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

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

Madeline

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

The Grand River Marshes

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Caroline Branson

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Dorcas Gustine

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.

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 t...

Edgar Lee Masters

Harold Arnett

    I leaned against the mantel, sick, sick,
    Thinking of my failure, looking into the abysm,
    Weak from the noon-day heat.
    A church bell sounded mournfully far away,
    I heard the cry of a baby,
    And the coughing of John Yarnell,
    Bed-ridden, feverish, feverish, dying,
    Then the violent voice of my wife:
    "Watch out, the potatoes are burning!"
    I smelled them . . . then there was irresistible disgust.
    I pulled the trigger . . . blackness . . . light . . .
    Unspeakable regret . . . fumbling for the world again.
    Too late! Thus I came here,
    With lungs for breathing . . . one cannot breathe here with lungs,
    Though one must breathe
    Of what use is it To rid one's self of the world,
    When no soul may ever escape t...

Edgar Lee Masters

Jefferson Howard

    My valiant fight! For I call it valiant,
    With my father's beliefs from old Virginia:
    Hating slavery, but no less war.
    I, full of spirit, audacity, courage
    Thrown into life here in Spoon River,
    With its dominant forces drawn from
    New England, Republicans, Calvinists, merchants, bankers,
    Hating me, yet fearing my arm.
    With wife and children heavy to carry -
    Yet fruits of my very zest of life.
    Stealing odd pleasures that cost me prestige,
    And reaping evils I had not sown;
    Foe of the church with its charnel dankness,
    Friend of the human touch of the tavern;
    Tangled with fates all alien to me,
    Deserted by hands I called my own.
    Then just as I felt my giant strength
    Short of breath, behold ...

Edgar Lee Masters

Franklin Jones

    If I could have lived another year
    I could have finished my flying machine,
    And become rich and famous.
    Hence it is fitting the workman
    Who tried to chisel a dove for me
    Made it look more like a chicken.
    For what is it all but being hatched,
    And running about the yard,
    To the day of the block?
    Save that a man has an angel's brain,
    And sees the ax from the first!

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

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