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.

August 23, 1868

March 5, 1950

English

Edgar Lee Masters

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A Study

    If your thoughts were as clear as your eyes,
    And the whole of your heart were true,
    You were fitter by far for winning,
    But then that would not be you.

    If your pulse beat time to love
    As fast as you think and plan,
    You could kindle a lasting passion
    In the breast of the strongest man.

    If you felt as much as you thought,
    And dreamed what you seem to dream,
    A world of elysian beauty
    Your ruined heart would redeem.

    If you thought in the light of the sun,
    Or the blood in your veins flowed free,
    If you gave your kisses but gladly,
    We two could better agree.

    If you were strong where I counted,
    And weak where yourself were at stake,
    You would have my strength...

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

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

Abel Melveny

    I bought every kind of machine that's known -
    Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers,
    Mills and rakes and ploughs and threshers -
    And all of them stood in the rain and sun,
    Getting rusted, warped and battered,
    For I had no sheds to store them in,
    And no use for most of them.
    And toward the last, when I thought it over,
    There by my window, growing clearer
    About myself, as my pulse slowed down,
    And looked at one of the mills I bought -
    Which I didn't have the slightest need of,
    As things turned out, and I never ran -
    A fine machine, once brightly varnished,
    And eager to do its work,
    Now with its paint washed off -
    I saw myself as a good machine
    That Life had never used.

Edgar Lee Masters

Ace" Shaw

    I never saw any difference
    Between playing cards for money
    And selling real estate,
    Practicing law, banking, or anything else.
    For everything is chance.
    Nevertheless
    Seest thou a man diligent in business?
    He shall stand before Kings!

Edgar Lee Masters

Adam Weirauch

    I was crushed between Altgeld and Armour.
    I lost many friends, much time and money
    Fighting for Altgeld whom Editor Whedon
    Denounced as the candidate of gamblers and anarchists.
    Then Armour started to ship dressed meat to Spoon River,
    Forcing me to shut down my slaughter-house
    And my butcher shop went all to pieces.
    The new forces of Altgeld and Armour caught me
    At the same time. I thought it due me, to recoup the money I lost
    And to make good the friends that left me,
    For the Governor to appoint me Canal Commissioner.
    Instead he appointed Whedon of the Spoon River Argus,
    So I ran for the legislature and was elected.
    I said to hell with principle and sold my vote
    On Charles T. Yerkes' street-car franchise.

Edgar Lee Masters

Albert Schirding

    Jonas Keene thought his lot a hard one
    Because his children were all failures.
    But I know of a fate more trying than that:
    It is to be a failure while your children are successes.
    For I raised a brood of eagles
    Who flew away at last, leaving me
    A crow on the abandoned bough.
    Then, with the ambition to prefix
    Honorable to my name,
    And thus to win my children's admiration,
    I ran for County Superintendent of Schools,
    Spending my accumulations to win - and lost.
    That fall my daughter received first prize in
    Paris For her picture, entitled, "The Old Mill" -
    (It was of the water mill before Henry Wilkin put in steam.)
    The feeling that I was not worthy of her finished me.

Edgar Lee Masters

Alfonso Churchill

    They laughed at me as "Prof. Moon,"
    As a boy in Spoon River, born with the thirst
    Of knowing about the stars.
    They jeered when I spoke of the lunar mountains,
    And the thrilling heat and cold,
    And the ebon valleys by silver peaks,
    And Spica quadrillions of miles away,
    And the littleness of man.
    But now that my grave is honored, friends,
    Let it not be because I taught
    The lore of the stars in Knox College,
    But rather for this: that through the stars
    I preached the greatness of man,
    Who is none the less a part of the scheme of things
    For the distance of Spica or the Spiral Nebulae;
    Nor any the less a part of the question
    Of what the drama means.

Edgar Lee Masters

Alfred Moir

    Why was I not devoured by self-contempt,
    And rotted down by indifference
    And impotent revolt like Indignation Jones?
    Why, with all of my errant steps
    Did I miss the fate of Willard Fluke?
    And why, though I stood at Burchard's bar,
    As a sort of decoy for the house to the boys
    To buy the drinks, did the curse of drink
    Fall on me like rain that runs off,
    Leaving the soul of me dry and clean?
    And why did I never kill a man Like Jack McGuire?
    But instead I mounted a little in life,
    And I owe it all to a book I read.
    But why did I go to Mason City,
    Where I chanced to see the book in a window,
    With its garish cover luring my eye?
    And why did my soul respond to the book,
    As I read it over and...

Edgar Lee Masters

All Life In A Life

    His father had a large family
    Of girls and boys and he was born and bred
    In a barn or kind of cattle shed.
    But he was a hardy youngster and grew to be
    A boy with eyes that sparkled like a rod
    Of white hot iron in the blacksmith shop.
    His face was ruddy like a rising moon,
    And his hair was black as sheep's wool that is black.
    And he had rugged arms and legs and a strong back.
    And he had a voice half flute and half bassoon.
    And from his toes up to his head's top
    He was a man, simple but intricate.
    And most men differ who try to delineate
    His life and fate.

    He never seemed ashamed
    Of poverty or of his origin. He was a wayward child,
    Nevertheless though wise and mild,
    And thoughtful...

Edgar Lee Masters

Alma Bell To The Coroner

    What my name is, or where I live, or if
    I am that Alma Bell whose name is broached
    With Elenor Murray's who shall know from this?
    My hand-writing I hide in type, I send
    This letter through a friend who will not tell.
    But first, since no chance ever yet was mine
    To speak my heart out, since if I had tried
    These fifteen years ago to tell my heart,
    I must have failed for lack of words and mind,
    I speak my heart out now. I knew the soul
    Of Elenor Murray, knew it at the time,
    Have verified my knowledge in these years,
    Who have not lost her, have kept touch with her
    In letters, know the splendid sacrifice
    She made in the war. She was a human soul
    Earth is not blest with often.

    First I say

Edgar Lee Masters

Amanda Barker

    Henry got me with child,
    Knowing that I could not bring forth life
    Without losing my own.
    In my youth therefore I entered the portals of dust.
    Traveler, it is believed in the village where I lived
    That Henry loved me with a husband's love
    But I proclaim from the dust
    That he slew me to gratify his hatred.

Edgar Lee Masters

Amelia Garrick

    Yes, here I lie close to a stunted rose bush
    In a forgotten place near the fence
    Where the thickets from Siever's woods
    Have crept over, growing sparsely.
    And you, you are a leader in New York,
    The wife of a noted millionaire,
    A name in the society columns,
    Beautiful, admired, magnified perhaps
    By the mirage of distance.
    You have succeeded,
    I have failed In the eyes of the world.
    You are alive, I am dead.
    Yet I know that I vanquished your spirit;
    And I know that lying here far from you,
    Unheard of among your great friends
    In the brilliant world where you move,
    I am really the unconquerable power over your life
    That robs it of complete triumph.

Edgar Lee Masters

Ami Green

    Not "a youth with hoary head and haggard eye",
    But an old man with a smooth skin
    And black hair! I had the face of a boy as long as I lived,
    And for years a soul that was stiff and bent,
    In a world which saw me just as a jest,
    To be hailed familiarly when it chose,
    And loaded up as a man when it chose,
    Being neither man nor boy.
    In truth it was soul as well as body
    Which never matured, and I say to you
    That the much-sought prize of eternal youth
    Is just arrested growth.

Edgar Lee Masters

Aner Clute

    Over and over they used to ask me,
    While buying the wine or the beer,
    In Peoria first, and later in Chicago,
    Denver, Frisco, New York, wherever I lived
    How I happened to lead the life,
    And what was the start of it.
    Well, I told them a silk dress,
    And a promise of marriage from a rich man -
    (It was Lucius Atherton).
    But that was not really it at all.
    Suppose a boy steals an apple
    From the tray at the grocery store,
    And they all begin to call him a thief,
    The editor, minister, judge, and all the people -
    "A thief," "a thief," "a thief," wherever he goes
    And he can't get work, and he can't get bread
    Without stealing it, why the boy will steal.
    It's the way the people regard the theft of ...

Edgar Lee Masters

Anne Rutledge

    Out of me unworthy and unknown
    The vibrations of deathless music;
    "With malice toward none, with charity for all.',
    Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions,
    And the beneficent face of a nation
    Shining with justice and truth.
    I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds,
    Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln,
    Wedded to him, not through union, But through separation.
    Bloom forever, O Republic,
    From the dust of my bosom!

Edgar Lee Masters

Anton Sosnowski

    Anton Sosnowski, from the Shakspeare School
    Where he assists the janitor, sweeps and dusts,
    The day now done, sits by a smeared up table
    Munching coarse bread and drinking beer; before him
    The evening paper spread, held down or turned
    By claw-like hands, covered with shiny scars.
    He broods upon the war news, and his fate
    Which keeps him from the war, looks up and sees
    His scarred face in the mirror over the wainscot;
    His lashless eyes and browless brows and head
    With patches of thin hair. And then he mutters
    Hot curses to himself and turns the paper
    And curses Germany, and asks revenge
    For Poland's wrongs.

        And what is this he sees?
    The picture of his ruin and his hate,
    Wert Rufus Fox...

Edgar Lee Masters

Arabel

    Twists of smoke rise from the limpness of jewelled fingers,
    The softness of Persian rugs hushes the room.
    Under a dragon lamp with a shade the color of coral
    Sit the readers of poems one by one.
    And all the room is in shadow except for the blur
    Of mahogany surface, and tapers against the wall.

    And a youth reads a poem of love: forever and ever
    Is his soul the soul of the loved one; a woman sings
    Of the nine months which go to the birth of a soul.
    And after a time under the lamp a man
    Begins to read a letter having no poem to read.
    And the words of the letter flash and die like a fuse
    Dampened by rain, it's a dying mind that writes
    What Byron did for the Greeks against the Turks.
    And a sickness enters our ...

Edgar Lee Masters

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