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

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

A Study

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Josiah Tompkins

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Saving A Woman: One Phase

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Love Is A Madness

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

William Marion Reedy

    He sits before you silent as Buddha,
    And then you say
    This man is Rabelais.
    And while you wonder what his stock is,
    English or Irish, you behold his eyes
    As big and brown as those desirable crockies
    With which as boys we used to play.
    And then you see the spherical light that lies
    Just under the iris coloring,
    Before which everything,
    Becomes as plain as day.

    If you have noticed the rolling jowls
    And the face that speaks its chief
    Delight in beer and roast beef
    Before you have seen his eyes, you see
    A man of fleshly jollity,
    Like the friars of old in gowns and cowls
    To make a show of scowls.
    And when he speaks from an orotund depth that growls
    In a humorous way...

Edgar Lee Masters

Neanderthal

"Then what is life?" I cried. And with that cry
I woke from deeper slumber - was it sleep? -
And saw a hooded figure standing by
The bed whereon I lay.

    "Why do you keep,
O spirit beautiful and swift, this guard
About my slumber? Shelley, from the deep
Why do you come with veiled face, mighty bard,
As that unearthly shape was veiled to you
At Casa Magni?"

        Then the room was starred
With light as I was speaking, and I knew
The god, my brother, from whose face the veil
Melted as mist.

        "What mission fair and true,
While I am sleeping, brings you? For I pale
Amid this solemn stillness, for your face
Unutterably majestic."

    As when the dale
At midnight echoes for a little space,
The night-bird's cry, ...

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

Tennessee Claflin Shope

    I was the laughing-stock of the village,
    Chiefly of the people of good sense, as they call themselves -
    Also of the learned, like Rev. Peet, who read Greek
    The same as English.
    For instead of talking free trade,
    Or preaching some form of baptism;
    Instead of believing in the efficacy
    Of walking cracks, picking up pins the right way,
    Seeing the new moon over the right shoulder,
    Or curing rheumatism with blue glass,
    I asserted the sovereignty of my own soul.
    Before Mary Baker G. Eddy even got started
    With what she called science I had mastered the "Bhagavad Gita,"
    And cured my soul, before Mary Began to cure bodies with souls -
    Peace to all worlds!

Edgar Lee Masters

Vacilliation

I

Between extremities
Man runs his course;
A brand, or flaming breath.
Comes to destroy
All those antinomies
Of day and night;
The body calls it death,
The heart remorse.
But if these be right
What is joy?


II

A tree there is that from its topmost bough
Is half all glittering flame and half all green
Abounding foliage moistened with the dew;
And half is half and yet is all the scene;
And half and half consume what they renew,
And he that Attis' image hangs between
That staring fury and the blind lush leaf
May know not what he knows, but knows not grief


III

Get all the gold and silver that you can,
Satisfy ambition, animate
The trivial days and ram them with the sun,
And yet upon t...

William Butler Yeats