Edgar Lee Masters

On an ancient vase representing in bas-relief the flight of Helen.


    This is the vase of Love
    Whose feet would ever rove
        O'er land and sea;
    Whose hopes forever seek
    Bright eyes, the vermeiled cheek,
        And ways made free.

    Do we not understand
    Why thou didst leave thy land,
        Thy spouse, thy hearth?
    Helen of Troy, Greek art
    Hath made our heart thy heart,
        Thy mirth our mirth.

    For Paris did appear,
    Curled hair and rosy ear
        And tapering hands.
    He spoke, the blood ran fast,
    He touched, and killed the past,
        And clove its bands.

    And this, I deem, is why
    The restless ages sigh,
        Helen, for thee.
    Whate'e...

    One partner may consult another - James,
    Here is a matter you must help me with,
    It's coming to a head.

    Well, to be plain,
    And to begin at the beginning first,
    I knew a woman up on Sixty-third,
    Have known her since I got her a divorce,
    Married, divorced, before - last night we quarreled,
    I must do something, hear me and advise.

    She is a woman notable for eyes
    Bright for their oblong lights in them; they seem
    Like crockery vases, rookwood, where the light
    Shows spectrally almost in squares and circles.
    Her skin is fair, nose hooked, of amorous flesh,
    A feaster and a liver, thinks and plans
    Of money, how to get it. And this husband
    Whom she divorced last summer went away,
    An...

    I reached the highest place in Spoon River,
    But through what bitterness of spirit!
    The face of my father, sitting speechless,
    Child-like, watching his canaries,
    And looking at the court-house window
    Of the county judge's room,
    And his admonitions to me to seek
    My own in life, and punish Spoon River
    To avenge the wrong the people did him,
    Filled me with furious energy
    To seek for wealth and seek for power.
    But what did he do but send me along
    The path that leads to the grove of the Furies?
    I followed the path and I tell you this:
    On the way to the grove you'll pass the Fates,
    Shadow-eyed, bent over their weaving.
    Stop for a moment, and if you see
    The thread of revenge leap out of the s...

    Whoever thou art who passest by
    Know that my father was gentle,
    And my mother was violent,
    While I was born the whole of such hostile halves,
    Not intermixed and fused,
    But each distinct, feebly soldered together.
    Some of you saw me as gentle,
    Some as violent,
    Some as both.
    But neither half of me wrought my ruin.
    It was the falling asunder of halves,
    Never a part of each other,
    That left me a lifeless soul.

    I was the Sunday-school superintendent,
    The dummy president of the wagon works
    And the canning factory,
    Acting for Thomas Rhodes and the banking clique;
    My son the cashier of the bank,
    Wedded to Rhodes, daughter,
    My week days spent in making money,
    My Sundays at church and in prayer.
    In everything a cog in the wheel of things - as - they-are:
    Of money, master and man, made white
    With the paint of the Christian creed.
    And then:
    The bank collapsed.
    I stood and hooked at the wrecked machine -
    The wheels with blow-holes stopped with putty and painted;
    The rotten bolts, the broken rods;
    And only the hopper for souls fit to be used again
    In a new devourer of life,
    When newspapers, ...

    The bank broke and I lost my savings.
    I was sick of the tiresome game in Spoon River
    And I made up my mind to run away
    And leave my place in life and my family;
    But just as the midnight train pulled in,
    Quick off the steps jumped Cully Green
    And Martin Vise, and began to fight
    To settle their ancient rivalry,
    Striking each other with fists that sounded
    Like the blows of knotted clubs.
    Now it seemed to me that Cully was winning,
    When his bloody face broke into a grin
    Of sickly cowardice, leaning on Martin
    And whining out "We're good friends, Mart,
    You know that I'm your friend."
    But a terrible punch from Martin knocked him
    Around and around and into a heap.
    And then they arrested me as...

    All your sorrow, Louise, and hatred of me
    Sprang from your delusion that it was wantonness
    Of spirit and contempt of your soul's rights
    Which made me turn to Annabelle and forsake you.
    You really grew to hate me for love of me,
    Because I was your soul's happiness,
    Formed and tempered
    To solve your life for you, and would not.
    But you were my misery.
    If you had been
    My happiness would I not have clung to you?
    This is life's sorrow:
    That one can be happy only where two are;
    And that our hearts are drawn to stars
    Which want us not.

    I Made two fights for the people.
    First I left my party, bearing the gonfalon
    Of independence, for reform, and was defeated.
    Next I used my rebel strength
    To capture the standard of my old party -
    And I captured it, but I was defeated.
    Discredited and discarded, misanthropical,
    I turned to the solace of gold
    And I used my remnant of power
    To fasten myself like a saprophyte
    Upon the putrescent carcass
    Of Thomas Rhodes, bankrupt bank,
    As assignee of the fund.
    Everyone now turned from me.
    My hair grew white,
    My purple lusts grew gray,
    Tobacco and whisky lost their savor
    And for years Death ignored me
    As he does a hog.

    I tried to win the nomination
    For president of the County-board
    And I made speeches all over the County
    Denouncing Solomon Purple, my rival,
    As an enemy of the people,
    In league with the master-foes of man.
    Young idealists, broken warriors,
    Hobbling on one crutch of hope,
    Souls that stake their all on the truth,
    Losers of worlds at heaven's bidding,
    Flocked about me and followed my voice
    As the savior of the County.
    But Solomon won the nomination;
    And then I faced about,
    And rallied my followers to his standard,
    And made him victor, made him King
    Of the Golden Mountain with the door
    Which closed on my heels just as I entered,
    Flattered by Solomon's invitation,
    To be ...

    Here I lie close to the grave
    Of Old Bill Piersol,
    Who grew rich trading with the Indians, and who
    Afterwards took the Bankrupt Law
    And emerged from it richer than ever
    Myself grown tired of toil and poverty
    And beholding how Old Bill and other grew in wealth
    Robbed a traveler one Night near Proctor's Grove,
    Killing him unwittingly while doing so,
    For which I was tried and hanged.
    That was my way of going into bankruptcy.
    Now we who took the bankrupt law in our respective ways
    Sleep peacefully side by side.

    Often Aner Clute at the gate
    Refused me the parting kiss,
    Saying we should be engaged before that;
    And just with a distant clasp of the hand
    She bade me good-night, as I brought her home
    From the skating rink or the revival.
    No sooner did my departing footsteps die away
    Than Lucius Atherton,
    (So I learned when Aner went to Peoria)
    Stole in at her window, or took her riding
    Behind his spanking team of bays
    Into the country.
    The shock of it made me settle down
    And I put all the money I got from my father's estate
    Into the canning factory, to get the job
    Of head accountant, and lost it all.
    And then I knew I was one of Life's fools,
    Whom only death would treat as the equal
    Of ot...

    It never came into my mind
    Until I was ready to die
    That Jenny had loved me to death, with malice of heart.
    For I was seventy, she was thirty - five,
    And I wore myself to a shadow trying to husband
    Jenny, rosy Jenny full of the ardor of life.
    For all my wisdom and grace of mind
    Gave her no delight at all, in very truth,
    But ever and anon she spoke of the giant strength
    Of Willard Shafer, and of his wonderful feat
    Of lifting a traction engine out of the ditch
    One time at Georgie Kirby's.
    So Jenny inherited my fortune and married Willard -
    That mount of brawn! That clownish soul!

    My name used to be in the papers daily
    As having dined somewhere,
    Or traveled somewhere,
    Or rented a house in Paris,
    Where I entertained the nobility.
    I was forever eating or traveling,
    Or taking the cure at Baden-Baden.
    Now I am here to do honor
    To Spoon River, here beside the family whence I sprang.
    No one cares now where I dined,
    Or lived, or whom I entertained,
    Or how often I took the cure at Baden-Baden.

- His Own Words

IN MEMORY OF KIFFIN ROCKWELL

    *        *        *        *        *

Eagle, whose fearless
Flight in vast spaces
Clove the inane,
While we stood tearless,
White with rapt faces
In wonder and pain. ...

Heights could not awe you,
Depths could not stay you.
Anguished we saw you,
Saw Death way-lay you
Where the storm flings
Black clouds to thicken
Round France's defender!
Archangel stricken
From ramparts of splendor -
Shattered your wings! ...

But Lafayette called you,
Rochambeau beckoned.
Duty enthralled you.
For France you had reckoned
Her gift and your debt.
Dull hearts could harden
Half-gods could palter.
For you never pardon
If Liberty's altar
Yo...

    Nothing in life is alien to you:
    I was a penniless girl from Summum
    Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River.
    All the houses stood before me with closed doors
    And drawn shades - l was barred out;
    I had no place or part in any of them.
    And I walked past the old McNeely mansion,
    A castle of stone 'mid walks and gardens
    With workmen about the place on guard
    And the County and State upholding it
    For its lordly owner, full of pride.
    I was so hungry I had a vision:
    I saw a giant pair of scissors
    Dip from the sky, like the beam of a dredge,
    And cut the house in two like a curtain.
    But at the "Commercial" I saw a man
    Who winked at me as I asked for work -
    It was Wash McNeely's son.

    I began with Sir William Hamilton's lectures.
    Then studied Dugald Stewart;
    And then John Locke on the Understanding,
    And then Descartes, Fichte and Schelling,
    Kant and then Schopenhauer -
    Books I borrowed from old Judge Somers.
    All read with rapturous industry
    Hoping it was reserved to me
    To grasp the tail of the ultimate secret,
    And drag it out of its hole.
    My soul flew up ten thousand miles
    And only the moon looked a little bigger.
    Then I fell back, how glad of the earth!
    All through the soul of William Jones
    Who showed me a letter of John Muir.

    You wrote:
    "Come over to Saugatuck
    And be with me on the warm sand,
    And under cool beeches and aromatic cedars."
    And just then no one could do a thing in the city
    For the lure of far places, and something that tugged
    At one's heart because of a June sky,
    And stretches of blue water,
    And a warm wind blowing from the south.
    What could I do but take a boat
    And go to meet you?

    And when to-day is not enough,
    But you must live to-morrow also;
    And when the present stands in the way
    Of something to come,
    And there is but one you would see,
    All the interval of waiting is a wall.
    And so it was I walked the landward deck
    With flapping coat and hat pulled down;
    And I sat o...

    The sounds of mid-night trickle into the roar
    Of morning over the water growing blue.
    At ten o'clock the August sunbeams pour
    A blinding flood on Michigan Avenue.

    But yet the half-drawn shades of bottle green
    Leave the recesses of the room
    With misty auras drawn around their gloom
    Where things lie undistinguished, scarcely seen.

    You, standing between the window and the bed
    Are edged with rainbow colors. And I lie
    Drowsy with quizzical half-open eye
    Musing upon the contour of your head,
    Watching you comb your hair,
    Clothed in a corset waist and skirt of silk,
    Tied with white braid above your slender hips
    Which reaches to your knees and makes your bare
    And delicate legs by contrast w...