Nellie Clark

 - Edgar Lee Masters

 

I was only eight years old;

And before I grew up and knew what it meant

I had no words for it, except

That I was frightened and told my

Mother; And that my Father got a pistol

And would have killed Charlie, who was a big boy,

Fifteen years old, except for his Mother.

Nevertheless the story clung to me.

But the man who married me, a widower of thirty-five,

Was a newcomer and never heard it

Till two years after we were married.

Then he considered himself cheated,

And the village agreed that I was not really a virgin.

Well, he deserted me, and I died

The following winter.

from: Spoon River Anthology.  Coptright 1915.

Fiddler Jones

   by Edgar Lee Masters

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.