Mabel Osborne

    Your red blossoms amid green leaves
    Are drooping, beautiful geranium!
    But you do not ask for water.
    You cannot speak!
    You do not need to speak -
    Everyone knows that you are dying of thirst,
    Yet they do not bring water!
    They pass on, saying:
    "The geranium wants water."
    And I, who had happiness to share
    And longed to share your happiness;
    I who loved you, Spoon River,
    And craved your love,
    Withered before your eyes, Spoon River -
    Thirsting, thirsting,
    Voiceless from chasteness of soul to ask you for love,
    You who knew and saw me perish before you,
    Like this geranium which someone has planted over me,
    And left to die.

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

Cities Of The Plain

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Searcy Foote

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Jennie M'Grew

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Lucinda Matlock

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

English

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Lucinda Matlock

    I went to the dances at Chandlerville,
    And played snap-out at Winchester.
    One time we changed partners,
    Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,
    And then I found Davis.
    We were married and lived together for seventy years,
    Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
    Eight of whom we lost
    Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
    I spun,
    I wove,
    I kept the house,
    I nursed the sick,
    I made the garden, and for holiday
    Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
    And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
    And many a flower and medicinal weed -
    Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
    At ninety - six I had lived enough, that is all,
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Edgar Lee Masters

Edmund Pollard

    I would I had thrust my hands of flesh
    Into the disk - flowers bee-infested,
    Into the mirror-like core of fire
    Of the light of life, the sun of delight.
    For what are anthers worth or petals
    Or halo-rays? Mockeries, shadows
    Of the heart of the flower, the central flame
    All is yours, young passer-by;
    Enter the banquet room with the thought;
    Don't sidle in as if you were doubtful
    Whether you're welcome - the feast is yours!
    Nor take but a little, refusing more
    With a bashful "Thank you", when you're hungry.
    Is your soul alive? Then let it feed!
    Leave no balconies where you can climb;
    Nor milk-white bosoms where you can rest;
    Nor golden heads with pillows to share;
    Nor wine cups while the...

Edgar Lee Masters

Searcy Foote

    I wanted to go away to college
    But rich Aunt Persis wouldn't help me.
    So I made gardens and raked the lawns
    And bought John Alden's books with my earnings
    And toiled for the very means of life.
    I wanted to marry Delia Prickett,
    But how could I do it with what I earned?
    And there was Aunt Persis more than seventy
    Who sat in a wheel-chair half alive
    With her throat so paralyzed, when she swallowed
    The soup ran out of her mouth like a duck -
    A gourmand yet, investing her income
    In mortgages, fretting all the time
    About her notes and rents and papers.
    That day I was sawing wood for her,
    And reading Proudhon in between.
    I went in the house for a drink of water,
    And there she sat asleep in ...

Edgar Lee Masters

Pauline Barrett

    Almost the shell of a woman after the surgeon's knife
    And almost a year to creep back into strength,
    Till the dawn of our wedding decennial
    Found me my seeming self again.
    We walked the forest together,
    By a path of soundless moss and turf.
    But I could not look in your eyes,
    And you could not look in my eyes,
    For such sorrow was ours - the beginning of gray in your hair.
    And I but a shell of myself.
    And what did we talk of? - sky and water,
    Anything, 'most, to hide our thoughts.
    And then your gift of wild roses,
    Set on the table to grace our dinner.
    Poor heart, how bravely you struggled
    To imagine and live a remembered rapture!
    Then my spirit drooped as the night came on,
    And you left...

Edgar Lee Masters

What You Will

    April rain, delicious weeping,
        Washes white bones from the grave,
    Long enough have they been sleeping.
        They are cleansed, and now they crave
    Once more on the earth to gather
    Pleasure from the springtime weather.

    The pine trees and the long dark grass
        Feed on what is placed below.
    Think you not that there doth pass
        In them something we did know?
    This spell, well, friends, I greet ye once again
    With joy, but with a most unuttered pain.

Edgar Lee Masters

Caroline Branson

    With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked,
    As often before, the April fields till star - light
    Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness
    Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood,
    Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing
    Like notes of music that run together, into winning,
    In the inspired improvisation of love!
    But to put back of us as a canticle ended
    The rapt enchantment of the flesh,
    In which our souls swooned, down, down,
    Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves -
    Annihilated in love!
    To leave these behind for a room with lamps:
    And to stand with our Secret mocking itself,
    And hiding itself amid flowers and mandolins,
    Stared at by all between salad and coffee....

Edgar Lee Masters