Carl Hamblin

    The press of the Spoon River Clarion was wrecked,
    And I was tarred and feathered,
    For publishing this on the day the
    Anarchists were hanged in Chicago:
    "l saw a beautiful woman with bandaged eyes
    Standing on the steps of a marble temple.
    Great multitudes passed in front of her,
    Lifting their faces to her imploringly.
    In her left hand she held a sword.
    She was brandishing the sword,
    Sometimes striking a child, again a laborer,
    Again a slinking woman, again a lunatic.
    In her right hand she held a scale;
    Into the scale pieces of gold were tossed
    By those who dodged the strokes of the sword.
    A man in a black gown read from a manuscript:
    "She is no respecter of persons."
    Then a youth wearing a red cap
    Leaped to her side and snatched away the bandage.
    And lo, the lashes had been eaten away
    From the oozy eye-lids;
    The eye-balls were seared with a milky mucus;
    The madness of a dying soul
    Was written on her face -
    But the multitude saw why she wore the bandage."

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

John M. Church

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Elijah Browning

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Fletcher McGee

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Trainor, the Druggist

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

English

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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

Zilpha Marsh

    At four o'clock in late October
    I sat alone in the country school-house
    Back from the road, mid stricken fields,
    And an eddy of wind blew leaves on the pane,
    And crooned in the flue of the cannon-stove,
    With its open door blurring the shadows
    With the spectral glow of a dying fire.
    In an idle mood I was running the planchette -
    All at once my wrist grew limp,
    And my hand moved rapidly over the board,
    'Till the name of "Charles Guiteau" was spelled,
    Who threatened to materialize before me.
    I rose and fled from the room bare-headed
    Into the dusk, afraid of my gift.
    And after that the spirits swarmed -
    Chaucer, Caesar, Poe and Marlowe,
    Cleopatra and Mrs. Surratt -
    Wherever I went, with m...

Edgar Lee Masters

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

Adam Weirauch

    I was crushed between Altgeld and Armour.
    I lost many friends, much time and money
    Fighting for Altgeld whom Editor Whedon
    Denounced as the candidate of gamblers and anarchists.
    Then Armour started to ship dressed meat to Spoon River,
    Forcing me to shut down my slaughter-house
    And my butcher shop went all to pieces.
    The new forces of Altgeld and Armour caught me
    At the same time. I thought it due me, to recoup the money I lost
    And to make good the friends that left me,
    For the Governor to appoint me Canal Commissioner.
    Instead he appointed Whedon of the Spoon River Argus,
    So I ran for the legislature and was elected.
    I said to hell with principle and sold my vote
    On Charles T. Yerkes' street-car franchise.

Edgar Lee Masters

Rosie Roberts

    I was sick, but more than that, I was mad
    At the crooked police, and the crooked game of life.
    So I wrote to the Chief of Police at Peoria:
    "l am here in my girlhood home in Spoon River,
    Gradually wasting away.
    But come and take me, I killed the son
    Of the merchant prince, in Madam Lou's
    And the papers that said he killed himself
    In his home while cleaning a hunting gun -
    Lied like the devil to hush up scandal
    For the bribe of advertising.
    In my room I shot him, at Madam Lou's,
    Because he knocked me down when I said
    That, in spite of all the money he had,
    I'd see my lover that night."

Edgar Lee Masters