TO WILLIAM MARION REEDY


It would have been fitting had I dedicated Spoon River Anthology to
you. Considerations of an intimate nature, not to mention a literary
encouragement which was before yours, crowded you from the page. Yet
you know that it was you who pressed upon my attention in June, 1909,
the Greek Anthology. It was from contemplation of its epitaphs that my
hand unconsciously strayed to the sketches of "Hod Putt," "Serepta The
Scold" ("Serepta Mason" in the book), "Amanda Barker" ("Amanda" in the
book), "Ollie McGee" and "The Unknown," the first written and the
first printed sketches of The Spoon River Anthology. The
_Mirror_ of May 29th, 1914, is their record.

I take one of the epigrams of Meleager with its sad revealment and
touch of irony and turn it from its prose form to a verse form, making
verses according to the breath pauses:

"The holy night and thou, O Lamp, we took as witness of our vows; and
before thee we swore, he that would love me always and I that I would
never leave him. We swore, and thou wert witness of our double
promise. But now he says that our vows were written on the running
waters. And thou, O Lamp, thou seest him in the arms of another."

In verse this epigram is as follows:

The holy night and thou,
O Lamp,
We took as witness of our vows;