Hare Drummer

    Do the boys and girls still go to Siever's
    For cider, after school, in late September?
    Or gather hazel nuts among the thickets
    On Aaron Hatfield's farm when the frosts begin?
    For many times with the laughing girls and boys
    Played I along the road and over the hills
    When the sun was low and the air was cool,
    Stopping to club the walnut tree
    Standing leafless against a flaming west.
    Now, the smell of the autumn smoke,
    And the dropping acorns,
    And the echoes about the vales
    Bring dreams of life.
    They hover over me.
    They question me:
    Where are those laughing comrades?
    How many are with me, how many
    In the old orchards along the way to Siever's,
    And in the woods that overlook
    The quiet water?

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

Benjamin Fraser

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Willie Pennington

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Sam Hookey

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Toward The Gulf

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

English

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        In summer time it doth seem good
        To seek the shade of the green wood,
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Time Of Clearer Twitterings

I.

Time of crisp and tawny leaves,
And of tarnished harvest sheaves,
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Voyaging the Autumn breeze
Like as fairy argosies:
Time of quicker flash of wings,
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Darts, in sudden, slanting flight,
Southward, while the startled crane
Films his eyes in dreams again.

II

Down along the dwindled creek
We go loitering. We speak
Only with old questionings
Of the dear remembered things
Of the days of long ago,
When the stream seemed thus and so
In our boyish eyes: - The bank
G...

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Harvest

        Cows in the stall and sheep in the fold;
        Clouds in the west, deep crimson and gold;
            A heron's far flight to a roost somewhere;
            The twitter of killdees keen in the air;
        The noise of a wagon that jolts through the gloam
            On the last load home.

        There are lights in the windows; a blue spire of smoke
        Climbs from the grange grove of elm and oak.
            The smell of the Earth, where the night pours to her
            Its dewy libation, is sweeter than myrrh,
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It was late in mild October, and the long autumnal rain
Had left the summer harvest-fields all green with grass again;
The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving all the woodlands gay
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Through a thin, dry mist, that morning, the sun rose broad and red,
At first a rayless disk of fire, he brightened as he sped;
Yet, even his noontide glory fell chastened and subdued,
On the cornfields and the orchards, and softly pictured wood.
And all that quiet afternoon, slow sloping to the night,
He wove with golden shuttle the haze with yellow light;
Slanting through the painted beeches, he glorified the hill;
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A Dream Of Autumn.

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    Flared, like Titan torches flinging
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    Sorrowfully, yet the sweeter
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