Barry Holden

    The very fall my sister Nancy Knapp
    Set fire to the house
    They were trying Dr. Duval
    For the murder of Zora Clemens,
    And I sat in the court two weeks
    Listening to every witness.
    It was clear he had got her in a family
    And to let the child be born
    Would not do.
    Well, how about me with eight children,
    And one coming, and the farm
    Mortgaged to Thomas Rhodes?
    And when I got home that night,
    (After listening to the story of the buggy ride,
    And the finding of Zora in the ditch,)
    The first thing I saw, right there by the steps,
    Where the boys had hacked for angle worms,
    Was the hatchet!
    And just as I entered there was my wife,
    Standing before me, big with child.
    She started the talk of the mortgaged farm,
    And I killed her.

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

Dialogue At Perko's

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

The Idiot

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Something Beyond The Hill

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Margaret Fuller Slack

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.

Nancy Knapp

    Well, don't you see this was the way of it:
    We bought the farm with what he inherited,
    And his brothers and sisters accused him of poisoning
    His fathers mind against the rest of them.
    And we never had any peace with our treasure.
    The murrain took the cattle, and the crops failed.
    And lightning struck the granary.
    So we mortgaged the farm to keep going.
    And he grew silent and was worried all the time.
    Then some of the neighbors refused to speak to us,
    And took sides with his brothers and sisters.
    And I had no place to turn, as one may say to himself,
    At an earlier time in life;
    "No matter, So and so is my friend, or I can shake this off
    With a little trip to Decatur."
    Then the dreadfulest smells infeste...

Edgar Lee Masters

Tom Merritt

    At first I suspected something -
    She acted so calm and absent-minded.
    And one day I heard the back door shut
    As I entered the front, and I saw him slink
    Back of the smokehouse into the lot
    And run across the field.
    And I meant to kill him on sight.
    But that day, walking near Fourth Bridge
    Without a stick or a stone at hand,
    All of a sudden I saw him standing
    Scared to death, holding his rabbits,
    And all I could say was, "Don't, Don't, Don't,"
    As he aimed and fired at my heart.

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

Mrs. Merritt

    Silent before the jury
    Returning no word to the judge when he asked me
    If I had aught to say against the sentence,
    Only shaking my head.
    What could I say to people who thought
    That a woman of thirty-five was at fault
    When her lover of nineteen killed her husband?
    Even though she had said to him over and over,
    "Go away, Elmer, go far away,
    I have maddened your brain with the gift of my body:
    You will do some terrible thing."
    And just as I feared, he killed my husband;
    With which I had nothing to do, before
    God Silent for thirty years in prison
    And the iron gates of Joliet
    Swung as the gray and silent trusties
    Carried me out in a coffin.

Edgar Lee Masters

Homer Clapp

    Often Aner Clute at the gate
    Refused me the parting kiss,
    Saying we should be engaged before that;
    And just with a distant clasp of the hand
    She bade me good-night, as I brought her home
    From the skating rink or the revival.
    No sooner did my departing footsteps die away
    Than Lucius Atherton,
    (So I learned when Aner went to Peoria)
    Stole in at her window, or took her riding
    Behind his spanking team of bays
    Into the country.
    The shock of it made me settle down
    And I put all the money I got from my father's estate
    Into the canning factory, to get the job
    Of head accountant, and lost it all.
    And then I knew I was one of Life's fools,
    Whom only death would treat as the equal
    Of ot...

Edgar Lee Masters

Elsa Wertman

    I was a peasant girl from Germany,
    Blue-eyed, rosy, happy and strong.
    And the first place I worked was at Thomas Greene's.
    On a summer's day when she was away
    He stole into the kitchen and took me
    Right in his arms and kissed me on my throat,
    I turning my head. Then neither of us
    Seemed to know what happened.
    And I cried for what would become of me.
    And cried and cried as my secret began to show.
    One day Mrs. Greene said she understood,
    And would make no trouble for me,
    And, being childless, would adopt it.
    (He had given her a farm to be still. )
    So she hid in the house and sent out rumors,
    As if it were going to happen to her.
    And all went well and the child was born -
    They were so k...

Edgar Lee Masters