Albert Schirding

    Jonas Keene thought his lot a hard one
    Because his children were all failures.
    But I know of a fate more trying than that:
    It is to be a failure while your children are successes.
    For I raised a brood of eagles
    Who flew away at last, leaving me
    A crow on the abandoned bough.
    Then, with the ambition to prefix
    Honorable to my name,
    And thus to win my children's admiration,
    I ran for County Superintendent of Schools,
    Spending my accumulations to win - and lost.
    That fall my daughter received first prize in
    Paris For her picture, entitled, "The Old Mill" -
    (It was of the water mill before Henry Wilkin put in steam.)
    The feeling that I was not worthy of her finished me.

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

Roy Butler

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

The Convent

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Henry C. Calhoun

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Mrs. Gregory Wenner

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

English

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Jonas Keene

    Why did Albert Schirding kill himself
    Trying to be County Superintendent of Schools,
    Blest as he was with the means of life
    And wonderful children, bringing him honor
    Ere he was sixty?
    If even one of my boys could have run a news-stand,
    Or one of my girls could have married a decent man,
    I should not have walked in the rain
    And jumped into bed with clothes all wet,
    Refusing medical aid.

Edgar Lee Masters

Jefferson Howard

    My valiant fight! For I call it valiant,
    With my father's beliefs from old Virginia:
    Hating slavery, but no less war.
    I, full of spirit, audacity, courage
    Thrown into life here in Spoon River,
    With its dominant forces drawn from
    New England, Republicans, Calvinists, merchants, bankers,
    Hating me, yet fearing my arm.
    With wife and children heavy to carry -
    Yet fruits of my very zest of life.
    Stealing odd pleasures that cost me prestige,
    And reaping evils I had not sown;
    Foe of the church with its charnel dankness,
    Friend of the human touch of the tavern;
    Tangled with fates all alien to me,
    Deserted by hands I called my own.
    Then just as I felt my giant strength
    Short of breath, behold ...

Edgar Lee Masters

Walter Simmons

    My parents thought that I would be
    As great as Edison or greater:
    For as a boy I made balloons
    And wondrous kites and toys with clocks
    And little engines with tracks to run on
    And telephones of cans and thread.
    I played the cornet and painted pictures,
    Modeled in clay and took the part
    Of the villain in the "Octoroon."
    But then at twenty - one I married
    And had to live, and so, to live
    I learned the trade of making watches
    And kept the jewelry store on the square,
    Thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, -
    Not of business, but of the engine
    I studied the calculus to build.
    And all Spoon River watched and waited
    To see it work, but it never worked.
    And a few kind souls believed...

Edgar Lee Masters

Josiah Tompkins

    I was well known and much beloved
    And rich, as fortunes are reckoned
    In Spoon River, where I had lived and worked.
    That was the home for me,
    Though all my children had flown afar -
    Which is the way of Nature - all but one.
    The boy, who was the baby, stayed at home,
    To be my help in my failing years
    And the solace of his mother.
    But I grew weaker, as he grew stronger,
    And he quarreled with me about the business,
    And his wife said I was a hindrance to it;
    And he won his mother to see as he did,
    Till they tore me up to be transplanted
    With them to her girlhood home in Missouri.
    And so much of my fortune was gone at last,
    Though I made the will just as he drew it,
    He profited little by it...

Edgar Lee Masters

John Scofield

    You see I worked for Arthur Fouche, he said,
    Until the year before he died; I knew
    That worthless son of his who lived with him,
    Born when his mother was past bearing time,
    So born a weakling. When he came from college
    He married soon and came to mother's hearth,
    And brought his bride. I heard the old man say:
    "A man should have his own place when he marries,
    Not settle in the family nest"; I heard
    The old man offer him a place, or offer
    To buy a place for him. This baby boy
    Ran quick to mother, cried and asked to stay.
    What happened then? What always happens. Soon
    This son began to edge upon the father,
    And take the reins a little, Arthur Fouche
    Was growing old. And at the last the son
    Contro...

Edgar Lee Masters

Searcy Foote

    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 ...

Edgar Lee Masters