Captain Orlando Killion

    Oh, you young radicals and dreamers,
    You dauntless fledglings
    Who pass by my headstone,
    Mock not its record of my captaincy in the army
    And my faith in God!
    They are not denials of each other.
    Go by reverently, and read with sober care
    How a great people, riding with defiant shouts
    The centaur of Revolution,
    Spurred and whipped to frenzy,
    Shook with terror, seeing the mist of the sea
    Over the precipice they were nearing,
    And fell from his back in precipitate awe
    To celebrate the Feast of the Supreme Being.
    Moved by the same sense of vast reality
    Of life and death, and burdened as they were
    With the fate of a race,
    How was I, a little blasphemer,
    Caught in the drift of a nation's unloosened flood,
    To remain a blasphemer,
    And a captain in the army?

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

The Letter

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Cities Of The Plain

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

The Loom

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

The Blind

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.

Jacob Goodpasture

    When Fort Sumter fell and the war came
    I cried out in bitterness of soul:
    "O glorious republic now no more!"
    When they buried my soldier son
    To the call of trumpets and the sound of drums
    My heart broke beneath the weight
    Of eighty years, and I cried:
    "Oh, son who died in a cause unjust!
    In the strife of Freedom slain!"
    And I crept here under the grass.
    And now from the battlements of time, behold:
    Thrice thirty million souls being bound together
    In the love of larger truth,
    Rapt in the expectation of the birth
    Of a new Beauty,
    Sprung from Brotherhood and Wisdom.
    I with eyes of spirit see the Transfiguration
    Before you see it.
    But ye infinite brood of golden eagles nesting ev...

Edgar Lee Masters

The Captain

A LEGEND OF THE NAVY


He that only rules by terror
Doeth grievous wrong.
Deep as hell I count his error.
Let him hear my song.
Brave the Captain was; the seamen
Made a gallant crew,
Gallant sons of English freemen,
Sailors bold and true.
But they hated his oppression;
Stern he was and rash,
So for every light transgression
Doomd them to the lash.
Day by day more harsh and cruel
Seemd the Captains mood.
Secret wrath like smotherd fuel
Burnt in each mans blood.
Yet he hoped to purchase glory,
Hoped to make the name
Of his vessel great in story,
Wheresoeer he came.
So they past by capes and islands,
Many a harbor-mouth,
Sailing under palmy highlands
Far within the South.
On a day when they were going

Alfred Lord Tennyson

William H. Herndon

    There by the window in the old house
    Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley,
    My days of labor closed, sitting out life's decline,
    Day by day did I look in my memory,
    As one who gazes in an enchantress' crystal globe,
    And I saw the figures of the past
    As if in a pageant glassed by a shining dream,
    Move through the incredible sphere of time.
    And I saw a man arise from the soil like a fabled giant
    And throw himself over a deathless destiny,
    Master of great armies, head of the republic,
    Bringing together into a dithyramb of recreative song
    The epic hopes of a people;
    At the same time Vulcan of sovereign fires,
    Where imperishable shields and swords were beaten out
    From spirits tempered in heaven....

Edgar Lee Masters

Knowlt Hoheimer

    I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.
    When I felt the bullet enter my heart
    I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail
    For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary,
    Instead of running away and joining the army.
    Rather a thousand times the county jail
    Than to lie under this marble figure with wings,
    And this granite pedestal Bearing the words, "Pro Patria."
    What do they mean, anyway?

Edgar Lee Masters

Godwin James

    Harry Wilmans! You who fell in a swamp
    Near Manila, following the flag
    You were not wounded by the greatness of a dream,
    Or destroyed by ineffectual work,
    Or driven to madness by Satanic snags;
    You were not torn by aching nerves,
    Nor did you carry great wounds to your old age.
    You did not starve, for the government fed you.
    You did not suffer yet cry "forward"
    To an army which you led
    Against a foe with mocking smiles,
    Sharper than bayonets.
    You were not smitten down
    By invisible bombs.
    You were not rejected
    By those for whom you were defeated.
    You did not eat the savorless bread
    Which a poor alchemy had made from ideals.
    You went to Manila, Harry Wilmans,
    While I en...

Edgar Lee Masters

I Pay My Debt For Lafayette And Rochambeau

- His Own Words

IN MEMORY OF KIFFIN ROCKWELL

    *        *        *        *        *

Eagle, whose fearless
Flight in vast spaces
Clove the inane,
While we stood tearless,
White with rapt faces
In wonder and pain. ...

Heights could not awe you,
Depths could not stay you.
Anguished we saw you,
Saw Death way-lay you
Where the storm flings
Black clouds to thicken
Round France's defender!
Archangel stricken
From ramparts of splendor -
Shattered your wings! ...

But Lafayette called you,
Rochambeau beckoned.
Duty enthralled you.
For France you had reckoned
Her gift and your debt.
Dull hearts could harden
Half-gods could palter.
For you never pardon
If Liberty's altar
Yo...

Edgar Lee Masters