Roger Heston

    Oh many times did Ernest Hyde and I
    Argue about the freedom of the will.
    My favorite metaphor was Prickett's cow
    Roped out to grass, and free you know as far
    As the length of the rope.
    One day while arguing so, watching the cow
    Pull at the rope to get beyond the circle
    Which she had eaten bare,
    Out came the stake, and tossing up her head,
    She ran for us.
    "What's that, free-will or what?" said Ernest, running.
    I fell just as she gored me to my death.

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

Tom Beatty

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Oscar Hummel

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Peleg Poague

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Silence

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

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Jacob Godbey

    How did you feel, you libertarians,
    Who spent your talents rallying noble reasons
    Around the saloon, as if Liberty
    Was not to be found anywhere except at the bar
    Or at a table, guzzling?
    How did you feel, Ben Pantier, and the rest of you,
    Who almost stoned me for a tyrant
    Garbed as a moralist,
    And as a wry-faced ascetic frowning upon Yorkshire pudding,
    Roast beef and ale and good will and rosy cheer -
    Things you never saw in a grog-shop in your life?
    How did you feel after I was dead and gone,
    And your goddess, Liberty, unmasked as a strumpet,
    Selling out the streets of Spoon River
    To the insolent giants
    Who manned the saloons from afar?
    Did it occur to you that personal liberty
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Edgar Lee Masters

W. Lloyd Garrison Standard

    Vegetarian, non - resistant, free-thinker, in ethics a Christian;
    Orator apt at the rhine-stone rhythm of Ingersoll.
    Carnivorous, avenger, believer and pagan.
    Continent, promiscuous, changeable, treacherous, vain,
    Proud, with the pride that makes struggle a thing for laughter;
    With heart cored out by the worm of theatric despair.
    Wearing the coat of indifference to hide the shame of defeat;
    I, child of the abolitionist idealism -
    A sort of Brand in a birth of half-and-half.
    What other thing could happen when I defended
    The patriot scamps who burned the court house
    That Spoon River might have a new one
    Than plead them guilty?
    When Kinsey Keene drove through
    The card - board mask of my life with a spear of light,...

Edgar Lee Masters

The Master of the Grange.

The type of enterprise is he,
    Of sense and thrift and toil;
Who reckons less on pedigree
    Than rich, productive soil;
And no "blue blood" - if such there be -
    His veins can ever spoil.

And yet on blood his heart is set;
    He has his sacred cow,
Some Alderney or Jersey pet,
    The mistress of the mow;
His favorite pig is (by brevet)
    "Lord Suffolk" - of the slough.

To points of stock is he alive
    As keenest cattle king;
A thoroughbred he deigns to drive,
    But not a mongrel thing;
The very bees within his hive
    Are crossed - without a sting.

If apple-boughs drop pumpkins and
    Tomatoes grow on trees,
It is because his grafting hand
    Has so diverted these
That alien shoots with native ...

Hattie Howard

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

Sam Hookey

    I ran away from home with the circus,
    Having fallen in love with Mademoiselle Estralada,
    The lion tamer.
    One time, having starved the lions
    For more than a day,
    I entered the cage and began to beat Brutus
    And Leo and Gypsy.
    Whereupon Brutus sprang upon me,
    And killed me.
    On entering these regions
    I met a shadow who cursed me,
    And said it served me right. . . .
    It was Robespierre!

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