Very well, you liberals, And navigators into realms intellectual, You sailors through heights imaginative, Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets, You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits, And Tennessee Claflin Shopes— You found with all your boasted wisdom How hard at the last it is To keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms. While we, seekers of earth’s treasures Getters and hoarders of gold, Are self-contained, compact, harmonized, Even to the end. 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! Penniwit, the Artist I lost my patronage in Spoon River From trying to put my mind in the camera To catch the soul of the person. The very best picture I ever took Was of Judge Somers, attorney at law. He sat upright and had me pause Till he got his cross-eye straight. Then when he was ready he said “all right.” And I yelled “overruled” and his eye turned up. And I caught him just as he used to look When saying “I except.” Jim Brown While I was handling Dom Pedro I got at the thing that divides the race between men who are For singing “Turkey in the straw” or “There is a fountain filled with blood”— (Like Rile Potter used to sing it over at Concord). For cards, or for Rev. Peet’s lecture on the holy land; For skipping the light fantastic, or passing the plate; For Pinafore, or a Sunday school cantata; For men, or for money; For the people or against them. This was it: Rev. Peet and the Social Purity Club, Headed by Ben Pantier’s wife, Went to the Village trustees, And asked them to make me take Dom Pedro From the barn of Wash McNeely, there at the edge of town, To a barn outside of the corporation, On the ground that it corrupted public morals. Well, Ben Pantier and Fiddler Jones saved the day— They thought it a slam on colts. Robert Davidson