Archibald Higbie

    I loathed you, Spoon River.
    I tried to rise above you,
    I was ashamed of you.
    I despised you
    As the place of my nativity.
    And there in Rome, among the artists,
    Speaking Italian, speaking French,
    I seemed to myself at times to be free
    Of every trace of my origin.
    I seemed to be reaching the heights of art
    And to breathe the air that the masters breathed
    And to see the world with their eyes.
    But still they'd pass my work and say:
    "What are you driving at, my friend?
    Sometimes the face looks like Apollo's
    At others it has a trace of Lincoln's."
    There was no culture, you know, in Spoon River
    And I burned with shame and held my peace.
    And what could I do, all covered over
    And weighted down with western soil
    Except aspire, and pray for another
    Birth in the world, with all of Spoon River
    Rooted out of my soul?

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

Emily Sparks

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Hamlet Micure

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Henry C. Calhoun

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Dora Williams

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.

Henry C. Calhoun

    I reached the highest place in Spoon River,
    But through what bitterness of spirit!
    The face of my father, sitting speechless,
    Child-like, watching his canaries,
    And looking at the court-house window
    Of the county judge's room,
    And his admonitions to me to seek
    My own in life, and punish Spoon River
    To avenge the wrong the people did him,
    Filled me with furious energy
    To seek for wealth and seek for power.
    But what did he do but send me along
    The path that leads to the grove of the Furies?
    I followed the path and I tell you this:
    On the way to the grove you'll pass the Fates,
    Shadow-eyed, bent over their weaving.
    Stop for a moment, and if you see
    The thread of revenge leap out of the s...

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

Aaron Hatfield

    Better than granite, Spoon River,
    Is the memory-picture you keep of me
    Standing before the pioneer men and women
    There at Concord Church on Communion day.
    Speaking in broken voice of the peasant youth
    Of Galilee who went to the city
    And was killed by bankers and lawyers;
    My voice mingling with the June wind
    That blew over wheat fields from Atterbury;
    While the white stones in the burying ground
    Around the Church shimmered in the summer sun.
    And there, though my own memories
    Were too great to bear, were you, O pioneers,
    With bowed heads breathing forth your sorrow
    For the sons killed in battle and the daughters
    And little children who vanished in life's morning,
    Or at the intolerable hour of no...

Edgar Lee Masters

Elliott Hawkins

    I looked like Abraham Lincoln.
    I was one of you, Spoon River, in all fellowship,
    But standing for the rights of property and for order.
    A regular church attendant,
    Sometimes appearing in your town meetings to warn you
    Against the evils of discontent and envy
    And to denounce those who tried to destroy the Union,
    And to point to the peril of the Knights of Labor.
    My success and my example are inevitable influences
    In your young men and in generations to come,
    In spite of attacks of newspapers like the Clarion;
    A regular visitor at Springfield
    When the Legislature was in session
    To prevent raids upon the railroads
    And the men building up the state.
    Trusted by them and by you, Spoon River, equally
   ...

Edgar Lee Masters

Percival Sharp

    Observe the clasped hands!
    Are they hands of farewell or greeting,
    Hands that I helped or hands that helped me?
    Would it not be well to carve a hand
    With an inverted thumb, like Elagabalus?
    And yonder is a broken chain,
    The weakest-link idea perhaps - but what was it?
    And lambs, some lying down,
    Others standing, as if listening to the shepherd -
    Others bearing a cross, one foot lifted up -
    Why not chisel a few shambles?
    And fallen columns!
    Carve the pedestal, please,
    Or the foundations; let us see the cause of the fall.
    And compasses and mathematical instruments,
    In irony of the under tenants, ignorance
    Of determinants and the calculus of variations.
    And anchors, for those who never s...

Edgar Lee Masters

Ezra Bartlett

    A chaplain in the army,
    A chaplain in the prisons,
    An exhorter in Spoon River,
    Drunk with divinity, Spoon River -
    Yet bringing poor Eliza Johnson to shame,
    And myself to scorn and wretchedness.
    But why will you never see that love of women,
    And even love of wine,
    Are the stimulants by which the soul, hungering for divinity,
    Reaches the ecstatic vision
    And sees the celestial outposts?
    Only after many trials for strength,
    Only when all stimulants fail,
    Does the aspiring soul
    By its own sheer power
    Find the divine
    By resting upon itself.

Edgar Lee Masters