Willie Pennington

    They called me the weakling, the simpleton,
    For my brothers were strong and beautiful,
    While I, the last child of parents who had aged,
    Inherited only their residue of power.
    But they, my brothers, were eaten up
    In the fury of the flesh, which I had not,
    Made pulp in the activity of the senses, which I had not,
    Hardened by the growth of the lusts, which I had not,
    Though making names and riches for themselves.
    Then I, the weak one, the simpleton,
    Resting in a little corner of life,
    Saw a vision, and through me many saw the vision,
    Not knowing it was through me.
    Thus a tree sprang
    From me, a mustard seed.

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

Richard Bone

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Lucinda Matlock

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Daisy Fraser

Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

Archibald Higbie

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.

Jefferson Howard

    My valiant fight! For I call it valiant,
    With my father's beliefs from old Virginia:
    Hating slavery, but no less war.
    I, full of spirit, audacity, courage
    Thrown into life here in Spoon River,
    With its dominant forces drawn from
    New England, Republicans, Calvinists, merchants, bankers,
    Hating me, yet fearing my arm.
    With wife and children heavy to carry -
    Yet fruits of my very zest of life.
    Stealing odd pleasures that cost me prestige,
    And reaping evils I had not sown;
    Foe of the church with its charnel dankness,
    Friend of the human touch of the tavern;
    Tangled with fates all alien to me,
    Deserted by hands I called my own.
    Then just as I felt my giant strength
    Short of breath, behold ...

Edgar Lee Masters

Willie Metcalf

    I was Willie Metcalf.
    They used to call me "Doctor Meyers,"
    Because, they said, I looked like him.
    And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire.
    I lived in the livery stable,
    Sleeping on the floor
    Side by side with Roger Baughman's bulldog,
    Or sometimes in a stall.
    I could crawl between the legs of the wildest horses
    Without getting kicked - we knew each other.
    On spring days I tramped through the country
    To get the feeling, which I sometimes lost,
    That I was not a separate thing from the earth.
    I used to lose myself, as if in sleep,
    By lying with eyes half-open in the woods.
    Sometimes I talked with animals - even toads and snakes -
    Anything that had an eye to look into.
    Once I saw...

Edgar Lee Masters

Indignation" Jones

    You would not believe, would you
    That I came from good Welsh stock?
    That I was purer blooded than the white trash here?
    And of more direct lineage than the
    New Englanders And Virginians of Spoon River?
    You would not believe that I had been to school
    And read some books.
    You saw me only as a run-down man
    With matted hair and beard
    And ragged clothes.
    Sometimes a man's life turns into a cancer
    From being bruised and continually bruised,
    And swells into a purplish mass
    Like growths on stalks of corn.
    Here was I, a carpenter, mired in a bog of life
    Into which I walked, thinking it was a meadow,
    With a slattern for a wife, and poor Minerva, my daughter,
    Whom you tormented and drove to deat...

Edgar Lee Masters

Willard Fluke

    My wife lost her health,
    And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds.
    Then that woman, whom the men
    Styled Cleopatra, came along.
    And we - we married ones
    All broke our vows, myself among the rest.
    Years passed and one by one
    Death claimed them all in some hideous form
    And I was borne along by dreams
    Of God's particular grace for me,
    And I began to write, write, write, reams on reams
    Of the second coming of Christ.
    Then Christ came to me and said,
    "Go into the church and stand before the congregation
    And confess your sin."
    But just as I stood up and began to speak
    I saw my little girl, who was sitting in the front seat -
    My little girl who was born blind!
    After that, ...

Edgar Lee Masters

Ezra Bartlett

    A chaplain in the army,
    A chaplain in the prisons,
    An exhorter in Spoon River,
    Drunk with divinity, Spoon River -
    Yet bringing poor Eliza Johnson to shame,
    And myself to scorn and wretchedness.
    But why will you never see that love of women,
    And even love of wine,
    Are the stimulants by which the soul, hungering for divinity,
    Reaches the ecstatic vision
    And sees the celestial outposts?
    Only after many trials for strength,
    Only when all stimulants fail,
    Does the aspiring soul
    By its own sheer power
    Find the divine
    By resting upon itself.

Edgar Lee Masters

Aaron Hatfield

    Better than granite, Spoon River,
    Is the memory-picture you keep of me
    Standing before the pioneer men and women
    There at Concord Church on Communion day.
    Speaking in broken voice of the peasant youth
    Of Galilee who went to the city
    And was killed by bankers and lawyers;
    My voice mingling with the June wind
    That blew over wheat fields from Atterbury;
    While the white stones in the burying ground
    Around the Church shimmered in the summer sun.
    And there, though my own memories
    Were too great to bear, were you, O pioneers,
    With bowed heads breathing forth your sorrow
    For the sons killed in battle and the daughters
    And little children who vanished in life's morning,
    Or at the intolerable hour of no...

Edgar Lee Masters