Trainor, the Druggist

    Only the chemist can tell, and not always the chemist,
    What will result from compounding
    Fluids or solids.
    And who can tell
    How men and women will interact
    On each other, or what children will result?
    There were Benjamin Pantier and his wife,
    Good in themselves, but evil toward each other;
    He oxygen, she hydrogen,
    Their son, a devastating fire.
    I Trainor, the druggist, a miser of chemicals,
    Killed while making an experiment,
    Lived unwedded.

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

The Town Marshal

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Elmer Karr

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Mrs. Sibley

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Margaret Fuller Slack

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

English

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Dr. Trace To The Coroner

    I cannot tell you, Coroner, the cause
    Of death of Elenor Murray, not until
    My chemical analysis is finished.
    Here is the woman's heart sealed in this jar,
    I weighed it, weight nine ounces, if she had
    A hemolysis, cannot tell you now
    What caused the hemolysis. Since you say
    She took no castor oil, that you can learn
    From Irma Leese, or any witness, still
    A chemical analysis may show
    The presence of ricin, - and that she took
    A dose of oil not pure. Her throat betrayed
    Slight inflammation; but in brief, I wait
    My chemical analysis.

    Let's exclude
    The things we know and narrow down the facts.
    She lay there by the river, death had come
    Some twenty hours before. No stick or stone,

Edgar Lee Masters

Chemist To His Love, The

I love thee, Mary, and thou lovest me,
Our mutual flame is like th' affinity
That doth exist between two simple bodies:
I am Potassium to thine Oxygen.
'Tis little that the holy marriage vow
Shall shortly make us one. That unity
Is, after all, but metaphysical.
Oh, would that I, my Mary, were an acid,
A living acid; thou an alkali
Endow'd with human sense, that, brought together,
We both might coalesce into one salt,
One homogeneous crystal. Oh, that thou
Wert Carbon, and myself were Hydrogen;
We would unite to form olefiant gas,
Or common coal, or naphtha, would to heaven
That I were Phosphorus, and thou wert Lime!
And we of Lime composed a Phosphuret.
I'd be content to be Sulphuric Acid,
So that thou might be Soda. In that case
We should be Gl...

Unknown

Mrs. Benjamin Pantier

    I know that he told that I snared his soul
    With a snare which bled him to death.
    And all the men loved him,
    And most of the women pitied him.
    But suppose you are really a lady, and have delicate tastes,
    And loathe the smell of whiskey and onions,
    And the rhythm of Wordsworth's "Ode" runs in your ears,
    While he goes about from morning till night
    Repeating bits of that common thing;
    "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"
    And then, suppose;
    You are a woman well endowed,
    And the only man with whom the law and morality
    Permit you to have the marital relation
    Is the very man that fills you with disgust
    Every time you think of it    while you think of it
    Every time you see him?
    That...

Edgar Lee Masters

Lucius Atherton

    When my moustache curled,
    And my hair was black,
    And I wore tight trousers
    And a diamond stud,
    I was an excellent knave of hearts and took many a trick.
    But when the gray hairs began to appear -
    Lo! a new generation of girls
    Laughed at me, not fearing me,
    And I had no more exciting adventures
    Wherein I was all but shot for a heartless devil,
    But only drabby affairs, warmed-over affairs
    Of other days and other men.
    And time went on until I lived at
    Mayer's restaurant,
    Partaking of short-orders, a gray, untidy,
    Toothless, discarded, rural Don Juan. . . .
    There is a mighty shade here who sings
    Of one named Beatrice;
    And I see now that the force that made him great
    Drove...

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

Mrs. Williams

    I was the milliner
    Talked about, lied about,
    Mother of Dora,
    Whose strange disappearance
    Was charged to her rearing.
    My eye quick to beauty
    Saw much beside ribbons
    And buckles and feathers
    And leghorns and felts,
    To set off sweet faces,
    And dark hair and gold.
    One thing I will tell you
    And one I will ask:
    The stealers of husbands
    Wear powder and trinkets,
    And fashionable hats.
    Wives, wear them yourselves.
    Hats may make divorces -
    They also prevent them.
    Well now, let me ask you:
    If all of the children, born here in Spoon River
    Had been reared by the
    County, somewhere on a farm;
    And the fathers and mothers had been given their freed...

Edgar Lee Masters