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 cursed: You damned old thing
    You cowardly dog! You rotten pauper!
    You Rhodes' slave! Till Roger Baughman
    Thought I was having a fight with some one,
    And looked through the transom just in time
    To see me fall on the floor in a heap
    From a broken vein in my head.

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

Friar Yves

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Anton Sosnowski

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

My Light With Yours

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

The Verdict

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.

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

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

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.
 ...

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

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

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