The Hill

Edgar Lee Masters

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 (August 23, 1868, – March 5, 1950) was born in Kansas and lived the majority of his life throughout Illinois. He is best know for the Spoon River Anthology (1915), a poetical work comprised of more than 200 free form poems presented as the epitaphs of the people of Spoon River, spoken by the dead themselves. This poem is the introduction to the anthology.

Ice Handler

Carl Sandburg

I know an ice handler who wears a flannel shirt with
      pearl buttons the size of a dollar,
And he lugs a hundred-pound hunk into a saloon ice-
      box, helps himself to cold ham and rye bread,
Tells the bartender it's hotter than yesterday and will be
      hotter yet to-morrow, by Jesus,
And is on his way with his head in the air and a hard
      pair of fists.
He spends a dollar or so every Saturday night on a two
      hundred pound woman who washes dishes in the
      Hotel Morrison.
He remembers when the union was organized he broke
      the noses of two scabs and loosened the nuts so the
      wheels came off six different wagons one morning,
      and he came around and watched the ice melt in the
      street.
All he was sorry for was one of the scabs bit him on the
      knuckles of the right hand so they bled when he
      came around to the saloon to tell the boys about it.

Carl Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was born in Galesburg, IL, and would spend most of his life living in various places across the Midwest. In 1916, he published Chicago Poems, a volume of wide-ranging poetry that included a cycle of 55 poems specifically dealing with life in Chicago.

A Line to an Unsettled Young Man

James Whitcomb Riley

"O what is Life at last," says you,
`At woman-folks and man-folks, too,
Cain't oncomplainin', worry through?

"An' what is Love, `at no one yit
`At's monkeyed with it kin forgit,
Er gits fat on remembern hit?

"An' what is Death?" - W'y, looky hyur -
Ef Life an' Love don't suit you, sir,
Hit's jes' the thing yer lookin' fer!

James Whitcomb Riley (October 7, 1849 – July 22, 1916) was born and raised in Indiana. He would become extraordinarily famous in his day and was often considered the successor to Longfellow. His reputation has somewhat declined since then. He wrote thousands of poems, some of which are far better examples of Gothic poetry than this--his poem, Leonainie, was for a long time misattributed to Edgar Allan Poe. However, we selected this one for its clear use of dialect and its dual interpretation. Depending on the way this is read, it could be considered dark or darkly humorous.