Thoughts of Spoon River

And so the final poem in the ‘Chase Henry Trilogy’. Chase Henry accepted his role as "town drunkard" and warned the Protestants, those "prudent and pious souls", of achieving, in a sense, the Devil's own goals for the sake of crossing the Catholics. Harry Carey Goodhue, in like manner to the Protestants, would have his legacy recognised as one thing while, in actual fact, leaving behind something else altogether different. And now we have Judge Somers, the "most erudite of lawyers" and maker of "the greatest speech / The court-house ever heard", lying in an unmarked grave, his life not having produced the rewards he thought it he deserved. Chase Henry recognises that he benefitted from the rivalry that exists between the Protestants and the Catholics but is not into thinking himself other than he really was. He is well aware that he "lived in shame" and his good fortune was not earned. In answer to Judge Somers' question, ...

There is a link between this epitaph and that of Cassius Hueffer, which immediately precedes it. This link is to be found in the use of the word “fool”, used in the same way in both poems. Hueffer accuses the engraver of his tombstone of being a fool, as Mason accuses the the townsfolk generally of being fools for lacking the wisdom to see the “ways of the wind” or perceive the “unseen forces” she claims govern life. It is a feature of Spoon River Anthology that there be short series of poems - sometimes members of a family offering differing perceptions of how things had been in life, sometimes individuals caught up in the same events accusing or defending. Hueffer and Mason are connected only in their bitterness for the townsfolk of Spoon River. But this link is vital to a full understanding of the poems. If each is taken separately, they appear little more than the whinings of the departed attempting one last time to get the living to listen. Together, though, they fo...