Ace" Shaw

    I never saw any difference
    Between playing cards for money
    And selling real estate,
    Practicing law, banking, or anything else.
    For everything is chance.
    Nevertheless
    Seest thou a man diligent in business?
    He shall stand before Kings!

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

Serepta Mason

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Cities Of The Plain

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Richard Bone

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.

Tom Beatty

    I was a lawyer like Harmon Whitney
    Or Kinsey Keene or Garrison Standard,
    For I tried the rights of property,
    Although by lamp-light, for thirty years,
    In that poker room in the opera house.
    And I say to you that Life's a gambler
    Head and shoulders above us all.
    No mayor alive can close the house.
    And if you lose, you can squeal as you will;
    You'll not get back your money.
    He makes the percentage hard to conquer;
    He stacks the cards to catch your weakness
    And not to meet your strength.
    And he gives you seventy years to play:
    For if you cannot win in seventy
    You cannot win at all.
    So, if you lose, get out of the room -
    Get out of the room when your time is up.
    It's mean to sit ...

Edgar Lee Masters

Aner Clute

    Over and over they used to ask me,
    While buying the wine or the beer,
    In Peoria first, and later in Chicago,
    Denver, Frisco, New York, wherever I lived
    How I happened to lead the life,
    And what was the start of it.
    Well, I told them a silk dress,
    And a promise of marriage from a rich man -
    (It was Lucius Atherton).
    But that was not really it at all.
    Suppose a boy steals an apple
    From the tray at the grocery store,
    And they all begin to call him a thief,
    The editor, minister, judge, and all the people -
    "A thief," "a thief," "a thief," wherever he goes
    And he can't get work, and he can't get bread
    Without stealing it, why the boy will steal.
    It's the way the people regard the theft of ...

Edgar Lee Masters

Lyman King

    You may think, passer-by, that Fate
    Is a pit-fall outside of yourself,
    Around which you may walk by the use of foresight
    And wisdom.
    Thus you believe, viewing the lives of other men,
    As one who in God-like fashion bends over an anthill,
    Seeing how their difficulties could be avoided.
    But pass on into life:
    In time you shall see Fate approach you
    In the shape of your own image in the mirror;
    Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth,
    And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest,
    And you shall know that guest
    And read the authentic message of his eyes.

Edgar Lee Masters

Hod Putt

    Here I lie close to the grave
    Of Old Bill Piersol,
    Who grew rich trading with the Indians, and who
    Afterwards took the Bankrupt Law
    And emerged from it richer than ever
    Myself grown tired of toil and poverty
    And beholding how Old Bill and other grew in wealth
    Robbed a traveler one Night near Proctor's Grove,
    Killing him unwittingly while doing so,
    For which I was tried and hanged.
    That was my way of going into bankruptcy.
    Now we who took the bankrupt law in our respective ways
    Sleep peacefully side by side.

Edgar Lee Masters

Farmer Stebbins On The Bowery.

DEAR COUSIN JOHN:

    We got here safe - my worthy wife an' me,
    An' then I looked the village through to see what I could see:
    I rode upon the cur'us track with stations all up-stairs;
    I walked through Wall Street all its length, an' saw no bulls or bears;
    I patronized a red-nosed chap with manners very queer,
    Who hadn't had a thing to eat for somethin' like a year;

    I saw the road commissioners to work upon a bridge
    A million times as large as that we built at Tompkins' Ridge -
    (I'm told that they are makin' it, though maybe that's all fun,
    To use the coming century, an' hope to get it done) -
    When who should up an' grasp my hand, with face of genuine joy,
    But Cousin Jeroboam Jones, my cousin's oldest boy!

    I h...

William McKendree Carleton

Ace Of Spades

    Parable as metaphor -
    profile in hard glint of light,
    buckskin garb
    merging from shadow &
    buckboards -
    sandwiching of memory
    being elbowed
    thru a Deadwood City
    saloon door.

    Noneother.
    Dead Man's Hand.
    Cards strewn,
    last tumbler ...
    chamber on empty.
    Yancy Derringer modelling the
    latest revolver of his namesake,
    in pit & the palm
    bullet in the back
    for Wild Bill, just for a keepsake.

    Treasure-trove for the funeral parlour:
    "they done him up well". Peccadillo as provocation.

Paul Cameron Brown