Rosie Roberts

    I was sick, but more than that, I was mad
    At the crooked police, and the crooked game of life.
    So I wrote to the Chief of Police at Peoria:
    "l am here in my girlhood home in Spoon River,
    Gradually wasting away.
    But come and take me, I killed the son
    Of the merchant prince, in Madam Lou's
    And the papers that said he killed himself
    In his home while cleaning a hunting gun -
    Lied like the devil to hush up scandal
    For the bribe of advertising.
    In my room I shot him, at Madam Lou's,
    Because he knocked me down when I said
    That, in spite of all the money he had,
    I'd see my lover that night."

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

Enoch Dunlap

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Friar Yves

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Jennie M'Grew

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

On A Bust

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

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Zilpha Marsh

    At four o'clock in late October
    I sat alone in the country school-house
    Back from the road, mid stricken fields,
    And an eddy of wind blew leaves on the pane,
    And crooned in the flue of the cannon-stove,
    With its open door blurring the shadows
    With the spectral glow of a dying fire.
    In an idle mood I was running the planchette -
    All at once my wrist grew limp,
    And my hand moved rapidly over the board,
    'Till the name of "Charles Guiteau" was spelled,
    Who threatened to materialize before me.
    I rose and fled from the room bare-headed
    Into the dusk, afraid of my gift.
    And after that the spirits swarmed -
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Edgar Lee Masters

Ralph Rhodes

    All they said was true:
    I wrecked my father's bank with my loans
    To dabble in wheat; but this was true -
    I was buying wheat for him as well,
    Who couldn't margin the deal in his name
    Because of his church relationship.
    And while George Reece was serving his term
    I chased the will-o-the-wisp of women
    And the mockery of wine in New York.
    It's deathly to sicken of wine and women
    When nothing else is left in life.
    But suppose your head is gray, and bowed
    On a table covered with acrid stubs
    Of cigarettes and empty glasses,
    And a knock is heard, and you know it's the knock
    So long drowned out by popping corks
    And the pea-cock screams of demireps -
    And you look up, and there's your Theft,

Edgar Lee Masters

Jack McGuire

    They would have lynched me
    Had I not been secretly hurried away
    To the jail at Peoria.
    And yet I was going peacefully home,
    Carrying my jug, a little drunk,
    When Logan, the marshal, halted me
    Called me a drunken hound and shook me
    And, when I cursed him for it, struck me
    With that Prohibition loaded cane -
    All this before I shot him.
    They would have hanged me except for this:
    My lawyer, Kinsey Keene, was helping to land
    Old Thomas Rhodes for wrecking the bank,
    And the judge was a friend of
    Rhodes And wanted him to escape,
    And Kinsey offered to quit on
    Rhodes For fourteen years for me.
    And the bargain was made.
    I served my time
    And learned to read and write.

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

Roscoe Purkapile

    She loved me.
    Oh! how she loved me I never had a chance to escape
    From the day she first saw me.
    But then after we were married I thought
    She might prove her mortality and let me out,
    Or she might divorce me. But few die, none resign.
    Then I ran away and was gone a year on a lark.
    But she never complained. She said all would be well
    That I would return. And I did return.
    I told her that while taking a row in a boat
    I had been captured near Van Buren Street
    By pirates on Lake Michigan,
    And kept in chains, so I could not write her.
    She cried and kissed me, and said it was cruel,
    Outrageous, inhuman! I then concluded our marriage
    Was a divine dispensation
    And could not be dissolved,
    Exce...

Edgar Lee Masters

Silas Dement

    It was moon-light, and the earth sparkled
    With new-fallen frost.
    It was midnight and not a soul abroad.
    Out of the chimney of the court-house
    A gray-hound of smoke leapt and chased
    The northwest wind.
    I carried a ladder to the landing of the stairs
    And leaned it against the frame of the trap-door
    In the ceiling of the portico,
    And I crawled under the roof and amid the rafters
    And flung among the seasoned timbers
    A lighted handful of oil-soaked waste.
    Then I came down and slunk away.
    In a little while the fire-bell rang -
    Clang! Clang! Clang!
    And the Spoon River ladder company
    Came with a dozen buckets and began to pour water
    On the glorious bon-fire, growing hotter
    Higher and...

Edgar Lee Masters