Robert Davidson

    I grew spiritually fat living off the souls of men.
    If I saw a soul that was strong
    I wounded its pride and devoured its strength.
    The shelters of friendship knew my cunning
    For where I could steal a friend I did so.
    And wherever I could enlarge my power
    By undermining ambition, I did so,
    Thus to make smooth my own.
    And to triumph over other souls,
    Just to assert and prove my superior strength,
    Was with me a delight,
    The keen exhilaration of soul gymnastics.
    Devouring souls, I should have lived forever.
    But their undigested remains bred in me a deadly nephritis,
    With fear, restlessness, sinking spirits,
    Hatred, suspicion, vision disturbed.
    I collapsed at last with a shriek.
    Remember the acorn;
    It does not devour other acorns.

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

Widow La Rue

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

John M. Church

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

The Blind

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Julia Miller

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Village Atheist

    Ye young debaters over the doctrine
    Of the soul's immortality
    I who lie here was the village atheist,
    Talkative, contentious, versed in the arguments
    Of the infidels. But through a long sickness
    Coughing myself to death I read the
    Upanishads and the poetry of Jesus.
    And they lighted a torch of hope and intuition
    And desire which the Shadow
    Leading me swiftly through the caverns of darkness,
    Could not extinguish.
    Listen to me, ye who live in the senses
    And think through the senses only:
    Immortality is not a gift,
    Immortality is an achievement;
    And only those who strive mightily
    Shall possess it.

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

Alfred Moir

    Why was I not devoured by self-contempt,
    And rotted down by indifference
    And impotent revolt like Indignation Jones?
    Why, with all of my errant steps
    Did I miss the fate of Willard Fluke?
    And why, though I stood at Burchard's bar,
    As a sort of decoy for the house to the boys
    To buy the drinks, did the curse of drink
    Fall on me like rain that runs off,
    Leaving the soul of me dry and clean?
    And why did I never kill a man Like Jack McGuire?
    But instead I mounted a little in life,
    And I owe it all to a book I read.
    But why did I go to Mason City,
    Where I chanced to see the book in a window,
    With its garish cover luring my eye?
    And why did my soul respond to the book,
    As I read it over and...

Edgar Lee Masters

Samuel Gardner

    I who kept the greenhouse,
    Lover of trees and flowers,
    Oft in life saw this umbrageous elm,
    Measuring its generous branches with my eye,
    And listened to its rejoicing leaves
    Lovingly patting each other
    With sweet aeolian whispers.
    And well they might:
    For the roots had grown so wide and deep
    That the soil of the hill could not withhold
    Aught of its virtue, enriched by rain,
    And warmed by the sun;
    But yielded it all to the thrifty roots,
    Through which it was drawn and whirled to the trunk,
    And thence to the branches, and into the leaves,
    Wherefrom the breeze took life and sang.
    Now I, an under - tenant of the earth, can see
    That the branches of a tree
    Spread no wider than its ...

Edgar Lee Masters

Willie Pennington

    They called me the weakling, the simpleton,
    For my brothers were strong and beautiful,
    While I, the last child of parents who had aged,
    Inherited only their residue of power.
    But they, my brothers, were eaten up
    In the fury of the flesh, which I had not,
    Made pulp in the activity of the senses, which I had not,
    Hardened by the growth of the lusts, which I had not,
    Though making names and riches for themselves.
    Then I, the weak one, the simpleton,
    Resting in a little corner of life,
    Saw a vision, and through me many saw the vision,
    Not knowing it was through me.
    Thus a tree sprang
    From me, a mustard seed.

Edgar Lee Masters

Robert Fulton Tanner

    If a man could bite the giant hand
    That catches and destroys him,
    As I was bitten by a rat
    While demonstrating my patent trap,
    In my hardware store that day.
    But a man can never avenge himself
    On the monstrous ogre Life.
    You enter the room    that's being born;
    And then you must live    work out your soul,
    Of the cross-current in life
    Which Bring honor to the dead, who lived in shame.

Edgar Lee Masters