A. D. Blood

    If you in the village think that my work was a good one,
    Who closed the saloons and stopped all playing at cards,
    And haled old Daisy Fraser before Justice Arnett,
    In many a crusade to purge the people of sin;
    Why do you let the milliner's daughter Dora,
    And the worthless son of Benjamin Pantier
    Nightly make my grave their unholy pillow?

Edgar Lee Masters

Edgar Lee Masters was an American poet, biographer, and dramatist. Born in Kansas and raised in Illinois, Masters is best known for his collection of poems entitled "Spoon River Anthology" (1915), which is a series of epitaphs of residents of the fictional small town of Spoon River. His works reflect the everyday lives and frustrations of middle America. Masters also practiced law and wrote biographies for historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain.

Edgar Lee Masters

Pauline Barrett

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Robert Davidson

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Many Soldiers

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Bert Kessler

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Town Marshal

    The: Prohibitionists made me Town Marshal
    When the saloons were voted out,
    Because when I was a drinking man,
    Before I joined the church, I killed a Swede
    At the saw-mill near Maple Grove.
    And they wanted a terrible man,
    Grim, righteous, strong, courageous,
    And a hater of saloons and drinkers,
    To keep law and order in the village.
    And they presented me with a loaded cane
    With which I struck Jack McGuire
    Before he drew the gun with which he killed
    The Prohibitionists spent their money in vain
    To hang him, for in a dream
    I appeared to one of the twelve jurymen
    And told him the whole secret story.
    Fourteen years were enough for killing me.

Edgar Lee Masters

Mrs. Williams

    I was the milliner
    Talked about, lied about,
    Mother of Dora,
    Whose strange disappearance
    Was charged to her rearing.
    My eye quick to beauty
    Saw much beside ribbons
    And buckles and feathers
    And leghorns and felts,
    To set off sweet faces,
    And dark hair and gold.
    One thing I will tell you
    And one I will ask:
    The stealers of husbands
    Wear powder and trinkets,
    And fashionable hats.
    Wives, wear them yourselves.
    Hats may make divorces -
    They also prevent them.
    Well now, let me ask you:
    If all of the children, born here in Spoon River
    Had been reared by the
    County, somewhere on a farm;
    And the fathers and mothers had been given their freed...

Edgar Lee Masters

Jack McGuire

    They would have lynched me
    Had I not been secretly hurried away
    To the jail at Peoria.
    And yet I was going peacefully home,
    Carrying my jug, a little drunk,
    When Logan, the marshal, halted me
    Called me a drunken hound and shook me
    And, when I cursed him for it, struck me
    With that Prohibition loaded cane -
    All this before I shot him.
    They would have hanged me except for this:
    My lawyer, Kinsey Keene, was helping to land
    Old Thomas Rhodes for wrecking the bank,
    And the judge was a friend of
    Rhodes And wanted him to escape,
    And Kinsey offered to quit on
    Rhodes For fourteen years for me.
    And the bargain was made.
    I served my time
    And learned to read and write.

Edgar Lee Masters

Ralph Rhodes

    All they said was true:
    I wrecked my father's bank with my loans
    To dabble in wheat; but this was true -
    I was buying wheat for him as well,
    Who couldn't margin the deal in his name
    Because of his church relationship.
    And while George Reece was serving his term
    I chased the will-o-the-wisp of women
    And the mockery of wine in New York.
    It's deathly to sicken of wine and women
    When nothing else is left in life.
    But suppose your head is gray, and bowed
    On a table covered with acrid stubs
    Of cigarettes and empty glasses,
    And a knock is heard, and you know it's the knock
    So long drowned out by popping corks
    And the pea-cock screams of demireps -
    And you look up, and there's your Theft,

Edgar Lee Masters

Alfred Moir

    Why was I not devoured by self-contempt,
    And rotted down by indifference
    And impotent revolt like Indignation Jones?
    Why, with all of my errant steps
    Did I miss the fate of Willard Fluke?
    And why, though I stood at Burchard's bar,
    As a sort of decoy for the house to the boys
    To buy the drinks, did the curse of drink
    Fall on me like rain that runs off,
    Leaving the soul of me dry and clean?
    And why did I never kill a man Like Jack McGuire?
    But instead I mounted a little in life,
    And I owe it all to a book I read.
    But why did I go to Mason City,
    Where I chanced to see the book in a window,
    With its garish cover luring my eye?
    And why did my soul respond to the book,
    As I read it over and...

Edgar Lee Masters

Indignation" Jones

    You would not believe, would you
    That I came from good Welsh stock?
    That I was purer blooded than the white trash here?
    And of more direct lineage than the
    New Englanders And Virginians of Spoon River?
    You would not believe that I had been to school
    And read some books.
    You saw me only as a run-down man
    With matted hair and beard
    And ragged clothes.
    Sometimes a man's life turns into a cancer
    From being bruised and continually bruised,
    And swells into a purplish mass
    Like growths on stalks of corn.
    Here was I, a carpenter, mired in a bog of life
    Into which I walked, thinking it was a meadow,
    With a slattern for a wife, and poor Minerva, my daughter,
    Whom you tormented and drove to deat...

Edgar Lee Masters