This poem was included in the original 1915 edition.
How many times, during the twenty years I was your leader, friends of Spoon River, Did you neglect the convention and caucus, And leave the burden on my hands Of guarding and saving the people's cause?-- Sometimes because you were ill; Or your grandmother was ill; Or you drank too much and fell asleep; Or else you said: "He is our leader, All will be well; he fights for us; We have nothing to do but follow." But oh, how you cursed me when I fell, And cursed me, saying I had betrayed you, In leaving the caucus room for a moment, When the people's enemies, there assembled, Waited and watched for a chance to destroy The Sacred Rights of the People. You common rabble! I left the caucus To go to the urinal.
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John , 3 months ago
This is an interesting poem. On one hand, it ends like a joke with its final line acting as a punchline. Normally, this kind of jokey poem is a turn off for me, but I think Masters has done something brilliant in this poem. I think he's managed to capture the sincerity of feeling that a real Enoch Dunlap would have felt in the situation. A leader, at once trusted and revered, has a fall and then everyone turns their back on him. No support was given while he was on top, and no support was given after the fall. As a civic leader, Enoch would certainly feel as if he'd worked hard for nothing. An additional thing that Masters has done here is to capture the pioneer spirit of loving a good joke in the story. Most of the old stories that I can remember hearing from my grandpa and the other old guys from Central Illinois all revolved around something that had happened that would crack a smile or elicit a chuckle when it was told. I don't think this element of storytelling is strictly practiced in Central Illinois, either, which is why SRA had such wide readership when it was published. Masters has really made himself a global storyteller through poems like this.