What You Will

    April rain, delicious weeping,
        Washes white bones from the grave,
    Long enough have they been sleeping.
        They are cleansed, and now they crave
    Once more on the earth to gather
    Pleasure from the springtime weather.

    The pine trees and the long dark grass
        Feed on what is placed below.
    Think you not that there doth pass
        In them something we did know?
    This spell, well, friends, I greet ye once again
    With joy, but with a most unuttered pain.

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

Nicholas Bindle

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

John M. Church

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Louise Smith

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

The Question

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.

The Landscape

You and your landscape! There it lies
Stripped, resuming its disguise,
Clothed in dreams, made bare again,
Symbol infinite of pain,
Rapture, magic, mystery
Of vanished days and days to be.
There's its sea of tidal grass
Over which the south winds pass,
And the sun-set's Tuscan gold
Which the distant windows hold
For an instant like a sphere
Bursting ere it disappear.
There's the dark green woods which throve
In the spell of Leese's Grove.
And the winding of the road;
And the hill o'er which the sky
Stretched its pallied vacancy
Ere the dawn or evening glowed.
And the wonder of the town
Somewhere from the hill-top down
Nestling under hills and woods
And the meadow's solitudes.

        *        *        *        *        *

Edgar Lee Masters

When Under The Icy Eaves

    When under the icy eaves
        The swallow heralds the sun,
    And the dove for its lost mate grieves
        And the young lambs play and run;
    When the sea is a plane of glass,
        And the blustering winds are still,
    And the strength of the thin snows pass
        In mists o'er the tawny hill -
    The spirit of life awakes
    In the fresh flags by the lakes.

    When the sick man seeks the air,
        And the graves of the dead grow green,
    Where the children play unaware
        Of the faces no longer seen;
    When all we have felt or can feel,
        And all we are or have been,
    And all the heart can hide or reveal,
        Knocks gently, and enters in: -
    The spirit of life awakes,
    In the fresh fla...

Edgar Lee Masters

Rain In My Heart

    There is a quiet in my heart
    Like one who rests from days of pain.
    Outside, the sparrows on the roof
    Are chirping in the dripping rain.

    Rain in my heart; rain on the roof;
    And memory sleeps beneath the gray
    And windless sky and brings no dreams
    Of any well remembered day.

    I would not have the heavens fair,
    Nor golden clouds, nor breezes mild,
    But days like this, until my heart
    To loss of you is reconciled.

    I would not see you. Every hope
    To know you as you were has ranged.
    I, who am altered, would not find
    The face I loved so greatly changed.

Edgar Lee Masters

The Question

    I

    The sea moans and the stars are bright,
    The leaves lisp 'neath a rolling moon.
    I shut my eyes against the night
    And make believe the time is June,
    The June that left us over-soon.

    This is the path and this the place
    We sat and watched the moving sea,
    And I the moonlight on your face.
    We were not happy, woe is me,
    Happiness is but memory!

    It seemeth, now that you are gone,
    My heart a measured pain doth keep:
    Are you now, as I am, alone?
    Do you make merry, do you weep?
    In whose arms are you now asleep?

Edgar Lee Masters

Arlo Will

    Did you ever see an alligator
    Come up to the air from the mud,
    Staring blindly under the full glare of noon?
    Have you seen the stabled horses at night
    Tremble and start back at the sight of a lantern?
    Have you ever walked in darkness
    When an unknown door was open before you
    And you stood, it seemed, in the light of a thousand candles
    Of delicate wax?
    Have you walked with the wind in your ears
    And the sunlight about you
    And found it suddenly shine with an inner splendor?
    Out of the mud many times
    Before many doors of light
    Through many fields of splendor,
    Where around your steps a soundless glory scatters
    Like new - fallen snow,
    Will you go through earth, O strong of soul,
    And...

Edgar Lee Masters

Caroline Branson

    With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked,
    As often before, the April fields till star - light
    Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness
    Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood,
    Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing
    Like notes of music that run together, into winning,
    In the inspired improvisation of love!
    But to put back of us as a canticle ended
    The rapt enchantment of the flesh,
    In which our souls swooned, down, down,
    Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves -
    Annihilated in love!
    To leave these behind for a room with lamps:
    And to stand with our Secret mocking itself,
    And hiding itself amid flowers and mandolins,
    Stared at by all between salad and coffee....

Edgar Lee Masters