Poems begining by J
/ page 23 of 30 /
Jacob Godbey
© Edgar Lee Masters
How did you feel, you libertarians,
Who spent your talents rallying noble reasons
Around the saloon, as if Liberty
Was not to be found anywhere except at the bar
Jennie M'Grew
© Edgar Lee Masters
Not, where the stairway turns in the dark,
A hooded figure, shriveled under a flowing cloak!
Not yellow eyes in the room at night,
Staring out from a surface of cobweb gray!
Joseph Dixon
© Edgar Lee Masters
Who carved this shattered harp on my stone?
I died to you, no doubt. But how many harps and pianos
Wired I and tightened and disentangled for you,
Making them sweet again -- with tuning fork or without?
Johnnie Sayre
© Edgar Lee Masters
Father, thou canst never know
The anguish that smote my heart
For my disobedience, the moment I felt
The remorseless wheel of the engine
Jeduthan Hawley
© Edgar Lee Masters
There would be a knock at the door
And I would arise at midnight and go to the shop,
Where belated travelers would hear me hammering
Sepulchral boards and tacking satin.
John M. Church
© Edgar Lee Masters
I was attorney for the "Q"
And the Indemnity Company which insured
The owners of the mine.
I pulled the wires with judge and jury,
Josiah Tompkins
© Edgar Lee Masters
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,
Jim Brown
© Edgar Lee Masters
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);
Judge Somers
© Edgar Lee Masters
How does it happen, tell me,
That I who was the most erudite of lawyers,
Who knew Blackstone and Coke
Almost by heart, who made the greatest speech
J. Milton Miles
© Edgar Lee Masters
Whenever the Presbyterian bell
Was rung by itself, I knew it as the Presbyterian bell.
But when its sound was mingled
With the sound of the Methodist, the Christian,
John Wasson
© Edgar Lee Masters
Oh! the dew-wet grass of the meadow in North Carolina
Through which Rebecca followed me wailing, wailing,
One child in her arms, and three that ran along wailing,
Lengthening out the farewell to me off to the war with the British,
June
© John Payne
THE empress of the year, the meadows' queen,
Back from the East, with all her goodly train,
Jonas Keene
© Edgar Lee Masters
Why did Albert Schirding kill himself
Trying to be County Superintendent of Schools,
Blest as he was with the means of life
And wonderful children, bringing him honor
John Cabanis
© Edgar Lee Masters
Neither spite, fellow citizens,
Nor forgetfulness of the shiftlessness,
And the lawlessness and waste
Under democracy's rule in Spoon River
Jefferson Howard
© Edgar Lee Masters
My valiant fight! For I call it valiant,
With my father's beliefs from old Virginia:
Hating slavery, but no less war.
I, full of spirit, audacity, courage
Jonathan Houghton
© Edgar Lee Masters
There is the caw of a crow,
And the hesitant song of a thrush.
There is the tinkle of a cowbell far away,
And the voice of a plowman on Shipley's hill.
Judge Selah Lively
© Edgar Lee Masters
Suppose you stood just five feet two,
And had worked your way as a grocery clerk,
Studying law by candle light
Until you became an attorney at law?
Jack McGuire
© Edgar Lee Masters
They would have lynched me
Had I not been secretly hurried away
To the jail at Peoria.
And yet I was going peacefully home,
Jonathan Swift Somers
© Edgar Lee Masters
After you have enriched your soul
To the highest point,
With books, thought, suffering, the understanding of many personalities,
The power to interpret glances, silences,
John Hancock Otis
© Edgar Lee Masters
As to democracy, fellow citizens,
Are you not prepared to admit
That I, who inherited riches and was to the manor born,
Was second to none in Spoon River
