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

Consider Freeland

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Henry Layton

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Joseph Dixon

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Mrs. George Reece

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.

Caroline Branson

    With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked,
    As often before, the April fields till star - light
    Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness
    Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood,
    Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing
    Like notes of music that run together, into winning,
    In the inspired improvisation of love!
    But to put back of us as a canticle ended
    The rapt enchantment of the flesh,
    In which our souls swooned, down, down,
    Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves -
    Annihilated in love!
    To leave these behind for a room with lamps:
    And to stand with our Secret mocking itself,
    And hiding itself amid flowers and mandolins,
    Stared at by all between salad and coffee....

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;
    And in my heart the voice of love
    Kept music with the dreaming surge.

    A little maid was at my side,
    She slept, I scarcely slept at all;
    Until toward the morning-tide
    A dream possessed me with its thrall.
    She sweetly breathed; around my breast
    I felt her warmth like drowsy bliss,
    Then came the vision of unrest,
    I saw your face and felt your kiss.

    I woke and knew with what dismay
    She read my secret and surprise;
    She only said, "Again 'tis day!
    How red your...

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,
    Sitting under the cedar tree,
    A picture that sank into my heart at last
    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.
    And there was I with my spirit girded
    By the flesh half dead, the senses numb
    Yet thinking of youth and the earth in youth, -
    Such phantom blossoms palely shining
    Over the lifeless boughs of Time.
    O earth that leaves us ere heaven takes us!
    Had I been only a tree to shiver
    With dreams of spring and a leafy youth,
    Then I had fallen in the cyclone
    ...

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
    It slimes your face with its running nose,
    And voids its essence all over you;
    Then bites your hand and springs away.
    And there you stand bleeding and smelling to heaven
    Why, Mary McNeely, I was not worthy
    To ...

Edgar Lee Masters

Washington McNeely

    Rich, honored by my fellow citizens,
    The father of many children, born of a noble mother,
    All raised there
    In the great mansion - house, at the edge of town.
    Note the cedar tree on the lawn!
    I sent all the boys to Ann Arbor, all of the girls to Rockford,
    The while my life went on, getting more riches and honors -
    Resting under my cedar tree at evening.
    The years went on. I sent the girls to Europe;
    I dowered them when married.
    I gave the boys money to start in business.
    They were strong children, promising as apples
    Before the bitten places show.
    But John fled the country in disgrace.
    Jenny died in child-birth -
    I sat under my cedar tree.
    Harry killed himself after a debauch, Susan was divorce...

Edgar Lee Masters