All Are Sleeping on the Hill

Taken at a recent visit to Oak Hill

Simply recording birth and death dates for people has never been that interesting to me.  What's interesting is discovering where people come from, who they marry, if they had children, what they did for a living, and sometimes, how they died.  Peoples lives are stories, and I never can resist a good story, which is why I enjoy reading Edgar Lee Masters' series of poem about the fictional lives of residents of Springfield, Illinois.  Those people's lives, their accomplishments and disappointments, their secrets, joys and sorrows, are not so different from those of people who lived and died in Rock county.  Here is the first poem, written one hundred years ago.

Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950).  Spoon River Anthology 1916.

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,	5
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,	10
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,	15
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,	20
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,	25
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,	30
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,	35
Of what Abe Lincoln said
One time at Springfield.