The Hill

    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,
    One of a broken pride, in the search for heart's desire;
    One after life in far-away London and Paris
    Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag -
    All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

    Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily,
    And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton,
    And Major Walker who had talked
    With venerable men of the revolution? -
    All, all are sleeping on the hill.

    They brought them dead sons from the war,
    And daughters whom life had crushed,
    And their children fatherless, crying -
    All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
    Where is Old Fiddler Jones
    Who played with life all his ninety years,
    Braving the sleet with bared breast,
    Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin,
    Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven?
    Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago,
    Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary's Grove,
    Of what Abe Lincoln said
    One time at Springfield.

Edgar Lee Masters

Edgar Lee Masters was an American poet, biographer, and dramatist. Born in Kansas and raised in Illinois, Masters is best known for his collection of poems entitled "Spoon River Anthology" (1915), which is a series of epitaphs of residents of the fictional small town of Spoon River. His works reflect the everyday lives and frustrations of middle America. Masters also practiced law and wrote biographies for historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain.

Edgar Lee Masters

William H. Herndon

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Sam Hookey

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Botanical Gardens

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

William Goode

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Marthy's Younkit.

The mountain brook sung lonesomelike
And loitered on its way
Ez if it waited for a child
To jine it in its play;
The wild flowers of the hillside
Bent down their heads to hear
The music of the little feet
That had, somehow, grown so dear;
The magpies, like winged shadders,
Wuz a-flutterin' to and fro
Among the rocks and holler stumps
In the ragged gulch below;
The pines 'nd hemlock tosst their boughs
(Like they wuz arms) 'nd made
Soft, sollum music on the slope
Where he had often played.
But for these lonesome, sollum voices
On the mountain side,
There wuz no sound the summer day
That Marthy's younkit died.

We called him Marthy's younkit,
For Marthy wuz the name
Uv her ez wuz his mar, the wife
Uv Sorry Tom--the same

Eugene Field

Marthy's Younkit

The mountain brook sung lonesomelike, and loitered on its way
Ez if it waited for a child to jine it in its play;
The wild-flowers uv the hillside bent down their heads to hear
The music uv the little feet that had somehow grown so dear;
The magpies, like winged shadders, wuz a-flutterin' to an' fro
Among the rocks an' holler stumps in the ragged gulch below;
The pines an' hemlocks tosst their boughs (like they wuz arms) and made
Soft, sollum music on the slope where he had often played;
But for these lonesome, sollum voices on the mountain-side,
There wuz no sound the summer day that Marthy's younkit died.

We called him Marthy's younkit, for Marthy wuz the name
Uv her ez wuz his mar, the wife uv Sorry Tom,--the same
Ez taught the school-house on the hill, way back in '69,<...

Eugene Field

Fiddler Jones

    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 robi...

Edgar Lee Masters

Lines Recited At The Berkshire Jubilee, Pittsfield, Mass., August 23, 1844

Come back to your mother, ye children, for shame,
Who have wandered like truants for riches or fame!
With a smile on her face, and a sprig in her cap,
She calls you to feast from her bountiful lap.

Come out from your alleys, your courts, and your lanes,
And breathe, like young eagles, the air of our plains;
Take a whiff from our fields, and your excellent wives
Will declare it 's all nonsense insuring your lives.

Come you of the law, who can talk, if you please,
Till the man in the moon will allow it's a cheese,
And leave "the old lady, that never tells lies,"
To sleep with her handkerchief over her eyes.

Ye healers of men, for a moment decline
Your feats in the rhubarb and ipecac line;
While you shut up your turnpike, your neighbors can go
The ol...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

John Mckeen.

John McKeen, in his rusty dress,
    His loosened collar, and swarthy throat;
His face unshaven, and none the less,
His hearty laugh and his wholesomeness,
    And the wealth of a workman's vote!

Bring him, O Memory, here once more,
    And tilt him back in his Windsor chair
By the kitchen-stove, when the day is o'er
And the light of the hearth is across the floor,
    And the crickets everywhere!

And let their voices be gladly blent
    With a watery jingle of pans and spoons,
And a motherly chirrup of sweet content,
And neighborly gossip and merriment,
    And old-time fiddle-tunes!

Tick the clock with a wooden sound,
    And fill the hearing with childish glee
Of rhyming riddle, or story found
In the Robinson Crusoe, leather-boun...

James Whitcomb Riley

My Playmates

The wind comes whispering to me of the country green and cool--
Of redwing blackbirds chattering beside a reedy pool;
It brings me soothing fancies of the homestead on the hill,
And I hear the thrush's evening song and the robin's morning trill;
So I fall to thinking tenderly of those I used to know
Where the sassafras and snakeroot and checkerberries grow.

What has become of Ezra Marsh, who lived on Baker's hill?
And what's become of Noble Pratt, whose father kept the mill?
And what's become of Lizzie Crum and Anastasia Snell,
And of Roxie Root, who 'tended school in Boston for a spell?
They were the boys and they the girls who shared my youthful play--
They do not answer to my call! My playmates--where are they?

What has become of Levi and his little brother Joe,

Eugene Field