Butch" Weldy

    After I got religion and steadied down
    They gave me a job in the canning works,
    And every morning I had to fill
    The tank in the yard with gasoline,
    That fed the blow-fires in the sheds
    To heat the soldering irons.
    And I mounted a rickety ladder to do it,
    Carrying buckets full of the stuff.
    One morning, as I stood there pouring,
    The air grew still and seemed to heave,
    And I shot up as the tank exploded,
    And down I came with both legs broken,
    And my eyes burned crisp as a couple of eggs.
    For someone left a blow - fire going,
    And something sucked the flame in the tank.
    The Circuit Judge said whoever did it
    Was a fellow-servant of mine, and so
    Old Rhodes' son didn't have to pay me.
    And I sat on the witness stand as blind
    As lack the Fiddler, saying over and over,
    "I didn't know him at all."

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

Roscoe Purkapile

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

State's Attorney Fallas

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Widow La Rue

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

St. Deseret

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.

Silas Dement

    It was moon-light, and the earth sparkled
    With new-fallen frost.
    It was midnight and not a soul abroad.
    Out of the chimney of the court-house
    A gray-hound of smoke leapt and chased
    The northwest wind.
    I carried a ladder to the landing of the stairs
    And leaned it against the frame of the trap-door
    In the ceiling of the portico,
    And I crawled under the roof and amid the rafters
    And flung among the seasoned timbers
    A lighted handful of oil-soaked waste.
    Then I came down and slunk away.
    In a little while the fire-bell rang -
    Clang! Clang! Clang!
    And the Spoon River ladder company
    Came with a dozen buckets and began to pour water
    On the glorious bon-fire, growing hotter
    Higher and...

Edgar Lee Masters

Eugene Carman

    Rhodes, slave! Selling shoes and gingham,
    Flour and bacon, overalls, clothing, all day long
    For fourteen hours a day for three hundred and thirteen days
    For more than twenty years.
    Saying "Yes'm" and "Yes, sir", and "Thank you"
    A thousand times a day, and all for fifty dollars a month.
    Living in this stinking room in the rattle-trap "Commercial."
    And compelled to go to Sunday School, and to listen
    To the Rev. Abner Peet one hundred and four times a year
    For more than an hour at a time,
    Because Thomas Rhodes ran the church
    As well as the store and the bank.
    So while I was tying my neck-tie that morning
    I suddenly saw myself in the glass:
    My hair all gray, my face like a sodden pie.
    So I cursed and curse...

Edgar Lee Masters

Clarence Fawcett

    The sudden death of Eugene Carman
    Put me in line to be promoted to fifty dollars a month,
    And I told my wife and children that night.
    But it didn't come, and so I thought
    Old Rhodes suspected me of stealing
    The blankets I took and sold on the side
    For money to pay a doctor's bill for my little girl.
    Then like a bolt old Rhodes accused me,
    And promised me mercy for my family's sake
    If I confessed, and so I confessed,
    And begged him to keep it out of the papers,
    And I asked the editors, too.
    That night at home the constable took me
    And every paper, except the Clarion,
    Wrote me up as a thief
    Because old Rhodes was an advertiser
    And wanted to make an example of me.
    Oh! well, you know how ...

Edgar Lee Masters

Henry Phipps

    I was the Sunday-school superintendent,
    The dummy president of the wagon works
    And the canning factory,
    Acting for Thomas Rhodes and the banking clique;
    My son the cashier of the bank,
    Wedded to Rhodes, daughter,
    My week days spent in making money,
    My Sundays at church and in prayer.
    In everything a cog in the wheel of things - as - they-are:
    Of money, master and man, made white
    With the paint of the Christian creed.
    And then:
    The bank collapsed.
    I stood and hooked at the wrecked machine -
    The wheels with blow-holes stopped with putty and painted;
    The rotten bolts, the broken rods;
    And only the hopper for souls fit to be used again
    In a new devourer of life,
    When newspapers, ...

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

Ralph Rhodes

    All they said was true:
    I wrecked my father's bank with my loans
    To dabble in wheat; but this was true -
    I was buying wheat for him as well,
    Who couldn't margin the deal in his name
    Because of his church relationship.
    And while George Reece was serving his term
    I chased the will-o-the-wisp of women
    And the mockery of wine in New York.
    It's deathly to sicken of wine and women
    When nothing else is left in life.
    But suppose your head is gray, and bowed
    On a table covered with acrid stubs
    Of cigarettes and empty glasses,
    And a knock is heard, and you know it's the knock
    So long drowned out by popping corks
    And the pea-cock screams of demireps -
    And you look up, and there's your Theft,

Edgar Lee Masters