Amanda Barker

    Henry got me with child,
    Knowing that I could not bring forth life
    Without losing my own.
    In my youth therefore I entered the portals of dust.
    Traveler, it is believed in the village where I lived
    That Henry loved me with a husband's love
    But I proclaim from the dust
    That he slew me to gratify his hatred.

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

Lydia Puckett

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Portrait Of A Woman

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Rev. Percy Ferguson

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

The Awakening

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

English

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Elizabeth Childers

    Dust of my dust,
    And dust with my dust,
    O, child who died as you entered the world,
    Dead with my death!
    Not knowing
    Breath, though you tried so hard,
    With a heart that beat when you lived with me,
    And stopped when you left me for Life.
    It is well, my child.
    For you never traveled
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    When little fingers blur under the tears
    That fall on the crooked letters.
    And the earliest wound, when a little mate
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Edgar Lee Masters

Hon. Henry Bennett

    It never came into my mind
    Until I was ready to die
    That Jenny had loved me to death, with malice of heart.
    For I was seventy, she was thirty - five,
    And I wore myself to a shadow trying to husband
    Jenny, rosy Jenny full of the ardor of life.
    For all my wisdom and grace of mind
    Gave her no delight at all, in very truth,
    But ever and anon she spoke of the giant strength
    Of Willard Shafer, and of his wonderful feat
    Of lifting a traction engine out of the ditch
    One time at Georgie Kirby's.
    So Jenny inherited my fortune and married Willard -
    That mount of brawn! That clownish soul!

Edgar Lee Masters

Henry Layton

    Whoever thou art who passest by
    Know that my father was gentle,
    And my mother was violent,
    While I was born the whole of such hostile halves,
    Not intermixed and fused,
    But each distinct, feebly soldered together.
    Some of you saw me as gentle,
    Some as violent,
    Some as both.
    But neither half of me wrought my ruin.
    It was the falling asunder of halves,
    Never a part of each other,
    That left me a lifeless soul.

Edgar Lee Masters

Ollie McGee

    Have you seen walking through the village
    A Man with downcast eyes and haggard face?
    That is my husband who, by secret cruelty
    Never to be told, robbed me of my youth and my beauty;
    Till at last, wrinkled and with yellow teeth,
    And with broken pride and shameful humility,
    I sank into the grave.
    But what think you gnaws at my husband's heart?
    The face of what I was, the face of what he made me!
    These are driving him to the place where I lie.
    In death, therefore, I am avenged.

Edgar Lee Masters

Australia Vindex

Who cometh from fields of the south
With raiment of weeping and woe,
And a cry of the heart in her mouth,
And a step that is muffled and slow?

Her paths are the paths of the sun;
Her house is a beautiful light;
But she boweth her head, and is one
With the daughters of dolour and night.

She is fairer than flowers of love;
She is fiercer than wind-driven flame;
And God from His thunders above
Hath smitten the soul of her shame.

She saith to the bloody one curst
With the fever of evil, she saith
My sorrow shall strangle thee first
With an agony wilder than death!

My sorrow shall hack at thy life!
Thou shalt wrestle with wraiths of thy sin,
And sleep on a pillow of strife
With demons without and within!

She whis...

Henry Kendall

Amelia Garrick

    Yes, here I lie close to a stunted rose bush
    In a forgotten place near the fence
    Where the thickets from Siever's woods
    Have crept over, growing sparsely.
    And you, you are a leader in New York,
    The wife of a noted millionaire,
    A name in the society columns,
    Beautiful, admired, magnified perhaps
    By the mirage of distance.
    You have succeeded,
    I have failed In the eyes of the world.
    You are alive, I am dead.
    Yet I know that I vanquished your spirit;
    And I know that lying here far from you,
    Unheard of among your great friends
    In the brilliant world where you move,
    I am really the unconquerable power over your life
    That robs it of complete triumph.

Edgar Lee Masters