“To this generation I would say:Memorize some bit of verse of truth or beauty.”

“And I never started to plow in my lifeThat some one did not stop in the roadAnd take me away to a dance or picnic. I ended up with forty acres; I ended up with a broken fiddle—And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,And not a single regret.”

“I have studied many timesThe marble which was chiseled for me—A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.In truth it pictures not my destinationBut my life.For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.And now I know that we must lift the sailAnd catch the winds of destinyWherever they drive the boat.To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,But life without meaning is the tortureOf restlessness and vague desire—It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.”

“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.”

“I tramped through the countryTo get the feelingThat I was not a separate thing from the earth.I used to lose myselfBy lying with eyes half-open in the woods.Sometimes I talked with animals…”

“My name used to be in the papers dailyAs having dined somewhere,Or traveled somewhere,Or rented a house in Paris,Where I entertained the nobility.I was forever eating or traveling,Or taking the cure at Baden-Baden.Now I am here to do honorTo Spoon River, here beside the family whence I sprang.No one cares now where I dined,Or lived, or whom I entertained,Or how often I took the cure at Baden-Baden!”

“Henry got me with child,Knowing that I could not bring forth lifeWithout losing my own.In my youth therefore I entered the portals of dust.”