Francis Turner

    I could not run or play
    In boyhood.
    In manhood I could only sip the cup,
    Not drink - For scarlet-fever left my heart diseased.
    Yet I lie here
    Soothed by a secret none but Mary knows:
    There is a garden of acacia,
    Catalpa trees, and arbors sweet with vines -
    There on that afternoon in June
    By Mary's side -
    Kissing her with my soul upon my lips
    It suddenly took flight.

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

Rutherford McDowell

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Herbert Marshall

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Terminus

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Henry Phipps

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

English

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Edgar Lee Masters

The Answer

    I made my bed beneath the pines
    Where the sea washed the sandy bars;
    I heard the music of the winds,
    And blest the aureate face of Mars.
    All night a lilac splendor throve
    Above the heaven's shadowy verge;
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Edgar Lee Masters

Mary McNeely

    Passer-By,
    To love is to find your own soul
    Through the soul of the beloved one.
    When the beloved one withdraws itself from your soul
    Then you have lost your soul.
    It is written: "l have a friend,
    But my sorrow has no friend."
    Hence my long years of solitude at the home of my father,
    Trying to get myself back,
    And to turn my sorrow into a supremer self.
    But there was my father with his sorrows,
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    Bringing infinite repose.
    Oh, ye souls who have made life
    Fragrant and white as tube roses
    From earth's dark soil,
    Eternal peace!

Edgar Lee Masters

Russell Kincaid

    In the last spring I ever knew,
    In those last days, I sat in the forsaken orchard
    Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered
    The hills at Miller's Ford;
    Just to muse on the apple tree
    With its ruined trunk and blasted branches,
    And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms
    Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle,
    Never to grow in fruit.
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Edgar Lee Masters

Daniel M'Cumber

    When I went to the city, Mary McNeely,
    I meant to return for you, yes I did.
    But Laura, my landlady's daughter,
    Stole into my life somehow, and won me away.
    Then after some years whom should I meet
    But Georgine Miner from Niles - a sprout
    Of the free love, Fourierist gardens that flourished
    Before the war all over Ohio.
    Her dilettante lover had tired of her,
    And she turned to me for strength and solace.
    She was some kind of a crying thing
    One takes in one's arms, and all at once
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    And voids its essence all over you;
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Edgar Lee Masters

Washington McNeely

    Rich, honored by my fellow citizens,
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    I dowered them when married.
    I gave the boys money to start in business.
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    Before the bitten places show.
    But John fled the country in disgrace.
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Edgar Lee Masters