| |
| BETTER than granite, Spoon River, | |
| Is the memory-picture you keep of me | |
| Standing before the pioneer men and women | |
| There at Concord Church on Communion day. | |
| Speaking in broken voice of the peasant youth | 5 |
| Of Galilee who went to the city | |
| And was killed by bankers and lawyers; | |
| My voice mingling with the June wind | |
| That blew over wheat fields from Atterbury; | |
| While the white stones in the burying ground | 10 |
| Around the Church shimmered in the summer sun. | |
| And there, though my own memories | |
| Were too great to bear, were you, O pioneers, | |
| With bowed heads breathing forth your sorrow | |
| For the sons killed in battle and the daughters | 15 |
| And little children who vanished in life’s morning, | |
| Or at the intolerable hour of noon. | |
| But in those moments of tragic silence, | |
| When the wine and bread were passed, | |
| Came the reconciliation for us— | 20 |
| Us the ploughmen and the hewers of wood, | |
| Us the peasants, brothers of the peasant of Galilee— | |
| To us came the Comforter | |
| And the consolation of tongues of flame! | |
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