Why did you bruise me with your rough places If you did not want me to tell you about them? And stifle me with your stupidities, If you did not want me to expose them? And nail me with the nails of cruelty, If you did not want me to pluck the nails forth And fling them in your faces? And starve me because I refused to obey you, If you did not want me to undermine your tyranny? I might have been as soul serene As William Wordsworth except for you! But what a coward you are, Spoon River, When you drove me to stand in a magic circle By the sword of Truth described! And then to whine and curse your burns, And curse my power who stood and laughed Amid ironical lightning! English Thornton Here! You sons of the men Who fought with Washington at Valley Forge, And whipped Black Hawk at Starved Rock, Arise! Do battle with the descendants of those Who bought land in the loop when it was waste sand, And sold blankets and guns to the army of Grant, And sat in legislatures in the early days, Taking bribes from the railroads! Arise! Do battle with the fops and bluffs, The pretenders and figurantes of the society column And the yokel souls whose daughters marry counts; And the parasites on great ideas, And the noisy riders of great causes, And the heirs of ancient thefts. Arise! And make the city yours, And the State yours— You who are sons of the hardy yeomanry of the forties! By God! If you do not destroy these vermin My avenging ghost will wipe out Your city and your state. Enoch Dunlap How many times, during the twenty years I was your leader, friends of Spoon River, Did you neglect the convention and caucus, And leave the burden on my hands Of guarding and saving the people’s cause?— Sometimes because you were ill; Or your grandmother was ill; Or you drank too much and fell asleep; Or else you said: “He is our leader, All will be well; he fights for us; We have nothing to do but follow.” But oh, how you cursed me when I fell, And cursed me, saying I had betrayed you, In leaving the caucus room for a moment, When the people’s enemies, there assembled, Waited and watched for a chance to destroy The Sacred Rights of the People. You common rabble! I left the caucus To go to the urinal. Ida Frickey