| THE WHITE men played all sorts of jokes on me. | |
| They took big fish off my hook | |
| And put little ones on, while I was away | |
| Getting a stringer, and made me believe | |
| I hadn’t seen aright the fish I had caught. | 5 |
| When Burr Robbins circus came to town | |
| They got the ring master to let a tame leopard | |
| Into the ring, and made me believe | |
| I was whipping a wild beast like Samson | |
| When I, for an offer of fifty dollars, | 10 |
| Dragged him out to his cage. | |
| One time I entered my blacksmith shop | |
| And shook as I saw some horse-shoes crawling | |
| Across the floor, as if alive— | |
| Walter Simmons had put a magnet | 15 |
| Under the barrel of water. | |
| Yet everyone of you, you white men, | |
| Was fooled about fish and about leopards too, | |
| And you didn’t know any more than the horse-shoes did | |
| What moved you about Spoon River. | 20 |
