Lydia Humphrey

    Back and forth, back and forth, to and from the church,
    With my Bible under my arm
    'Till I was gray and old;
    Unwedded, alone in the world,
    Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation,
    And children in the church.
    I know they laughed and thought me queer.
    I knew of the eagle souls that flew high in the sunlight,
    Above the spire of the church, and laughed at the church,
    Disdaining me, not seeing me.
    But if the high air was sweet to them, sweet was the church to me.
    It was the vision, vision, vision of the poets
    Democratized!

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

J. Milton Miles

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Loveridge Chase

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

The Answer

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Rosie Roberts

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

English

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Aaron Hatfield

    Better than granite, Spoon River,
    Is the memory-picture you keep of me
    Standing before the pioneer men and women
    There at Concord Church on Communion day.
    Speaking in broken voice of the peasant youth
    Of Galilee who went to the city
    And was killed by bankers and lawyers;
    My voice mingling with the June wind
    That blew over wheat fields from Atterbury;
    While the white stones in the burying ground
    Around the Church shimmered in the summer sun.
    And there, though my own memories
    Were too great to bear, were you, O pioneers,
    With bowed heads breathing forth your sorrow
    For the sons killed in battle and the daughters
    And little children who vanished in life's morning,
    Or at the intolerable hour of no...

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

Ezra Bartlett

    A chaplain in the army,
    A chaplain in the prisons,
    An exhorter in Spoon River,
    Drunk with divinity, Spoon River -
    Yet bringing poor Eliza Johnson to shame,
    And myself to scorn and wretchedness.
    But why will you never see that love of women,
    And even love of wine,
    Are the stimulants by which the soul, hungering for divinity,
    Reaches the ecstatic vision
    And sees the celestial outposts?
    Only after many trials for strength,
    Only when all stimulants fail,
    Does the aspiring soul
    By its own sheer power
    Find the divine
    By resting upon itself.

Edgar Lee Masters

Henry Phipps

    I was the Sunday-school superintendent,
    The dummy president of the wagon works
    And the canning factory,
    Acting for Thomas Rhodes and the banking clique;
    My son the cashier of the bank,
    Wedded to Rhodes, daughter,
    My week days spent in making money,
    My Sundays at church and in prayer.
    In everything a cog in the wheel of things - as - they-are:
    Of money, master and man, made white
    With the paint of the Christian creed.
    And then:
    The bank collapsed.
    I stood and hooked at the wrecked machine -
    The wheels with blow-holes stopped with putty and painted;
    The rotten bolts, the broken rods;
    And only the hopper for souls fit to be used again
    In a new devourer of life,
    When newspapers, ...

Edgar Lee Masters

Willard Fluke

    My wife lost her health,
    And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds.
    Then that woman, whom the men
    Styled Cleopatra, came along.
    And we - we married ones
    All broke our vows, myself among the rest.
    Years passed and one by one
    Death claimed them all in some hideous form
    And I was borne along by dreams
    Of God's particular grace for me,
    And I began to write, write, write, reams on reams
    Of the second coming of Christ.
    Then Christ came to me and said,
    "Go into the church and stand before the congregation
    And confess your sin."
    But just as I stood up and began to speak
    I saw my little girl, who was sitting in the front seat -
    My little girl who was born blind!
    After that, ...

Edgar Lee Masters

Poynings.

    Do you remember that June day among
    The hills, the high, far-reaching Sussex hills?
    Above, the straggling flocks of fleecy clouds
    That skipped and chased each other merrily
    In God's warm pasturage, the azure sky;
    Below, the hills that stretched their mighty heads
    As though they fain would neighbor with that sky.
    Deep, vivid green, save where the flocks showed white;
    The wise ewes hiding from the glow of noon
    In shady spots, the short-wooled lambs at play,
    And over all the stillness of the hills,
    The sweet and solemn stillness of the hills.

    The shepherds gave us just such looks of mild
    Surprise as did the sheep they shepherded.
    "Ye are not of the hills," so said the looks,
    "Not of our kind, but st...

Jean Blewett