"My boy, wherever you are,/ Work for your soul's sake,/ That all the clay of you, all of the dross of you,/ May yield to the fire of you,/ Till the fire is nothing but light! . . ./ Nothing but light!" (p. 40, Emily Sparks)

"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." (p.83, Fiddler Jones)

"I reached the highest place in Spoon River,/ But through what bitterness of spirit!" (p. 198 Henry C. Calhoun)

"You may think, passer-by, that Fate/ Is a pit-fall outside of yourself,/ Around which you may walk by the use of foresight/ And wisdom . . . / But pass on into life:/ In time you shall see Fate approach you in the shape of your own image in the mirror;/ Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth,/ And suddenly...