Felix Schmidt

    It was only a little house of two rooms -
    Almost like a child's play-house -
    With scarce five acres of ground around it;
    And I had so many children to feed
    And school and clothe, and a wife who was sick
    From bearing children.
    One day lawyer Whitney came along
    And proved to me that Christian Dallman,
    Who owned three thousand acres of land,
    Had bought the eighty that adjoined me
    In eighteen hundred and seventy-one
    For eleven dollars, at a sale for taxes,
    While my father lay in his mortal illness.
    So the quarrel arose and I went to law.
    But when we came to the proof,
    A survey of the land showed clear as day
    That Dallman's tax deed covered my ground
    And my little house of two rooms.
    It served me right for stirring him up.
    I lost my case and lost my place.
    I left the court room and went to work
    As Christian Dallman's tenant.

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

Enoch Dunlap

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

The Awakening

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Zilpha Marsh

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

John Wasson

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

English

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Ida Frickey

    Nothing in life is alien to you:
    I was a penniless girl from Summum
    Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River.
    All the houses stood before me with closed doors
    And drawn shades - l was barred out;
    I had no place or part in any of them.
    And I walked past the old McNeely mansion,
    A castle of stone 'mid walks and gardens
    With workmen about the place on guard
    And the County and State upholding it
    For its lordly owner, full of pride.
    I was so hungry I had a vision:
    I saw a giant pair of scissors
    Dip from the sky, like the beam of a dredge,
    And cut the house in two like a curtain.
    But at the "Commercial" I saw a man
    Who winked at me as I asked for work -
    It was Wash McNeely's son.

Edgar Lee Masters

Lillian Stewart

    I was the daughter of Lambert Hutchins,
    Born in a cottage near the grist - mill,
    Reared in the mansion there on the hill,
    With its spires, bay - windows, and roof of slate.
    How proud my mother was of the mansion
    How proud of father's rise in the world!
    And how my father loved and watched us,
    And guarded our happiness.
    But I believe the house was a curse,
    For father's fortune was little beside it;
    And when my husband found he had married
    A girl who was really poor,
    He taunted me with the spires,
    And called the house a fraud on the world,
    A treacherous lure to young men, raising hopes
    Of a dowry not to be had;
    And a man while selling his vote
    Should get enough from the people's betrayal...

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

Searcy Foote

    I wanted to go away to college
    But rich Aunt Persis wouldn't help me.
    So I made gardens and raked the lawns
    And bought John Alden's books with my earnings
    And toiled for the very means of life.
    I wanted to marry Delia Prickett,
    But how could I do it with what I earned?
    And there was Aunt Persis more than seventy
    Who sat in a wheel-chair half alive
    With her throat so paralyzed, when she swallowed
    The soup ran out of her mouth like a duck -
    A gourmand yet, investing her income
    In mortgages, fretting all the time
    About her notes and rents and papers.
    That day I was sawing wood for her,
    And reading Proudhon in between.
    I went in the house for a drink of water,
    And there she sat asleep in ...

Edgar Lee Masters

Lambert Hutchins

    I have two monuments besides this granite obelisk:
    One, the house I built on the hill,
    With its spires, bay windows, and roof of slate.
    The other, the lake-front in Chicago,
    Where the railroad keeps a switching yard,
    With whistling engines and crunching wheels
    And smoke and soot thrown over the city,
    And the crash of cars along the boulevard, -
    A blot like a hog-pen on the harbor
    Of a great metropolis, foul as a sty.
    I helped to give this heritage
    To generations yet unborn, with my vote
    In the House of Representatives,
    And the lure of the thing was to be at rest
    From the never - ending fright of need,
    And to give my daughters gentle breeding,
    And a sense of security in life.
    But, you ...

Edgar Lee Masters

Nancy Knapp

    Well, don't you see this was the way of it:
    We bought the farm with what he inherited,
    And his brothers and sisters accused him of poisoning
    His fathers mind against the rest of them.
    And we never had any peace with our treasure.
    The murrain took the cattle, and the crops failed.
    And lightning struck the granary.
    So we mortgaged the farm to keep going.
    And he grew silent and was worried all the time.
    Then some of the neighbors refused to speak to us,
    And took sides with his brothers and sisters.
    And I had no place to turn, as one may say to himself,
    At an earlier time in life;
    "No matter, So and so is my friend, or I can shake this off
    With a little trip to Decatur."
    Then the dreadfulest smells infeste...

Edgar Lee Masters