State's Attorney Fallas

    I, the scourge-wielder, balance-wrecker,
    Smiter with whips and swords;
    I, hater of the breakers of the law;
    I, legalist, inexorable and bitter,
    Driving the jury to hang the madman, Barry Holden,
    Was made as one dead by light too bright for eyes,
    And woke to face a Truth with bloody brow:
    Steel forceps fumbled by a doctor's hand
    Against my boy's head as he entered life
    Made him an idiot. I turned to books of science
    To care for him.
    That's how the world of those whose minds are sick
    Became my work in life, and all my world.
    Poor ruined boy! You were, at last, the potter
    And I and all my deeds of charity
    The vessels of your hand.

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

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Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

English

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The Circuit Judge

    Take note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions
    Eaten in my head-stone by the wind and rain -
    Almost as if an intangible Nemesis or hatred
    Were marking scores against me,
    But to destroy, and not preserve, my memory.
    I in life was the Circuit judge, a maker of notches,
    Deciding cases on the points the lawyers scored,
    Not on the right of the matter.
    O wind and rain, leave my head-stone alone
    For worse than the anger of the wronged,
    The curses of the poor,
    Was to lie speechless, yet with vision clear,
    Seeing that even Hod Putt, the murderer,
    Hanged by my sentence,
    Was innocent in soul compared with me.

Edgar Lee Masters

The Town Marshal

    The: Prohibitionists made me Town Marshal
    When the saloons were voted out,
    Because when I was a drinking man,
    Before I joined the church, I killed a Swede
    At the saw-mill near Maple Grove.
    And they wanted a terrible man,
    Grim, righteous, strong, courageous,
    And a hater of saloons and drinkers,
    To keep law and order in the village.
    And they presented me with a loaded cane
    With which I struck Jack McGuire
    Before he drew the gun with which he killed
    The Prohibitionists spent their money in vain
    To hang him, for in a dream
    I appeared to one of the twelve jurymen
    And told him the whole secret story.
    Fourteen years were enough for killing me.

Edgar Lee Masters

Judge Somers

    How does it happen, tell me,
    That I who was most erudite of lawyers,
    Who knew Blackstone and Coke
    Almost by heart, who made the greatest speech
    The court-house ever heard, and wrote
    A brief that won the praise of Justice Breese
    How does it happen, tell me,
    That I lie here unmarked, forgotten,
    While Chase Henry, the town drunkard,
    Has a marble block, topped by an urn
    Wherein Nature, in a mood ironical,
    Has sown a flowering weed?

Edgar Lee Masters

Butch" Weldy

    After I got religion and steadied down
    They gave me a job in the canning works,
    And every morning I had to fill
    The tank in the yard with gasoline,
    That fed the blow-fires in the sheds
    To heat the soldering irons.
    And I mounted a rickety ladder to do it,
    Carrying buckets full of the stuff.
    One morning, as I stood there pouring,
    The air grew still and seemed to heave,
    And I shot up as the tank exploded,
    And down I came with both legs broken,
    And my eyes burned crisp as a couple of eggs.
    For someone left a blow - fire going,
    And something sucked the flame in the tank.
    The Circuit Judge said whoever did it
    Was a fellow-servant of mine, and so
    Old Rhodes' son didn't have to pay me.
 ...

Edgar Lee Masters

A. D. Blood

    If you in the village think that my work was a good one,
    Who closed the saloons and stopped all playing at cards,
    And haled old Daisy Fraser before Justice Arnett,
    In many a crusade to purge the people of sin;
    Why do you let the milliner's daughter Dora,
    And the worthless son of Benjamin Pantier
    Nightly make my grave their unholy pillow?

Edgar Lee Masters

Harmon Whitney

    Out of the lights and roar of cities,
    Drifting down like a spark in Spoon River,
    Burnt out with the fire of drink, and broken,
    The paramour of a woman I took in self-contempt,
    But to hide a wounded pride as well.
    To be judged and loathed by a village of little minds -
    I, gifted with tongues and wisdom,
    Sunk here to the dust of the justice court,
    A picker of rags in the rubbage of spites and wrongs, -
    I, whom fortune smiled on!
    I in a village,
    Spouting to gaping yokels pages of verse,
    Out of the lore of golden years,
    Or raising a laugh with a flash of filthy wit
    When they bought the drinks to kindle my dying mind.
    To be judged by you,
    The soul of me hidden from you,
    With its wound gang...

Edgar Lee Masters