Explore "Aaron Hatfield" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Better than granite, Spoon River, / Is the memory-picture you keep of me / Standing before the pioneer men and women / There at Concord Church on Communion day.
Speaking in broken voice of the peasant youth / Of Galilee who went to the city / And was killed by bankers and lawyers;
My voice mingling with the June wind / That blew over wheat fields from Atterbury;
While the white stones in the burying ground / Around the Church shimmered in the summer sun.
And there, though my own memories / Were too great to bear, were you, O pioneers, / With bowed heads breathing forth your sorrow / For the sons killed in battle and the daughters / And little children who vanished in life's morning, / Or at the intolerable hour of noon.
But in those moments of tragic silence, / When the wine and bread were passed, / Came the reconciliation for us --
Us the ploughmen and the hewers of wood, / Us the peasants, brothers of the peasant of Galilee --
To us came the Comforter / And the consolation of tongues of flame!