Franklin Jones

    If I could have lived another year
    I could have finished my flying machine,
    And become rich and famous.
    Hence it is fitting the workman
    Who tried to chisel a dove for me
    Made it look more like a chicken.
    For what is it all but being hatched,
    And running about the yard,
    To the day of the block?
    Save that a man has an angel's brain,
    And sees the ax from the first!

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

The Question

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Henry Phipps

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Dow Kritt

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Rev. Lemuel Wiley

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.

William Jones

    Once in a while a curious weed unknown to me,
    Needing a name from my books;
    Once in a while a letter from Yeomans.
    Out of the mussel-shells gathered along the shore
    Sometimes a pearl with a glint like meadow rue:
    Then betimes a letter from Tyndall in England,
    Stamped with the stamp of Spoon River.
    I, lover of Nature, beloved for my love of her,
    Held such converse afar with the great
    Who knew her better than I.
    Oh, there is neither lesser nor greater,
    Save as we make her greater and win from her keener delight.
    With shells from the river cover me, cover me.
    I lived in wonder, worshipping earth and heaven.
    I have passed on the march eternal of endless life.

Edgar Lee Masters

Robert Fulton Tanner

    If a man could bite the giant hand
    That catches and destroys him,
    As I was bitten by a rat
    While demonstrating my patent trap,
    In my hardware store that day.
    But a man can never avenge himself
    On the monstrous ogre Life.
    You enter the room    that's being born;
    And then you must live    work out your soul,
    Of the cross-current in life
    Which Bring honor to the dead, who lived in shame.

Edgar Lee Masters

Were I A Bird

Were I a bird free born to fly
    Aloof on two wee, downy wings,
My canopy would be the sky
    When rosy morn its dawning springs.

Were I a bird I'd sweetly sing
    Earth's vesper song in tree-tops high,
And chant the carol of the Spring
    To every weary passer by.

Were I a bird, the sweetest voice
    That human ear has ever heard, -
The mocking-bird would be my choice,
    For he's the sweetest singing bird!

Were I a bird my life would be
    In keeping with the Will divine -
I'd sing His carols full and free
    In spreading oak and cony pine!

Were I a bird through air I'd roam,
    Just flitting on the morning breeze,
In search of summer's sunny dome,
    To live contentedly at ease.

Were I a bird I'd ...

Edward Smyth Jones

Walter Simmons

    My parents thought that I would be
    As great as Edison or greater:
    For as a boy I made balloons
    And wondrous kites and toys with clocks
    And little engines with tracks to run on
    And telephones of cans and thread.
    I played the cornet and painted pictures,
    Modeled in clay and took the part
    Of the villain in the "Octoroon."
    But then at twenty - one I married
    And had to live, and so, to live
    I learned the trade of making watches
    And kept the jewelry store on the square,
    Thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, -
    Not of business, but of the engine
    I studied the calculus to build.
    And all Spoon River watched and waited
    To see it work, but it never worked.
    And a few kind souls believed...

Edgar Lee Masters

Minerva Jones

    I am Minerva, the village poetess,
    Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street
    For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk,
    And all the more when "Butch" Weldy
    Captured me after a brutal hunt.
    He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers;
    And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up,
    Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice.
    Will some one go to the village newspaper,
    And gather into a book the verses I wrote? -
    I thirsted so for love
    I hungered so for life!

Edgar Lee Masters

Albert Schirding

    Jonas Keene thought his lot a hard one
    Because his children were all failures.
    But I know of a fate more trying than that:
    It is to be a failure while your children are successes.
    For I raised a brood of eagles
    Who flew away at last, leaving me
    A crow on the abandoned bough.
    Then, with the ambition to prefix
    Honorable to my name,
    And thus to win my children's admiration,
    I ran for County Superintendent of Schools,
    Spending my accumulations to win - and lost.
    That fall my daughter received first prize in
    Paris For her picture, entitled, "The Old Mill" -
    (It was of the water mill before Henry Wilkin put in steam.)
    The feeling that I was not worthy of her finished me.

Edgar Lee Masters