,
And roaring about the cursed saloons,
And the criminals they made?
“You drunken Oscar Hummel,” he said,
As I stood there weaving to and fro,
It was just like everything else in life:
Something outside myself drew me down,
My own strength never failed me.
Why, there was the time I earned the money
With which to go away to school,
And my father suddenly needed help
And I had to give him all of it.
Just so it went till I ended up
A man-of-all-work in Spoon River.
Thus when I got the water-tower cleaned,
And they hauled me up the seventy feet,
I unhooked the rope from my waist,
And laughingly flung my giant arms
Over the smooth steel lips of the top of the tower—
But they slipped from the treacherous slime,
And down, down, down, I plunged
In youth my wings were strong and tireless,
But I did not know the mountains.
In age I knew the mountains
But my weary wings could not follow my vision—
Genius is wisdom and youth.
I was a peasant girl from Germany,
Blue-eyed, rosy, happy and strong.
And the first place I worked was at Thomas Greene’s.
On a summer’s day when she was away
He stole into the kitchen and took me
Right in his arms and kissed me on my throat,
I turning my head. Then neither of us
Seemed to know what happened.
And I cried for what would become of me.
And cried and cried as my secret began to show.
One day Mrs. Greene said she understood,
And would make no trouble for me,
And, being childless, would adopt it.
(He had given her a farm to be still.)
So she hid in the house and sent out rumors,
As if it were going to happen to her.
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,
You were always a dreamer, Rose, red Rose,
As you swung on your perfumed spray.
Swinging, and all the world was true,
Swaying, what did it trouble you ?
A rose will fade in a day.
Why did you smile to his face, red Rose,
As he whistled across your way ?
And all the world went mad for you,
All the world it knelt to woo.
A rose will bloom in a day.
I gather your petals. Rose, red Rose,
The petals he threw away.
And all the world derided you ;
Ah ! the world, how well it knew
A rose will fade in a day.
Dear, in wintry weather,
How close we crept together !
The storms, with all their thunder,
Could not our fond hands sunder.
No sorrow followed after
Cold words or scornful laughter.
How close we crept together,
Through all the wintry weather !
Dear, when each rose uncurled
To its sweet narrow world,
You went to cull its glory ;
You would not hear my story,
Too sweet the birds were singing,
Too fair the buds were swinging.
If I should come or go
You did not care to know.
Laughter and song for my cheer,
Life is so fair.
None so happy as I
Anywhere ;
Birds in the woods carol clear,
White clouds in the sky.
Song silent and brow with a frown,
Why is this so ?
Guiltless am I
Would you know,
The lark from the heavens drops down ;
Grey clouds in the sky.
Sighing and tears for my sorrow,
Life is so drear,
None so weary as I,
'Tis a mere
Now God between us and all harm,
For I to-night have seen
A banshee in the shadow pass
Along the dark boreen.
And as she went she keened and cried
And combed her long white hair,
She stopped at Molly Reilly's door,
And sobbed till midnight there.
And is it for himself she moans,
Who is so far away ?
Or is it Molly Reilly's death
She cries until the day ?
Now Molly thinks her man is gone
A sailor lad to be ;
She puts a candle at her door
Each night for him to see.