I WANTED to go away to college But rich Aunt Persis wouldn't help me. So I made gardens and raked the lawns And bought John Alden's books with my earnings And toiled for the very means of life. I wanted to marry Delia Prickett, But how could I do it with what I earned? And there was Aunt Persis more than seventy, Who sat in a wheel-chair half alive, With her throat so paralyzed, when she swallowed The soup ran out of her mouth like a duck -- A gourmand yet, investing her income In mortgages, fretting all the time About her notes and rents and papers. That day I was sawing wood for her, And reading Proudhon in between. I went in the house for a drink of water, And there she sat asleep in her chair, And Proudhon lying on the table, And a bottle of chloroform on the book, She used sometimes for an aching tooth! I poured the chloroform on a handkerchief And held it to her nose till she died. -- Oh Delia, Delia, you and Proudhon Steadied my hand, and the coroner Said she died of heart failure. I married Delia and got the money -- A joke on you, Spoon River? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB by GEORGE GORDON BYRON EPITAPH ON THOMAS CLERE, SURREY'S FAITHFUL FRIEND AND FOLLOWER by HENRY HOWARD STRANGE HURT [SHE KNOWS] by JAMES LANGSTON HUGHES PIANO by DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE |