Herbert Marshall

    All your sorrow, Louise, and hatred of me
    Sprang from your delusion that it was wantonness
    Of spirit and contempt of your soul's rights
    Which made me turn to Annabelle and forsake you.
    You really grew to hate me for love of me,
    Because I was your soul's happiness,
    Formed and tempered
    To solve your life for you, and would not.
    But you were my misery.
    If you had been
    My happiness would I not have clung to you?
    This is life's sorrow:
    That one can be happy only where two are;
    And that our hearts are drawn to stars
    Which want us not.

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

Black Eagle Returns To St. Joe

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Mabel Osborne

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Perry Zoll

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Oscar Hummel

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

English

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Louise Smith

    Herbert broke our engagement of eight years
    When Annabelle returned to the village From the
    Seminary, ah me!
    If I had let my love for him alone
    It might have grown into a beautiful sorrow -
    Who knows? - filling my life with healing fragrance.
    But I tortured it, I poisoned it
    I blinded its eyes, and it became hatred -
    Deadly ivy instead of clematis.
    And my soul fell from its support
    Its tendrils tangled in decay.
    Do not let the will play gardener to your soul
    Unless you are sure
    It is wiser than your soul's nature.

Edgar Lee Masters

Samuel Butler Et Al.

Let me consider your emergence
From the milieu of our youth:
We have played all the afternoon, grown hungry.
No meal has been prepared, where have you been?
Toward sun's decline we see you down the path,
And run to meet you, and perhaps you smile,
Or take us in your arms. Perhaps again
You look at us, say nothing, are absorbed,
Or chide us for our dirty frocks or faces.
Of running wild without our meals
You do not speak.

Then in the house, seized with a sudden joy,
After removing gloves and hat, you run,
As with a winged descending flight, and cry,
Half song, half exclamation,
Seize one of us,
Crush one of us with mad embraces, bite
Ears of us in a rapture of affection.
"You shall have supper," then you say.
The stove lids rattle, wood's p...

Edgar Lee Masters

Harlan Sewall

    You never understood,
    O unknown one,
    Why it was I repaid
    Your devoted friendship and delicate ministrations
    First with diminished thanks,
    Afterward by gradually withdrawing my presence from you,
    So that I might not be compelled to thank you,
    And then with silence which followed upon
    Our final Separation.
    You had cured my diseased soul.
    But to cure it
    You saw my disease, you knew my secret,
    And that is why I fled from you.
    For though when our bodies rise from pain
    We kiss forever the watchful hands
    That gave us wormwood, while we shudder
    For thinking of the wormwood,
    A soul that's cured is a different matter,
    For there we'd blot from memory
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Edgar Lee Masters

Mrs. Benjamin Pantier

    I know that he told that I snared his soul
    With a snare which bled him to death.
    And all the men loved him,
    And most of the women pitied him.
    But suppose you are really a lady, and have delicate tastes,
    And loathe the smell of whiskey and onions,
    And the rhythm of Wordsworth's "Ode" runs in your ears,
    While he goes about from morning till night
    Repeating bits of that common thing;
    "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"
    And then, suppose;
    You are a woman well endowed,
    And the only man with whom the law and morality
    Permit you to have the marital relation
    Is the very man that fills you with disgust
    Every time you think of it    while you think of it
    Every time you see him?
    That...

Edgar Lee Masters

St. Deseret

You wonder at my bright round eyes, my lips
Pressed tightly like a venomous rosette.
Thus do me honor by so much, fond wretch,
And praise my Persian beauty, dulcet voice.
But oh you know me, read me, passion blinds
Your vision not at all, and you have passion
For me and what I am. How can you be so?
Hold me so bear-like, take my lips with yours,
Bury your face in these my russet tresses,
And yet not lose your vision? So I love you,
And fear you too. How idle to deny it
To you who know I fear you.

    Here am I
Who answer you what e'er you choose to ask.
You stride about my rooms and open books,
And say when did he give you this? You pick
His photograph from mantels, dressers, drawl
Out of ironic strength, and smile the while:
"You did not love ...

Edgar Lee Masters

Sarah Brown

    Maurice, weep not, I am not here under this pine tree.
    The balmy air of spring whispers through the sweet grass,
    The stars sparkle, the whippoorwill calls,
    But thou grievest, while my soul lies rapturous
    In the blest Nirvana of eternal light!
    Go to the good heart that is my husband
    Who broods upon what he calls our guilty love: -
    Tell him that my love for you, no less than my love for him
    Wrought out my destiny - that through the flesh
    I won spirit, and through spirit, peace.
    There is no marriage in heaven
    But there is love.

Edgar Lee Masters