Ippolit Konovaloff

    I was a gun-smith in Odessa.
    One night the police broke in the room
    Where a group of us were reading Spencer.
    And seized our books and arrested us.
    But I escaped and came to New York
    And thence to Chicago, and then to Spoon River,
    Where I could study my Kant in peace
    And eke out a living repairing guns
    Look at my moulds! My architectonics
    One for a barrel, one for a hammer
    And others for other parts of a gun!
    Well, now suppose no gun - smith living
    Had anything else but duplicate moulds
    Of these I show you - well, all guns
    Would be just alike, with a hammer to hit
    The cap and a barrel to carry the shot
    All acting alike for themselves, and all
    Acting against each other alike.
    And there would be your world of guns!
    Which nothing could ever free from itself
    Except a Moulder with different moulds
    To mould the metal over.

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

Mary McNeely

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Hod Putt

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

The City

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

The Idiot

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

English

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Silas Dement

    It was moon-light, and the earth sparkled
    With new-fallen frost.
    It was midnight and not a soul abroad.
    Out of the chimney of the court-house
    A gray-hound of smoke leapt and chased
    The northwest wind.
    I carried a ladder to the landing of the stairs
    And leaned it against the frame of the trap-door
    In the ceiling of the portico,
    And I crawled under the roof and amid the rafters
    And flung among the seasoned timbers
    A lighted handful of oil-soaked waste.
    Then I came down and slunk away.
    In a little while the fire-bell rang -
    Clang! Clang! Clang!
    And the Spoon River ladder company
    Came with a dozen buckets and began to pour water
    On the glorious bon-fire, growing hotter
    Higher and...

Edgar Lee Masters

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

Mrs. Kessler

    Mr. Kessler, you know, was in the army,
    And he drew six dollars a month as a pension,
    And stood on the corner talking politics,
    Or sat at home reading Grant's Memoirs;
    And I supported the family by washing,
    Learning the secrets of all the people
    From their curtains, counterpanes, shirts and skirts.
    For things that are new grow old at length,
    They're replaced with better or none at all:
    People are prospering or falling back.
    And rents and patches widen with time;
    No thread or needle can pace decay,
    And there are stains that baffle soap,
    And there are colors that run in spite of you,
    Blamed though you are for spoiling a dress.
    Handkerchiefs, napery, have their secrets -
    The laundress, Life, know...

Edgar Lee Masters

John Hancock Otis

    As to democracy, fellow citizens,
    Are you not prepared to admit
    That I, who inherited riches and was to the manor born,
    Was second to none in Spoon River
    In my devotion to the cause of Liberty?
    While my contemporary, Anthony Findlay,
    Born in a shanty and beginning life
    As a water carrier to the section hands,
    Then becoming a section hand when he was grown,
    Afterwards foreman of the gang, until he rose
    To the superintendency of the railroad,
    Living in Chicago,
    Was a veritable slave driver,
    Grinding the faces of labor,
    And a bitter enemy of democracy.
    And I say to you, Spoon River,
    And to you, O republic,
    Beware of the man who rises to power
    From one suspender.

Edgar Lee Masters

Percival Sharp

    Observe the clasped hands!
    Are they hands of farewell or greeting,
    Hands that I helped or hands that helped me?
    Would it not be well to carve a hand
    With an inverted thumb, like Elagabalus?
    And yonder is a broken chain,
    The weakest-link idea perhaps - but what was it?
    And lambs, some lying down,
    Others standing, as if listening to the shepherd -
    Others bearing a cross, one foot lifted up -
    Why not chisel a few shambles?
    And fallen columns!
    Carve the pedestal, please,
    Or the foundations; let us see the cause of the fall.
    And compasses and mathematical instruments,
    In irony of the under tenants, ignorance
    Of determinants and the calculus of variations.
    And anchors, for those who never s...

Edgar Lee Masters

Mrs. Williams

    I was the milliner
    Talked about, lied about,
    Mother of Dora,
    Whose strange disappearance
    Was charged to her rearing.
    My eye quick to beauty
    Saw much beside ribbons
    And buckles and feathers
    And leghorns and felts,
    To set off sweet faces,
    And dark hair and gold.
    One thing I will tell you
    And one I will ask:
    The stealers of husbands
    Wear powder and trinkets,
    And fashionable hats.
    Wives, wear them yourselves.
    Hats may make divorces -
    They also prevent them.
    Well now, let me ask you:
    If all of the children, born here in Spoon River
    Had been reared by the
    County, somewhere on a farm;
    And the fathers and mothers had been given their freed...

Edgar Lee Masters