Elmer Karr

    What but the love of God could have softened
    And made forgiving the people of Spoon River
    Toward me who wronged the bed of Thomas Merritt
    And murdered him beside?
    Oh, loving hearts that took me in again
    When I returned from fourteen years in prison!
    Oh, helping hands that in the church received me
    And heard with tears my penitent confession,
    Who took the sacrament of bread and wine!
    Repent, ye living ones, and rest with Jesus.

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

Jane Fisher

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Professor Newcomer

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

In The Garden At The Dawn Hour

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Silence

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.

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

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

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

Father Malloy

    You are over there, Father Malloy,
    Where holy ground is, and the cross marks every grave,
    Not here with us on the hill -
    Us of wavering faith, and clouded vision
    And drifting hope, and unforgiven sins.
    You were so human, Father Malloy,
    Taking a friendly glass sometimes with us,
    Siding with us who would rescue Spoon River
    From the coldness and the dreariness of village morality.
    You were like a traveler who brings a little box of sand
    From the wastes about the pyramids
    And makes them real and Egypt real.
    You were a part of and related to a great past,
    And yet you were so close to many of us.
    You believed in the joy of life.
    You did not seem to be ashamed of the flesh.
    You faced life as it is,

Edgar Lee Masters

E. C. Culbertson

    Is it true, Spoon River,
    That in the hall - way of the New Court House
    There is a tablet of bronze
    Containing the embossed faces
    Of Editor Whedon and Thomas Rhodes?
    And is it true that my successful labors
    In the County Board, without which
    Not one stone would have been placed on another,
    And the contributions out of my own pocket
    To build the temple, are but memories among the people,
    Gradually fading away, and soon to descend
    With them to this oblivion where I lie?
    In truth, I can so believe.
    For it is a law of the Kingdom of Heaven
    That whoso enters the vineyard at the eleventh hour
    Shall receive a full day's pay.
    And it is a law of the Kingdom of this World
    That those who first op...

Edgar Lee Masters

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
    ...

Edgar Lee Masters